Conservative Party

With a vote looming, and widespread disgust at polarization and ideology, perhaps we can all get behind the major political figure who said, “I am unique in that I’m neither left nor right, but I’m also not a mushy moderate. I’ve always stood for something.” Provided we can figure out what that thing was. Or in which election. Or who he was.

Was it Doug Ford, whose party is poised for re-election in Ontario for being neither left, right nor… um… can’t remember? Or someone the federal Tories will soon choose to lead them to defeat whenever Jagmeet Singh realizes blindly supporting a party he openly despises is fatuous?

Perhaps Jean Charest, who wants to reform stuff, not tear it down. Or Scott Aitchison, who would do whatever nicely. Not Leslyn Lewis, whose firm beliefs too often involve the WEF. Or Roman Baber, who everyone forgets. As for Patrick Brown, well, let’s ask him.

Nobody saw Patrick Brown coming when he won the leadership of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party in 2015. Can the current mayor of Brampton, Ont., former three-term MP and ex-provincial leader repeat the feat at the federal level? In the most wide-ranging interview he’s given, Brown tells John Ivison that he is “cautiously optimistic” about victory.

Three weeks ago, Charles Vincent drove to a local hotel in Notre-Dame-du-Bon-Conseil, Que., to meet Pierre Poilievre. Vincent ended up buying a membership and even took a picture with the Ottawa-area MP, whom he first heard of during the trucker convoy last January.

But after this week’s French debate, Vincent isn’t so sure he will be voting for Poilievre.

Full disclosure I will likely be voting PPC.  Poilievre is fun but there is really no difference between the CPC & LPC.

OTTAWA – Federal Conservative leadership candidate Patrick Brown says calling social conservatives “dinosaurs” in a book he wrote about his time in Ontario politics was “the wrong terminology.”

“I guess a better way to articulate that would be to say: I don’t think the Conservative Party needs to revisit these issues,” Brown said in an interview Friday.

The mayor of Brampton, Ont., has attacked longtime MP Pierre Poilievre — once a colleague in the House of Commons back when Brown was an MP — over his position on abortion.

I hope he wins, it will absolutely kill the CPC.

There’s a general consensus that Pierre Poilievre is the front-runner in the Conservative party leadership race. Whether you’re a Conservative (or conservative) or not, and whether you support Poilievre or not, everything from the size of the crowds at his events, to the traction of his social media messages to opinion polling suggest he’s the man to beat.

The six candidates vying for the Conservative Party’s top job sparred in the last official debate of the leadership campaign on Wednesday — clashing over everything from the trucker convoy to bitcoin and tax cuts in a fiery matchup in a Laval, Que., banquet hall.

The two-hour debate featured pointed, personal exchanges throughout as Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre, the leading right-wing candidate in this race, traded jabs with his more centrist opponents, Brampton, Ont. Mayor Patrick Brown and former Quebec premier Jean Charest.

And a Star columnist hits the fainting couch … Pierre Poilievre is inching toward the dark places where Donald Trump found votes

The perceived front-runner in the Conservative leadership race is trying to lure support from people with a shaky knowledge of the system of government in Canada, Susan Delacourt writes.

No one is going to accuse Pierre Poilievre of practising restraint in his campaign to be the next leader of the federal Conservatives.

Show him an institution and Poilievre will knock it down — the Bank of Canada, the media, anyone deemed a “gatekeeper,” or the World Economic Forum. He doesn’t just disagree with his opponents, he calls them liars.

At the risk of giving the “freedom” candidate any more ideas, it should be noted that there is one institution Poilievre hasn’t directly challenged, at least not yet — democracy itself. But if Poilievre is going to go full Donald Trump in his bid to be the next prime minister, an assault on the legitimacy of the voting system is almost inevitable.

This is what happens when you wear Hitler Glasses.

… The only way to win, he argued, is to find a way to appeal to “moderate, pragmatic, middle-of-the-road Canadians” who do not see themselves in the other more progressive parties.

… But Poilievreism, or whatever we end up calling it, is not Trumpism. Not even close. If you need proof, check out last week’s Conservative leadership debate.

Moderator Tom Clark asked the candidates whether they agree with the Liberal government’s policy of increasing the annual immigration intake to more than 400,000.

“We need the work force, frankly,” Mr. Poilievre replied, “but when we bring immigrants here we need to make sure they have the freedom to own a home by getting rid of the gatekeepers that prevent housing construction and the freedom to work in their field by getting rid of the gatekeepers that prevent them from getting licences in their professions and trades. So I will get rid of the gatekeepers and give them that opportunity.”

He gets how to be another O’Toole to win the leadership – go incognito

As conservatives across Canada reacted to the fall of Jason Kenney, a defining voice in their political movement, a Liberal from the Tory heartland offered an outsider’s diagnosis into the state of conservatism in the country.

“Mr. Kenney was pushed out of his party because he wasn’t extreme enough,” Tourism Minister Randy Boissonnault, an Edmonton MP, declared Thursday.

“It’s time for the moderates in conservative movements in this country to step up and ask themselves: Where is this train going?”

Huh? O’Toole was a case of false advertising and Kenney won the confidence vote but decided to push himself out. Certainly in the CPC’s case not one of the current leadership candidates will be able to alter the party’s leftward tilt.