It was quite a week in Canadian politics.
On Monday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who polls suggests could win a majority government with more than 200 seats in the next election, suggested he will invoke the notwithstanding clause if he becomes prime minister.
The Trudeau government’s tax hike on capital gains has investors and business leaders blowing up my phone.
They yelp: “What are you going to do about this?”
My answer: “No. What are you going to do about it?”
Most are stunned silent by the question. They had been planning to do nothing except complain and hope their useless and overpaid lobbyists meet Chrystia Freeland or Justin Trudeau to talk some sense into them while the opposition hounds the government to reverse course.
A dozen years ago, Pierre Poilievre was a relatively obscure political figure who was mostly regarded — to the extent he was regarded at all — as a fiercely anti-labour guy on the far-right of the Harper cabinet.
But there he was in Parliament last February, voting in favour of pro-labour legislation banning scabs in federal workplaces.
Has he fundamentally changed his thinking — or was that simply part of his new, air-brushed “friend of the working man” look?
More on Linda and her fellow travelers: Venezuela’s collapse and the ‘useful idiots’ of the Canadian left
While Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives continue to endear themselves to voters, new polling suggests Tory supporters are among those most likely to change their minds come election day.
A new National Post-Leger poll shows the Conservative with a 21-point lead over the Liberals — with the Tories gaining two points over the last month for 42 per cent support nationally and Trudeau Liberals losing three points to 26 per cent. The poll was taken April 26 to 28.
It’s been an extraordinary couple of days in the saga of Pierre Poilievre, unleashed.
Ejected from the House of Commons on Tuesday, blue-skying about making laws without Charter of Rights protection on Monday, the Conservative leader is giving Canadians a good look at his somewhat flexible views about what constrains him.
Short answer: Not much. It’s certainly not the rule book of the Commons or even the rules of political civility. So why not the Constitution, too?
Pierre Poilievre is courting support from groups that spew hate. Is this really the alternative to Justin Trudeau we want?
Perhaps Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was feeling too comfortable.
After all, his party is ahead of the Liberals by 20 points in public opinion polls. The poll aggregator 338Canada.com has the Conservatives winning a 207-seat majority in the House of Commons, if an election were held today — a Brian Mulroney-sized landslide, and that’s without the Bloc Québécois’ seats.
The Conservatives, according to Abacus Data, lead across all age brackets, education brackets, even gender lines.
Trudeau’s media is getting desperate. At this stage outside of Toronto and Ottawa you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who likes Junior.
The Diagalonians should sue the Star.
RCMP documents contradict mainstream media claims Diagalon is a ‘far-right threat’
Internal RCMP documents reveal law enforcement concluded controversial Diagolon does “not pose a criminal or national security threat,” contrary to the Public Safety Minister’s remarks.
h/t Mauser
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre delivered an hour-long rebuttal to the Liberal government’s budget Thursday — a fiery speech that depicted the multi-billion dollar spending plan as a threat to the country’s future.
Poilievre was particularly critical of the budget’s projection that Ottawa will run deficits for the foreseeable future, with no plan to return to balance — a program that will push the national debt to $1.4 trillion.
Ottawa will spend more to service that debt — $54.1 billion — than it will on health care this year, and the debt charges will continue to grow as the government rolls over some of that debt at higher interest rates.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says that he will support the Trudeau government’s budget under three conditions. Poilievre wants Trudeau to commit to axing the carbon tax for farmers, to build homes and not bureaucracy, and to agree to a cap on government spending.
338Canada federal update | April 7, 2024
Details here → https://t.co/IQaKoGJItT
Analysis → https://t.co/p9EDbSSMpG pic.twitter.com/LFuXszLB5L
— Philippe J. Fournier (@338Canada) April 8, 2024
OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s path to power may be by prosecuting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s past eight years in government, but his road to victory is painted NDP orange.
Appealing to working-class voters in rural and northern ridings — like those held by New Democrats across British Columbia and Liberals in northern Ontario — is part of what Poilievre sees as a winning formula.
If you’re waiting for Pierre Poilievre to start acting like a “prime minister-in-waiting,” you’ve not been paying attention. While Poilievre is more John Diefenbaker than Stephen Harper, this is not your Father’s Progressive Conservative Party.
Politics traditionally draws the type of person who cares deeply about what others think of them. That’s only natural. To get elected, you need to be more popular than everyone else on the ballot.
With almost 18 months under his belt as Conservative leader, it’s becoming clear that Poilievre has a certain superpower that sets him aside from most of his predecessors, whether they be Liberal or Conservative: he doesn’t care what “we” think of him.
Says Conservatives would ‘defund antisemitism’
It can be one of the thorniest issues for Canadian politicians — highly divisive and filled with decades of fighting, with potential for political blowback from one side or the other.
While conflict has raged in the Middle East in recent months, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has tended to focus on bread-and-butter domestic issues, such as inflation and the Liberal government’s carbon tax.
As federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre prepares to hold a rally Monday on Vancouver Island, a new poll suggests the provincial Conservative Party in British Columbia is benefiting from his popularity even though there are no official links between the two parties.
Fifty-six per cent of likely federal Conservative voters support the provincial Conservatives instead of BC United, the other centre-right party, according to a survey by the Angus Reid Institute.
There seem to be lots of tribes of conservatism and the smell of impending victory is keeping them united. For now.
The Toronto Star says Conservatives are really not Conservative as they define Conservativism.
It wasn’t a scenario normally associated with Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre.
Encircled by dozens of First Nations leaders, Poilievre was the focus of attention and respect at a ritual-filled gathering this year at the Vancouver Convention Centre.
‘We won’t forget’: How some Muslims view Poilievre’s stance on Israel-Hamas war
OTTAWA – A spokesman for a regional Muslim advocacy group says Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war could complicate his party’s relationship with Muslim Canadians.
Nawaz Tahir of the Hikma Public Affairs Council in London, Ont., met Poilievre during the leader’s outreach efforts in southwestern Ontario last summer.
Tahir says he believes Poilievre has missed chances to show compassion with Muslims and that building ties could be, in his words, “much more difficult now.”
