For my Canadian friends
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Shiftless2
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In a nutshell ....
Shiftless2
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Sean Prpick
dSenprootsutay 08Yfrt5M fc80dafc141:f4Ae8ite3ihf6g0la35 cgst ·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.
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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.
Citizen Voice's webmaster has informed me some % of the "Views:" indicated here:
are non-posting members, known to admins as "lurkers" (welcome, though your contributions are welcome too),
and the rest are hits from bots.
We can dismiss the bots as sub-cognitive.
But the rest are likely to be inquisitive.
In the onset of my dotage I (a lifelong U.S. citizen) find it difficult to keep up with U.S. politics. My partial excuse, we're early in a new administration, a new secretary of State, etc.
My suspicion on the presentation of Canadian politics here @CV.us
it may entrain more involvement (even if not posting "participation") to focus on a contrast of issues rather than parties or persons.
The shuffle in Canadian politics seems to compound the embarrassment of U.S. politics. Bad enough we've driven our own buggy into the ditch.
Running that of our faithful friend & neighbor Canada over the precipice is no solace.
are non-posting members, known to admins as "lurkers" (welcome, though your contributions are welcome too),
and the rest are hits from bots.
We can dismiss the bots as sub-cognitive.
But the rest are likely to be inquisitive.
In the onset of my dotage I (a lifelong U.S. citizen) find it difficult to keep up with U.S. politics. My partial excuse, we're early in a new administration, a new secretary of State, etc.
My suspicion on the presentation of Canadian politics here @CV.us
it may entrain more involvement (even if not posting "participation") to focus on a contrast of issues rather than parties or persons.
The shuffle in Canadian politics seems to compound the embarrassment of U.S. politics. Bad enough we've driven our own buggy into the ditch.
Running that of our faithful friend & neighbor Canada over the precipice is no solace.
Shiftless2
Well-known member
John Wesley Chisholm
onsetdorSpgM12u061Ml:17 2lgtc3gmlu8c512a8 26m 09r1ufcP9a16h ·Oh man, I don't like being the Snopes of Canadian political silliness, but today's Meme that says "Former British Prime Minister Slams Mark Carney" is just well, coming at me from all across the social media.
The 'former PM' in question is Liz Truss—she filled in after the previous PM resigned. She served for 44 days before resigning herself amid severe political and economic backlash, and a now-iconic head of lettuce story that outlasted her in office.
Truss is now saying former Bank of England governor Mark Carney's policies for economic stability, undermined her grand economic vision.
Calling her a ‘former PM’ without context is ironic, coming from the same Conservatives who are raging about Carney being appointed by well-established rules to lead the Liberal Party until an election is called. Maybe today. They have questioned Carney’s political role, while paradoxically embracing commentary from Liz Truss despite her brief and controversial tenure. Holy Crow.
Rishi Sunak, the actual British PM who had to clean up Ms. Truss's mess when he was elected called her economic plans “fantasy economics” and would lead to “higher inflation, higher interest rates, and higher mortgage rates.” He said that promising massive, unfunded tax cuts while ignoring the real-world impact on markets was not just irresponsible—it was dangerous.
In one particularly cutting moment, he said:
"Borrowing your way out of inflation isn’t a plan—it’s a fairytale."
And… he was right. Within days of Truss’s government unveiling her “mini-budget,” the markets panicked, the mortgage sector went into freefall, the pound nosedived, and the
Bank of England had to intervene.
By the time Liz Truss became Prime Minister in September 2022, Mark Carney had been out of the Bank of England for over two years—his seven-year term ended in early 2020. Yet she now blames him for setting the policy climate - the cautious central bank orthodoxy, high regulation, and fiscal restraint vibe - that supposedly doomed her tax-cutting agenda.
This perspective, however, is not widely held. Her administration's mini-budget—which proposed significant unfunded tax cuts—led to market instability and necessitated intervention by the Bank of England to stabilize financial markets. Sunak’s government, alongside existing Bank of England policies established under Carney’s tenure, helped restore market stability following Truss’s resignation.
Truss's unfunded tax cuts triggered a market crisis; Carney’s monetary policies, while debated in fine details, maintained investor confidence and financial stability. Carney’s approach to monetary policy has received broader institutional support compared to Truss’s fiscal proposals.
And, one more time around: Mr. Carney's resume. He was not a "banker" in the Mr. Potter, It's A Wonderful Life" sense, no matter how derisively they keep repeating it. He was Governor of the Bank of Canada and then Governor of the Bank of England—the only person in history to hold the top job at two G7 central banks. That’s not “banking.” That’s economic statecraft at the highest level.
Calling Mark Carney a 'banker' is like calling a brain surgeon a 'man with a knife.'
As governor, Carney wasn’t chasing profit. He was managing interest rates, controlling inflation, stabilizing currencies, overseeing the financial system, and making judgment calls that affected the livelihoods of tens of millions of people. He helped steer Canada through the 2008 financial crisis with less damage than almost any other advanced economy—and was recruited by Britain to bring that steady hand to the economy.
He was a key player in global monetary policy, a respected voice at the G20, and chaired the Financial Stability Board, where he helped redesign the rules of global finance after the crash. That’s not banker stuff—that’s international economic leadership.
This post is based on publicly available facts about recent UK political and economic events. Where interpretive language is used, it reflects general consensus from economists and political analysts, but readers are encouraged to consult primary sources.
Shiftless2
Well-known member
Item fifteen in the Conservative Party of Canada's official policy declaration effectively calls for the end of basic human rights monitoring and enforcement in Canada by slitting the throat of the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. Because who needs human rights, am I right?
And since those of us old enough to remember that the Supreme Court prevented the Harper government from violating citizen rights should not be surprised to see the Cons declare that parliament should be dominant over the courts, also in item fifteen.
This is some mighty heinous f*ckery that's afoot, right here.
Canada aside only very briefly:
Trump / Musk are political barbarians. BUT !
When Musk flagrantly idiotically fired some of our indispensable top nuclear experts, within a day Musk was back to rehire them.
The firing was lunacy. BUT !
At least Trump / Musk had it together enough to recognize the mistake, and try to undo the damage.
Back to Canada:
Is this wrecking-ball politics Canadian style deliberately malicious? Or merely ignorant?
A decade from now, will history students believe this?
Those that have not lived this, responsible tax paying voters in tune with more rational times may simply mistake history of April 2025
as nonsense ravings of paranoiac extremism.
It isn't.
BUT !
If it were the "news" might look much the same.