I spent a few minutes before starting this trying to think of something good to say about Randy Briand. It was harder than it may sound, and in the end, I could only really think of one.
I don’t know Randy from a head of lettuce, so in fairness to him, I should make the effort to learn more about him before I weigh-in on whatever it is that he’s all about.
So I did.
Salt of the earth is Randy. Born in Petawawa into a military family, he served himself as a weekend-warrior in the Reserves, an infantry officer by his own account. A school teacher for over thirty years, with a couple of years way up North working with indigenous children before returning home to become an Ottawa Valley farmer. With a resume like that, what’s not to like, for heaven’s sake?
I don’t know of Randy’s formative years, where he developed his belief system and moral and ethical compass, but he apparently went through a catharsis of some sort when he met Grant Abraham, the leader of the Alberta-based United Party of Canada. Abraham either solidified Briand’s world-view or he totally knocked it on its ass, but either way, Briand has emerged as whole, a complete man, one who has found himself a home in a new political party when all the others had failed him.
So he decided to run as a candidate in the federal election for the United Party of Canada (UPC) in his home riding of Algonquin-Renfrew-Pembroke. For the record, the UPC joins a crowded field on the political right, joining the Conservatives and Maxine Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada (PPC), all three the main proponents for most of the things that I stand against.
So, in an election where there’s a CPC, UPC, and PPC, is there any room for voter confusion? I mean, if I’m against immigrants or anyone who doesn’t look like a “legacy” Canadian, if I’m against a woman’s right to choose and medically assisted dying, if I truck with conspiratorial types who want to save us from the United Nations, the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization, then who am I to support with my vote from among the three?
If I’m a trucker wannabe, believe that occupying a nation’s capital and terrorizing and bullying the local population is a cool Canadian thing to do, which of the three is the better fit?
What if I believe that Canada is inexorably broken, beaten down by woke policies and DEI — diversity/equality/inclusion — then who best represents my beliefs?
What if I just have a perpetual hate on for everything and everyone? Who’s going to stick up for my “ideals?”
This brings me to the only thing that I can think of that serves as a positive for Mr. Briand, albeit it’s not a very scientific way to make friends. If all were to go well, Briand, and all the folks considering voting for him, will not be voting Conservative.
That’s a full stop good thing right there.
A vote-splitter on the right. Heavens above, what’s not to like about that?
I don’t for one moment in seven thousand years of moments think it will have any impact on the overall results here on election night, but I have to confess to a certain satisfaction knowing that all these right-wing angry-pyjama types will be going hammer and tong at each other in Tim Hortons locations across the riding. The Horton Dump, that hotbed of political reasoning, will be alive with heated discourse. I may fake having to go to the dump just to witness it.
But this is Algonquin-Renfrew-Pembroke, where it’s Guns, God, and Gallant.
Still, I hear of discontent among traditional Conservative supporters who express dissatisfaction with Gallant, which is pretty weird, and something I dismissed as too good to be true. I was talking to one fellow who always goes in the opposite direction from me when it comes to politics. I asked him why he’d be angry with Gallant.
“What’s she done for the riding?” He asked.
Um, okay, and you’re coming around to a question like that after 25 consecutive years of Cheryl Gallant?
It’s the funniest thing when the afternoon Tim Hortons crowd suddenly changes course in the way they think. It’s something I’ve noticed with certain populations many times before, where a group is steadfast in one direction, and then, in the snap of a finger, they suddenly veer the other way without any reasonable explanation. Sort of reminds me of parts of George Orwell’s 1884, where today, black is the new white, and it will be 100% that way until we arbitrarily declare that it’s white being the new black, and it’s never been anything other than that, so help us God.
Maybe Briand will be the beneficiary of all of this supposed Gallant discontent out there, although I really don’t believe there’s that much of it, to be honest. It’s not like the PPC made any noticeable dent in Gallant’s margin of victory last time out, so I’m not thinking Briand’s going to do much better in that regard.
With two weeks to go before election day, Briand’s signs are everywhere, giving the visual impression he’s doing really well, when what it actually might mean is that he’s got a shit-ton of signs to play with. Or it means that he took every sign he’s got and hammered them all up on the first day of the campaign. And since nobody knows who the hell he is or what he stands for, nobody’s bothered to kick them over or otherwise vandalize them. Another thing I’ve noticed is that all his signs are on public land, in that I’ve not seen one on anyone’s lawn. Mind you, I haven’t been up and down the residential streets of this part of the Ottawa Valley to determine this, but still, if such a thing was happening, I think I would have seen evidence of it by now.
Over the past 25 years, Cheryl Gallant has no doubt assembled a war chest of signs, but you tend to see more the farther west you drive in the riding. Around here, the Renfrew-Arnprior area, I’ve only seen a couple of simple lawn signs of hers, not on lawns so much, but at some intersections, but certainly not all. But that means nothing.
Back in another lifetime, when I was working on a Mike Harris Conservative campaign in North Bay, there was an election where it was decided we’d hold back on sign placement, with one of the reasons being to protect, as much as possible, assets like signs that cost a whack of cash. So the plan was to not put them up at the start of the campaign, in fact nothing in the first two weeks at all. Then the 4 x 8 signs went up, but still no lawn signs.
In the meantime, the Liberal and NDP candidates were busily hammering home lawn signs on private lawns, giving the impression that we were in big trouble, if one were to go by the number of signs test. In fact, we’d be getting calls from Conservative supporters angry at what they felt was a dire situation, that we weren’t working hard enough on the campaign.
Meanwhile, the phones were also ringing in our campaign office with people asking for lawn signs. We’d take their contact information and put it in the database, which at that time was a ledger-type book, one of many, each specific to a family of polling stations.
Then we’d get the calls of an almost panic-stricken supporter base, asking when they were going to get their lawn sign. And we’d tell them to be patient, that our teams were working on it, and that they’d get their sign soon.
With one week to go, we struck. In one night, overnight, many hundreds of Mike Harris signs were planted across the city. And in the morning, it was a new city, with Tory purple/blue seemingly everywhere, a demonstration of overwhelming support. And as important, a demonstration of overwhelming momentum.
Maybe this is the Gallant ploy, maybe not. She doesn’t bother to attend all-candidates meetings, which is kind of smart, because we all know that everyone in the room already knows who they’re going to vote for anyways, so they’re just really cheerleading sessions. With that in mind, maybe she’s of the mind that she doesn’t need to do the lawn sign thing either. Because there’s one inescapable truth about lawn signs, that being that they’re fun as hell to put up, but less fun taking them down and collecting them the day after the election.
And back to the local scene, I’d have to say I see far more signs for the NDP candidate, Eileen Jones-Whyte than I do for both the Liberals and Conservatives combined, but that doesn’t mean I can rush to the conclusion that Eileen’s pulling away with the race, because she’s not. The NDP is in gawdawful trouble everywhere, so I don’t see them riding up a win in this riding if they’re trying to save the furniture in the ridings the do hold.
Likewise, even though the polls indicate a massive shift in support back to the Liberals, I don’t see Cindi Mills as our next MP either. Mrs. Gallant is too entrenched in the riding, especially with her support base that delivers time and time again until they die.
I’ve been wrong about about everything political for the past little while now, in fact I’ve got myself a bit of a prognosticator’s slump going on. But I honestly don’t see Mr. Briand supplanting Mrs. Gallant for the seat in the House of Commons, nor do I see anybody else doing so either.
To be honest, if a candidate were to defeat Mrs. Gallant, I’d prefer it not be one further to the right on the political spectrum. And I definitely wouldn’t want to see the riding go to an Alberta-based party, as much as this riding resembles rural Alberta in its thinking.
And one final thing is the fact that the UPC appears to have a grand total of 16 candidates across the entire nation, and we’re one of them, which does appear to say something about us here in good ol’ Algonquin-Renfrew-Pembroke, or at least some of us. Okay, fine, many of us.
If it is, in fact, a possibility that Briand may be successful, then I may find myself pulling the ripcord and exiting the plane, in that I may vote strategically for Mrs. Gallant as a means to keep the crazies from taking the seat, which is saying an awful lot about craziness, in that I thought we’d had plenty of that for the past 25 years as it was.
A strategic vote for Cheryl Gallant.
That would be a tough day to quit drinking.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 