How do I talk about Pierre Poilievre without sounding like, well, Pierre Poilievre?
I started this article on Friday and tossed it in my trash bin Saturday morning, mostly because of the tone I was taking, and because I had let him get under my skin again. So I walked away.
Maybe I should just have confidence in my fellow Canadians to discern for themselves what kind of person he is. And maybe they already have. Maybe that’s why he’s not prime minister.
But that said, he’s not gone. Not yet. Not by a long shot.
This is a country that was founded, in a fashion, by a Conservative prime minister at the head of a Conservative Party. And while that other party has had a better political win-loss record over the years since, the role of the Conservative Party in Canada was, for the most part, a noble one.
And then along this fellow came again, this time unchastened and unbowed, still full of all the anger and bitterness and divisiveness that he had before.
Angry. Bitter. Grudge-filled. Permanently elbows-up, to borrow the term. Hell, elbows and stick both up.
Poilievre, in my view, would drag this country into the gutter for no other reason than to sit in that coveted chair. While others build things, Poilievre seems intent on tearing them down. Hell, even the stuff that does work he says is broken. And everything difficult is pinned on the Liberals. Just name it, disease, pestilence, measles, forest fires, drop in the count of beluga whales? All the fault of the Liberals. I’m so happy the Blue Jays won game 7 the other night so I don’t have to wake up the next morning to hear that a loss would have been pinned on those hated Liberals.
This guy will never change.
The Russians, aside from being the biggest pains in the ass in all of human history, at least have a sense of humour and some cool folk tales, one of them having to do with a person that can’t or won’t change.
According to one such story, there’s this scorpion on the move and he comes to a river bank and realizes he can’t get across. A frog happens along.
“Let me ride across the river on your back,” says the scorpion to the frog. The frog is incredulous.
“Are you crazy! You’ll sting me!” says the frog.
The scorpion assures the frog that if he did that, they would both drown, and what would be the point of that?
The frog weighs the logic and relents. “Hop aboard,” he says.
Halfway across the river the scorpion stings the frog.
“What did you just do!” exclaimed the frog. “Now we’re both going to die! Why did you do that!”
“Because I’m a scorpion,” replied the scorpion. “It’s what I do.”
There is very little noble about the Conservative Party as it now stands. They have evolved into an amalgam of the loudest voices, the biggest bullies, and the most bile-filled bigots, all seemingly riding the same train as all the everyday, normal people who just want to get rid of the Liberals.
As to the bullies and bigots, I thought that was what the Peoples’ Party of Canada was for.
Under Poilievre, the angriest voices in the room are now the Conservative ones. And while that may appeal to the small percentage of extremist malcontents, I cannot accept that they represent the way many people, who I know to be Conservative supporters, want to be judged.
But Poilievre has to play to the gallery, and that gallery includes the hot-heads that hold sway in places like Alberta, and particularly in the towns and villages that make up his riding of Battle-River-Crowfoot, sometimes dubbed as the safest Conservative seat in the country. And in my mind, it doesn’t have that reputation because of anything good.
I used to live there, and I know those people. They are not the people, and not the ideas, that we want running the country.
In America, the Republican Party has been hijacked by the MAGA crowd leaving voters nowhere to really go if they’re dissatisfied with Democrat policies and personalities. So it is here with the Conservatives, where a small number of super-loud and angry voices coming from the west and rural Ontario have co-opted one of two of Canada’s principal political parties.
So why does a proud and traditional party allow this? Why do they sully themselves and their political integrity like this?
Because they think they’ll never win another election if they don’t bring the crybabies along with them. That if they don’t pander to the perpetually angry mob, that the angry mob would go elsewhere, and split the right-of-centre vote.
And there’s the rub right there.
Can’t win with them and can’t win without them.
With a political choice like this, a person may well have to decide which way they’d rather attempt to win an election. They can motor right along with the deplorables running the show, or they can pursue that same goal by advancing policy ideas and arguments.
They can can choose maturity over immaturity. Responsibility over irresponsibility.
For me, if I’m going to lose anyways, I think I’d rather go down with my integrity and self-respect intact.
But Poilievre would rather burn the place down and have us hating each other if that’s what it takes.
When he lost the election, I thought of that song from the Wizard of Oz, “Ding dong, the Witch is Dead.”
But that witch ain’t ever dead.
Poilievre faces a leadership review in January, something the party does after every election defeat. Conservative delegates, the responsible ones anyways, can find themselves with an opportunity to separate themselves from Poilievre, and in so doing, give this country a bit of a respite, or maybe even a toning down of the perpetual angry rhetoric.
The people in Carleton did it. So why can’t they?
Having the courage to ignore those angry voices, they can find somebody far more moderate and representative of the Canadian voting majority to be the face of the party and prepare them for the next election. And in so doing, maybe even draw real Conservatives like myself back into the party where we can actually win elections and do some good policy work.
The Conservatives may have to lose an election before they win their next government. But if they keep an un-changed Pierre Poilievre, or anyone like him, or even worse than him?
They may never win another election again.
This is Canada and we deserve better. We deserve to have a choice between at least two responsible political parties, and our democracy doesn’t work properly without that. The infiltration of one of those parties by right-wing activists has compromised that choice.
And we need to take that party back.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 