I've never heard anything about a change to British spelling. Sounds like nonsense.
Carney is the most popular politician Canada has had in decades. The opposition party is starting to fall apart (two members defected, which means Carney's party is one seat away from a majority).
Whole thing sounds like an attempt to manufacture an 'Obama beige suit' moment.
> Canadian English has been the standard in government communications for decades. But eagle-eyed linguists and editors have spotted British spellings — like "globalisation" and "catalyse" — in documents from the Carney government, including the budget.
Apparently it was acceptable to use s or z in words like catalyse or analyze in British English until Microsoft Word came out with a British English spellchecker that picked the s spelling as its standard. Whether this is just myth or fact seems to be a point of controversy.
In popular writing, the s forms dominate - I've not heard the MS Word explanation before, but the most popular UK-produced word processors and spellcheckers in the 1980s (eg. Locoscript/Locospell, Protext/Prospell, 1st Word) tended to come from companies in the Cambridge area or which were founded by Cambridge grads, so would naturally have used the s spellings by default.
I'm British, but when submitting papers for blind review, always use American spelling for obvious reasons. I suppose I could change it after acceptance, but that would just be pretentious.
I learned British English starting in the 80s and using s whereas z was used in American English, together with tre instead of ter (eg. theatre), was a big difference. And I can tell you that MS Word back then was just not there so this sounds like an urban legend but let the British people in HN chime in.
No, see (even the new) Fowler's Modern English Usage. British usage is -yse, but right-and-proper Oxford spelling uses -ize, not -ise, for words with a Greek root.
It's not a line that's crossed. It's just the standard in Canada.
In Britain, aeroplanes are made of aluminium and they have tyres. The Ministry of Defence sends them out on manoeuvres in theatres of combat, where the pilots have generally excelled due to regular practice.
In America, airplanes are made of aluminum and they have tires. The Department of Defense sends them out on maneuvers in theaters of combat, where the pilots have generally exceled due to regular practise.
In Canada, airplanes are made of aluminum and they have tires. The Department of National Defence sends them out on manoeuvres in theatres of combat, where the pilots have generally excelled due to regular practice.
"Period" tends to be used in day-to-day speech when referring to the punctuation; you'll hear "full stop" if it's meant to emphasize a previous statement (though not universally), like with "you'll do the dishes, full stop."
Generally, the correct spelling of a word is determined by those that use it. Canadians have used 'colour' for a long time. If enough people start using 'color', that will eventually be the correct spelling in Canada.
Heh, it’s -11C here right now and my thermostat is set to drop to 65F overnight.
Also, with respect to the metric/imperial systems of measurement… officially the government is all metric, but due to the history of it all there will be a bunch of regulations that say things like “the toilet must be at least 228.6mm away from the wall” because the pre-metric standard was 9 inches.
And a final one for the prairies: in the 1800s there was the Dominion Land Survey, which carved us up into 1 mile x 1 mile squares. They did a truly impressive job of it. However, the edges of these squares is where the road allowances are, which means that despite the speed limit being in km/h, you are almost certainly going to be travelling N miles down the highway to get to your destination.
Oh! Didn't know! Is there regional variation in that?
I was forced to unlearn centre when we moved to America in my second grade. But everyone–from Virginia to New Jersey to California–was cool with me keeping analyse and defence.
This is as stupid as starting a war over cracking the big end or little end of an egg. Or, using whatever book was about that subject as a spelling style guide.
The opposition party is falling apart because, despite being a Liberal government, the Liberal party is being a better Conservative party than the Conservatives were while the Conservatives have no platform or plan other than 'Liberals bad, lol' (or, somehow, 'Trudeau bad, lol').
The first conservative MP to defect said that the caucus has a "frat party atmosphere"[1]. The last MP to defect used to be CIO at Royal Bank of Canada. My suspicion is that the conservatives are being run internally like a boys' club revolving around PP and the Liberals are having no difficulty peeling off MPs who went in expecting a professional workplace. Disaster.
Yes. Additionally, Poilievre's attitude is tone deaf. Canadians are fearful of and anxious about Trump's foreign policy. Most Canadian politicians have been savvy enough to know voters crave a reassuring, united front. Poilievre's combativeness is a bad fit for the current moment.
Nope, he was a Democrat and Republicans and their propaganda outlets like Fox news use the disinfo technique "accusation in a mirror" to discredit complaints about things they plan to do by poisoning discourse early. So they can point back to their bad faith complaints and say "they're copying me" and then the rest of the media just goes "ho hum he said she said." because corporate media doesn't care to actually separate fact from fiction when they can just make boatloads of money from ad views.
So they complained about Obama "destroying presidential norms"
> Carney is the most popular politician Canada has had in decades.
All thanks to Trump's silly tariffs. There's a silver lining to everything. I hope that the association makes protectionism politically taboo for decades to come.
Not in the US, at least. Every administration since at least Bush jr slapped tariffs on a few things here and there, and mostly kept the previous admin's ad hoc tariffs in place.
In more practical places, like Singapore where I live, you'd be right: tariffs are by and large unthinkable.
The tariffs were just half of it, the attacks on national sovereignty were the other, and Pierre being his usual shallow and despicable self on the campaign trail were the third.
If Carney (or almost anyone but PP, really) were the head of the CPC, they'd have had a majority today. But looking at where the party's going, it's doubtful that the CPC will ever again elect a leader who can both read and write.
> I hope that the association makes protectionism politically taboo for decades to come.
That is waaaay too black and white. Trump's actions != protectionism, Trump's actions ⊂ protectionism (and have been stupid). Free trade and globalization has failed most of the world in pretty serious ways (though it's been great for the much of the elite, floating on top of big piles of capital). Protectionism is important, it just needs to be conducted in a smarter way (instead of indiscriminately tariffing everyone all the sudden)
> Free trade and globalization has failed most of the world in pretty serious ways (though it's been great for the much of the elite, floating on top of big piles of capital).
Globalization benefits capital in rich countries and labor in poor countries. As someone who is from a poor and corrupt country, I have seen many people around me come out of poverty due to globalization.
I can agree that globalization can be bad for labor in rich countries.
Edit: Ironically your comment is also waaaay too black and white.
> I have seen many people around me come out of poverty due to globalization.
This is definitely true and Phil Knight of Nike fame even said that without the opportunity to join his slave workforce in Vietnam, those people would be worse off.
> without the opportunity to join his slave workforce in Vietnam, those people would be worse off.
I am not sure if you are being sarcastic here. But without Amazon many people in my country will be worse off, however bad the working conditions maybe.
Yes it is tongue-in-cheek. I know it's a good proposition for the poor people of that country. But it is pretty widely viewed as exploitative through a wider world lens.
I remember Planet Money doing a pretty good story on this where they spoke with sweatshop workers in Bangladesh.
Relative to the labor wage of employees in the US, they were earning absolute pennies.
Relative to the places they came from? They doubled their income and were functionally free from concerns about things like famine and infected drinkable water.
Exploitation of labor is a complicated topic (and really, the meta-fight is, as is so often the case, not between nations; it's between labor and capital. Offshoring is just another form of scabbing, but the world is not yet small enough that one should expect a fresh-off-the-farm factory worker who just had their prospects opened up to join a global strike because people in the US want to make $15/hr).
(Related: As is so often the case, if you want things better for your folks back home, lift everyone out of poverty and make everyone safe. People are less likley to take "slave-wage" jobs if the alternative is not subsistence and high risk of unpredictable outcome due to localized supply disruption, disease outbreak, or war).
Bangladesh is a fascinating case story. They had a few decades of solid growth largely due to the textile industries, yes.
They went from dirt poor to merely poor. That's to be celebrated, and I hope we see Bangladeshis continue making themselves richer through their own hard work.
> (Related: As is so often the case, if you want things better for your folks back home, lift everyone out of poverty and make everyone safe. People are less likley to take "slave-wage" jobs if the alternative is not subsistence and high risk of unpredictable outcome due to localized supply disruption, disease outbreak, or war).
I assume by 'folks back home' you are referring to people who live in rich countries? Having people in Bangladesh and Vietnam become richer is definitely good from a moral point of view, but it has only second order effects on the 'folks back home'. To a first approximation, it doesn't matter economically how well off or poor foreigners are. As a second order effect, if an economy is booming next door (ie they are getting richer), some positive effects often spill over, and global security probably goes up, too.
> Exploitation of labor is a complicated topic (and really, the meta-fight is, as is so often the case, not between nations; it's between labor and capital. Offshoring is just another form of scabbing, but the world is not yet small enough that one should expect a fresh-off-the-farm factory worker who just had their prospects opened up to join a global strike because people in the US want to make $15/hr).
I'm not sure what you mean by exploitation? In any case, labour and capital are working together, you need both to produce anything in a modern economy. In fact, you need labour, capital and land working together.
If you want to get worked up about anything, it's not labour vs capital. But it's labour+capital vs land. In recent decades in the US the share of GDP going to labour has dipped a bit, capital's share has stayed stable, and the share of land went up.
Many economic analyses mix up land into capital. But that's misleading at best. We can produce more capital to compete with the old capital. We can't make more Land. (Well, not until we are building space habitats.)
(By Land with a capital L, I'm including the oceans. The Netherlands (or even more Singapore) reclaiming big swaths of land just means they are converting ocean floor Land to dry Land.)
It's ironic that USA lost 60-some thousand troops in Vietnam trying to prevent a communist takeover, only for American companies just to enslave them all anyway. I wonder how different the dynamic with Vietnam would have turned out if it had been more of a Korea situation. USA certainly never enslaved South Korea.
Huh? What do you mean by 'enslave'? If you mean that people work for low wages in the export sector, well then I have news for you on South Korea.
The reason South Korea graduated to higher wages quicker than Vietnam seems to be doing, is partially because South Korea is more capitalist, so they see more economic growth quicker.
> Globalization benefits capital in rich countries and labor in poor countries.
Globalization is about benefiting capital in rich countries, any benefits to people poor countries is an unintended side-effect.
> I can agree that globalization can be bad for labor in rich countries.
It may seem that way if you restrict your view to say, China, but it's more complicated than that, and there's more to the world than the "developed world" than Asia.
For instance: IIRC, Africa has had problems with local producers getting run out of business by Chinese knock-offs (e.g. https://www.dw.com/en/how-nigeria-lost-its-textile-market-to...), without the "benefit" of foreign sweatshop employment you've seen in Asia.
My understanding is protectionism would probably be better for Africa, as cheap imports block development of local industry and agriculture, trapping it a low level of development.
> China is now competing head-on not just against other advanced economies but the most vulnerable ones. In effect, it is blocking the ladder to prosperity for countries in the Global South.
> Indonesia lost 250,000 jobs in its backbone textile industry between 2022 and 2024 because of a deluge of Chinese imports, according to the Indonesia Fiber and Filament Yarn Producer Association — and another half-million may now be at risk....
> In Thailand, the Chinese export tsunami has precipitated a crisis among smaller firms making car parts, electrical equipment, and consumer goods, stoking fears of deindustrialization. Village-based cottage industries are particularly at risk; for example, makers of hand-painted ceramic “rooster” bowls have been idled en masse by Chinese fakes that sell for one fifth of the price.
> China’s exports to Southeast Asia are now larger than those to the US. Malaysia’s semiconductor industry, a key growth-engine, is feeling the pressure. Electronics manufacturers in the Philippines are struggling. Vietnam has erected tariff barriers to Chinese hot-rolled coil steel products....
> Yet China keeps piling on the trade pressure. Africa is the new hotspot for Chinese exports: In September, Chinese shipments to the continent surged 56% year-on-year. In the same month, shipments to Latin America were up 15.2%. Some of China’s exports to emerging economies, particularly in Asia, are being rerouted to the US to get around US tariffs, but they also compete with local manufacturers in those firms’ home markets, while displacing their overseas sales.
> My understanding is protectionism would probably be better for Africa, as cheap imports block development of local industry and agriculture, trapping it a low level of development.
It's not like protectionism and the government directing economies hasn't been tried in Africa..
>> I hope that the association makes protectionism politically taboo for decades to come.
> That is waaaay too black and white.
We're talking about Trump here: of course it's black and white.
> Free trade and globalization has failed most of the world in pretty serious ways (though it's been great for the much of the elite, floating on top of big piles of capital).
I don't know: extreme poverty has been driven down quite effectively AFAICT:
Wealth inequality dropped after the Gilded Age and post-WW2 until the 1970s (in the US); nothing said it couldn't have been kept down (say, if Reagan was not elected). There's nothing inherent to free trade and globalization that should lead to it if are willing to redistribution (e.g., through taxation and social programs).
> We're talking about Trump here: of course it's black and white.
Trump might portrait things that way, but that doesn't mean we need to analyse anything involving him that way.
> Wealth inequality dropped after the Gilded Age and post-WW2 until the 1970s (in the US); [...]
Well, if you take on a more global perspective: global inequality absolutely skyrocketed until the 1970s and has only gradually been climbing down since then. Numerically, the biggest contributor was Mao strangling the Chinese economy (and people) until his death, and then Deng Xiaoping took over and relaxed the grip around their throats. But outsourcing and container shipping and lower tariffs helped a lot, too. Not just in relation with China, but for everyone on the globe.
I'm sick of portraying the era until the 1970s as some kind of golden age. It was the nadir for most people on the globe in terms of equality, not the zenith.
> Well, if you take on a more global perspective: global inequality absolutely skyrocketed until the 1970s and has only gradually been climbing down since then.
Probably because pre-WW2 and globalization most people on the planet were equally poor.
> I'm sick of portraying the era until the 1970s as some kind of golden age. It was the nadir for most people on the globe in terms of equality, not the zenith.
The 1970s were mostly the zenith of recent technological advancement: certainly personal computing and the Internet came after, but there really hasn't been any major invention.
Peak approval for Trudeau was over 64% - Carney hasn't hit that high water mark yet. Now peak to trough - I think Trudeau probably had the biggest fall.
Using nearly the exact same rhetoric and party platform, with the exception of austerity measures. Only difference really seems to be that he knows how to pass a budget, but hasn't really offered anything substantial in terms of hope to the working age population
Getting in bed with Trump was a bad idea. Seeing the right wing in Canada scramble to appear patriotic while everyone knows the conservatives would start a Vichy government.
Jean Chrétien is the most recent Canadian Prime Minister that I remember a wide spectrum of Canadians liking (and by 2000, not as much). Justin Trudeau appealed many American journalists, but only to some Canadians.
If I missed an obvious politician, I will happily concede.
By gut feeling I’d agree on Chrétien, and there is some polling on this (which I think backs that up). This article compares favourability after first election for PMs going back quite a ways and Carney looks similar but slightly worse off than Trudeau or Harper.
Well then, I concede! To stick to my guns would require us to trade competing survey results from different pollsters. That's no fun, and unsatisfying, in any case.
That is reasonable, and why I conceded the point. Unfortunately, I cannot remember where the notion got into my head, and it's a bigger pain then it might seem trawling search results to find current articles with peak approval for both men.
It's a huge drag to debate this issue because multiple pollsters have published polls of both Justin Trudeau and Carney, and the results are seldom identical. Consequently, there's a lot of research involved both of polls and pollsters, and the end result won't be conclusive.
It is worth noting, polls aside, that the Carney election both finished off the NDP, and resulted in Conservative Poilievre losing his seat. And recently, Conservatives have started crossing the floor to join Carney. Justin Trudeau was popular with Liberals. Carney is generally popular.
Justin Trudeau actually appealed to many younger Canadians as well, until he severely didn't, but that's how he got elected afaik. I don't think the numbers are out yet, but it was largely boomers who voted Carney in, everyone else that I've spoken to under the age of 40 is like "meh", and some regret voting him in after the Liberals' predictable reaction to the Air Canada strike.
Much like the rest of the g7, we have an aging population and a mega generational class divide. Our youth unemployment rate is high, jobs have dried up, it's a shitshow, and Carney hasn't tried to address this much.
So whether he's popular or not needs more context. He'd certainly be most popular with the richest and most populated generation ever, and potentially business owners, but we'll see.
Considering how much government spending goes to the elderly, either directly via programs like OAS and tax benefits or indirectly via healthcare, and it was only a matter of time before young people question their position in it all (higher schooling tuition/debt, bad job market, expensive housing, etc). OAS doesn't even start getting clawed back until personal income is over $90K and is only fully clawed back at $150K! And it's double that for a couple!
The timing of the last election was perfect for Carney when there was a window where the whole country was going WTF with Trump and PP was still railing against various "woke" grievances and mentioning Trudeau by name. The fact that he wasn't turfed after not only losing the election that was his to win, but also losing his seat, is everything wrong with the myopic federal Conservative Party (whose core members refuse to "compromise" with the rest of the country).
There is a real generational tilt happening and young Canadians no longer defaulting to left leaning ways of thinking (not that they ever were as much as people thought).
Yep agreed on all points. I like that there are a few local orgs (GenerationSqueeze, Missing Middle) bringing light to things like the portion of the federal budget allocated to OAS and how it's structured, and generally being real about present day inequities.
Carney will (hopefully) have to reckon with those in the coming year, while Pierre seriously missed a (the?) boat. It does feel like something big is shifting slowly.
> There is a real generational tilt happening and young Canadians no longer defaulting to left leaning ways of thinking (not that they ever were as much as people thought).
It's my impression that the balance between economic prosperity and social good needs to be constantly curated and revered as an inherent virtue of a democracy with strong social safety nets. It's much easier to get working age people to compensate for the ails of generations past if there's no doubt in their mind they'll have a roof over their head next year.
Progressive, often barely tangible issues, necessarily become internalized as luxurious if the people who could support them can't even pay for food.
Carney is the most popular politician Canada has had in decades. The opposition party is starting to fall apart (two members defected, which means Carney's party is one seat away from a majority).
Whole thing sounds like an attempt to manufacture an 'Obama beige suit' moment.