Blazingcatfur

OTTAWA – Pierre Poilievre is vowing to eliminate “woke ideology” from the public service, federal funding for university research and military culture.

But what does he mean by “woke,” exactly? The Conservative leader doesn’t seem keen to define the term.

When asked recently to explain what he considers “woke,” Poilievre gave a nearly two-minute answer that touched on most of his campaign talking points.

As the threat posed by US President Donald Trump tops Canada’s federal election agenda, the issue of the country’s contribution to global warming has been largely overshadowed.

The two main contenders are pushing plans for new energy infrastructure as the country seeks to pivot away from its reliance on the US.

Mark Carney’s Liberals are promising to make Canada a global superpower in both conventional and green energy. The Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre want to invigorate the oil and gas sector and scrap the industrial carbon tax.

Despite suggestions that votes cast in Western Canada don’t influence the result of general elections, an analysis of results from past elections challenges this notion.

The perception about the irrelevance of Western votes may have become popularized by the statement “Screw the west, we’ll take the rest” by Liberal political organizer Keith Davey in the 1980 federal election. It turned out to be a winning strategy for the Pierre Trudeau Liberals, who prevailed with a majority win against the Progressive Conservatives led by Alberta MP Joe Clark.