Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says that he will support the Trudeau government’s budget under three conditions. Poilievre wants Trudeau to commit to axing the carbon tax for farmers, to build homes and not bureaucracy, and to agree to a cap on government spending.
338Canada federal update | April 7, 2024
Details here → https://t.co/IQaKoGJItT
Analysis → https://t.co/p9EDbSSMpG pic.twitter.com/LFuXszLB5L
— Philippe J. Fournier (@338Canada) April 8, 2024
OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s path to power may be by prosecuting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s past eight years in government, but his road to victory is painted NDP orange.
Appealing to working-class voters in rural and northern ridings — like those held by New Democrats across British Columbia and Liberals in northern Ontario — is part of what Poilievre sees as a winning formula.
If you’re waiting for Pierre Poilievre to start acting like a “prime minister-in-waiting,” you’ve not been paying attention. While Poilievre is more John Diefenbaker than Stephen Harper, this is not your Father’s Progressive Conservative Party.
Politics traditionally draws the type of person who cares deeply about what others think of them. That’s only natural. To get elected, you need to be more popular than everyone else on the ballot.
With almost 18 months under his belt as Conservative leader, it’s becoming clear that Poilievre has a certain superpower that sets him aside from most of his predecessors, whether they be Liberal or Conservative: he doesn’t care what “we” think of him.
Says Conservatives would ‘defund antisemitism’
It can be one of the thorniest issues for Canadian politicians — highly divisive and filled with decades of fighting, with potential for political blowback from one side or the other.
While conflict has raged in the Middle East in recent months, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has tended to focus on bread-and-butter domestic issues, such as inflation and the Liberal government’s carbon tax.
As federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre prepares to hold a rally Monday on Vancouver Island, a new poll suggests the provincial Conservative Party in British Columbia is benefiting from his popularity even though there are no official links between the two parties.
Fifty-six per cent of likely federal Conservative voters support the provincial Conservatives instead of BC United, the other centre-right party, according to a survey by the Angus Reid Institute.
There seem to be lots of tribes of conservatism and the smell of impending victory is keeping them united. For now.
The Toronto Star says Conservatives are really not Conservative as they define Conservativism.
It wasn’t a scenario normally associated with Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre.
Encircled by dozens of First Nations leaders, Poilievre was the focus of attention and respect at a ritual-filled gathering this year at the Vancouver Convention Centre.
‘We won’t forget’: How some Muslims view Poilievre’s stance on Israel-Hamas war
OTTAWA – A spokesman for a regional Muslim advocacy group says Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war could complicate his party’s relationship with Muslim Canadians.
Nawaz Tahir of the Hikma Public Affairs Council in London, Ont., met Poilievre during the leader’s outreach efforts in southwestern Ontario last summer.
Tahir says he believes Poilievre has missed chances to show compassion with Muslims and that building ties could be, in his words, “much more difficult now.”
When Sarah Morin hears the phrase “axe the tax,” what enters her mind is “freedom.”
The 41-year-old is a stay-at-home mother of two who has been using a food bank amid cost-of-living pressures.
She was among those who packed into a crammed room at a convention centre near Ottawa’s airport on Sunday to listen to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre speak.
With Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives far ahead in the polls, the next federal election could bring a change in leadership and big policy changes. But it takes a lot of political capital to make big changes, and some deeply embedded policies may be hard to reverse.
How might a Poilievre government approach Liberal programs currently taking root, such as national child care, pharmacare, and dental care? How might it handle energy policy, including how Canada’s oil and gas industry is treated and how green energy is subsidized?
… “Second,” he continued, “you didn’t pay attention to what’s happening to men. The Canadian media spent years talking about Pierre Poilievre’s problem with women voters. No one seemed to notice Justin Trudeau’s problem with men voters. I have never seen male voters, or any voting bloc, form up so monolithically. And that is happening elsewhere, including in the U.S. Men love Pierre Poilievre so much that there basically aren’t enough women voters left to counteract that,” he quipped. “And that was something you could have seen.” He then added, “And it’s not over. You know what’s happening right now? For generations, French-Canadian men have voted like French-Canadians. Now they’re starting to just resemble other Canadian men. And if that happens, that’s a game-changer. It’s happening at the provincial level, too, but I don’t think Trudeau or other progressives thought through the long-term impact of telling millions of men that they’re privileged, no matter their life circumstances. Right now, millions of those voters are shrugging and saying, ‘Well, okay. Fuck you. Me and my privilege will vote for the other guy.’”
h/t DS
OTTAWA — Prime ministers always say they leave their political legacies to historians. But it’s their successors who largely write that history by deciding what parts of any governing agenda survive.
So what should we glean from the reflections about Brian Mulroney’s legacy? His successors left most of the former Progressive Conservative leader’s important accomplishments intact, even those they once adamantly opposed.
And what might it tell us about which parts of Justin Trudeau’s agenda will survive, or what lessons Pierre Poilievre has taken?
After federal Tory candidate Jamil Jivani won the recent byelection in Ontario’s Durham riding, his speech targeted not only the rival Liberals but also, unexpectedly, Ontario’s ruling Progressive Conservatives. He is especially critical of the “anti-racism” taught in Ontario schools.
Race and gender are among sensitive topics federal and provincial conservatives alike had often been reluctant to speak strongly about in the past. But that has been changing, with senior Conservative leaders speaking up more on these touchy social issues in recent months.
Former prime minister Kim Campbell waded back into federal politics last week, slamming Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as a “liar and a hate-monger,” without providing evidence to back up her assertion.
With their party badly trailing Poilievre’s Conservatives in the polls, Liberal MPs, staffers and partisans praised Campbell’s name-calling. This was not surprising as Campbell is part of a special group within Canadian politics.
I happened to catch a CBC Front Burner podcast last week in which host Jayme Poisson interviewed the inestimable Paul Wells about Pierre Poilievre’s interactions with — some would say roughing-up — of the press. Both the episode and a transcript are available online.
