It was December, 2023, and Pierre Poilievre had started a speech to Bay Street executives by spelling out his aversion to them.
The audience took in the scolding with stony faces. You could have forgiven some of them, however, for having a good-humoured chuckle into their buffet plates of cod or chicken.
Shrewder listeners probably understood why Poilievre was casting them as aloof and indifferent aristocrats, while presenting himself as an intimate ally of the country’s aggrieved majority. A year and a half ago, it was still the season for targeting and tarring Canada’s elite, and this was kabuki theatre, using exaggerated, stylized gestures of combat to conjure a sense of conflict and confrontation—even though none existed.
After all, Poilievre was fresh from a flurry of private events at which precisely this crowd had donated thousands of dollars to rub shoulders with him. Just the night before, he had mingled with bankers, real estate investors, and corporate executives at a $16-million French-style manor that boasted an elevator, indoor basketball court, and a dressing room bigger than most downtown apartments.
If Mark Carney wins, he will govern in Poilievre’s shadow
Only if we Canadians let him. If Carney, who professed environmentally conscious thinking in his book Values, is willing to borrow Poilievre’s ideas for a campaign, I imagine he is also willing to listen to ideas from the people just the same in government.-
Now’s (or Monday if we hear the result is a Liberal majority) is not the time to despair. It’s the time to put our own progressive slate of ideas together and tell our MPs what we want and how we as Canadians can accomplish it. Rhetoric is rhetoric, I think it’s high time for action, no matter what the ultimate make up of the House is next week.
Politics now exists to feed a base of social influencers with bullshit to magnify over the social media megaphone. The amount of disinformation that is regurgitated daily is unmanageable. So what do logical thinkers do… Disconnect. It’s not worth correcting everyone we come in contact with. But alas we’re also losing the war because there more it is regurgitated the more it is taken as fact.
The other thing is there is a circlejerk of funding keeping the machine running and the hateful right wingers spend money to feel the machine. Left/centererists tend to be suspicious and want detailed analytics and analysis before trusting.
Plus… A good conspiracy can be fun and empowering, like good gossip it feels good to be on the inside. Deep analysis is boring and rarely rewarding.
We’re fucked.
Because getting the government to build homes isn’t socialism. Because getting the government to build pipelines isn’t socialism. The only thing moving right is hopefully more oil to the east coast.
Because getting the government to build homes isn’t socialism.
I mean, it CAN be, and ideally, it WILL be. But not in Ontario while Ford is Premier.
We really should be working towards depending on oil less, seeing as it is a finite resource and damages any part of the planet it touches.
As somebody who lives in Alberta, fuck the oil industry, the sooner it is dead and gone from this province the better. I hope Carney tariffs the shit out of our oil sands going to the states.
Definitionally public ownership of these things is a socialist policy. In contrast the capitalist version of it is private ownership of all homes and pipelines, mediated by the free market.
