Few surprises with Pierre winning his party leadership on the first ballot (68%). His wife seems very well spoken in both French and Spanish. He was fairly graceful thanking his opponents; he didn’t mention Brown, whom he scuffed with and who may or may not have had due process in removal from the ballot. Pierre pointed out commonplace frustrations of Canadians, would be wise to concentrate on these, and he avoided saying anything too strange about banking, protests or vaccines. The last item is important, the scientific basis is solid and it is a slippery slope to sacrifice this for populism; it is difficult to gauge his sincerity.
I don’t get why CBC feel the need to translate a speech in French and English when they are saying the same thing in both languages. I would much rather just hear the French. And they didn’t translate any of the Spanish IIRC. This annoys me during Remembrance Day speeches too. It is relevant only if they say different things in both languages, and usually not then.
I thought he would win a higher proportion than he did.
I wonder how often, if ever, Pierre considers the irony if a shared name with Trudeau pere. I tend to agree. But I also think Pierre is easy to underestimate.
I thought his speech was excellent. I also think he’s going to be formidable, and very likely our next PM. If the Liberals couldn’t win a majority against a rudderless CPC with weak leaders, they are in trouble against a unified CPC with a charismatic, intelligent young leader who has captured the imaginations of many already.
Here are a couple of articles about him from a putatively hostile or at least skeptical media, and even they are acknowledging the skills and the intelligence and sincereity of Poilievre:
From the McLeans article:
So… he’s a politician and ‘partisan’. But they wish he wasn’t because otherwise there’s a lot to like. That’s not a very stinging criticism.
I wasn’t at all surprised. The opponents were just… nothing.
“we need to get the centrists” is what they tried last time and the time before, and it doesn’t work, and its really stupid.
The voters aren’t on all a one-dimensional scale. Life just isn’t like that; I know it’s tempting to think that way but it’s just not how people vote. Things like personality and issues matter, often more than one’s position on the political spectrum.
Poilevre, to use one example, is already saying things that are VERY appealing to younger voters; he is the only politician in Canada who is legitimately making a disruption-level fuss about the housing crisis. That will win him votes from people across the spectrum.
By far, the most important thing to do in a general election is to make a clear and affirmative case for why you should be elected. Poilevre is good at making clear and affirmative cases. I’m not saying I agree with him - that’s not the point here, and his babbling about firing the BoC governor is fucking stupid. I do, however, really easily remember what his positions ARE (so they’re clear) and that they involved him proposing specific actions to take, as opposed to things that should not happen (which is what I mean by affirmative.)
I agree with the first sentence, but not necessarily with your second. I’ll wait and see. But so far, I suspect that the next election platform will consist primarily of “we hate Trudeau and so should you”, and I’m not sure if re-running that scenario again is going to work.
He’s going to have to work mighty hard to rid himself of the stench of the anti-masker, anti-science, “let’s go to Ottawa and overthrow the government because we don’t believe in the germ theory of medicine” idiots that he seems to love.
If that happens in 2025 they won’t do as well as they could. However, in the leadership campaign, Poilevre did in fact stake out very clear, unambiguous, affirmative positions, far more so than his opponents. He was good at it, and I’ve no reason to think his being good at it will make the CPC WORSE at it than they have been.
I still don’t know why Erin O’Toole wanted to be PM. I can think of literally infinity percent more positions Poilevre has than O’Toole, and O’Toole was actually the party leader in an election.
The Conservatives fails in the last election, which they honestly should have won, because the right split and the balancing act O’Toole had to perform to keep the base happy and woo the middle failed.
I do love how conservative pundits are lauding him as our next PM. The NDP is in no shape to want to force and election, the Liberals have no need for one. So we’re not going to the polls any time soon.
And that’s one of the reasons I’m never going to vote for him. I’ve said before he’s the Ted Cruz of Canada - smart enough to know how full of shit he usually is, but slimy enough that he doesn’t care at all about embracing bullshit in search of the win. This is everything that’s wrong with the modern GOP, and if we reward it in Canada, we’ll be as bad off as the US is now, with one party entirely consumed by stupid bullshit.
His embrace of the anti-vax morons who decided to blockade a city and demand the overthrow of an elected government in the name of “freedom to harm others” is enough for me to never vote for his party.
There is not going to be an election before 2025 since the NDP does not want one and will accept some minimal to moderate influence on policy. Pierre is not Trump - he supports immigration and diversity - but much will happen in the US in the next three years which will have ripple effects and challenge all candidates. I would prefer pragmatism to populist poppycock.
This is ample time for Pierre to gain or lose momentum; he has some potential. He does have strong and clear opinions, not that many specifics - and Trudeau does not - except on Covid and US trade where Trudeau performed well, and identity issues of only moderate importance to most Canadians. The Liberals now say they are going to take economic issues seriously. What are their detailed plans? Just watch them. Don’t hold your breath.
I would say I was not likely to vote CPC in the next election; however, with PP as leader there is a precisely zero percent I will vote for them. Supporting the Fascist Convoy is an absolute red line for me. And of course there is so much more: anti-vaxx, anti-science, anti-climate, cryptocurrency, anti-gay marriage, support of Jordan Peterson (e.g., racism, misogyny), etc. That being said I think he stands a good chance to win because Canadians vote people out, and JT has been PM for an awfully long time through hard times. However, if JT does anything to address housing costs (and/or inflation), then PP is finished. This is his most powerful piece of ammo.
If it is Freeland running in 2025, if Trudeau can park his ego at the door, she may benefit from things like Ukraine and trade negotiation… or she may be seen as more of the same.
Well, I wasn’t really interested in what he had to say in the first place but Poilievre has guaranteed that he’s never going to get my vote with his speech decrying Justin Trudeau’s “radical woke coalition”. Fuck outta here with that. Of any real problem I can list with Canada today, wokeness is not among them. Does he think he truly, honestly can convince me for one second that dental care for low income families is some horrible woke agenda? Go ahead Pierre, tell me how awful it is to be a hetero white man in this cruel woke world. Be specific, I want to hear all about it.
I see he’s also got the idea of spend a dollar, slash a dollar from the existing budget which I see as a transparently obvious way to defund things he doesn’t like. Oops, we’ve got to keep the fossil fuel industry going strong, I guess we should get rid of that socialized medicine! Somebody here once said something about people having ideas that are plain, simple and totally wrong. This is one of them. I am not accusing the Liberals of being experts with the budget by any means and I am sure they used the pandemic to do some spending in places where they otherwise couldn’t have gotten away with it. But saying that we’re going to just cap government spending at a set level makes an assumption that the government has more money than it needs and exists in a state of inherent wastefulness. That may be true to some degree but I don’t think it is anywhere near that simple. So I reject his “nuke the hurricane” solution because anyone who thinks it is that simple shouldn’t be anywhere near that money.
And his Freedom Convoy love is absurd too. As if a Conservative government would have let that BS go on in Ottawa for three weeks straight. But maybe he’s saying there wouldn’t have been a Freedom Convoy under his watch because he would have ignored the science and let people die instead. Sure, try that, see how it goes.
I think he is in favour of Freedom. The freedom to ignore public health measures based on modern medical knowledge. The freedom to make others sick, and to kill them because you have ignorant beliefs in conspiracy theories.
This is kind of built-in to modern conservative thought. Doug Ford was making the same kind of noises, back when he was first elected. Whenever he was challenged on how he’d pay for his ideas without raising taxes, he’d bleat about “finding efficiencies”. The only way anyone could really believe that would work is if they believe that government spending is rife with pork and waste.
This is a common refrain from all parties, sorry. Not at all just a PC thing. Such talk is common horseshit when explaining why dubious election promises can be kept.
