i need to be clear about what's happening in canada right now.

the liberal party in the senate is blocking legislation from the liberal party in the house. on first glance, it appears as though the liberals are just hopelessly incompetent; it's a schizophrenic system, akin to what happens to a body when it gets overrun by cancer.

but, this cancer is not accidental. this is by design.

in fact, the liberal party redesigned the system, so that the liberals in the senate would be able to block legislation from the liberals in the house. they did this by splitting the caucus in half.

this is the way this is supposed to work:

1) trudeau makes an election promise. like proportional representation. the dry run was marijuana legalization.
2) after the promises win the election, the party passes legislation in the house and sends it to the senate.
3) the party controls the senate, but what they've done is split the caucus in half. half are called liberals and half are called 'independents'. they were all appointed by the liberals. that way, the party can block it's own legislation without technically voting against it, then blame it on the opposition.
4) then, they can run on the same empty promise in the next election.

the model is the obama administration, which managed to avoid doing anything substantive through years of unified government via a similar mechanism.

but, the next government isn't going to want to do anything like this. the conservatives are still going to exist in the senate. they will eventually regain a majority. and, they will promptly undo everything that trudeau has done, in order to reassert control over it.

in the mean time? don't fall for this.

trudeau's words are not worth the paper that somebody else wrote them on.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.