CanadaLand Podcast, Part 2 & Canadian Election News
Canada Faces an Election Call on Sunday. Times have changed.
Mark Carney, Canada’s newly minted Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Party is likely to call an election on Sunday.
I appeared on the CanadaLand podcast again with San Grewal to talk about media and the election. (- check it out above -)
The title of the podcast is because Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has announced that he will not have media on his plane during the election, which is a major break from the way it’s been done.
There’s been an incredible reversal of polling fortune for the Conservatives, who were polling in majority territory for so long that they one of their slogans was “Bring it Home”.
They have now been cycling through slogans at an astonishing pace as their polling numbers keep falling.
The Conservatives had relied on three pillars for their election strategy, and they all seemed to be working.
Pin everything on Justin Trudeau
Blame everything else on the Carbon tax
Be TrumpLite (A Canadian Subsidiary of MAGA)
Then, after months of pressure Trudeau resigned after Christmas after his Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland very pointedly resigned. It has to be said that Trudeau’s performance and that of his cabinet in dealing with Trump and tariffs has been very effective.
Mark Carney, who won the leadership, has already removed the consumer portion of the carbon tax.
Carney has a PhD in Economics, was a senior finance official and has been the Governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, as well as working in the private sector.
I will say the Conservatives were overdue for a correction in the polls.
I had discussions with Liberals who were saying months ago that a Liberal majority was possible, and while few would have believed it at the time, polls are now showing that is more and more likely.
This is for two basic reasons, both related to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. (PWAH-LEE-EV-RUH).
Poilievre’s entire brand is sneering abuse and contempt towards opponents, the media and Canadians. His chest-puffing bluster is clearly to compensate for his truly profound ignorance about the way the world works. He has been a Member of Parliament for nearly 20 years, has a colossal gold-plated pension, and has nevertheless managed to achieve nearly nothing in his chosen profession.
Poilievre was at one point the Conservative Finance critic, and it was clear that his knowledge of finance the economy was feeble. I was taken aback when I spoke to a blogger who told me that Poilievre had called him to explain how central banks and monetary policy worked.
The Canadian Conservatives and Trump advisors have been working together for years. Mike Roman, who played a key role in engineering the entire false narrative that Trump won in 2020, when they knew he had lost, was charged in multiple states, and was in Canada advising the Conservatives in 2019.
Poilievre has been endorsed by Musk, the Nazi-Salute giving, German Neo-Nazi Party endorsing, apartheid-era South African who is currently dismantling and crippling every aspect of the U.S. Government and economy.
So has renowned youtuber, self-help guru and self-medicating “mental health” expert, Jordan Peterson. Peterson carried out a lengthy interview with Poilievre, where Poilievre said Canada was broken because Canadians were stupid. So have Kevin O’Leary, Alex Jones and Joe Rogan.
Now, if anyone wants to understand the seething rage that Canada is feeling towards the U.S, imagine that you are you, and you are minding your own business, when a very strange old man who is completely out of his mind starts hitting on you, and won’t let up.
Young people. Old people. Men. Women. LGBTQ+. People of all cultures and ethnicities. Imagine having a beer at your local bar and this guy comes up to you and starts breathing down your neck.
These are some recent polls, which for some reason, manage to leave out two entire provinces - Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
The Liberals are at 49.5%, CPC at 31.8%, the NDP at 8%.
Now, if you want to understand what a change this is, the Liberals are up over 25%, the Conservatives are down nearly 20% and the NDP have dropped by 10%.
Not all polls have the Liberals quite so high - these are very high numbers - but they all reflect a stark change in mood.
It is not just Trump’s policies or tariffs towards Canada. It is all the other blatant racism, cruel mistreatment, corruption, and closeness to Russia and Putin, as well as the blatant lies about our country.
The U.S. is lying about the threat of fentanyl from Canada. They are lying about Canada being “subsidized” due to a trade deficit. We sell the U.S. a lot of cheap oil that they make a good profit from.
This is widely, and rightly seen as a betrayal. The U.S. has benefited enormously from the Canadian economy, and a huge number of U.S. businesses operate in Canada and send their profits stateside, and when Canada signed free trade agreements with the U.S., from the Autopact through the FTA, NAFTA and USMCA, the result has been the loss of Canadian companies to the benefit of American ones.
We have been allies for decades, having fought side-by-side, and Canada has a very proud military history, which the U.S. in its tellings tends to ignore.
Put it this way: the U.S. tends to be more likely to succeed in battle if Canada is fighting alongside them - and more likely to fail when Canada is not.
In both the First and Second World Wars, Canada joined the Great Britain right at the start of fighting, in 1914 and 1939, respectively. Canada fought in Korea, but not in Vietnam. We fought in the First Gulf war, and in Afghanistan, but not the Iraq war.
Canada is now being treated as an enemy, or a threat, when data shows that the U.S. exports more toxic drugs and illegal guns, gangs and criminals into Canada than the other way around.
When Trump started making his overblown claims about the border, Poilievre and the Conservatives doubled down on them, promising to send Canadian troops to the border. By parroting Trump’s claims, Poilievre was siding with the U.S. against Canada.
The other relates to Canada’s position on Ukraine, Russia and Zelenskyy.
Poilievre has long made it a habit to dogwhistle about conspiracy theories favoured by a certain core of conservatives. WEF, globalists, George Soros, UN immigration pacts, vaccinations. He would not commit to increasing Canada’s defense commitment to NATO, citing the need for austerity. He referred to Ukraine as a “far away land.”
[This appeals to a common kind of “America First / Canada First” resentment, which appears to be rooted in legitimate concern, “Why are we helping others abroad when people in Canada don’t have the help they need?”. The actual answer is “The federal government is doing its job, but the provincial governments that are responsible for housing, homelessness and income supports are a catastrophe. ]
The anti-Ukrainian messaging on the part of Canadian conservatives seems to be pure imitation of the U.S. right, and it is also repeating messaging that is known to be part of Russian propaganda (and that has been repeated by Trump, Musk, and Jordan Peterson).
Canada has a very significant number of Canadians of Ukrainian heritage, and their tradition of Ukrainian nationalism stretches back to well before the Second World War, and it has deep roots in Canada.
We regularly mark the Holodomor, which was when Stalin and the USSR created an horrific political famine that led to the deaths of up to seven million Ukrainians in the 1930s. There are still survivors of that famine living today. Canada was the first country to recognize Ukraine’s independence in the 1990s.
The Ukrainian famine has barely been mentioned, and many people seem to be completely unaware of it in the context of Ukrainian resistance to Russia. Canadians are more likely to be aware of it.
The shift in Canada’s mood is palpable, and all of the MAGA praise Poilievre was basking in is backfiring. He’s never worked in anything but politics. This is something he shared with another Conservative Leader, Andrew Scheer.
Poilievre’s hectoring style is not unique to him: it’s a way of interacting that’s taught.
The same thing that makes all these outrageous statements shocking is also what makes them effective and appealing. By stepping outside the bounds of what is considered regular debate, they are seen as “transgressive” and seen as rule-breakers defying the system. They get to “own the libs” and people don’t know how to respond (and still don’t), because there is no polite or reasoned way to deal with it.
What they say gets repeated, and accuracy is irrelevant.
This entire Trumpian strategy is it uses opponents, commentators and outrage to amplify Trump’s message. It’s repeated, discussed, and if it “triggers” an angry response, so much the better. Forget the woke mind virus - the Trump mind-virus: he makes you have no choice but to talk about him all the time.
Saying something outrageous - or floating an idea - is a way for Trump and his team to gauge what will get the biggest reaction, and pursue that. While people argue over whether it is serious or not, the whole point is to fill the news with people talking about him.
The thing is, this whole obnoxious conservative bit consists of abusing the goodwill of others - who are constrained by morality, professional obligation, or institutional rules from responding.
It’s the human embodiment of a particular German word “Backpfeifengesicht” - “a face badly in need of a fist.”
If someone walked up to you in any setting and spoke to you that way, your first instinct might well be to ask them to step outside.
The basis for the Conservative’s previous polling success was that they wanted and expected Canadians to punish the Liberals for the turmoil and misery they have faced in the last few years.
Instead, the mood has shifted and Canadians - who have been in a punishing mood - want to make anyone associated with Trump pay.
How bad is it? After Wayne Gretzky went to Mar-A-Lago to celebrate Trump’s election, wearing a MAGA cap, he managed to earn the ire of hockey fans during the Four Nations Cup. Gretzky wore no red, and gave a thumbs up to the U.S. bench as he walked onto the ice.
Gretzky’s hockey achievements might once have made him untouchable, but his fall from grace was made abundantly clear as his statue in Edmonton, Alberta was recently smeared with excrement.
Conservatives are now scrambing to dissassociate themselves from Trump, and Trump and his team are trying to play some elementary school level reverse psychology.
After years of heaping abuse on Liberals and praising Poilievre as being more aligned just weeks ago, Trump has now said that Poilievre is not MAGA, and that he would rather deal with the Liberals instead.
Poilievre and the conservatives seem to be oblivious to the fact, in asking Canadians to believe this ridiculous bluff, Poilievre is asking Canadians to put their faith in Trump telling the truth.
A final point about the conflict between Canada and the U.S. that bears repeating.
In the classic book of strategy, the Art of War, Sun-Tzu talks about the importance of knowing yourself and knowing your opponent. If you don’t understand yourself, or your opponent, you are much less likely to succeed.
If you understand yourself, and your opponent, you can prevail even when the odds are against you.
A couple of Canadian representatives, including Melanie Joly, made the point that no one knows Americans better than Canadians, and being that close means we do have a completely different relationship and perspective than the rest of the world. Part of the horror of the current administration is that it is actively dismantling and destroying institutions that represent what we all know are core American principles - First Amendment rights, basic due process, the rule of law. The way that companies are simply caving in to the blatantly illegal threats and extortion has been beyond depressing. It’s craven and servile.
It’s quite clear that many, Americans especially the ones in the current administration, do not understand Canada or Canadians, at all. That is more than a shortcoming - it is a strategic mistake.
Canadians have been galvanized in a way I have never seen in my lifetime. It has been genuinely heartening, and it is organic. It is not phony jingoism drummed up from above with propaganda, hype and fanfare. It is a clear eyed -and serious- response to an existential threat.
Poilievre and Conservatives cannot escape that his entire brand - in style and substance is modelled on Trump and MAGA. It might be lightly rewritten by AI and “U”s added to the relevant Canadian words like “colour”, but now there’s no getting the stink off.
As for Carney and the Liberals, if they get elected, they need to recognize that this change in fortunes has been driven by progressives like the NDP and Greens abandoning their parties to keep the Conservatives out, and of course millions of Liberal voters.
I’ve been clear in my writing that what Canada needs is a New Deal and a Marshall Plan - and in my very first post, I wrote about the vital need for central bank monetary policy reform. (below)
Important monetary reforms are critical to better stewardship of Canada’s economy, and Carney is uniquely positioned to understand and implement ideas that could be transformational in Canada, and a model for the world.
I’ve written about them (and many other proposals for reform) in my e-book, Bring on The Brand New Renaissance, which is now available on multiple platforms:
KOBO » Click to buy »
AMAZON » Click to buy »
APPLE » Click to buy »
Check them out!
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For the CPC being so strong in Alberta and Saskatchewan I offer my pontifications.
Before Poilievre, Harper was famously media invisible. He is also who Poilievre, as a junior staffer, honed his natural political skills. Poilievre is the only leadership candidate Harper has ever endorsed.
Now for the ‘this CPC’ I promised.
Today’s CPC isn’t the party of your parents.
It’s an amalgamation of some very right wing, even alt-right, Christian, pro Alberta (read oil and gas) and
public money-private for profit service providers modeled after the US, throw in a few of the defectors from the bigot party, the People’s Party of Canada which has the same values as previously noted with a healthy helping of white nationalist thrown in. Now add the remnants of your parents CPC and you have todays Reform/Alliance/PPC masquerading as the CPC.
The Reform Party of Canada grew out of a coalition of Western Canadian interest groups. It began in 1986 as an attempt to voice western concerns federally. In May 1987, the Reform created a broad based party to voice western economic concerns (read oil, gas and agriculture) and its treatment within the constitution. Its major preoccupations, however, were decentralizing and reducing the size, scope and cost of the federal government within Alberta —primarily through cuts to social welfare and cultural programs (including bilingualism and multiculturalism).
The Canadian Alliance party was created from the Reform Party of Canada in January of 2000 to present a united right wing front against the Liberal party. Its priorities were mandated balanced budgets and debt repayment, and support for the conservative creeds of "free enterprise,""strong families" and "safer streets and secure borders." Stockwell Day beat out Reform leader to lead the party. Day passed leadership to Harper after provincial legal issues and political missteps. The CPC resignation of Joe Clark saw the Alliance permanently join with the decimated party thus forming the modern day Conservative Party of Canada.
Today we have a CPC that is Alberta centric, faith based, pro everything US because that’s who makes up the party base. It’s also why party unity is a constant irritant for its leaders. It’s Alberta members know they can go it on their own, they’ve done it before, also there’s another pro Alberta party, the Rebublican Party of Alberta. No. I am not making this up.
All the above, combined with rural populations scattered across the provinces where ridings are far apart resulting an in echo chamber effect with very little challenging your beliefs.
Excellent article. The liberals really need to promote PPs anti Ukraine rhetoric all over Alberta. As you said there is a huge Ukrainian population in AB that has been here for many generations, and it is disheartening how many people in AB still support Danielle even though she is ruining our province and focusing on profit over people. I do not think the people realize how impt it is to overthrow lady Trump before it is too late. Unfortunately a lot of maga maple in AB and we need to flood the misinformation online with truth.