Conservative Party

The six candidates vying for the Conservative Party’s top job sparred in the last official debate of the leadership campaign on Wednesday — clashing over everything from the trucker convoy to bitcoin and tax cuts in a fiery matchup in a Laval, Que., banquet hall.

The two-hour debate featured pointed, personal exchanges throughout as Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre, the leading right-wing candidate in this race, traded jabs with his more centrist opponents, Brampton, Ont. Mayor Patrick Brown and former Quebec premier Jean Charest.

And a Star columnist hits the fainting couch … Pierre Poilievre is inching toward the dark places where Donald Trump found votes

The perceived front-runner in the Conservative leadership race is trying to lure support from people with a shaky knowledge of the system of government in Canada, Susan Delacourt writes.

No one is going to accuse Pierre Poilievre of practising restraint in his campaign to be the next leader of the federal Conservatives.

Show him an institution and Poilievre will knock it down — the Bank of Canada, the media, anyone deemed a “gatekeeper,” or the World Economic Forum. He doesn’t just disagree with his opponents, he calls them liars.

At the risk of giving the “freedom” candidate any more ideas, it should be noted that there is one institution Poilievre hasn’t directly challenged, at least not yet — democracy itself. But if Poilievre is going to go full Donald Trump in his bid to be the next prime minister, an assault on the legitimacy of the voting system is almost inevitable.

This is what happens when you wear Hitler Glasses.

… The only way to win, he argued, is to find a way to appeal to “moderate, pragmatic, middle-of-the-road Canadians” who do not see themselves in the other more progressive parties.

… But Poilievreism, or whatever we end up calling it, is not Trumpism. Not even close. If you need proof, check out last week’s Conservative leadership debate.

Moderator Tom Clark asked the candidates whether they agree with the Liberal government’s policy of increasing the annual immigration intake to more than 400,000.

“We need the work force, frankly,” Mr. Poilievre replied, “but when we bring immigrants here we need to make sure they have the freedom to own a home by getting rid of the gatekeepers that prevent housing construction and the freedom to work in their field by getting rid of the gatekeepers that prevent them from getting licences in their professions and trades. So I will get rid of the gatekeepers and give them that opportunity.”

He gets how to be another O’Toole to win the leadership – go incognito

As conservatives across Canada reacted to the fall of Jason Kenney, a defining voice in their political movement, a Liberal from the Tory heartland offered an outsider’s diagnosis into the state of conservatism in the country.

“Mr. Kenney was pushed out of his party because he wasn’t extreme enough,” Tourism Minister Randy Boissonnault, an Edmonton MP, declared Thursday.

“It’s time for the moderates in conservative movements in this country to step up and ask themselves: Where is this train going?”

Huh? O’Toole was a case of false advertising and Kenney won the confidence vote but decided to push himself out. Certainly in the CPC’s case not one of the current leadership candidates will be able to alter the party’s leftward tilt.

Conservative leadership hopeful Pierre Poilievre deserves credit, not opprobrium, for his willingness to speak and listen to those who are feeling angry and alienated, rather than immediately dismissing their concerns as illegitimate. This sometimes leads him down a path where he risks turning himself into a populist caricature, but providing a mainstream avenue to channel this anger is undoubtedly better than letting it fester.

The cultural ignorance of the Conservative candidates is a revealing insult

You can’t make it up, although one suspects some of the people involved did make it up. The people in question are the ones who want to lead the Conservative Party of Canada. You’d think they’d want to be accurate and you’d think they’d be superpositive about good Canadian-made productions in storytelling and themes. Especially supersuccessful Canadian TV in the international market.

Not so. In that eccentrically organized but revealing Conservative leadership candidates TV debate the other night, the candidates were asked about their personal taste in books, music and the last binge-watch TV they enjoyed. Not hard questions but good, get-to-know-you questions.

The list of shows they mentioned amounts to a telltale revelation. These people seem to be completely ignorant of Canadian-made TV that’s renowned, award-winning and made in their own backyards. It was like dirty laundry being aired; it was an excursion into the mind-boggling.

The snobbery nears self-parody. Roman Baber is called out for stating he learned to speak English from Al Bundy in ‘Married with children’ and you can practically see the author hyperventilating on his fainting couch. Hell that makes me like Baber even more, I thought he came across as a genuine human being during the last debate. I’m probably voting PPC again given the CPC’s leftward drift but this biased crap outdoes the CBC.

CanCon is typically humourless PC garbage that force feeds the lived experience of transvestite migrant farm labourers or other such drivel. That’s because all arts funding eventually becomes toxic lesbians funding other toxic lesbians with your tax dollars. It’s a grift and people instinctively know to stay away. (Go incognito)

Conservative Party leadership candidate Patrick Brown says social conservatives would have a place in a party led by him but that he stands firm on his views on topics such as abortion.

In an interview on CTV’s Question Period, Brown pointed to his time in provincial politics when social conservatives were elected while he was at the helm of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario.