Canadian Politics Today

Thinking that his wife is the same as him and doesn’t have her own opinions is wrong-headed.  Maybe even a tad sexist.

I said they. They seem to tweet and post and lock stuff with regards to their political views

Well that's retarded.

I am not willing to predict how well/poorly such stupidity will play.

He's campaigning against the pandemic ?  By the time of the next election will mask mandates be much more than an unpleasant piece of nostalgia ?

He's like the nerd who actually turned out to be bad at math and everything.

I think that one reason Poillievre has appealed to a lot of people is that he has been hammering away at prices for 2 years.  He was talking about rising costs when Justin and friends were trying to convince us that the inflation rate was just an aberration that resulted from low gas prices early in the pandemic.

The other thing is that many people just don't feel heard. And like other self-styled populists, Poillievre has somehow conned regular people into thinking he hears them.

Our politicians (and our journalists as well) aren't exactly a group representative of Canadian society as a whole.  They're well-to-do college educated urbanites. They live in big cities. Their friends live in big cities. They and their friends are all prosperous white-collar people. They got to work remotely from spacious homes (or their recreation properties!) during the lockdowns.  They treat large areas of this country as "fly-over" territory. They don't actually know anybody who works at a factory or in trades or at a restaurant or a farm or a jobsite. They're aware that these people exist, in an academic sense, and they might even have met some of them at photo-ops and that sort of thing, but they don't really actually have any connection to anybody who isn't part of the same privileged, urbanite culture as they are. And it's very easy for people to feel disconnected from all of these politicians. It's very easy to be cynical of them, especially when they profess to be "fighting for working Canadians!" or similar slogans.   It's all very fake, very patronizing.

Poillievre is part of that same elite urbanite culture as the rest of them, but he has been talking about groceries being too expensive for two years, and that's something that us "regular people" can relate to.

I saw a Poillievre sign in the back window of a pickup last month, and the race had barely even started.  Can you recall seeing that in Canada before? I can't.   During an election, sure. But for a candidate in a leadership race? I think people might be underestimating the amount of enthusiasm there is behind Poillievre.

One of the people I follow on Twitter said a while back something along the lines of "if Poillievre wins, Liberals will finally be able to relate to how annoying 35% of Canadians find Trudeau."

 -k

I guess people never learn.

They seem to think that people will save us not policies.

Charest could possibly appeal to Quebecers.  As a CPC member why would you not vote for him if you actually want to win an election?  If your wants of a leader is someone who is anti-abortion, pro-comvoy, and pro-Trump well you're going to be a appeal to the fringe and lose the election.

Charest could possibly appeal to Quebecers.

Yes he could. The problem is, the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois also appeals to Quebecers. The question is, would Charest's appeal to quebecers actually result in a significant gain of seats in Quebec (at least to counteract possible losses elsewhere) would it simply increase the votes but leave other parties still leading.

As a CPC member why would you not vote for him if you actually want to win an election?

Voters don't often think rationally. (Look at all the left-leaning American voters who decided to sit out the 2016 election because they mistakenly thought "my vote doesn't matter", and ended up with 4 years of Stubby McBonespurs in charge, instead of Clinton.)

Personally, I usually lean conservative, and would probably prefer Charest to Trudeau (assuming he can keep the nut cases in the party in check), but I can certainly imagine some conservative voters thinking "Former Liberal premier vs. Liberal Prime Minister... there isn't enough difference to matter".

skippy says to 'give control of money to the people'... which means what? Anyone, anyone, anyone......

Former Bank of Canada governor slams Poilievre's assertion central bank is 'financially illiterate'

On another Poilievre stance -- that cryptocurrency allows people to “opt out” of inflation -- Dodge said “he has no idea what he’s talking about.”

“He’s just wrong because the issue of rising prices…that you have to cope with out of your income is fundamentally at the moment a structural one,” he said. “We have limitations on supply, in part because of a war, in part because of COVID, in part because of ongoing features of the economy – we’re all getting older – the labour force is not growing as fast.”

The Liberal Party was the right-wing federalist party in Quebec in opposition to the left-wing PQ. He didn't change parties from Conservative to Liberal; he remained in the federalist fold to go fight for Canadian unity...and succeeded.

First of all, it is true that the Liberal party in Quebec is further to the right than the PQ. But that doesn't necessarily mean it would be considered "right wing" or "conservative" when compared to the federal conservatives or conservatives in other provinces.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_Liberal_Party
In the context of federal Canadian politics, it is a more centrist party when compared to Conservative and Liberal parties in other provinces, such as the British Columbia Liberal Party. It believes in a strong role for government in the economy and supports social-liberal policies

Secondly, even if the Quebec Liberal Party is "right wing", do you really think most voters in other provinces are going to understand the difference? Most people aren't that familiar with the political landscape of other provinces... they will just here "Charest was a Quebec Liberal" and base their opinions on him based on that.