When Sarah Morin hears the phrase “axe the tax,” what enters her mind is “freedom.”
The 41-year-old is a stay-at-home mother of two who has been using a food bank amid cost-of-living pressures.
She was among those who packed into a crammed room at a convention centre near Ottawa’s airport on Sunday to listen to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre speak.
With Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives far ahead in the polls, the next federal election could bring a change in leadership and big policy changes. But it takes a lot of political capital to make big changes, and some deeply embedded policies may be hard to reverse.
How might a Poilievre government approach Liberal programs currently taking root, such as national child care, pharmacare, and dental care? How might it handle energy policy, including how Canada’s oil and gas industry is treated and how green energy is subsidized?
… “Second,” he continued, “you didn’t pay attention to what’s happening to men. The Canadian media spent years talking about Pierre Poilievre’s problem with women voters. No one seemed to notice Justin Trudeau’s problem with men voters. I have never seen male voters, or any voting bloc, form up so monolithically. And that is happening elsewhere, including in the U.S. Men love Pierre Poilievre so much that there basically aren’t enough women voters left to counteract that,” he quipped. “And that was something you could have seen.” He then added, “And it’s not over. You know what’s happening right now? For generations, French-Canadian men have voted like French-Canadians. Now they’re starting to just resemble other Canadian men. And if that happens, that’s a game-changer. It’s happening at the provincial level, too, but I don’t think Trudeau or other progressives thought through the long-term impact of telling millions of men that they’re privileged, no matter their life circumstances. Right now, millions of those voters are shrugging and saying, ‘Well, okay. Fuck you. Me and my privilege will vote for the other guy.’”
h/t DS
OTTAWA — Prime ministers always say they leave their political legacies to historians. But it’s their successors who largely write that history by deciding what parts of any governing agenda survive.
So what should we glean from the reflections about Brian Mulroney’s legacy? His successors left most of the former Progressive Conservative leader’s important accomplishments intact, even those they once adamantly opposed.
And what might it tell us about which parts of Justin Trudeau’s agenda will survive, or what lessons Pierre Poilievre has taken?
After federal Tory candidate Jamil Jivani won the recent byelection in Ontario’s Durham riding, his speech targeted not only the rival Liberals but also, unexpectedly, Ontario’s ruling Progressive Conservatives. He is especially critical of the “anti-racism” taught in Ontario schools.
Race and gender are among sensitive topics federal and provincial conservatives alike had often been reluctant to speak strongly about in the past. But that has been changing, with senior Conservative leaders speaking up more on these touchy social issues in recent months.
Former prime minister Kim Campbell waded back into federal politics last week, slamming Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as a “liar and a hate-monger,” without providing evidence to back up her assertion.
With their party badly trailing Poilievre’s Conservatives in the polls, Liberal MPs, staffers and partisans praised Campbell’s name-calling. This was not surprising as Campbell is part of a special group within Canadian politics.
I happened to catch a CBC Front Burner podcast last week in which host Jayme Poisson interviewed the inestimable Paul Wells about Pierre Poilievre’s interactions with — some would say roughing-up — of the press. Both the episode and a transcript are available online.
OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s recent criticism of “useless” corporate lobbyists is rooted in his party’s skepticism of the modern business community and also meant to demonstrate that he is not “beholden” to anyone as he prepares to form government, say political observers.
In fact, those observers say that Poilievre’s strategy involves deliberately ditching the traditional business luncheon circuits in Ottawa, Toronto or Montreal to speak directly to voters.
Frankly I am skeptical.
Under Trudeau corporate Canada has dictated the Liberal Party’s ruinous mass immigration policy.
We all know how it works.
Trudeau’s Liberal Party curries favour with ethnic vote blocs by flooding the country with immigrants of dubious economic and social caliber.
The corporate class gets the malleable cheap labour pool they want while the well positioned profit from the shortages caused by the huge increase in population.
The article mentions that Poilievre is bypassing the business class and speaking directly to working class voters, both of them.
Nowhere is mass immigration mentioned as a topic of discussion in Poilievre’s heart to hearts and for that I call time.
The poll suggests the Conservatives have 40 per cent support, compared to the Liberals on 23 per cent and the NDP on 21 per cent.
But Kurl pointed out that the results of the next election will depend entirely on what is happening at the time on the number one issue that is dominating the mindset of voters — the cost of living.
A generation of Canadians will likely never be able to afford a home, for some even rent will be beyond their means.
Justin Trudeau did that and the situation will not be reversed in time for the next election.
There are two steep hills that Pierre Poilievre will have to climb if he hopes to turn his good polling numbers into victory: the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and Quebec.
The 60 or so seats in the GTA and the 78 seats of La Belle Province have been elusive prizes since the creation of the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper.
In 2021, the Liberals ran the table in Toronto, Mississauga and Brampton. This time around, things promise to be very different. Clever policy work, deep data and an open approach to ethnocultural communities and their concerns could open the floodgates for Poilievre.
Personally I believe the disgust Canadians hold for Trudeau makes re-election impossible however Mulcair is not talking pie in the sky nonsense.
Explaining why he decided to spend his Sunday afternoon at a Conservative rally against the carbon tax, Graham Humphries expressed a common sentiment among those in attendance.
“Trudeau sucks, obviously.”
Humphries, 32, was joined by his wife, Kelci Wolter, who was pushing their nearly 1-year-old son in a stroller. He said he actually voted for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals back in 2015. He didn’t follow politics back then, though, and just went along with what was a popular choice at the time. Now Humphries said he’s paying attention, and he believes “we’re going off a cliff.”
OTTAWA—Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is accusing corporate Canada — including natural resources companies and housing developers — of “sucking up” to the Liberals and is urging them to actively campaign against the government.
The audience for his latest salvo at the corporate sector was the sector itself, a Greater Vancouver Board of Trade breakfast, which Poilievre acknowledged isn’t the kind of crowd he talks to that often.
He told a room of business leaders and numerous Conservatives that his affection for the business world lies with the entrepreneurs who risk it all to make a living — not the lobbyists or CEOs who only focus on what’s best for themselves.
What, if anything, should voters make of Pierre Poilievre’s attitude toward journalists?
What should voters make of Pierre Poilievre’s criticism of journalists?
All politicians disagree from time to time with the way they’re depicted by journalists. Any number of them have been vocal about it, publicly or privately. (The late Brian Mulroney, who has been fondly remembered over the past week, was known to harangue journalists on the phone when he disagreed with their coverage.) Sometimes their complaints have been justified.
OTTAWA—Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s approach to Ukraine will cost the party support among Ukrainians unless things change, a trio of MPs were warned at a recent town hall.
At a Feb. 25 townhall in Etobicoke, the MPs — James Bezan, Tom Kmiec and Shuvaloy Majumdar — were confronted by criticism Poilievre is missing in action on the Ukraine file and that when he does show up, he only delivers partisan talking points.
Meanwhile, the party’s continued use of the word Nazi to describe a Ukrainian soldier honoured in Parliament last year is disparaging the entire Ukrainian community, MPs heard.
Honestly this sounds like a set up.
OTTAWA – He may be peaking too soon.
Pierre Poilievre and his Conservatives appear to be on cruise control to a rendezvous with the leader’s prime ministerial ambition.
This week’s byelection in a riding just east of Toronto featured a Liberal show of force, including campaign visits by the prime minister and a parade of cabinet ministers, to try to make it a close contest. It ended up being a cakewalk with 57 per cent of the vote steamrolling to Conservative heavyweight Jamil Jivani over the hapless Liberals at 22 per cent.
Wise to be cautious but Trudeau is so despised I do not believe it possible for him to comeback.
