Tag Archives: Just Sayin Caledon

The Rise and Fall of a Political Animal

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The results of our federal election seem to be all accounted for at this point in time, and we can enjoy those May flowers knowing that a secure centre-left majority will work their best to provide the economic, environmental, health and housing security that all Canadians hope to achieve.

It is also calming to know that Pierre Poilievre will be out of Parliament for the rest of the year. Yes, he suffered a humiliating defeat in his long held riding in Ottawa, losing his seat and his Opposition leader status, and maybe even his residence in Stornoway. And yes, there will possibly be a leadership review that could send him into the barren lands. BUT, Pierre Poilievre is a consummate political animal. Now he is a desperate political animal backed into a corner. He will fight ruthlessly to win back a seat in Parliament and resume his former role as Leader of the Opposition by any means possible. Why? Because he doesn’t have any other skills – politics is the only thing he has ever done and ever wanted to do. The only other thing he has ever wanted to do was to drive a stake through the heart of the Liberal Party of Canada.

If his Party doesn’t reject him in a leadership review, they will seek a sacrificial lamb of a newly elected or re-elected MP to give up their seat for him. It can’t be anywhere near Ottawa, because the good citizens of Ottawa have kicked Pierre to the curb and don’t want him back. That’s what you get for waving support to a  convoy of anti-everything insurrectionists who blockaded and terrorized your hometown for weeks while you just smiled down on the chaos. That was really, really stupid.

How could anyone who wanted to be the leader of our country align themselves with a group of burly, bearded, bully truckers and bikers who desperately wanted to have sex with our Prime Minister? But I digress … back to slithering into the House.

Having been born and raised in Calgary, Pierre would be very safe moving to rural Alberta and trying for a seat there. He would be quite comfortable in the nest of discontent woven by past Reform,  Alliance, and Conservative mentors. He could easily settle under the warm wings of Danielle Smith, Premier of Alberta’s far right United Conservative Party. There was a joke circulating when Trumpism began to rear its ugly head to our south: “What do you get when you cross a far right Floridian with a far right Texan? A UCP Albertan.” Pierre would fit right in with that crowd.

In the meantime, if needed ,the Conservative Reform Alliance Party will sit a place holder in the House of Commons and may even figure a way to let Poilievre and family stay in Stornoway until  the party’s leadership is decided. Heaven forbid that poor homeless Pierre would have to go house hunting for an affordable abode like so many hard working tax-paying Canadians do every year. And imagine, having to do new job skills training at the same time. Oh, the horror, the horror!

Until then the unemployed Pierre will be putting on his election defeat speech demeanor as he continues to seduce the media circuit with his newfound co-operative spirit to work positively for all Canadians. He cannot afford to let Canadians see his true colours – that provocative, petulant partisan personality that is hardwired into his reptilian brain stem.  He also cannot afford to lose the many angst filled Generation Z young adults who drank his kool aid during the election campaign. What happens if they discover that he lied to them (Canada is 1st in the G7 in per capita GDP share), and what if their needs get met, as promised, by the new minority/majority government in his absence?

Until then, if and when her returns, there will be entente in the family. Just remember that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

The way I see it.

UPDATE: As we predicted, the Conservatives found a sacrificial lamb –  on May 2,2025 Damien Kurek stepped aside from his seat in Battle River-Crowfoot, Alberta to allow Poilievre to run in a safe seat. Prime Minister Carney then threw Poilievre a lifeline by promising that he would call a by-election “as soon as possible … no games.” That means that Pierre Poilievre could be back in Parliament this as early as this September. Let’s hope he’s ready to work for Canada this time.

WTF! They Resurrected Stephen Harper?

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The Conservative campaign must be in trouble. The Party has decided to resurrect their old, retired leader Stephen Harper to become the new voice and face of their media campaign. Poor Pierre Poilievre was even absent from the last few commercials, on the bench for a bit while Harper and two colonial golfers filled in for him.

The question is “Why would you bring back the most reviled leader in current Canadian history to lead you to victory in this 2025 election?”

Here are quotes from John Ibbitson who was Harper’s sympathetic biographer:

“There has never been a Prime Minister as utterly contemptuous of people outside his voting coalition as Stephen Harper.”

“Harper had so wanted to destroy the Liberal Party, to reshape Canadian politics along American or British or Australian lines, with a dominant party of the centre right.”

“Harper paid a political price for the robocalls affair, as he deserved to. His own secretive, suspicious nature and his relentless determination to do everything within the legal limit to discredit and defeat his opponents created the win-at-all-costs culture.”

 

 

“No prime minister in history and no political party have been loathed as intensely as Stephen Harper and the Conservative party.”

And the legacy continues … like father, like son

The way I see it.

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 an attempt 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 event. 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.