Conservative Party

… Take the former Quebec premier’s visit to Oakville on Thursday night. It was billed as a great event on his social media feed, but all his Twitter account had to show for it were pictures of Charest flanked by his spouse and a couple of local supporters.

One must assume that had hundreds of people showed up to see Charest in the flesh, his campaign would have been eager to showcase the fact. By all indications — and not for the first time — his social media team had to make the most of a meagre offering.

The Star’s Chantal Hebert basically crowns Poilievre in this piece.

He’s fun no question but there’s  plenty of time before the next election for the CPC braintrust to squeeze the likeability out of him.

Will he alter the ersatz LPC policy offerings of the party and tackle mass immigration? Free speech? Identity politics? Wokism? The Green-scam?

Being “conservative” has nothing to do with being a lackey of the corporate class but I suspect that’s a wish too far.

HMA

Pierre Poilievre might recoil at the suggestion, but the Conservative leadership campaign he is running in 2022 is not entirely dissimilar to the campaign Justin Trudeau started running a decade ago.

There are certainly discordant notes — and Poilievre is pursuing very different ends. But at the heart of Poilievre’s current stump speech is something that was at the core of Trudeau’s Liberal campaign: financial insecurity.

Trudeau built a campaign for “real change” upon a foundation of addressing the insecurities felt by the “middle class and those working hard to join it.”

Plagiarizing the LPC? This has to be the worst slander CBC has ever uttered against the CPC. The LPC must be desperate!

OTTAWA – Even as he decries government policies for pushing up the cost of housing, Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre is defending investments he and his wife made in rental properties of the kind that some economists say contribute to rising real estate prices.

Poilievre co-owns a real estate investment company that owns a rental property in Calgary and his wife owns a rental home in Ottawa.

It’s not so much that Pierre Poilievre drew a crowd to an event in downtown Toronto. It’s that after the rally, hundreds stood in a long, swirling line for as long as an hour-and-a-half, waiting for a picture and a few words with the politician and his wife, Anaida.

So if you are still wondering: Yes, this is a thing. Mr. Poilievre has hit a nerve, and has some people responding in a rare way in Canadian politics: expending shoe leather to hear a politician speak.

Go incognito.

OTTAWA — An apology to the Tamil community, improving cricket infrastructure, and putting a visa office in Kathmandu are just some of the promises Patrick Brown has made in hopes of becoming the next leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

But a search for these pledges on the campaign website, and social media accounts of the Brampton, Ont., mayor come up empty.

They appear only to exist in pitches he delivered to leaders and members of the country’s Tamil and Nepalese community, whom he’s courting, among other immigrant and racialized Canadians, to buy party memberships as the clock ticks down to the June 3 deadline.

Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre has often been criticized for his populist politics. His opponents and critics have been eager to paint him as a xenophobe, or as a Donald Trump-style populist, but when one looks at Poilievre’s campaign messaging, it’s evident that these attacks are baseless. Poilievre’s own brand of populism has been laser-focussed on a racially-inclusive message of economic justice.

There’s been a lot of panic over the “P” word lately. Yes, Pierre Poilievre, but more specifically, populism. The term is being weaponized to villainize candidates who oppose the elite status quo, often implying they have devious ulterior motives, anti-democratic leanings and racist views.

The truly dangerous populists are on the left

As the Conservative leadership campaign kicks into high gear, Pierre Poilievre has solidified his position as the front-runner, and unless there’s some unexpected shift, he’s likely to win the race. This should be no surprise for those who’ve followed his rise in the Conservative party. Unlike ousted leader Erin O’Toole, who tried desperately to be Trudeau lite and only succeeded in alienating his own base without winning over anyone else, Poilievre is an unabashed conservative who is not afraid of taking conservative positions on a range of issues ranging from the economy to gun control and everything in between.

Seems as if it was just a month ago that federal Conservative leadership contender Jean Charest was telling Conservative MPs at an Ottawa gathering that he was not a red Tory. True blue.

Charest also pledged not to “run against so-cons” – the party supporters, mostly religious, who are generally opposed to abortion, same-sex marriage and transgender rights.

It seems like only a month ago, because it was only a month ago.

Pierre Poilievre is upending every conventional assumption about Canadian politics.

There is growing evidence that the Carleton MP has successfully tapped into the anger and frustration of younger suburban voters who believe they have been denied the right to home ownership and job security by “gatekeepers,” as Mr. Poilievre calls them, who have been acting in their own, selfish, interests.

We have been seeing it in the packed rooms where hundreds, even thousands, have gathered to hear and be photographed with the Conservative leadership candidate. And now we have data to back it up.

I still won’t back him if he remains committed to mass immigration – a policy that even the LPC now admits has helped “create” the housing shortage.

Go Incognito.

It is not the Wedding Feast at Cana but to some it’s close to an equal transformation. It belongs in the category of things, like turning water to wine, that are not supposed to happen, things which defy the common order of nature.