I know we won’t hear it from either corporate party, so I’d love to hear about this from @avilewis of the #NDP.
I live in one of many blue/orange electoral districts, where there are enough gamers, technicians, mechanics, farmers, nurses, and ticked off normies jaded by conventional slimy politics that a sincerely blunt Graham Platner-esque economic populist message, framing leftist policy in terms of practical solutions to material conditions, paired with a #rightToRepair and #rightToOwn message, could swing the margin orange.
The same state capture by oligarchs enabled by DMCA § 1201 in the USA is enabled by the propagandically misnamed Copyright Modernization Act in Canada. My work puts me in discussion with a lot of locals about their electronics, and the anti-repair and anti-ownership effects of the CMA anger a lot of people, as does the barrier it imposes to migrating off Meta platforms and other US tech monopolies. (They don’t put it in those words, but they talk about frustrations with devices and services and the companies, and express feeling trapped.)
As @pluralistic points out, the CMA was enacted by Harper and Clement despite overwhelming Canadian popular opposition, ostensibly in exchange for a trade deal the US is now violating. However, that’s not the language to use with a bunch of blue-collar types, nor with a much of IT nerds. For the language to talk with them out here, listen to #LouisRossmann, to #Steve Burke of #GamersNexus, and to analogous voices on topics of cars, farm equipment, medical equipment, military equipment, and personal electronics.
Ensure you and any NDP candidate running in a blue/orange district fluently understand these topics and discuss them in language relatable to working-class Canadians who don’t consider themselves “political,” by relating the topics to material conditions of people’s lives at home, in business, at the clinic or hospital, etc., and you’ll have something to offer that neither Pierre nor Mark will touch.
