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22 Comments

news

Harperopaganda

By Joshua Errett

cpcsite.jpg
harperslips.jpgMr. Speaker, can the Prime Minister please explain why the newly redesigned Government of Canada website very much resembles the Conservative Party of Canada website? Why does the new Government of Canada website also share press releases from the CPC site? And can the Prime Minister also explain why the colour blue – a very Conservative hue of blue – now appears on the publicly-funded site?
And, finally, can the Prime Minister please admit to getting collagen lip implants?

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  • http://www.newmindspace.com kevin bracken

    actually, look at it: it has “fields of blue” and red and white stripes
    it kinda looks like an american flag

  • Little Boy Blue

    Considering that in 1965, a minority Liberal government launched a new Canadian flag purely in Liberal colours, the fact that Canada’s website has some blue on it seems relatively minor.
    Oh…and for a website about ‘Toronto and everything that happens in it’, you guys sure seem to spend a lot of time taking cheapshots at the federal Conservatives.

  • anon

    I noticed this a couple weeks ago too and it bugs me. It HAS to be politically motivated.
    The funny thing is, I’m on this panel that does surveys about the design and utility of the Canada site, and they did NOT run this past us.

  • Dave

    Yawn.

  • rek

    The red stuff is babies!
    http://tinyurl.com/zqu7p
    (ed. note: length!)

  • Michael

    Ah, but our conservative friend leaves out the fact that the flag was accepted by a majority in parliament (163 to 78 according to wikipedia). Democracy. Ain’t it a bitch?

  • rek

    He also left out that blue has never been a Canadian colour, while the red maple leaf had been a symbol of The Canadas going back a few hundred years.

  • Greg

    Canadian flags on these pages (click through to others – very slow to load) seem to have blue in them…
    http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/ca-1907.html
    http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/ca-1921.html
    Why the kerfuffle? Do you think a little blue on Government of Canada websites is going to influence people’s voting patterns? I second the comment about a seeming lack of Toronto content sometimes on this site.

  • josh

    you can access the gov of canada website from toronto, or at least i can. and i would characterize both comments re:toronto content as politically motivated. none of you would blink (or have blinked) at a neil young article or a post on any other toronto ex-pat in the news.
    and, as for the site, it’s not only the blue – sharing the same text as the cpc website, similar pictures (whereas there were no pictures before), the five election priorities spelled out again…references to ‘canada’s new government’ (canada has had government since confederation, so i don’t see what’s new about it).

  • Phil

    The blue is probably to appeal to Quebec.
    As to the comment that the red white and blue makes it look like a USA flag, the flgs ofthe UK and France are also red white and blue. Can’t people in Toronto grow up and stop comparing Canada to just the US?

  • Michael

    Well, the McGuinty govt changed the colours of the Ontario website to a browny red theme after they won their election. Of course, it was mostly blue during the Mike Harris years. So there is a precedent for this stuff.

  • http://cork2toronto.blogspot.com Mark Dowling

    Ooooh, maybe Torontoist as actually secretly a tory website shooting us subliminal messages and stuff – where’s my foil hat and polarizing lenses :D

  • Josh

    do you mean our baby blue background? because that is actually an appeal to quebec.

  • http://paigesix.blogspot.com Paige

    come on.. you can’t think Torontoist is all about “taking cheapshots at the federal Conservatives”– Adrian the Adorable Conservative does contribute here after all.

  • http://www.newmindspace.com kevin bracken

    > the flgs ofthe UK and France are also red white and blue
    it honestly looks like a large field of blue with red and white stripes (backwards). look at it, starting from “Government Initiatives” under the “Features” section

  • rek

    The blue in the Blue Ensign is from the British Blue Ensign, and it was only officially used by the Canadian Navy. The blue in the Red Ensign is also from the Union Jack. Both are predated by the red maple motif (though it was never an officially state recognized symbol or colour).

  • Little Boy Blue

    Michael – in a democracy, something as important as choosing a national emblem would have been put forward for a referendum. Instead, it was selected by a Liberal led panel, a politically motivated House of Commons vote, and a vote by the (unelected) Senate. If that’s democracy, then yes, it’s queen of the bitches.

  • Michael

    Yeah, like the referendae used to select the union jack, old glory and the French tricolour? But I suppose those aren’t important symbols. That our flag was put to any kind of a vote at all is a rare achievement.

  • hey

    Stop your whining you communist scumbags. Seriously.
    The Maple Leaf was a cynical decision by the liberals, who used red as their colour long before. Just an early example of “Liberals are the only real Canadians” used in the recent elections and spewed by “pogressives” and Liberals.
    The old Quebecois motto “le ciel est bleue, l’enfer est rouge” is much more apt and accurate!
    Why does the CPC use the same press releases as the GC? Cause the CPC hardly has anyone doing anywork, and thus just copy the GC releases. LPC did this while they were in power, and every governing party will do it. To see nefarious motives in this bespeaks an exceptionally low IQ, but then your leftist politics already proved that.
    Michael… nice moving of the goalposts. To complain about the undemocratic and american nature of the site, and then say that democracy in national symbols is irrelevant once they’ve been demonstrated to be purely partisan, is hilarious, and typical of leftwing debating skills. But then you don’t have the facts or the law on your side, so you have to try something!

  • Pinko

    “the CPC hardly has anyone doing anywork”
    You said it, hey, not us.

  • Michael

    Hey, can tell me where I complained about the gc site being american or undemocratic? One post responded to little boy blue’s contention that our flag was pushed through undemocratically (as if a minority gov’t could have an easy time doing that). Another post mentioned that parties have and will change colours of the official gov’t web site (with no political slant other than those added by the reader) and another post responding to little boy blue again, regarding the “democratic” selection of flags or lack thereof.
    It’s not me moving goal posts.

  • Michael

    If I really must spell it out, I don’t think anyone is influenced or gives a shit about the colours of a website. I hope people’s political beliefs go beyond a damn colour. It’s like back in the early 90′s, little kids thought that Quebec separatism could be solved by putting a fleur de lis on the flag. How ridiculous.