Conservative Party

QUEBEC CITY – The Conservative Party’s moment has come to sell Canadians on its “common sense” plan, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre told his caucus on Thursday, as they gathered in Quebec City for the federal party’s three-day policy convention where controversial policy pitches risk impacting the party’s broadening appeal.

To start the day, Poilievre rallied his MPs with a speech filled with the anti-Justin Trudeau messaging that would be familiar to anyone who had attended one of his rallies this summer: the prime minister and his nearly eight years in power are to blame for the rising cost of living, housing costs and the “crime, chaos, drugs and disorder” that are “common on our streets.”

Conservative party members will assemble in Quebec City starting Thursday for a three-day policy convention — a chance to craft a playbook to woo voters who are showing signs of fatigue with the governing Liberals.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has seen his fortunes improve over the summer months with the party registering higher support in public opinion polls — figures that suggest the party could form a majority government if the next election were held any time soon.

Poilievre is laser-focused on affordability, inflation and the government’s perceived failings but some party members have other issues on their mind.

OTTAWA – Quebecers might be slowly but surely cozying up to Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative party, poll trends suggest, in a province where voting predictions can rapidly crumble with what can prove to be a volatile and emotional electorate.

Conservatives are used to trailing far behind the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals in Quebec and have rarely managed to make it above the 20-per-cent mark in polls of the province in the last decade. On the rare occasion they do, it’s even rarer for them to hold those numbers for an extended period.

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OTTAWA—There’s a long-accepted wisdom in federal political circles: the best chance for the Conservatives to form government happens when the vote is split on the left.

It was New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton’s surge in 2011, after all, that handed the federal Conservatives their majority that year.

But Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre isn’t one for sticking with the orthodoxy.

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre doesn’t know if he’ll attend the “Million Person March” against gender ideology being taught in schools, but he says parents should be the arbiters on how children are educated.

While attending a Pakistan Independence Day event in Toronto on Aug. 20, Mr. Poilievre was asked by Awaz media whether he will attend the march, according to social media posts.

OTTAWA – As conservative premiers change the rules around pronoun use in schools, members of the federal Conservative grassroots want Pierre Poilievre to wade further into the debate around gender.

A submission advancing to a policy convention next month proposes discussion of a Conservative government prohibiting “life altering medicinal or surgical interventions” for those 18 and younger who are looking to transition.

The pitch is similar to ones found across the United States, including in Florida where Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill in May banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth.

Pierre Poilievre’s makeover is the latest instalment of two-faced conservatism—red meat for the base, porridge for the general population—until they win.

HALIFAX—There are a lot of things to be said about Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s $3-million makeover, few of them flattering.

It is cynical, it is transparently manipulative, and it is comical. No T-shirt is ever going to turn Poilievre into Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

This is hate porn on par with Der Starrer.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre responded in retaliation to a reporter’s accusation during a press conference in Prince Edward Island on Aug. 16 that he’s attempting to “court the far-right,” saying it has no basis in reality.

“I’m sorry that your question seems to be based on a false premise. You can’t even tell me who these experts are. It sounds like it’s just a CBC smear job,” Mr. Poilievre said.

Watch as a journalist tells Pierre Poilievre that his comments have been characterized as “dog whistling to the far-right” by experts without being able to provide one example of an expert ever saying that. pic.twitter.com/cgoes2imD4

— Harrison Faulkner (@Harry__Faulkner) August 16, 2023

It’s been a big week in America. A grand jury in Atlanta indicted former U.S. President Donald Trump for conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state of Georgia. Trump’s fourth indictment adds 13 felony charges to his rap sheet, including a charge of criminal conspiracy. Yet polls show Trump would still handily win the Republican nomination, and possibly the presidency, in 2024.

None of Canada’s mainstream parties care much for the working class.

Instruction by the BOC to the corporate class to fight inflation by denying working people wage increases.

Wages already artificially low thanks to suppression by mass immigration.

Wages so low they can’t afford to rent or own homes and still Big Business wants to import even more wage slaves because there’s money to be made in critical shortages.

Carbon taxes that accomplish nothing but increased costs across the board and fail to change the weather in China.

Pierre needs to give sober thought to immigration policy. Without that he is just another UNIPARTY candidate.

… If I know anything about the working class, it’s that they constantly refer to themselves, in the manner of a particularly cringey museum exhibit, as “common people” who delight in primitive “festivals.” And they absolutely view dirty boots as something to preen about, like an especially successful Halloween costume.

But the bigger problem with Mr. Poilievre’s class tourism is this: He has grasped a real thing that is simmering just below a boil. Too many people feel like they can’t afford any sort of reasonable life or even pin the hopes of such a thing to their children. And many people – some included in the group above, some not – feel ignored, maligned and scolded by the current federal government.

Poilievre is a career politician, a part of our Ottawa permaclass and as the column points out he is comically out of touch with the “common man.”

I  like Poilievre primarily because he isn’t Justin but I do not trust him on key issues I care about.

It’s one thing to raise money on a promise to defund the CBC, another to actually do it.

We’ve had our hopes dashed before. Yes the jury is out until he’s elected but bear in mind the CBC is part of the same Political Permaclass he belongs to.

On the question of mass immigration it’s already clear Poilievre will offer more of the same Ponzi scheme Trudeau is foisting on us.

Identity politics and mass immigration are a part of every politicos hymnal in Canada and all with rare exception belong to the UNIPARTY choir.

I wish him luck. People are getting so sick of that preening twit in Ottawa and his buddy Sideshow Singh the conservatives may just win the next election.

But please Pierre spare us the proletarian pantomime.