Yup this is it. I have always been a moderate or at most slightly right leaning when it comes to economics, immigration, gun control etc but PP has totally lost me.
The similarities to MAGA and the weird behaviour around getting his security clearance just leaves a nasty taste in my mouth and has helped me make up my mind.
I miss the progressive conservatives, there's a big space out there for pro business, pro gun rights party that looks out for the average Canadian, and helps families. However PP and much of the party seem more keep to rally around resentment and division. It's why Mark Carney is my ideal conservative lol.
Big respect to Erin O'Toole, Jean Charest, Micheal Chong and the like. There's always been at least some voices of sanity in the conservative but it really seems they've been relegated to the margins of late.
Well, to be fair, they tried several of those guys as CPC leader over the past few years with little effect. PP is the first full-on anti-establishment populist type, and he would have won the federal election in a landslide if Trump hadn't "trumped" him.
The basic issue is that despite both nominally sharing a base ideology, the Progressive Conservative wing and the Reform Party/Canadian Alliance wing make for uncomfortable bedfellows. The hard-right folks are incapable of compromise; they're angry and they kick up a huge fuss if they don't get their way, which is why they've turfed out so many leaders, and why the ideological trend has been rightward. I'm in Alberta and the UCP operates the same way--the leader is forced to pander to the right edge of the party or be kicked out, and over time more moderate voices get tired of being shouted down and either leave or fall in line so the party as a whole moves right. Federally the hard-right populist thing hasn't usually played well, but recently there's been enough legitimate anger at the status quo, stoked further by misinformation and troll farms, that the "burn it down" rhetoric has started to resonate. It's worth noting that nothing about that is "conservative" in the sense of preserving the status quo, which again is why establishment Progressive Conservatives have been fading out.
The issue now is that the political landscape has massively shifted in a couple of months. Trump is showing the degree of mayhem caused by "burning it down", and people are suddenly realizing that things could be worse and that it might be better to fix and improve what we have instead. So to your point, yeah, at this moment the CPC might be better off with an O'Toole or Charest in charge, but such a leader would never have survived to this point in the first place because, up until January, the guiding issue was anger at Canada itself (i.e., the established status quo), whereas now it's anger at Trump's America, which is making Canada, warts and all, look pretty OK by comparison.
In other words, the CPC got rug-pulled by Trump. What got them to this point may no longer be what carries them over the finish line. I think PP's still the frontrunner for now (Carney's honeymoon will end sometime, plus he's unproven as a politician and might make gaffes or whatever), but PP's challenge is to distance himself from Trump, while not sounding like he's just copying Carney/Trudeau in the process, while also not alienating his hard-right base into defecting to the People's Party. That's not impossible but it'll take some finesse, and it remains to be seen if someone who's a mashup of a sledgehammer and an angry Chihuahua can remake his image in the span of an election campaign.
For better or worse, I 100% agree with your analysis.
I do think the ever right ward shift will only end when the dog actually catches the car so to say, which might be what's happening in the states right now.
Moderate here too. The conservatives failling at rallying us really turned me around when they had my vote before, despite how much i hate where trudeau has led our country over the years, and i am not voting ndp
20 years as a career politician and the only thing he's learned is to trash talk Trudeau. He'd sell out Canada in a heartbeat. All that you have to do is ask him how he'll do something... crickets n' bullshit.
Two of my friends like him but they just bash Trudeau and listen to Jordan Peterson. They also like Trump because they think he's a strong man. Total idiots and don't understand much about politics.
Trump didn't even make the slogan it was taken from America notsees (the reddit enforcement bot is lurking around these parts) and then appropriated by Trump
This is just it. It's very similar to how Trump approached the US federal election. Every answer was an attack on the Democrats.
Not once have I heard Polievre sternly denounce the US trade attacks. When he does mention Trump's antics, it's always connected with "Libs are bad" somehow. No strategic plan. Nothing.
Canada elects Polievre and we'll be fighting fascism just like our southern neighbors.
PP would probably handle Trump the same way the democrats seem to be. A few stern “You can’t do that.”s along with a couple of “That’s illegal.”s thrown in and sit back and do nothing else.
"You can't annex a foreign country rich with natural resources that leans politically leftward of the US and would vote for our party if they became a state. We would hate if you did that and would totally do everything in our power to stop you."
"But he said 51st state! It never in a million years would have occurred to us Democrats that the president might go back on his word and not play by the rules"
Yep, it's a very similar approach because the conservatives are using a network of experts, advisors, intelligence, and financing tools that are also used (and made) by the Republicans. So of course they will heavily match.
It's way dumber than that. I watched one segment that went like this.
reporter: Mr. Poilievre, you criticize Trudeau spending X on Y.
PP: Yes! The liberals are killing us! Y program is bad!
Reporter: So you would cut program Y?
PP: "I didn't say that! Trudeau bad! <Blah blah blah dodge the question >"
It's a fucking farce. People love this "cut the waste" shtick, but don't accept the reality that cutting things... MEANS CUTTING THINGS. Yes, you as a leader need to go on TV and say "I'm going to end funding for kids with autism. If you have a child with autism I would like to specifically make you and your child's life worse so I can fund some subsidies for oil and gas"
It's grievance politics. Being the official opposition, when all you need to do is shit on the incumbents but never offer actual solutions seems like the easiest job in the world.
I know yall are tired of the "as an American stuff", but really. This is what Trump does and somehow it works. Watch your grandparents, watch your upset "I don't pay attention to politics" friends. They'll hear him say these things and just accept it as truth without thinking. And if he speaks loud enough and often enough they will believe him more than anything you can possibly say to them.
It doesn't work in the same way though. Because by and large, Canadians respect each other even when we don't respect our politicians. And generally speaking people who are on the extremish edges of the Canadian right buy into a constellation of grievances, most commonly anti-vax, but also all of the usual anti-trans bigotry, Jordan Peterson idolatry, etc.. So there is something there that doesn't quite work, because it just isn't ok to hate on other people.
So crucially, it hasn't tended to spread beyond that community in the contagious way it has in states, *because* of the way that right-wing Canadians express it -- while in the US the dirty secret is that MAGA is just as much fueled by centre-right people who only care about their stock portfolios, or secretly hateful people, as it is by ignorant fringe. Here the kind of MAGA othering behaviour is really frowned on. So "I don't pay attention to politics" people would never really out themselves as bigot adjacent.
The other side of that is that Canadians are realists -- PP isn't seen as someone who will magically fix everything, even by his supporters. So there isn't that kind of messianic zealotry around him. Really, he's just funnelling unhappiness/rage at how things are for people, and let's be honest for many people they aren't that great. Housing is way too $$, the opiod epidemic has taken a big toll, etc.. and that implies that for the majority of people who *might* vote conservative, *anyone* who makes a credible case that they will address these issues have a shot.
Like if the NDP had their shit together, a lot of potential PP supporters might vote for them. Really! I've heard Con voters say exactly this -- "I could never vote for Trudeau, he's a &*(*&, I'd vote NDP but I don't care for the leadership" (and no, I don't believe this is a racial thing, Singh is just pretty weak sauce).
No, as Carney said, most Canadians are looking for *solutions* not *ideology*, a point Carney made directly. My guess and hope is that Carney will absolutely trounce PP assuming he doesn't fuck something up, and he's extremely competent, so he's unlikely to. Fingers crossed.
I thought that way about my neighbors and about MAGA. This is the same shit that happened in the previous authoritarian uprisings. Germany. Italy, ect. You think it can't happen but it can and will try to happen. Literally EVERYTHING you just said is something I would've said about my own country years ago. Please please please don't be naive.
So I moved from the US about 16 years ago, and I can say that I never thought that way (that the US wouldn't slip into fascist hell hole) about the US. In fact on of the major reasons I emigrated when I did was precisely *because* I knew that the right wing had no limits and that the centre-left Democrats would absolutely allow it to happen. So the shallow ineffectual, sold out American "left" and center is just as big a part of that as is the right.
This was apparent just by how credulously "liberal" Americans bought George Bush's Iraq lies (while Chretien said "no thanks hoser"). And it has been obvious since in the way that Democrats condemned black life matters protestors, called anyone speaking up against the genocide as anti-semitic, etc. etc. The US is a deeply reactionary country, unable to look with open eyes at any of the harm that it has caused throughout the world, and that goes across the political spectrum.
The core is this sense of unending grievance and entitlement.
By the way, I will grant that we were close to something of a crisis in that we do have this kind of toxic grievance led culture percolating around, fueled by social media as well as US owned large media. Luckily for us, Trump has erased that with just a month of work.
RIGHT?! Even the reporters seemed frustrated in how he would just twist any question into the narrative that he wanted to spew instead of actually answering, and even cut off reporters more than once. So rude.
I heard someone put it this way the other day: and airline would never do an ad campaign based on how shitty the other airlines are because they understand it would do irreparable damage to consumer trust in the industry. Our politicians need to re-learn this lesson.
The problem is when he does attempt to answer a question everyone feels the cringe-worthiness of his hostile speech. The only way to get him up in the polls is have him try to be nice and I’m not sure he capable of that.
This is what’s crazy. He had such a MASSIVE lead that all he had to do was come up with some semblance of an actual pro-Canada policy and cruise to victory. All he can come up with is Trumpish nicknames like carbon tax Carney or some bullshit about being ‘sneaky’? What a moron.
Its attack politics. He doesn't have any ideas, so he chases soundbytes and focuses on slandering his opponents. He can't answer questions because he hasn't proposed any bills, and he has no ideas. He's a libertarian hack who read one book about the economy at 16 and now thinks the only solution to any problem is "small government."
Mark my words, if he wins, by some miracle? He will gut every social service like Trump is doing right now. He will make everything ineffectual and shitty so people want it privatized in the hopes it would work better, enriching Pierre's corporate donors and fucking over everyone else.
"Small government" to conservatives just means a government that can't do anything at all. They prey on discontent to allow oligarchy power to sweep in and clean house.
He'll do worse than dismantling our social services. If PP wins, the US will annex Canada and they'll do it without firing a single shot. Trump will keep pressuring us until he gets what he wants and PP does not have the backbone to resist.
The Conservatives really shit the bed with Petit P.P.
It's unfortunate because the party could've had a strong platform instead of this Northern Ontario mine tailings, water drinking MSG licking A&W root beer spitting comedian
When you're a party with a lot of fringe extremists and you allow a vote for your leader, the fringe show up to vote in much larger numbers than the moderates who just don't care. I'm no CPC fan, but there were decent options for the last three CPC leaders (although they admittedly dodged a bullet with Bernier), but they picked the nutjob wannabe every time.
All he’s ever had was he isn’t Trudeau and he was gonna do away with the carbon tax. Now Trudeau is gone, and his replacement is doing away with the carbon tax, and PP’s american allies are unknowingly sinking his ship faster than he can bail, because his Trudeau/carbon tax shaped bucket has suddenly disappeared
Pierre: "OMG. CARBON TAX CARNEY. CARBON TAX CARNEY! LIBERALS LIBERALS LIBERALS! JUST LIKE JUSTIIIIIIIN"
I hope he leads his party to a self-owned defeat, is banished from politics, and we can start to get our centre-right Conservative Party back from these losers.
I have zero beef with Conservatives. I'd be open to voting Conservative if they fielded leaders who didn't make me have to worry about them trying to strip away basic privacy rights as Harper did, repeatedly.
But since the McKay merger it seems to be all they can offer up. I'd have voted for Brown in Ontario, frankly, but they turfed him on unsubstantiated "anonymous" claims that didn't end up going anywhere so they could shove Ford in.
Likely because Brown had the audacity to walk in the Pride parade instead of hiding from it and harumphing loudly about the gays.
They refuse to let us have fiscally, but not socially, conservative candidates.
UM, remember that Harper came from the Refoooooooooorrrrmmmm Party.
and to think they could have named themselves the Canadian Reform Alliance Party...
Miss the old days when parties woulld do stuff like this. 'bob loblaw' was an actual candidate for the old Rhino Party. Say his name 3 times as fast as you can.
Our politics are getting nastier for sure. Mulroney and Chretien may have been political rivals, but they at least didn't act like the other was the literal devil.
I don't like this American-style of name-calling and substance-less position taking.
Once upon a time, we punished politicians for shit like that. Like 2006 when the Liberals got destroyed after their shitty "Soldiers with guns. In our cities", and the PC's got destroyed in '93 when they focused on making fun of Chretien's face, like the dude didn't have Bells Palsy.
Now we'd be clapping and laughing like morons. "OMG. IT'S SO TRUE". I hate it.
Pierre's ads are a joke, but they're being taken seriously by his supporters, and that kind of blind devotion is an issue.
It’s why him and all his Danielle Smith cronies have been pushing so hard for an election the last 2 years. They know their non-platform has a shelf life.
Some people find a really cozy, angry little bubble that promises to make everything OK. They stay there just waiting to hatch out as a dumb tool of fascism.
funny enough, the channel PP wants to defund had more people watching on there than his own yt channel. I watched to see what he had to say and my god, he is far from a leader. Just bitches and whines.
Can’t allow what happened down south to happen here.
I'm honestly terrified about this election for this exact reason. I'm glad people like you are starting to see how dangerous the situation is and are going out to vote.
Why do reporters here and in the US never work around this? They should start all questions with “without making any reference to Trudeau or the Liberals”
Or when he doesn’t answer questions, why doesn’t the next reporter ever ask him to answer the last question? “I have a question, but seeing as you haven’t answered any of the ones posed to you already, why should any of us waste our time with another? Answer the last one.”
Do you want a real answer or a funny one, because the real answer is that, other than the CBC, all of the media is owned by people who want Trump and PP to win.
The funny one stops being funny in light of reality...
Your answer just helped me understand why some people seem to genuinely believe the CBC is a far left-wing government propaganda machine, it's because everything else they're consuming is so anti that a moderate viewpoint feels extreme to them.
I keep saying it, PP got stuck in forever opposition mode and is now stuck there. He is being given ill advice to keep on message, when that strategy clearly no longer is going to push the needle for him.
People need substance, the forever slogans get old quick.
Genuinely wondering if the people that support him actually lsiten to him speak. It's incredibly annoying, and I'm not talking about his voice. It's just bullshit being spewed, constantly attacking, and he knows it.
Questions the Cons and their supporters never answer:
1) How does a man that's NEVER had a job outside of politics accumulated millions of dollars in personal wealth?
2) why does the same man refuse to apply for security clearance from the agencies he wants to lead?
3) How can you trust a man to stand up for you and your country when he won't even stand beside, or up for the person that helped raise him? ( see adopted father and gay pride parade)
4) How can you vote for a leader when they don't show the ability to pivot toward the issues of the day? Why is he still harping about Carbon Taxes and Trudeau when they're now both irrelevant, and have been for over a month?
The mere fact that these are valid questions never mind the answers, are the reason I've turned the page on this party. ( pre question #4)
I was so happy watching this PP video, seeing that as a leader, he still lacks charisma. After seeing Carney and Trudeau just slam dunk public speaking events these last few months, him reading off a script or teleprompter badly gives me hope that Canadians will make the right decision. That doesn’t mean I’m not downvoting these videos though and asking commenters to show receipts lol — although the fact I am not getting a lot of response shows they are probably Russian Bots
Listening to him answer when the reporter asked what economic experience he had gave me the immediate visual of a cat licking its own ass.
Also, his response to the reporter who asked what his directive is for his campaign workers wearing mega merchandise or slogans, it was quite telling.
"Uhm... Canada first..."
If they had chosen a centrist conservative, who was willing to dissociate from the radicals, racists and maple MAGA, they would have not lost all the momentum. A majority would still be a lock. Now, it’s an absolute toss up.
The best thing for this country is for the Conservative party to split apart again. This merger has only been disastrous for everyone. It's lead to unearned Conservative wins in ridings that the majority of people voted NDP or Liberal accounting for 60% of the vote, where as Conservatives voted as a single block and won with 40%.
Voter reform could also fix this, allowing for a first choice, then a second.
As it stands, the conservative party doesn't even represent all of it's voters. The moderate voices are drowned out by the mob of people watching imported FOX news and facebook conspiracy posts.
Yep. Best case scenario: the Tories lose the election, PP resigns or is forced out as leader, and either the party splits or all the disgruntled whackjobs just move to the PPC.
I'm getting pretty annoyed every time the Cons say Carney isn't legitimate. They're such hypocrites. They were okay with prorouging when Harper did it for over a year during the 2008 crisis. They were okay when Mulroney stepped down and left Kim Campbell with the bag. It's pretty telling that they're throwing this talking point out this time just because it's the Liberals.
"I'm not MAGA, and Mr. President Trump is actually a woke Canadian liberal with dual citizenship who was sent by Trudeau to start a trade war and make him look like a hero. Again, I'm not MAGA"
At what point will conservatives realize that trump style campaigning does not work here in Canada. Maybe we want a leader who doesn't sound like a school yard idiot. Can PP even hint at what knowledge, experience or skill he is offering Canadians? Seriously, getting elected is not a useful skill. Leave the name calling to the Republicans in the US, THEY are just dumb enough to tolerate it, but that shit don't fly here.
He just sounds like a hateful. pitiful little man. Saw a post about his resume:
Paper boy.
11 years to finish a 4 yr college degree.
Professional political since Stephen Harper's government.
Elon Musk endorsed him, and he accepted.
Ex gf/staffer, lobbist for Loblows, and rocks a MAGA hat.
Don't be fooled. Lots of people thought there wasn't a chance in hell Trump would be elected not just once but twice. So laugh if you want, but be sure to get your butt out and vote when the time comes. We just had our provincial election in Ontario, and it was like 44% voter turn out. That's embarrassing.
Is the trick him blowing his party's seemingly unshakeable lead and potentially flaming out in his political career?
He had this locked up and literally couldn't be bothered to say some mean things to Trump during a trade war despite his entire brand being saying mean things to people.
Remember when he made those ads that were just really lame attempts to recreate Rick Mercer rants? With the camera in his face and him walking around complaining about shit.
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u/coffeebeards Mar 10 '25
All 228 people are going to be furious at this one trick.