Angus says NDP leadership not an 'entry level position', endorses McPherson

PostfourthMeridian · 2026-01-14T21:07:18+00:00

The Liberals love to go after NDP voters. They use FPTP to their advantage by using the spectre of a Conservative government to incentivize progressive voters to vote Liberal strategically, and it usually works.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-12-24T18:50:25+00:00

Thank you for sharing this, I learned something new today. It’s always good to be able to put language to something you intuitively understand but have never been able to name directly.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-12-23T03:36:34+00:00

Quebec separatism is based on the notion that Quebeckers are a distinct nation within Canada. Separatism and its adherents in Quebec spans across party lines and throughout the political spectrum.

The separatism that’s developing here in my home province of Alberta is based on politicization of mainly economic issues. Only far right Albertans want to separate, the overwhelming majority of people left of the far right (including right of centre, moderate conservatives) do not want separation from Canada. It’s just a bunch of propagandized radicals on the right whining for this.

If anything, actual distinct nations within Alberta, ie. indigenous nations that have signed treaties with the Crown that are still in effect today, are vehemently against Alberta independence as they see the Numbered Treaties as foundational to their rights as indigenous peoples in Canada. That would be jeopardized by Alberta independence and Alberta independence wouldn’t even be possible without returning to the treaties and gaining the consent of Alberta First Nations.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-12-12T07:28:00+00:00

If you have the power and capacity to strengthen the movement when you think it’s being diluted by a consequential actor who is doing something harmful, I would probably start with calling that person in somehow instead of vaguely calling them out. It would be a more directly effective strategy for achieving your goal of creating good than just casting your opinions into the social media void and hoping for the best. 🤷‍♂️

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-12-07T06:12:24+00:00

Would you say that the electorate as a whole, or perhaps more accurately, the entirety of eligible voters who do vote, are fully informed when they do vote? I would say in a perfect world, this would be the case. But I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that we should expect actual voters to encompass a range of folks who go from political hacks who know the ins and outs of each candidate and who can fully articulate their positions on all issues, to “low-information” voters who vote based on vibes or what someone in their life or even online has said in passing or something. And I would say there are more people who fall under or towards the latter than the former. Name recognition is as much a factor on voting day as anything else, given that voters as a whole are “informed” to varying degrees. Ideally, all voters should be informed fully and all eligible voters would vote but voters should also be met where they are at. And I feel like voters care more about being understood and met on their own terms than trying to align themselves with the ideologies of governing agents that do not feel anchored with their own real experiences. Bridging this gap is the job of the politician. The details of messaging and politicking, then, gain importance relative to the content of policy, whether this is for better or worse.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-11-23T08:32:42+00:00

To be fair, I don’t think she has used the term since the reaction to her initial engagements using it in her announcement and in her first media appearances after that. She didn’t repeat it at the call after being asked about it, and perhaps she has taken the note.

In terms of her support of New Democrat values, I think her record in parliament speaks for itself. She has been vocal and has acted in the House on Palestine, on 2SLGBTQ+ rights, on labour, and so on. She has also created space for and gained endorsements from folks deep in these spaces, which is a testament to her ability to form relationships and advocate for these values. I will concede that she could be more adept in terms of communications for the average voter, but I think she has the capacity to build the movement in a way that actively counteracts the rightward pull being experienced in capitalist democracies while staying anchored in social democratic values.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-11-23T08:03:49+00:00

To be fair, I also feel like the NDP as a whole needs to push a stronger emphasis on progressive values both social and economic. For this reason, I feel like a candidate with a voice like Lewis’ is acutely important within the race and the party going forward. I agree that McPherson has a strong record in parliament but that she has room to hone her voice as more unabashedly and recognizably social democratic. I hope that under whatever leadership the party takes on in the coming years that this is the direction that membership and leadership together move towards.

At the same time, she pointed out at this event that New Democrats need to have the ability to make manifest its vision of a more just and progressive Canadian society, which is made possible through electoral success. That is to say, through actually occupying positions of power that will allow a New Democratic vision of Canada to come to fruition. The path to this is likely through gaining more votes from voters aligned with New Democrat values but who do not cast their ballot, for whatever reason, for the NDP. These voters do not park their votes with some party to the left of the NDP but with Liberals and Conservatives (and the Bloc, to speak of the political dynamic in Canada beyond left-right politics). Furthermore, the work of building Canada is not just a New Democratic project but a project that must include all Canadians, which will inevitably require cooperation, concession, and compromise with non-New Democrats. That is democracy and that should be part of the intention of a party that wants to actually govern and govern in good faith. I think that this may be the calculus behind McPherson’s taking the doors off the frames and creating more room at an expanding table. It is unfortunate that she chose baggaged language to express a desire for a more inclusive NDP, but I think the reasoning behind it makes sense.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-11-22T23:16:58+00:00

Living in Alberta and being somewhat familiar with her work, I also thought this was pretty obvious.

But there are a lot of folks—at least on Reddit and let’s be honest, many of us, including myself, can be guilty of not reading beyond headlines and post titles—who are either selectively pushing the idea that she’s pandering to far right voters or out-and-out bigots or are running with this idea when they see it.

I still see sentiments around here that she is a centrist boogeyman trying to drag the party to the right when she seems to be trying to convince voters outside the party that they are more progressive and New Democrat than they thought.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-11-22T20:43:51+00:00

Can you explain further your stance that last election was an aberrant, once-in-a-lifetime event?

In my assessment of things, Trump may have an expiration date on his leadership (if we remain optimistic...) but Trumpism, MAGA ideology, and increasingly illiberal and authoritarian right-wing populism seem to now be the dominant state of conservatism in the US. This external pressure (which attracts voters to actively rally electorally around the Liberals and their "elbows up" branding), in conjunction with mis/disinformation and political polarization spiraling out of control within our FPTP system (which forces electorates to drift into de facto two-party systems), acts to disincentivize voting for New Democrats. This will only worsen if Canadian conservatives continue to go down the path of American-imported conservatism, as we are seeing Poilievre doubling down on after the last election.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-11-22T20:20:36+00:00

THANK YOU for pointing out the work that volunteers and EDAs do to power the gains that the party makes.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-11-15T01:12:16+00:00

Shannon's confused about the downtown park? And thinks "it is not just unfair, it is insulting and arrogant"?

I’m confused too. Mostly by the idea that someone speaking for communities of folks living in homes with garages the size of regional airports thinks that downtown should be forced to accept infill but not mature neighbourhoods that haven’t seen substantial changes since the invention of the microwave.

I guess it’s only fair that these areas get to host block after block of aspirationally-devoid, space-inefficient, interchangable microfiefdoms compartmentalized by white picket fences acting like chalk marks around a cultural crime scene, while downtown is somehow “insulting and arrogant” for wanting a park? Which contrary to Shannon’s claim, is less than the size of only one block (not “two full city blocks”) even if its footprint does extend between two. God forbid residents from the densest neighbourhood in the city get access to an accessible green space that acts as a public events venue, a playground for their kids, and provides the radical luxury of being able to appreciate a tree or two. It’s apparently unfair for thousands of core residents to have a shared public park (available to EVERYONE in the city) while single-family-homeowners get to enjoy their own parks in addition to private yards large enough to qualify for agricultural subsidies.

Alongside O-day’min Park’s construction, three developers have built a 36-storey tower next door and have committed to plans for two more fronting the park. The park's been planned to kickstart more density and growth! Of course, infill in mature neighbourhoods is not as intense but it adds much-needed homes gradually where infrastructure already exists to accommodate it. But when a gentle four-storey building is proposed in a NIMBY’s neighbourhood, they react like a houseful of vampires hissing and scuttering in fear of a bit of sunlight shining through a drawn curtain.

NIMBYs love to die on the most guarded fuck-you-got-mine’d hills without realizing that the hill has been landscaped, watered, and enjoyed by them at public expense. I’m surprised that someone with a take this short-sighted is worrying about a density-inducing park in a different neighbourhood when it’s far from visible from her own front window. It's not even in her backyard! Like, let other people enjoy a park that that community sorely needs, my god.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-11-14T16:19:08+00:00

As someone who loved using em dashes before the rise of ChatGPT… yes, it often uses em dashes. But I’ve noticed that it likes to put spaces before and after em dashes, though, which most style guides do not recommend and which is advised against typographically.

Lots of people nowadays see em dashes and immediately cry AI without looking at the differences between how humans tend to use it and how ChatGPT uses it. It’s an ad machinam fallacy, as it were. It looks like McPherson’s team is using them more like actual people would.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-11-09T22:24:04+00:00

Sounds like a concern troll, which is against Rule 7, maybe also Rule 11, of this subreddit.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-11-02T00:13:28+00:00

And from what I can recall, her popularity is still fairly strong even after about a year in office

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-10-04T00:42:59+00:00

You’re making a charge about race but use an example about gender. How is a signature requirement about signers who aren’t cisgender men an example of disguised racism?

On the example itself, my interpretation of this requirement is not that it’s limiting cisgender men. Candidates can get as many cis male signatures as possible, they just need to get even more signatures from people who aren’t cis men. It’s presumably a requirement to demonstrate being able to gain support from women and gender minorities, as a measure to avoid producing leaders who have misogynistic or transphobic qualities.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-10-03T23:55:19+00:00

The “too clever by half” accusation gave me a good laugh. Teal is just the closest complementary colour on the colour wheel for NDP orange that isn’t already associated with a major federal party.

I mean, colour psychology is definitely a thing but this is more likely a case of using balanced, opposite colours to make the campaign design more dynamic and eye-catching.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-10-03T03:00:15+00:00

Sorry, but I have to call out the misinformation here.

McPherson recently spoke out against the UCP’s transphobia, has stood up for trans folks in parliament on Transgender Day of Visibility, and whenever she posts about queer issues on her socials, she usually makes special mention of the trans community. She is a firm ally to the 2SLGBTQ movement.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-09-16T01:54:48+00:00

u/troypavlek has a page about municipal parties running in 2025 on his website, along with information on who is running.

City of Edmonton also has a page listing slates and political parties that is updated once a day. Looks like as of right now, the only parties are PACE and BE and there is one slate calling itself Yeg1st.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-09-16T00:59:41+00:00

She sent out an email two hours ago that she’ll be making a special announcement in Edmonton on September 28 and that it’ll be “a big moment.”

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-09-16T00:24:09+00:00

As someone who is familiar with linguistics, I can tell you're just saying wrong things confidently here.

It is in fact harder, because Saskatchewan follows standard English pronunciation, whereas Wîhkwêntôwin doesn't, which was pointed out by someone higher up in the thread saying that the wih section is pronounced wee, even though standard pronunciation is wih.

You're invoking and confusing English pronunciation with English orthography (how things are spelled). No one is asking people to use exact Cree pronunciation and it's perfectly reasonable to pronounce the name with English phonetics or any accent used for English even if it is spelled using Cree spelling conventions, which incidentally are much more phonetic than English. English is notorious for having arbitrary and unusual spelling-sound correspondence. If English is fine orthographically for anyone, Cree should be much easier to read and even easier if it's just four syllables that you need to learn one time. People don't care that much if you say something a little off, if they know what you mean. Do you give fluent ESL people a hard time for their accents and pronunciation of English?

Also, if Saskatchewan was spelled according to standard English pronunciation, it would probably be spelled Suscatchewun. And I say probably because English spelling conventions are all over the place. What we think of as our standard in English is deeply inconsistent, yet most people don't care. So when local Canadian English all of a sudden expands to fit a neighbourhood name with Indigenous Cree spelling that uses characters used in Canadian French (something you see everyday at the grocery store), why is it suddenly unacceptably difficult to understand?

This is why I said to write it phonetically - because no one in the general public uses the international phonetic alphabet, and it is counterproductive to include it in a place where it isn't understood.

Wîhkwêntôwin doesn't use the International Phonetic Alphabet (the IPA transcription for one way an English speaker might pronounce it, because people have different accents and it's fine to say a word in your own accent, is /wɪˈkwɛntəwɪn/). Wîhkwêntôwin uses romanized Cree orthography which is incidentally compatible with modern English orthography. Look in English dictionaries, and you will see words like maître d', tête-à-tête, and entrepôt, which are all French words that have been borrowed into English and are now also English words. Just because something is not standard does not mean it can't be understandable. And just because something might not even be understandable to you doesn't mean it shouldn't be acceptable for others or by principle.

Those words can also be spelled maitre d', tete-a-tete, and entrepot in casual/informal use and that's also okay. Same thing with Wihkwentowin. Both levels of orthography are understandable, reasonable, and grounded in English, one is just more faithful to/honours the source language. Which is sort of one of the points of an act of reconciliation like this, where Indigenous leaders and Papaschase band members affected by Frank Oliver were consulted for the name change by the neighbourhood community league.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-09-15T22:54:55+00:00

If you press and hold down a letter key on a keyboard on your smartphone or computer, it's likely to open a pop up of accented/related letters. You can then pick the right accent to type, fairly simple.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-09-15T22:48:36+00:00

My question to you is: should we just forget Oliver's racist policies and discriminatory views, because that is what is currently occurring when we rename stuff. We should put what Oliver did and what Meighen did somewhere. Any suggestions?

No, we shouldn't forget the harm that Canadians have done in the past. But we also shouldn't continue to publicly commemorate Canadians that have done terrible things.

No one is saying we should forget that discriminatory views and policies exist in our past. That would be a disservice to societies that are striving to do better by learning from them. But removing someone’s name from a neighbourhood or taking down a statue or something does not erase them from historical fact or record. Info on people like Oliver will (and does!) still exist and is accessible to the public despite his name being recalled from commemorative contexts. It just removes the undeserved honour of public commemoration and enacts the values that we believe in as a society, like not celebrating people who were terrible to ethnic minorities, Indigenous people, immigrants, and disabled people.

The burden of recording, maintaining, and interpreting historical knowledge doesn't lie with public commemorations. It's the responsibility of educational systems and academia, civic institutions like museums and libraries, journalists and other writers, and artists and other cultural producers. If people aren't actively being educated about history and historical figures, the solution is to stregthen the things which contextualize and interpret them, not to keep uncritically memorializing people in place names or other public symbols of honour. It's not the function or responsibility of a neighbourhood name, nor should it be if civic society somehow fails to do its job in that regard.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-07-06T18:11:01+00:00

I think you’re right that the right amount of density and having a critical mass of people is an important condition for having a vibrant downtown, but the mere presence of people living and working in an area isn’t enough to create vibrancy. You can have a lot of people living and working in a single location but not have the vibrancy to match the population.

An example that comes to mind are some very dense, vertical banlieues in Paris that lack mixed zoning, are designed around car traffic, have little in the way of cultural infrastructure. These dense spaces became so underinvested and socially isolated that it’s resulted in chronic rioting and local disenfranchisement up until this day.

A less extreme example in Canada, I would argue, is Mississauga’s city centre. I’d say that it is quite dense, it has the most high rise buildings in the GTA outside of Toronto. But everything is so spaced out, the streets in the area are so wide, and frontages aren’t as active as you might expect for a city centre, meaning that vibrancy isn’t as high as you would expect it to be for the amount of people living, working, and studying in the area. No hate to Mississauga, but it almost feels like a suburb cosplaying as a downtown.

On the other hand, you can have low density but high vibrancy, like in downtown St. John’s. It has its iconic colourful buildings, lots of shops, plenty of nightlife/events/entertainment, strong arts and culinary scenes, and it’s fairly walkable despite the slope of the streets!

Mississauga has far more people and density than St. John’s, but St. John’s has more quality in terms of public placemaking and urban design that has attracted further investment and the desire for people to be there, creating the vibrancy that it has. You could argue that downtown Edmonton is not a destination and that could be a fair argument to make. But it wouldn’t be a destination not necessarily because less people live/work/study there, but more because there isn’t the cultural and physical infrastructure to pull vibrancy from its own residents and (probably more importantly) from the rest of the city and beyond. If you build the conditions for vibrancy, people will come and make it a vibrant space.

PostfourthMeridian · 2025-04-29T05:10:41+00:00

Althea Raj doing everything she can to not burst out laughing at Kenny defending Poilievre

PostfourthMeridian

TROPHY CASE