Monday, March 31, 2025

The Conservatives Fall From Grace?

Dissecting the Conservatives' fall from grace. 

Two months ago, the Conservatives seemed destined to romp to a majority government.  Now, the Liberals have taken the lead.  This article examines some of the possible reasons.

This article was posted on Facebook on March 31st, 2025, by Sean Prpick, a freelance journalist based in Regina.  It was written by Susan Delacourt and published in the Toronto Star.  I'm posting it here in its entirety for the record.  I've highlighted a few sections that I found especially interesting.




The Toronto Star’s Susan Delacourt today on why Pierre Poilievre’s chippy, attack dog personality is making it very difficult for him to shift gears in the federal election campaign.
****
Pierre Poilievre’s big problem as Conservatives slide in the polls? He can’t turn his enemies into friends
Pressure is building for the leader and his team to shift their entire approach to this campaign, writes Susan Delacourt.
March 31, 2025
Pierre Poilievre went into this election campaign with plenty of political skills, but lacking one he needs right now — the ability to turn enemies into friends.
That could be a tall order for this take-no-prisoners Conservative leader.
As each day brings a new report of unrest within the Conservative team, pressure is building for the leader and his team to shift their entire approach to this campaign. The consensus seems to be that they’re fighting like it’s 2024, but this is 2025, and the Donald Trump reality has to be tackled head on.
But it’s not just that. It is increasingly clear that Poilievre was prepared to fight a front-runner’s campaign, cruising to a majority and simply put, that’s not the bright future before Conservatives right now.
The latest projections by the Star’s Signal poll tracker put Mark Carney and the Liberals on course to win a decisive majority, around 190 seats — well above the 172 seats needed — while the Conservatives would win between 123 to 139 seats.
When you’re a front-runner, as Poilievre once was, you don’t have to worry so much about all the enemies you’ve accumulated along the way, whether that was Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives, the other opposition parties or even the traditional media.
Poilievre has done next to zero outreach with any of those interests in advance of the election campaign, presumably because he and his team didn’t think they would need them. They may be learning to regret that now.
The Star’s Queen’s Park bureau reported that Poilievre and Ford finally did have a conversation just before the campaign launched but it didn’t go all that well. And then came the startling shot this week from Ford’s top adviser, Kory Teneycke, saying the Poilievre campaign was off the rails and the leader himself “too Trumpy.”
This is not what Poilievre needed, to say the least, and it seems to have emboldened a subsequent series of Conservatives to start venting in the media about how the leader and his chief adviser, Jenni Byrne, are not up to the task at hand.
Not so long ago, you wouldn’t have found Conservatives brave enough to say that out loud to the media, even anonymously. But maintaining discipline through fear and intimidation is more difficult when the leader is running from behind.
Worse, that kind of leadership can also be seen as “too Trumpy,” to borrow Teneycke’s phrase. Are Canadians looking for a prime minister who, like Trump, is a party of one, demanding nothing but obsequious silence from his own troops?
James Kanagasooriam, a U.K. pollster who worked on the Conservatives’ last campaign in 2021, put up some social-media posts over the weekend highlighting the peril of Poilievre getting linked too closely to Trump. He appears to think this is a big problem for the Conservatives at the moment.
“The ballot question is about Trump. Not being like a Trump is as important as criticizing him,” he wrote.
He also noted that the Canadian electorate is extremely fluid, which means “not being hated is critical.”
Poilievre, unlike his old boss, Stephen Harper, has done little to build any bridges to the Bloc Québécois or New Democrats since he became leader, perhaps assuming that he would have a majority and not need their help in a minority Parliament.
As things now stand — and it is early — that majority seems elusive, if not impossible. My colleague Mark Ramzy reported on Saturday how Poilievre seemed to be offering an olive brach to the Bloc by vowing not to challenge Quebec’s language laws, but on that same day, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh ruled out propping up a Conservative government. Perhaps two years of trashing his fellow opposition parties as dupes of the Liberals have reached a reckoning point for Poilievre.
Similarly, Poilievre and his team could be finding that their hostility to traditional media could be coming back to bite them. Keeping all media off the campaign plane, for instance, may have seemed like a good idea when the Conservatives thought they would romp to power without the bothersome journalists asking questions all the time and simply channel all their communication through friendly, right-wing outlets.
But having reporters aboard a campaign plane presents opportunities for advisers to give background and context; to see the leader away from the podium and the talking points. Poilievre hasn’t been taunting his media questioners as much on the campaign trail as he did in press encounters before the election.
Perhaps that is, again, an effort to distance himself from the media-baiter Trump, or just a sign that all-enemies-all-the-time doesn’t work when you’re fighting for the centre.
Conservatives suited up for this election to play an aggressive game of offence.
The polls so far show that a more defensive game is required; one that requires making fewer enemies, or even turning those enemies into friends.


Friday, March 28, 2025

Election 2025 Prognostications

 

Canada's Federal Election will be held on April 28th, 2025.

Until a couple of weeks ago, it seemed the Conservatives would win a majority.  Actions by the American administration have turned that on its head.

My plan is to update this blog twice.  Once around mid-April and again after the election results are in.

Polls vary widely, but indications at this point (March 28th) seem to indicate the Liberals winning a majority.  This article seems to be the most optimistic.  I haven't tried to find countering views.  As a former PM once said, "Dogs know what to do with poles".... (or polls, whatever).  So for what it's worth, this is one prognostication as of 2 days ago.

Read Canadian Poll Shocker for the full article.  Here is the very brief summary.

According to EKOS:

📊 Liberals: 50% popular support
🧌 Conservatives: 35%
🟠 NDP: 7%
🟢 Greens & Bloc: somewhere between “meh” and “microscopic”

Seat-wise? It’s an absolute obliteration:

🟥 Liberals: 251 seats
🟦 Conservatives: 90 seats
🟠 NDP: 12 seats
🟩 Bloc: 24
🌱 Greens: 1
🪦 Poilievre: zero charisma, zero seat, zero plan

This appeared in Social Media around April 16th....

By Scott Harradine

“Poilievre is beloved by his people. He has somewhere near 40 per cent of the electorate locked down. It’s just that that the other 60 per cent are finally getting a good look at him and it turns out a lot of them don’t like what they see.”
++++++++++
If Pierre Poilievre was a hockey player instead of a politician, he’d be a pest — the kind of guy you hate to play against but love to have on your team. He’d be Sean Avery or Brad Marchand: making life miserable for the other team’s best player while driving opposing fans up the wall. He would, in other words, be exactly what he is on the campaign trail: loved and loathed, irritating and inspiring, as polarizing as cilantro or blue cheese.
With just over two weeks to go in the campaign, Poilievre’s Conservatives are trailing in every major opinion poll. At the same time, Poilievre himself continues to draw large crowds to rallies from coast to coast. I was at one, in Brampton, last week. I can confirm his celebrity isn’t fake. Poilievre is a real star to his base.
For weeks now, there have been whispers in Conservative circles that all that visible enthusiasm must mean the polls are wrong somehow, that they are fake or biased, that Poilievre must be winning after all. But spend even a couple of days following the Conservative leader around and it becomes obvious that something much less nefarious is going on.
For weeks now, there have been whispers in Conservative circles that all that visible enthusiasm must mean the polls are wrong somehow, that they are fake or biased, that Poilievre must be winning after all. But spend even a couple of days following the Conservative leader around and it becomes obvious that something much less nefarious is going on.
The evidence is in the polling, and not just the national horse race numbers. Survey after survey has found that more voters dislike Poilievre than like him. The Conservative leader's net-negative favourability rating is minus 6 according to a recent poll by Abacus Data, and minus 26 according to Angus Reid.
Poilievre’s problem is that the very things his base loves about him seem to be the same ones turning the rest of the country off. Supporters adore the fact that he’s an unrepentant attack dog. They love that he’s spent years opening the Conservative tent up to the further fringes of the right. They cheer his sloganeering and his sneering and his general treatment of the news media as an infectious plague.

He isn’t Donald Trump. If anything, in attitude, philosophy and demeanour, he’s closer to Ted Cruz. But he has been happily surfing on the same waves that brought Trump to power a second time: rage over COVID lockdowns; rejection of “woke” ideology; a generalized hatred and disgust for the status quo. His base loves it. But a lot of other Canadians are looking at it, looking at him and looking south and thinking: "do we want to bring all that here?”
Against a deeply unpopular Justin Trudeau, having the Conservative base locked down would probably have been enough. Stephen Harper won a majority government in 2011 with less than 40 per cent of the national vote. But against Mark Carney, it’s been clear for months that he was going to need more.
The strange thing is, on the campaign trail, Poilievre genuinely doesn’t seem interested in attracting new voters. He is quite literally preaching to the converted, night after night. The crowd in Brampton Wednesday night wasn’t huge; organizers walled off the back of the venue at one point and there was still plenty of room to walk around. But it was big, and it tilted visibly toward the diehard fans.
In the parking lot before the event, a woman walked by a large pickup truck with three identical stickers on the back window. “Yeah, F**k Trudeau!,” she said, reading one. Inside, another woman was handing out copies of a newspaper dedicated to spreading COVID vaccine conspiracies. For a while, I stood in the pen near the door where Poilievre was set to appear. One man in front of me had scribbled “you can’t cancel all of us!” twice in blue ink on his white Poilievre hat. Across the aisle, a man wearing a Canadian flag cape was showing off a picture on his phone of a black F**K CARNEY flag. All around him, people were taking pictures of his phone with their own phones and cheering him on.
When Poilievre did appear, it wasn’t pandemonium, but there was a real surge. The Conservative leader grinned and shook hands. (That smile, always slightly forced, has been his one concession to change on this campaign. You can almost see the thought bubble above his head at every rally: “See! I’m not so mad.”) At one point, he stopped, turned around and posed for a picture with a woman wearing a sweater that read, in massive letters, “Do you believe the polls?”
I don’t know what Poilievre’s team thinks about the public polling. I have no idea what their own numbers are telling them. All I can say is that, from the outside, it looks like they don’t particularly care.
It might be that Poilievre would rather lose than change — that he sees himself more as Barry Goldwater than Ronald Reagan, the pure, doomed warrior who will pave the way for another’s victory down the road. It could also be that his team believes they still have time knock Carney down with a few more weeks of attacks and the Liberal party's own gaffes.
I don’t think that instinct is wrong, exactly. There are some signs the wheels are coming off the Liberal campaign. (Witness the party's clueless and arrogant "Stop the Steal" button prank in Ottawa.) But I also think there’s something stranger and more personal at play here.
Put simply, I’m not sure Poilievre has anything to pivot to. He can seem so artificial when he talks — with his quacking voice and his endless slogans. But I don’t think he is artificial. I just don’t think there’s anything else there. The affected persona Canadians have seen on the campaign trail isn’t just who he is, it’s all he is. He doesn’t have another side to show.
So, if Poilievre can't close the deal now, against a rank rookie politician in Mark Carney, it won't be because of Trump — not entirely, or even especially. It will be because too many Canadians looked at him — the real him, the one he's been showing off in all his rallies — and decided “That guy’s not for me.”
He destroyed Justin Trudeau. He eviscerated Jagmeet Singh. He should have walked to victory. Instead, he seems to be grinning his way, every day, closer and closer to defeat.

April 22nd, 2025 - Earth Day, and the CBC's Poll Tracker is saying this:




These are screenshots taken in the morning of April 22nd, 2025. Unfortunately, they are updated every day so a link to a website isn't what I'm looking for.

Only 7 days to go.













Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Bogus Part I

 

(From elsewhere on the Internet)

Trump's Lies About Canada Vs. Reality
Subsidies/Trade Deficit

Trump Lie: Trump said March 13: "In the case of Canada, we're spending $200 billion a year to subsidize Canada."
Reality: Trump has repeatedly exaggerated the U.S.-Canada trade deficit which is closer to $35.7 billion, according to the latest trade data released from the U.S. Census Bureau on March 6. The overwhelming driver of the deficit with Canada is that the U.S. buys a lot of unrefined oil from Canada. If you take out energy (that the USA desperately needs AND gets from us at a discount!), Canada is running a small deficit with the United States.
Dairy

Trump Lie: Trump said on March 7: "In Canada, we find that they're charging us over 200% for dairy products"
Reality: The over 200% tariffs on U.S. dairy products are only triggered if U.S. dairy exports exceed certain yearly duty-free limits, and U.S. dairy manufacturers say they have never been close to exceeding these limits. These tariffs were negotiated during the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which Mr. Trump signed during his first term.
Fentanyl

Trump Lie: March 4: "They have allowed fentanyl to come into our country at levels never seen before, killing hundreds of thousands of our citizens."
Reality: Trump cited Canada's failure to halt the flow of illicit drugs as a reason for imposing tariffs, saying that fentanyl has been coming from the country "at levels never seen before." He claimed, "The fentanyl coming through Canada is massive." In 2024, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol seized 43 pounds of fentanyl at the U.S.-Canada border, accounting for roughly 0.2% of all fentanyl seized by CBP that year. By contrast, approximately 21,100 pounds — about 96.6% of the total — was seized at U.S.-Mexico border.


Monday, March 24, 2025

Oh Alberta (reprise)

 

File this under the category of "What Was She Thinking"?

A Canadian Premier urging a foreign leader to adjust his policies just to avoid pissing off Canadians in the runup to an election?  

Dan Yell's supporters and advisors might try to spin this differently, but read what she apparently said.  


Yeah, it's Offensive, all right.

Alberta Premier's office denies Smith urged US to interfere in Federal election.

Anything that can legitimately show this in a better light?  This is what I read:

During a March 8 interview with Breitbart, a right-wing U.S. media company, Smith said the Conservative Party of Canada was far ahead of the governing Liberal Party in polls before the trade war. But the threat of "unjust and unfair tariffs" had boosted Liberal support.

Smith told U.S. administration officials that she hoped "we could put things on pause," so Canada could get through an election, she told Breitbart. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is more aligned with the Trump administration's agenda, Smith said.

"The longer this dispute goes on, politicians posture, and it seems to be benefiting the Liberals right now," Smith told Breitbart.

"Let's just put things on pause so we can get through an election," she said. "Let's have the best person at the table make the argument for how they would deal with it — and I think that's [Conservative Leader] Pierre Poilievre."

Explain how we should see this as anything other than an invitation to interfere in the election of a sovereign nation.


Friday, March 21, 2025

Whither Democracy

 

Events over the past few weeks in American politics has caused many people and some organizations to question what will become of Democracy in the USA.

US Could lose Democracy status, says global watchdog



Saturday, March 15, 2025

MAGA Man (A Neil Young Parody - Canada Ain't Your 51st State)

Making the rounds on social media, this takeoff from Neil Young.

Thursday, March 06, 2025

The Logic of Science - Masks and Vaccines

 

Masks and COVID vaccines were were huge successes; Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were not

This post from The Logic of Science

A good analysis of the way the world was, starting at the beginning of 2020.  Interestingly, and disturbingly, disinformation persists today, 5 years on.

Wednesday, March 05, 2025

As If We Didn't Know Already

 

Several million voters elected an eejit to the White House.

But we knew that already....




How Can You Tell When Trump is Lying?

 Apparently whenever he opens his mouth.  This analysis from subversives within the Federal bureaucracy.

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That speech didn’t age well. Here are some notes on the false and misleading claims.
“We won the popular vote by big numbers and won counties in our country 2,700 to 525.”
This is misleading. Trump won the popular vote in 2024 but only by a small margin (1.5%), one of the smallest in modern history.
“Illegal border crossings last month were by far the lowest ever recorded.”
False. February had about 8,300 border encounters, far from historic lows. In the early 1900s and 1960s, annual crossings were much lower.
“Hundreds of thousands of illegal crossings a month, and virtually all of them including murderers, drug dealers, gang members and people from mental institutions and insane asylums were released into our country.”
False. While crossings were high under Biden, there’s no evidence that most migrants were criminals or from institutions.
“I withdrew from the unfair Paris Climate accord, which was costing us trillions of dollars.”
False. The Paris Accord is nonbinding, and the U.S. set its own commitments. Trump’s cost estimates come from industry-backed studies that ignore benefits.
“We ended the last administration’s insane electric vehicle mandate, saving our autoworkers and companies from economic destruction.”
False. Biden promoted EV incentives, not a mandate. Automakers had already committed to EVs due to global trends.
“I have directed that for every one new regulation, 10 old regulations must be eliminated.”
False. No reliable metric shows Trump cut more regulations than past presidents. Studies found his claims exaggerated.
“We’ve ended weaponized government where, as an example, a sitting president is allowed to viciously prosecute his political opponent like me.”
False. No evidence Biden directed prosecutors against Trump.
“We inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare.”
False. Trump inherited low unemployment, falling inflation, and strong growth.
“We suffered the worst inflation in 48 years. But perhaps even in the history of our country, they’re not sure.”
False. Inflation peaked at 9% in 2022, lower than the 1970s and post-WWII spikes.
“Joe Biden especially let the price of eggs get out of control.”
Misleading. Egg prices spiked due to bird flu, not Biden’s policies.
“The appalling waste we have already identified … We found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud.”
Unproven. Claims rely on questionable math, miscategorized spending, and false fraud allegations.
“…$45 million for diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships in Burma …”
False. The funding was for scholarships in Myanmar, not DEI programs.
“…$10 million for male circumcision in Mozambique …”
False. It was a public health initiative to reduce HIV/AIDS.
“…$20 million for the Arab Sesame Street in the Middle East. It’s a program. $20 million for a program …”
False. The main funding came from private foundations, not U.S. government grants.
“…$59 million for illegal alien hotel rooms in New York City …”
Misleading. NYC received a grant for migrant housing at standard, not luxury, rates.
“We have hundreds of thousands of federal workers who have not been showing up to work.”
False. Many federal employees telework, but Trump’s numbers are exaggerated.
“It was one of the main reasons why our tax cuts were so successful in our first term, giving us the most successful economy in the history of our country.”
False. The economy was strong, but not the best in history—other periods had higher growth and lower debt.
“Over the last three months about Mexico and Canada, but we have very large deficits with both of them. But even more important, they’ve allowed fentanyl to come into our country at levels never seen before.”
False. Mexico is the main source of fentanyl, not Canada.
“We pay subsidies to Canada and to Mexico of hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Misleading. Trade deficits aren’t subsidies, and Trump’s numbers are exaggerated.
“We have had $1.7 trillion of new investment in America in just the past few weeks.”
Dubious. Claims rely on recycled announcements, vague commitments, and unrelated Biden-era policies.
“Not long ago. And you can’t even believe these numbers. 1 in 10,000 children had autism. 1 in 10,000. and now it’s 1 in 36. There’s something wrong.”
Misleading. The rise is partly due to better diagnosis and broader definitions.
“But it was built at tremendous cost of American blood and treasure. 38,000 workers died building the Panama Canal.”
False. The actual number was under 6,000, mostly non-Americans.
“Europe has sadly spent more money buying Russian Oil and Gas than they have spent on defending Ukraine — by far!”
False. Military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine exceeded energy spending.
“We’ve spent perhaps $350 billion [on Ukraine], like taking candy from a baby. That’s what happened. And they’ve [the E.U.] spent $100 billion.”
False. U.S. aid was $183 billion, while the EU’s total support exceeded that.
“Biden has authorized more money in this fight than Europe has spent by billion and billions of dollars.”
Misleading. The EU has committed and spent more than the U.S., but disbursement rates differ