Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre comes to British Columbia
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre made several campaign stops in B.C. on Thursday. As Liam Britten reports, his first stop was in a riding that was fiercely contested by all parties in the last election.
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Winnipeg Free Press
9 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
The next steps forward for Pierre Poilievre
Opinion Spare a thought for Pierre Poilievre. What's a guy to do when you lose an election you were winning for two years, the seat you held for 20 years, and the policy platform you pined for your whole life? All in less than three months. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Having campaigned for change, Poilievre succeeded in changing Justin Trudeau to Mark Carney. Now, the Conservative Party leader is searching for renewed relevance against a Liberal government and prime minister that increasingly resembles a classic progressive conservative government. Lower taxes, check. Bigger military, check. Faster energy project approvals, check. Eliminate internal trade barriers, check. Poilievre was uniquely successful — until he wasn't — in proposing, not just opposing the Trudeau government. He set the country's political and policy agenda on housing, crime, energy, and carbon taxes. He proposed policies to deal with each. Agree or disagree, he was uniquely successful in getting Canadians talking about, and mostly agreeing, with his concerns and his solutions. So successful, the Liberals adopted much of what he proposed. Hence, his current conundrum. Laura Proctor / The Canadian Press Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in headier times, speaking at a rally in Oshawa, Ont. on April 3. This may all be temporary. Setbacks are common in politics. Ask Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien, or even Stephen Harper. All lost their first leadership race or election as leader, only to serve about a decade each as prime minister. Poilievre's fortunes are at a low ebb today. His personal popularity, outside of conservatives, is falling. With it, his party's. At just 46 years of age, his future is by no means automatically behind him. Honeymoons for your opponent and humbling circumstances for yourself will do that. Come the fall, however, he will be back in the House of Commons as the true leader of the official Opposition following an expected byelection win in a safe Alberta seat readied for him. He then needs to prevail in a formal party leadership review either this fall or next spring. So, Poilievre has two big challenges ahead. Regain relevance and retain his leadership. He dropped a clue as to how he plans to do both last week. 'We want severe limits on population growth' he said at a news conference. 'The population has been growing out of control; our border has been left wide open. This has caused the free flow of drugs, illegal migration, human trafficking and much worse.' The CPC leader provided no details as to what those 'severe limits' should be. Nor did he offer specifics about how this would be done. He had no intention of doing so. This was politics, not policy. And it was a specific kind of politics that conservative parties have embraced in America and Europe. 'Politics is downstream from culture.' So says the Breitbart doctrine, coined by the extreme conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart. To change politics, you must change culture. In essence, replace one set of truths with another. There is no shortage of targets in a culture war. Abortion, parental rights in schools, gender identity, DEI, climate change, race, free speech, and statues, to name a few. Bundled under the term 'woke', it really is a form of 'objection activism' to the progressive left. Poilievre liberally sprinkled that label in the last campaign, attacking the Liberals for everything from a 'woke criminal justice agenda' to a 'woke agenda on spending.' He promised a 'warrior culture, not a woke culture,' in the military, popularized by U.S. President Donald Trump. Pursuing this line serves the Conservatives well at this time because it buys time. It animates movement conservatives Poilievre needs to retain his leadership. It avoids picking policy lanes on current issues that may not even be relevant four years from now at the time of the next election. And it sounds principled and 'leader-like' to restore lost lustre. This may not be the right long-term lesson to learn from an election loss where his personal and leadership style held back support. But in the short-term, it offers the safest, most secure way for Mr. Poilievre to assert himself via the 'bro-casting' media platforms with the audience that matters most now: conservatives. Weekday Evenings Today's must-read stories and a roundup of the day's headlines, delivered every evening. Canadians will see more of this from the Conservative leader as he waits, and hopes, the Carney government begins the process of defeating itself, that time-honoured method of changing governments in Canada. For all its attention-getting, culture wars are inherently divisive. They are meant to be. By doubling-down on these issues, and he will, Poilievre runs the real risk of reinforcing his own negative image of divisiveness, defeating himself, not the government across the aisle from him. 'You were the future once', was how a new British Conservative leader named David Cameron challenged then-prime minister Tony Blair at his first question period in the House of Commons. Five years later he was prime minister. Canada's Conservative Party leader has his work cut out for him to avoid this being said about him. David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.
Toronto Star
14 hours ago
- Toronto Star
Singles tell us how the political gender gap is impacting their dating lives: ‘I would not date anybody who votes Conservative'
Three years ago, Jessica Katzman was dating a Conservative voter. Now, she feels it would be more difficult to do so. 'Everything feels more divided now, even compared to a few years ago,' said the 26-year-old Toronto content creator. 'It feels like everyone decided they are either 'this' or 'that' and are less inclined to acknowledge that nothing is black or white.'
Vancouver Sun
16 hours ago
- Vancouver Sun
What does the creation of OneBC mean for the province's political scene?
When the legislature resumes in October, it will have four political parties, after the formation of OneBC this week by independent MLAs Dallas Brodie of Vancouver-Quilchena and Tara Armstrong of Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream. Brodie was ejected from the B.C. Conservatives in March for comments about the Kamloops Indian Residential School that many First Nations called residential school denialism and an appearance on a podcast with former Mount Royal professor Frances Widdowson where she made comments that Conservative Leader John Rustad said mocked residential school survivors. Armstrong and Jordan Kealy, MLA for Peace River North, left the Conservatives in solidarity with Brodie and in the months since the three have formed an alliance on issues such as defending an ostrich farm in the B.C. interior that has been marked for a cull due to avian flu. Start your day with a roundup of B.C.-focused news and opinion. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Sunrise will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. OneBC was officially registered with Elections B.C. on June 9 and will grant Brodie and Armstrong additional funding and privileges in the legislature. In a press release on Thursday, the party outlined several policy planks from ending 'mass immigration' to defunding 'the reconciliation industry.' Other promises include pushing for a ban on strikes by teachers, allowing private health-care, and steep cuts to income taxes. Questioned about these policies by Postmedia on Friday, Brodie said the goal is to deliver on the goals that initially ignited the Conservative base. She said B.C. needs to get control over immigration in the same way as Quebec and allow for people to pay for health-care here instead of waiting for months and months, a change she believes would also reduce the burden on the public system. As for the 'reconciliation industry,' Brodie alleged that money meant to help First Nations children get ahead has instead been siphoned off to an army of lawyers, consultants and some chiefs and councils. 'What's happened is the money isn't getting down to the people who need it,' said Brodie. OneBC will not get funding through Elections B.C. as it was not a registered party during the last election. Where it will get money is through the legislature, with each party of at least two members considered a recognized caucus as soon as they have notified the office of the Speaker. Under this designation, the party will receive $108,471 per MLA for a total of $216,942. It will also receive $442,000 for Brodie's office as leader. Brodie herself will receive a top-up of $29,883.19 to her base salary of $119,532.72, meaning she will receive a total of just under $150,000, the same as Green interim leader Jeremy Valeriote. Yes. Historically the practice has been to give each party at least one question during question period, which takes place each day the legislature sits for a period of half an hour, with the Conservatives being given a question and a followup every question period after becoming an officially recognized party in September 2023. Likewise, the Greens as the official third party in the legislature receive one question and one followup during each question period. Previously the three independents got one question between them each week. Speaking to Postmedia on Friday, Kealy said he doesn't align with Armstrong and Brodie on all of their policies, although he wouldn't say which ones he disagrees with, and believes continuing on as an independent MLA is the best way for him to represent his riding of Peace River North. He isn't closing the door on joining either OneBC or another political party but for now considers himself a 'lone wolf.' 'One of the primary issues that we're having in the North here is our health-care system that is falling to pieces, and we struggle to get staff and professionals for our health care system right now,' said Kealy. 'My region's also been on fire for the past three years, and the current government seems to not really prioritize putting those fires out when they can. So there's a lot of issues that are pressing for my region that are different than others.' Four. The last time there were this many parties was last August just before B.C. United Leader Kevin Falcon's decision to drop his party out of the provincial election in an effort to consolidate support behind the B.C. Conservatives. That consolidation of the centre-right and right-wing vote only lasted for seven months before Brodie, Armstrong and Kealy left the Conservatives to sit as independents. 'John Rustad has to deal with the problems that Kevin Falcon had to deal with before, and although in the short-term, Rustad, I think, might have a little bit more success than Falcon did, because this new party is so far to the right. And, in the short term, I think that's going to make John Rustad and the B.C. Conservatives look more moderate,' said Hamish Telford, a University of the Fraser Valley political scientist. There hasn't been this much upheaval in B.C. provincial politics since the early 1990s when a series of short-lived parties formed out of the collapse of Social Credit before the B.C. Liberals under former premier Gordon Campbell were able to consolidate their free-enterprise coalition in the lead-up to the 2001 election.
