Conservative

Friday December 16, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday December 16, 2022

‘Stand on the side of the common people,’ Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre tells caucus

In a speech to his caucus ahead of the holidays, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said it is his party’s job to “stand on the side of the common people.”

Ahead of a closed-door meeting, Poilievre spoke to Conservative parliamentarians in front of the media, telling his MPs and senators that it is their job as the Official Opposition “always to stand on the side of the common people.”

“Their paycheques, their savings, their homes, their country,” Poilievre said, asking his caucus to spend some time during the break reflecting on how Conservatives can do that in the new year.

“I hope you have a wonderful break with your families, a time to renew and rebuild your energy to come back in fighting form on behalf of Canadians,” Poilievre said. “But it’s also a time over Christmas to think of the less fortunate, those who have less, those who are struggling more. Unfortunately, those people are more numerous than ever before.”

September 3, 2021

During his remarks, delivered first in French and then in English, the Conservative leader capped off his first fall sitting at the helm of the party by delivering a laundry list of ways he thinks Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the federal Liberals are failing.

From the cost-of-living crunch prompting some Canadians to turn to food banks, to young Canadians “stuck in their parents’ basements” because of housing unaffordability, Poilievre called for “legal limits” on federal spending to try to bring down inflation.

“The cost of government is driving up the cost of living,” he said, repeating one of his most-used talking points since becoming party leader.

Poilievre also spoke about public safety concerns, from the growing number of drug overdoses in Canada, to the ongoing contention over the Liberals’ gun control legislation Bill C-21 and their push to considerably expand the number of firearms that would be prohibited.

September 5, 2019

“So instead of putting time, money, and resources into attacking Indigenous people, hunters and farmers, Conservatives will protect those people’s rights and go after the real criminals to keep Canadians safe,” said Poilievre.

The Conservative leader also spoke about his concerns over the state of the Canadian health-care system, which he said was coming apart “at the seams.”

“It boils my blood to sit in a waiting room with my daughter, who’s got from time to time a migraine headache, while she waits and waits along with the other little children because of doctor shortages,” he said. Poilievre vowed that if his party was in power he’d work with the provinces to allow more qualified immigrants to practice medicine, more quickly.

“It is true that Canadians are hurting, but it is our job as the Official Opposition to turn that hurt into hope. To inspire people that a real improvement in their lives is possible, that the dream that brought them here as immigrants or the dream with which they were raised when they were born here, can be rekindled,” Poilievre said. “That is our purpose my friends.” (CTV) 

 

Tuesday December 6, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday December 6, 2022

Pierre Poilievre’s self-imposed media vacuum is about to face its first test

October 20, 2022

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre believes the voters whose support he needs to lead his party to government in the next federal election will not be reached via the mainstream media.

His strategy is about to be tested.

On Dec. 12, the voters of the GTA riding of Mississauga-Lakeshore will be going to the polls to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of Liberal MP Sven Spengemann last spring.

Friday October 14, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday October 14, 2022

The high cost of pandering to extremists

It didn’t take long for new Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to do a swan dive into the murky waters of delusion and political pandering.

May 20, 2022

Shortly after being sworn in Tuesday to replace Jason Kenney, Smith called those who refused vaccination against COVID-19 “the most discriminated against group that I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime.”

That she could say so demonstrated to everyone who has faced true discrimination either a profound ignorance of both history and current realities or a bottomless capacity for pandering to the misplaced sense of victimhood in her right-wing base.

On Wednesday, Smith issued a statement saying she had wanted to highlight the “mistreatment” of those who chose not to get vaccinated and that she had not intended to “trivialize” the discrimination faced by minority communities.

Still, words have consequences. Words can console or wound, inspire or enrage. They can bring out what’s best in us, or what’s worst.

Hate-mongering and character assassination in Canada — however much we fancy our political discourse more civil than in the United States — has already seen in Ontario communities stones being flung at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh assaulted with hatred and racism.

Those with political pulpits and media soap boxes must remember that along with that power and influence they assume great responsibility.

September 13, 2022

Kenney acknowledged in his final words as premier that the conservative movement in Canada is giving succour to disturbing elements. He warned federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre about keeping company with extremists whose chief interest is in “tearing things down and blowing things up.

“I think a Conservative party that is focused on a campaign of recrimination over COVID, politicizing science, entertaining conspiracy theories and campaigning with QAnon is a party that can’t form a government and shouldn’t,” he told Global News’ “The West Block.”

Former prime minister Brian Mulroney agreed, telling CTV’s “Question Period” after a private dinner with Poilievre “that you can’t get elected with that kind of stuff.”

Among other things, it was recently found that YouTube videos produced for Poilievre contained a hidden tag appealing to an online anti-women movement — #mgtow, Men Going Their Own Way — that Canadian security agencies view as a danger.

Trudeau told Poilievre in the Commons that “in reaching out to extremist online groups and pulling in anti-women, misogynistic groups for his own political gain” is something for which he will have to answer to Canadian women.

But it should not be left just to women to object. All rational citizens should be on guard against the kind of rhetoric and messaging aimed at courting the tear-things-down and blow-things-up elements in Canada.

September 24, 2022

As has been seen around the world, there is political opportunity for leaders cynical and self-interested enough to tap into pools of rage. It is not as if Canadians, living where we do, lack for horrifying recent evidence of the damage recklessness leaders can incite. There is a direct line from “some very fine people on both sides” and “stand back and stand by” to the deadly attack on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

American scholar Larry Diamond wrote in his 2019 book “Ill Winds” that “a culture of democracy is also a culture of moderation.

“Democracy can’t function when politics is dominated by opposing camps of ‘true believers’ who view compromise as betrayal and dismiss discordant evidence as fake,” Diamond wrote.

Premier Smith seems not to have read his book.

What we need from our leaders is the serious work to understand the social fragmentation and political polarization that got us here and a resolve to mend these rifts, not to exploit them for political gain.

Complicity by political leaders with the extreme fringes will provide fuel for social conflict and chaos. But it is complacency on the part of a moderate majority that will provide the opportunity. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

From sketch to finish, see the current way Graeme completes an editorial cartoon using an iPencil, the Procreate app, and a couple of cheats on an iPad Pro …

 

Tuesday September 13, 2022

September 13, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday September 13, 2022

Firebrand Poilievre now starts the hard search for wider support as a no-pivot party leader

It’s a daring experiment by the Conservatives – overwhelmingly elect a hard-right fire-breathing leader and expect enough voters to gravitate in his direction to win a federal election.

September 14, 2021

That wasn’t the case with post-Harper leaders Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole, who shifted right-wing positions toward the mainstream in what became a futile effort to find broader voter support.

But there’ll be no waffling in the political winds by steamrolled-to-victory Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre; no pivoting to a kinder, gentler, mushy middle to win over voters. That’s just not in Poilievre’s DNA.

This makes Saturday’s commanding leadership win (with 68 per cent of the ballots) the easy part of Poilievre’s ultimate goal to become prime minister.

The baby-faced 43-year-old partisan pit-bull faces an even tougher test now to reposition himself as leading a viable government-in-waiting.

His next quest has bedevilled Conservatives and indeed majority-seeking Liberals for the last two decades: Where to find the crucial five per cent bump in voting support that it takes to win a federal election?

It’s not a simple search. His oratorical assault on elites, gatekeepers and the ArriveCAN app easily fires up those fed-up and frustrated with Justin Trudeau’s preachiness and his open-the-vault response to every politically correct cause.

But to corral votes further left politically and further east geographically would seem a mission impossible, particularly given that the issues he’s attacking are now losing some of their traction.

May 13, 2022

Poilievre’s preoccupied with “Justinflation” that’s easing slightly courtesy of a Bank of Governor he wants to fire. Meanwhile, the cryptocurrencies Poilievre advocated as a safe monetary alternative are in the dumpster and the illegal “Freedom Convoy” he supported for protesting vaccine mandates he opposed are a repressed memory and unlikely to be revived.

And then there’s his party unity problem.

While he delivered a classy outreach to rival camps on Saturday night, lasting damage has been done to the progressive wing of the party after his campaign trash-talked rivals as unworthy Conservatives from the opening bell of this seven-month leadership brawl. You can bet distant-second-place-finisher Jean Charest and his pathetic 16 per cent of voting party members will not lift a finger to help a Poilievre-led party. Ever.

That suggests we’ll see an Official Opposition that’s a Reform reincarnation – and that will be a tough sell in urban Ontario and B.C., a seat expansion challenge in Quebec and register at best modest support growth in Atlantic Canada.

All is not lost, of course.

August 5, 2022

The Liberal government is failing to deliver basic services on multiple fronts, has unleashed inflation-fuelling budgets and is led by a Prime Minister whose popularity is at a personal low. This government seems hell-bent to defeat itself.

Poilievre, for his part, is going to be a masterful Opposition leader, slicing and dicing the Trudeau Liberal cabinet with devastating quips and clips on the government’s economic failures and working-class letdowns, many of which were nicely previewed in his feisty victory speech.

Anyone watching Question Period starting next week will see his exquisitely entertaining eviscerations of Justin Trudeau, which will stand in favorable contrast to a Prime Minister who pretends not to hear his questions while reading staff-scripted responses.

And with two-thirds of the Conservative caucus behind him and that massive convention victory, Pierre Poilievre will undoubtedly get something Scheer and O’Toole didn’t – two election campaigns before the party does its usual dump-the-loser-leader routine.

December 3, 2015

But his longer-term success depends on swaying the undefined, unpredictable and risk-adverse voters in Central Canada and B.C. who usually christen the election winner and do it while sticking to his controversial positions.

If those voters don’t pivot to firebrand Pierre Poilievre, well, congratulations Conservatives — you’ve just voted yourself four more years or longer in Official Opposition. (Don Martin – CTV) 

From sketch to finish, see the current way Graeme completes an editorial cartoon using an iPencil, the Procreate app, and a couple of cheats on an iPad Pro …

 

Friday August 26, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday August 26, 2022

Diagolon: What to know about the group whose founder shook Pierre Poilievre’s hand

Conservative leadership front-runner Pierre Poilievre came under fire this past weekend after an image of him shaking hands with Jeremy Mackenzie, the founder of a group known as “Diagolon,” emerged.

August 4, 2022

Shortly after the image surfaced on Mackenzie’s public Telegram channel, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh called on Poilievre to “denounce Jeremy Mackenzie and Diagolon,” who he said are “designated as violent extremists by Canada’s Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre.”

Singh was referring to a report from Press Progress, which last week published a document it obtained through access-to-information from the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre, a federal organization that assesses threats of terrorism to Canada.

The document, dated Feb. 17, 2022, classifies Mackenzie as one of the “key anti-government IMVE (ideologically motivated violent extremism) adherents” that attended the so-called “freedom convoy” protests in Ottawa earlier this year.

The Canadian government has not expressed formal concern about Diagolon nor does it list the group as a terrorist entity.

“Over the course of my campaign I have shaken hands with literally tens of thousands of people at public rallies. It is impossible to do a background check on every single person who attends my events,” Poilievre’s campaign team said in response to Global News’ request for comment on Aug. 20.

“As I always have, I denounce racism and anyone who spreads it. I didn’t and don’t know or recognize this particular individual.”

So who is Mackenzie — and what is Diagolon? 

A drug-addled demonic goat named Phillip. A fictional diagonal country running from Alaska to Florida. An alleged plot to kill RCMP officers in Coutts, Alta.

There’s a common thread uniting these topics: they’re all, in some way, tied to Diagolon.

June 30, 2022

Founders of the group say it’s all one big joke, a meme, and they’re just a group of anti-establishment comedians. The demonic goat and fictional country were the product of “several edibles,” to hear Diagolon founder Jeremy Mackenzie tell it.

His telegram channel has more than 13,000 members, and he has at least 10,000 subscribers on YouTube.

But after a patch bearing the group’s insignia was found alongside weapons seized by the RCMP near the border in Coutts in February, some extremism experts say they are concerned about what the multi-hour livestreams could inspire their viewers to do.

“It’s not just an innocent podcast. It’s not just irony,” said Amarnath Amarasingam, an assistant professor at Queen’s University and expert on extremism.

These podcasters are giving their viewers a new “lens” through which to interpret their struggles, he said – one that paints government as the villain and societal collapse as inevitable. (Global)