Just days after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the astonishing allegation that Canada has “credible intelligence” linking agents of the Indian government to the killing of a Canadian citizen, the scandal has scarcely been mentioned during question period in the House of Commons.
There might be a good reason for that, observers say.
“There’s a lot of landmines here,” said Shakir Chambers, a former Conservative Party staffer and now a principal at Earnscliffe Strategies.
OTTAWA – Conservative MPs were told not to post online or talk to media about competing protests on Parliament Hill that saw protesters clashing over how schools should handle LGBTQ+ issues.
The Canadian Press obtained a copy of the message sent to members of Pierre Poilievre’s caucus, which warned them not to speak publicly about the issue and provided talking points they could use to communicate with their constituents.
That was cowardly. Unlike Max.
There’s a massive crowd this morning at the Ottawa #1MillionMarch4Children and the PPC is there to say we must protect our kids against radical gender ideology! pic.twitter.com/mWOpr3ad7t
— Maxime Bernier (@MaximeBernier) September 20, 2023
Pierre Poilievre‘s address to the federal Conservative party conference on Sept. 8 in Quebec City was one of the most effective and important political speeches in this country in many years. It was amusing, hard-hitting, well delivered, comprehensive, and except for Brian Mulroney and the Trudeaus, Poilievre is the most fluently bilingual leader any Canadian political party has had since Louis St. Laurent. The most important aspect of it was that it was an authentic conservative speech skillfully crafted to attract broad support. Except for Stephen Harper and Andrew Scheer, the federal Conservative and Progressive Conservative leaders since George drew (who retired in 1956), were only marginally to the right of the Liberals.
Out here in the far reaches of the American empire, it’s always gratifying and more than a little thrilling when people in the imperial capital take notice of us. Last week, the New York Times’ Ross Douthat wrote about wokeness in the Anglosphere and though he started with how James Bond has gone woke in the latest Bond novel (“On His Majesty’s Secret Service,” written not by Ian Fleming, who died in 1964, but by one Charlie Higson), the subject of woke Canada entered soon enough.
OTTAWA—For the Liberals to win an election, a seasoned Conservative organizer mused the other morning, they need to fall in love with their leader.
Conservatives? They need to fall in line.
The two Conservative leaders before Pierre Poilievre grappled with a party that never fully united around the boss.
Pierre Poilievre delivered an epic stemwinder to the Conservative Party faithful in Quebec City on Friday. He threw in every simplistic solution he’s been touting for years.
Canadians should start paying more attention to his nostrums and begin asking tough questions. Those are the types of questions that Poilievre likes to avoid because, in his view, journalists who ask them are part of a conspiracy against him.
I had the opportunity to work across the aisle from Poilievre for over a decade. They can lose the glasses, drop the tie, slow the cadence and reduce the Brylcreem. Those of us who got to know his overheated demagoguery firsthand know that nothing will have really changed — and that’s the danger.
The Conservative party has set its target on the Bloc Québécois and the fight for Quebec votes may get ugly.
The party’s convention was centre stage for leader Pierre Poilievre’s dual strategy this weekend — a charm offensive towards soft nationalists and an aggressive campaign against the Bloc, which holds the seats the Tories may need to form a majority government.
With all due respect to the “Bring it home” tagline that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre really, really likes, a more accurate slogan for the policy convention that his party just wrapped up would be, simply, “Enough.”
Enough woke-ism, the gathering heard over and over in Quebec City. Enough spending like drunken sailors on shore leave. Enough scolding and preening and apologizing. Enough identity politics. Enough with the broken social contract and the cruel obliviousness they see in the current federal government.
Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre appears to be in the pole position with an enviable lead over the governing Liberals in most public opinion polls and he commands near-total loyalty from the Tory base.
The party’s three-day policy convention, which ended Saturday, broke past attendance records with more than 2,500 delegates registered for the Quebec City love-in.
The party is flush with cash after eye-popping fundraising hauls in the first and second quarters of this year — funds that will allow the party brass to continue its expensive ad campaign touting Poilievre in this pre-writ period.
Two things in Poilievre’s favour – The Trudeau authored housing crisis and his prosperity killing environmental policy are not going away.
Pierre Poilievre’s push to keep convention focused on economy falls to grassroots votes for social policies
QUEBEC CITY—Efforts by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre to keep his party focused on an economic message to win the next election took a blow Saturday as the party’s grassroots voted in favour of social policies likely to give the Liberals a renewed line of attack.
The majority of party members voted in favour of a ban on providing medical or surgical treatments to minors questioning their gender identity, as well as one that voiced support for “women-only” spaces like bathrooms.
What sort of monster gets their jollies from mutilating children? I wonder at the medical schools that churn out Mengele’s spiritual offspring.
A key member of the brain trust that surrounds Pierre Poilievre says that the Conservative Party is undergoing a “rejuvenation” under the new leader, partially through outreach to several previously skeptical voting blocs.
“There’s been an evolution in terms of who the Conservative supporter is, who the Conservative voter is. Right now, we’re seeing an entirely new group of people … a new demographic of people that are looking at the Conservative Party and looking at Pierre Poilievre as being the next prime minister very seriously,” Jenni Byrne said in an interview with CBC’s The House airing Saturday.
If an election were held tomorrow, polls suggest Pierre Poilievre would defeat Justin Trudeau and become the 24th prime minister of Canada. And if an election were to happen tomorrow, the Conservative leader says the choice would be quite straightforward.
“Canadians will have only two options,” Poilievre told the Conservative party convention in Quebec City last night. “A common-sense Conservative government that frees hardworking people to earn powerful paycheques that buy affordable food, gas and homes — in safe neighbourhoods.
“Or a reckless coalition — of Trudeau and the NDP — that punishes your work, taxes your money, taxes your food, doubles your housing bill and unleashes crime and chaos in your neighbourhood.”
QUEBEC CITY – Fresh from a visit to Beijing, Liberal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault appeared at the doorstep of Quebec City’s convention centre on Friday to crash the Conservative party’s national convention and call leader Pierre Poilievre a climate denier.
“Frankly, it’s very easy to attack Pierre Poilievre on the environment,” Guilbeault said, adding that Poilievre is “someone who claims to be a political leader in 2023 who does not even believe in climate change, who does not believe that we should be doing anything about climate change”.
I’m betting Guilbeault got instructions from Xi.
QUEBEC CITY—Two decades after he helped merge warring factions of federal conservatives into a new party, former Progressive Conservative party leader Peter MacKay went back before party members Friday urging them to maintain a united front.
Voicing his confidence in Pierre Poilievre’s leadership, and also lavishing him with praise, MacKay said in Poilievre he sees the opportunity for the party to build another new coalition of conservatives.
But to take back government also requires the current coalition to stick together, he told the Conservatives’ policy convention Friday.
QUEBEC CITY – A year after his decisive first-ballot leadership victory coming in as members’ first choice in nearly every riding across the country, Pierre Poilievre is delivering a rally-style speech at the Conservative convention aimed at pushing his “common sense” message beyond the base, to the broader public.
So far this weekend, buoyed by positive polling numbers and a growing list of prominent party members proclaiming he’ll be Canada’s next prime minister, party unity seems to be holding strong, even as some contentious issues are back on party members’ priority lists.
It’s running live.
