Beware The Pierre

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After years of suffering through endless “Axe the Tax” ads from Mr. Poilievre and the Conservative Reform Alliance Party, I couldn’t resist one little partisan poke from my side of the table. Consider it a safety warning to all who want to keep Canada Strong and Free, “Beware The Pierre” is our rallying cry!

WARNING: this is a long report. But if we are going to vote wisely on April 28, we should know who we are getting into bed with for the next four years.

One week from now, Canadians will have either elected a government that will be led by a Prime Minister of a free and sovereign nation, or a government that will be led by the man who would be Governor of the 51st State. It’s that serious.

We need to Beware The Pierre simply because he is such a successful politician. Mr. Poilievre lives and breathes the Reform Alliance ideology hidden under the banner of the latest reincarnation of the Conservative Party of Canada. This ideology is hardwired into his reptilian brain stem, beats in his heart, and sings in his soul. He believes.

Mr. Poilievre describes himself as a “True Conservative” but political journalists describe him as a “libertarian, populist, social Conservative.” For Canadians who may have forgotten, we used to have Progressive Conservatives. Then came the alienated gang from the west pushing their Reform Alliance agenda to Unite the Right. David Orchard of the federal PC swore never to give the Conservative name to that ideology, but was betrayed by an ambitious Peter MacKay. Thus was born the new Conservative Party of Canada.

Let’s go back to that alienated gang from the west, because that is the root of Mr. Poilievre’s idolatry of ideology. Since the age of 14, Pierre Poilievre has been a political animal, attending Conservative, Reform and Alliance Party meetings. He was selling memberships for the Reform Party at 16, and at 17 was a delegate to the Reform Party National Convention. At 19, he was leading protests against a student organization that had tried to prevent a Reform Party rally on campus.

This is no casual hobby. This is a full time job. When people say Mr. Poilievre has no work life experience, they are wrong. He was working full time and perfecting his skills as a political agitator for the Reform Party of Canada. As a Reform Party member on campus at the University of Calgary, he was in direct conflict with the Progressive Conservative student organization, calling them “unprincipled.”

As President of Calgary’s “Young Club” of Reformers, he clashed with none other than a young Patrick Brown, President of the Progressive Conservative Youth Federation. By 2002, Pierre aka Jeff aka Skippy and his colleagues were calling themselves “The Fight Club” and were now canvassing for Stockwell Day and the new Canadian Alliance. This is where his true  political skill begins to emerge.

Mr. Poilievre becomes an adviser to Stockwell Day while he works online to complete his BA. in 2002, he begins to work as Ezra Levant ‘s campaign spokesperson (yes, that Ezra Levant, the far right journalist now broadcasting Rebel News) in a bid to merge the Alliance and Progressive Conservative Parties. He then becomes Levant’s campaign spokesperson in a bid to replace Preston Manning, However, Mr. Manning withdraws from the race to allow Stephen Harper to step in and become leader of the new Conservative Party of Canada.

Every step of the way, Mr. Poilievre was able to move along the leadership chain, very cleverly shifting allegiance from one rising political star to the next, continually honing his political skills. Finally, in 2004, he became an MP and, along with Andrew Scheer, the distinction of being the youngest members of the Conservative caucus. After the 2006 election, Harper appointed Mr. Poilievre to become Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury Board. In this game of Snakes and Ladders, Skippy just kept climbing.

From there, through leaders Harper, Ambrose, Scheer, and O’Toole, Pierre Poilievre continued to survive and prosper. When O’Toole was ousted in 2021 (did he fall or was he pushed?) Mr. Poilievre campaigned for leadership of the Party promising that he would make Canada “the freest country in the world.”

Jean Charest and Patrick Brown were also running in that leadership race. Charest was attacked for being too “Liberal”, and a whistleblower claimed that Mr. Brown had violated campaign finance  laws. That accusation led to his disqualification. Former PM Harper stepped in to endorse Mr. Poilievre, and he became the next leader of the Conservative Reform Alliance Party of Canada on the first ballot. Little PP had finally made it to the top of his political pile.

To get to the next prize he would need to incite the madding crowd in the only way a populist politician knows: attack and dumb down. Columnist Karl Nerenberg noted in September of 2023, “Poilievre has decided to push emotional buttons rather than focus on anything so complex as the details of policy.” Mr. Poilievre began a litany of campaign slogans bearing an eerie resemblance to the Trumpian rhetoric south of our border. His “Canada is Broken” and “Canada First” mirrored Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” and “America First” rhetoric.

The danger with “create a crisis” and nationalistic slogans like these is that they conveniently take up the airspace that should be devoted to positive action plans. “Nationalism is a great deflection from having actual policy discussions,” says economist Erica Ifill. She sees nationalism as a gateway to fascism and white supremacy. This is classic far right Republican electioneering.

At the same time, Poilievre continued with his relentless assault on anything Liberal and blamed all of the nation’s perceived woes on PM Justin Trudeau. “Axe the Tax”, “Build the Homes”, “Fix the Budget”, “Stop the Crime” were the solution to decades of Liberal mismanagement, according to Mr. Poilievre, who has yet to release his Party’s platform.. That is why we need to Beware The Pierre, the man who wants to stop the crime but keep the handguns.

More troubling than this was his close parroting of some of President Trump’s more controversial positions, Mr. Poilievre issued a rejection of “wokeness” and stated,, among other things, “We will restore the promise of Canada and our founding leader {John A. Macdonald}.”  He commented that he sees DEI programs as “garbage.” He feels that “Canada is broken.” Back In February of 2022, Prime Minister Trudeau warned that “Mr. Poilievre wants to “Make Canada Great Again”

The final straw, and unintended proof that Mr. Poilievre had fallen prey to Trumpian rhetoric, was when he began to brag about the sizes of his rally crowds in Edmonton, posting on social media that over 15,000 people attended the vent. He later told reporters “When was the last time we had a rally that big in Canada? I think to have 10,000 or 15,000 people at one political rally. this is a movement like we’ve never seen.” Candidate Trump also inflated his crowd sizes, Boys will be boys.

Mr. Poilievre later challenged that Mark Carney’s large crowds had been inflated by AI. That was rich, considering a Conservative commercial once aired featuring Poilievre with current campaign manager Jenni Byrne holding Stockwell Day’s grandchild and posing as an average Alberta family. CBC fact-checked Mr. Poilievre’s claim and found no AI manipulation. Mr. Poilievre wasn’t lying, he was simply suffering from rally crowd size envy.

Finally, on January 30, 2025 , columnist Dan Newman wrote about “Poilievre’s Trumpian Aversion to Intelligence” regarding his refusal to go through a Top Secret Security Clearance.  No one who is afraid of being checked out for a Top Secret Security Clearance should be anywhere close to the leadership of this country in this day and age. Full Stop.

I don’t think we’ll get any of this blarney from Carney. The way I see it

Skid Crease, CAJ

Canada’s Promise?

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The Conservative Reform Alliance Party candidate in my riding, incumbent Kyle Seeback, has recently been touting a Party line about “Bringing Home Canada’s Promise” This Common Scents Party claims, and I quote from their online site, that Canada’s Promise is: “All who work hard get a great life in a beautiful home on a safe street protected by strong borders and military under our proud flag.“ Whoa! Did we just suddenly teleport to the land of make believe south of our previously unprotected border?

Fellow Canadians, old and new, you may want to read that “Promise” again. First, I can assure you it was never made to our First Nations. Secondly, I don’t ever recall that promise being recited in school, or taught in any citizenship class, or sung by Anne Murray or Celine Dion or Bruce Cockburn (still living), or Gord Downie or Leonard Cohen or Gordon Lightfoot (forever would not have been enough) in the verses of any song, I know a lot of people who worked hard their entire lives and ended up with a whole lot less that a “great life in a beautiful home, etc.” and still loved Canada. If Canada ever made a promise to any of us, it was this: “I will bring you long winters cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.”

The promise that all who come to Canada to live and study and work and perhaps raise a family in a welcoming community was a hope really. A hope that we could live in a country where, if we worked hard and contributed our skills, we would be respected and cared for, be protected by the laws of the land applied fairly to everyone, and that our government would endeavour to act in our best interests in times of peace and war. If we studied hard, worked hard, and cared for our communities, we would find adequate shelter, sustenance, safety. And maybe, just maybe, time to express our creativity, and find love and friendship In our communities.

Dear Mr. Kyle Seeback, you claim that Canada is broken and needs to be fixed, You claim that you can bring home Canada’s Promise. I think that you need to stop parroting Mr. Poilievre, and that Mr. Poilievre needs to put his glasses back on for a reality check.

You see gentlemen, despite the hype of your “create a crisis” press releases, Canada is not broken. The promise of Canada is alive and well and living in Dufferin-Caledon, standing right beside you in the person of Malalai Halimi, the Liberal Party of Canada candidate running to be our next MP. That’s a promise.

The way I see it.

WTF Moments in Life

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Prior to the April 21/25 release of my editorial on Pierre Poilievre, I felt compelled to insert a recent experience with a Caledon resident. I had been at a local clinic getting therapy for my knee (the joys of walking a border collie on icy sidewalks) when another client came to the front desk, She had apparently just finished a massage therapy session and was waxing eloquent about the health benefits of massage.

Standing beside her at the counter, I made a friendly observation that, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a government would include a once a month massage as a basic health benefit?”

To which she commented, “Yes, as long as it’s not a Liberal government!”

WTF!

To which I replied, “That’s not an answer. That’s an invitation to debate. I’ve done a fair bit of research on Pierre Poilievre, and do you think that the Party that has promised to kill Pharmacare, Dental Care, and School Lunch Programs is going to give us the benefit of a monthly massage therapy treatment?”

She grew agitated, took her receipt off the counter and left, muttering under her breath that “Carney is shady.”  What that comment had to do with our exchange about the benefits of massage therapy being included in basic health care,  I have no idea. But the facts remain the same. The government most likely to care for Canadian’s health benefits would be either New Democratic, Green, or Liberal. It sure wouldn’t be Conservative no matter how long you’ve voted for them in the past. Thems’s the facts.

The way I see it.

The Woman Who Would Not Give Up

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I had fully intended that my first feature article of 2025 would be a continuing dissection of the Conservative Reform Alliance Party. It will have to wait until Easter Monday. I had an unexpected encounter with a political candidate and her community of supporters that completely changed my priorities list.

They had organized a volunteer celebration in Bolton at the Allan Drive Middle School park. I walk our dog around the perimeter twice a day (on leash and stoop and scoop), so I thought I’d check it out. When our district was Wellington-Grey-Dufferin-Simcoe, Liberal Murray Calder was MP from 1993 to 2004.  Then the boundaries were changed to create Dufferin Caledon and since then it has been considered one of the top ten safest CRAP seats in the country. Why would a neophyte candidate with an Afghan name even consider a run for the Liberal Party of Canada in such a difficult riding?

And then I met Malalai Halimi. And I understood why. This is her story.

In 2006, a young Malalai and her husband made the difficult decision to emigrate from Afghanistan. They arrived in Canada in November and were welcomed by winter, Over the next several years she coped with all the pressures of learning English through ESL classes, graduated from high school, found employment as an Office Administrator at an Aerospace company, and raised a growing family.

After her third child was born, Malalai found that her marriage had grown increasingly difficult to manage and was heading for divorce. She packed her three children into an old Honda Civic, loaded up some basic provisions and left her home in Vaughan. She had $95.00 in her pocket and no family support network. For months, they slept in the car, parking in empty lots for the night, moving around constantly. They used local Community Centres for showers, libraries for reading, and food banks for sustenance.

When their family home in Vaughan became vacant, Malalai and the children were finally able to return. Slowly her life began to come back into balance. She continued to work hard to protect her family. Her life became an endless cycle: get up at 5:00 am, drive the kids to daycare and school, drive to work, pick the kids up from daycare and school, and study. Repeat, every day. This takes a special kind of courage. Her only goals were to study and to care for her family.

She never stopped fighting to achieve those goals,

At Aerospace she continued to evolve, moving from Office Administrator to Production Coordinator, Production Manager, and now Business Manager. Her work ethic and abilities paid off, and her financial discipline finally enabled her to find a home in Orangeville She moved her family there in June 2022. She continues to work for the Aerospace company, and in 2024 started her own media network that now has 50,000,000 viewers  globally across all media platforms.

Now the unstoppable Malalai Halimi is running to become the Member of Parliament for Dufferin-Caledon. When we finished our interview, I asked Malalai one last question: “After everything you have been through, finally just having settled peacefully in beautiful Orangeville, what made you decide to run against an incumbent Conservative in this very conservative riding?”

She answered instantly and passionately. “Because a Conservative government would cancel all the programs that saved my life and the lives of my children. They would cancel School Food Programs, Pharmacare, and Dental Care. The Conservatives voted against the Bill that will provide food programs to every school by 2025. I want to make sure that no vulnerable families will be hurt. We need action from our side of the table. At present, there is no strong voice in Dufferin-Caledon.”

I came home after that interview and put up my Malalai Halimi lawn signs. If we have to go into battle with the MAGA’s to the South, I don’t want a maple syrup MAGA in charge of the country. And right here in Dufferin-Caledon, we will have a very real choice between a woman who knows how to fight with all her heart for the protection of our community and our children, or the same old lawyer politician.

The woman who would not give up looks like a very good choice. The way I see it.

(Note: Malalai is pronounced mah lah ligh) Her mother told her she was named after Malalai of Mariwand, one of the greatest folk heroes in Afghan history. She fought alongside Ayub Khan and rallied the Pashtun fighters to victory in The Battle of Mariwand July 27, 1880.)

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome Back

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Dear Readers,

After taking a break for two years to focus on health and family, I have decided to come out of hibernation. From the annexation of Crimea to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, from the attacks of Hamas to the extermination of Palestine by Israel, from the humanitarian crises from Sudan to Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, Congo, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ethiopia, South Sudan,  and Chad, we are witnessing koyaanisqatsi – a Hopi term signifying life out of balance.

Now we have the chaos south of our previously comfortable borders seeping into our mythologically polite Canadian lives. Truskland, as I have renamed the political real estate to our south (Google has not agreed, yet) is now a perfect example of what happens when you let the idiotes (check the original Greek) take over mission control. This new gargantuan political pandemic may turn out to be more dangerous than our recent battle with a tiny virus.

Canada faces a critical decision in the coming weeks. We can either elect the person who would be the next Prime Minister of Canada, or we can elect the person who would be the Governor of the 51st State.

My first official return blog will be published on April 13, two weeks before the election. It is titled: Beware the Pierre, the Man Who Would be Governor. And I quote: “Trump’s invitation to become the 51st State is like a blow to the head from a metal pipe is an invitation to nap.”  Thank you, CBC Debaters.

Elbows up. Canada Strong. The way I see it.