2025 Canadian election - April 28

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

Poilievre was never as weak as Liberals claimed before he was chosen nor as strong as Conservatives have claimed since. He's stronger than O'Toole or Scheer but weaker than Harper.

I actually think O'Toole was a pretty good CPC leader - if they had stuck with him they would be in a much better position. He was less of an acerbic flame thrower than is Poilievre and would have met the moment much better as a "safe pair of hands" - but he was clearly too sensible for the freaks that make up the CPC membership base these days.

I liked O'Toole quite a lot, but a lot of it was also that he basically lied his way to the job. He won a mandate from his party as a hard-edged "true blue Conservative who will Take Canada Back!", and okay everyone pivots in the general but O'Toole pretty much did a U-turn. You can only get away with that if it actually works. I wish he did get away with that, because it turned out Trudeau was burned out and unable to navigate post-pandemic everything, whereas I think with the very forward-looking platform that O'Toole ran on, he was much more focused on the post-pandemic challenges we were already starting to see signs of. And I guess with Carney leading the Liberals we're pretty clearly in a fiscally conservative mood, and O'Toole would have brought that to government more quickly than the Liberals could. But he didn't win. You can lie your way to the job in politics, but if you're gonna do that, you better win.

Meh, the entire Conservative Party was created on the lie that a Peter MacKay Progressive Conservative Party would oppose a merger with the Canadian Alliance.

After MacKay went back on his word and the P.Cs held an approval vote for the merger, there is considerable evidence that Canadian Alliance members joined the P.Cs on masse to ensure support for the merger.

And, at that time, Canadian Alliance/Conservative members and leaders were proud of their subterfuge. So, Conservatives don't seem to have any problem when they're the ones engaged in deceit.

[Long Live The King!]

The Pierre Poilievre videos are already coming out!   

[Can't Back Down When Punched!]

Poilievre was never as weak as Liberals claimed before he was chosen nor as strong as Conservatives have claimed since. He's stronger than O'Toole or Scheer but weaker than Harper.

I actually think O'Toole was a pretty good CPC leader - if they had stuck with him they would be in a much better position. He was less of an acerbic flame thrower than is Poilievre and would have met the moment much better as a "safe pair of hands" - but he was clearly too sensible for the freaks that make up the CPC membership base these days.

I liked O'Toole quite a lot, but a lot of it was also that he basically lied his way to the job. He won a mandate from his party as a hard-edged "true blue Conservative who will Take Canada Back!", and okay everyone pivots in the general but O'Toole pretty much did a U-turn. You can only get away with that if it actually works. I wish he did get away with that, because it turned out Trudeau was burned out and unable to navigate post-pandemic everything, whereas I think with the very forward-looking platform that O'Toole ran on, he was much more focused on the post-pandemic challenges we were already starting to see signs of. And I guess with Carney leading the Liberals we're pretty clearly in a fiscally conservative mood, and O'Toole would have brought that to government more quickly than the Liberals could. But he didn't win. You can lie your way to the job in politics, but if you're gonna do that, you better win.

Meh, the entire Conservative Party was created on the lie that a Peter MacKay Progressive Conservative Party would oppose a merger with the Canadian Alliance.

After MacKay went back on his word and the P.Cs held an approval vote for the merger, there is considerable evidence that Canadian Alliance members joined the P.Cs on masse to ensure support for the merger.

And, at that time, Canadian Alliance/Conservative members and leaders were proud of their subterfuge. So, Conservatives don't seem to have any problem when they're the ones engaged in deceit.

I'm not making a moral case against O'Toole, but a practical one. The anti-merger PCs who MacKay deceived never really got a chance to directly hold him accountable, some crossed the floor to the Liberals and others just made peace with the merger. With O'Toole, there were no structural changes to the party, he was held accountable by virtually the same caucus and membership he had deceived, and that's much harder to survive. I think O'Toole's cynical rise to the top wouldn't have mattered had he won the election, but the downside of being offside with your party membership is you get a lot less sympathy if you lose, similar to Mulcair (although even worse in the sense that Mulcair never ran as a hammer-and-sickle lefty, he was always supposed to be a neoliberal makeover)

[Can't Back Down When Punched!]

No idea what to make of this Trump "endorsement", he's been saying a lot of crap and it's best that we don't put too much stock into his words. But from a campaign perspective, Conservatives should absolutely take this opportunity and see how much mileage it has.

[Long Live The King!]

No idea what to make of this Trump "endorsement", he's been saying a lot of crap and it's best that we don't put too much stock into his words. But from a campaign perspective, Conservatives should absolutely take this opportunity and see how much mileage it has.

New CPC campaign ad;

'Don't vote for Maple MAGA Carney or he and his friend Trump will make us the 51st state!'

 

[Progressive Pessimist]

Everybody knows what Trump is doing with those comments. If he wants to give Poilievre a chance, he should honestly just keep his mouth shut. Canadians are done with this sh-t.

This kind of thing might work on us dumb Americans, but I'm certain that you guys know better.

[adma]

Yeah I was going to say I thought Carney indicated he would run in an Edmonton riding. There's just no good non-risky options there though.

It would be really cool to have a Prime Minister representing a seat in one of the territories.

Carney was born in the NWT but his family moved to Edmonton when he was very young so his ties there are tenuous to say the least. Its also not a very practical place for a party leader or PM to represent. Its not unprecedented for a party leader to run in a difficult seat. In 1985 Robert Bourassa ran in a seat where the PQ was historically strong. His Liberals won the election but he lost the seat narrowly. It was no big deal. A Liberal MP from a safe seat resigned right away and Bourassa easily won a subsequent byelection. In 2013 in BC Christy Clark also lost her seat (to David Eby of all people) while her party won the election. She quickly ran in a byelection in a safe BC Liberal seat in Kelowna

Of course, John Turner was the classic party-leader-in-a-difficult-seat in '84.  (One could say the same about Joe Clark in '00--but for him that year , any option outside the Maritimes was a gamble.)

Even Chretien as PM might be argued as a "difficult seat" circumstance; or, he was the only thing preventing Saint-Maurice from *not* going Bloc...

trudeau?

Probably not, Papineau seems like a pretty Liberal riding regardless of Trudeau. It used to be a Bloc seat before he won it in 2008, but they've trended downward since and Papineau's no longer majority French. If anyone beats the Liberals there, it's probably NDP, but the NDP ain't doing so hot right now. And it's definitely not Conservatives. The Liberals will probably hold it.

Regardless of the present, it *was* a dicey proposition when Justin first ran for it, particularly as the Libs were still licking their post-'06 wounds under the Dion leadership (and he deliberately chose that seat as a challenge, rather than a more obvious rubber stamp seat).  But yes, Justin wasn't leader yet...

At the time, yeah. But the Bloc ain't what it used to be in Montreal. Their support collapsed in 2011, recovered quite a bit in 2019, but more so in CAQ type areas, not QS type areas.

Going back to this talking point, a parallel "future Liberal leader" situation to Justin in '08 was Paul Martin in '88, who was one of the very few Quebec Libs to defeat a Mulroney Tory incumbent that year...

[Can't Back Down When Punched!]

No idea what to make of this Trump "endorsement", he's been saying a lot of crap and it's best that we don't put too much stock into his words. But from a campaign perspective, Conservatives should absolutely take this opportunity and see how much mileage it has.

New CPC campaign ad;

'Don't vote for Maple MAGA Carney or he and his friend Trump will make us the 51st state!'

 

Trump endorses finance bro "MAGA Mark" Carney after he abolished the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality!

Jokes aside, it's actually not implausible that Trump prefers Carney - one thing that's clear about Trump is he operates on personal relationships and that doesn't always follow a left/right binary, for example how he's approached Starmer and even Sheinbaum compared to Trudeau.

But of course from a Conservative campaign perspective what really matters here is that Trump, and not for the first time, is expressing his dislike of Poilievre. Conservatives need to push that notion, whether Trump means it, doesn't mean it, or has no idea what he's talking about. If you're blowing a 20 point lead, you might as well try something different. The Liberal pushback will be either "ugh who cares what that orange f-k says" (which is a viewpoint I'm very sympathetic to, but let's not kid ourselves, had the orange f-k endorsed Poilievre all of a sudden Liberals would care very much what he says), or "this is actually a 4D Chess move to make Canadians vote Conservative" (which would be funny because suddenly it's the Liberals buying into the tactical genius version of Trump, and if he was such a tactical genius hellbent on getting the Conservatives elected, he wouldn't have started a trade war in the first place).

[Pericles]

Vladimir Putin endorsed Joe Biden, Trump probably looked at that and thought it was a neat trick.

[Can't Back Down When Punched!]

Vladimir Putin endorsed Joe Biden, Trump probably looked at that and thought it was a neat trick.

It's definitely a possibility, but a much more convoluted narrative for Carney to push. In any case, "we shouldn't take Trump at his word" almost directly contradicts the crux of the campaign that the Liberals have been prepping. I don't think a common public narrative has been set yet on this, so it will be interesting to see who can sell their version of events better.

[brucejoel99]

Vladimir Putin endorsed Joe Biden, Trump probably looked at that and thought it was a neat trick.

It's definitely a possibility, but a much more convoluted narrative for Carney to push. In any case, "we shouldn't take Trump at his word" almost directly contradicts the crux of the campaign that the Liberals have been prepping. I don't think a common public narrative has been set yet on this, so it will be interesting to see who can sell their version of events better.

Hopefully the majority of voting Canadians won't like their intelligence being insulted by Trump trying to paint a target on Carney's back with some classic flooding of the zone with confusing, distracting, Putinesque sh*t. Who'll actually believe PP arguing "my opponents, who've hated Trump forever, are actually who he likes since they're so weak as to bend the knee"?

[OSR stands with Israel]

Vladimir Putin endorsed Joe Biden, Trump probably looked at that and thought it was a neat trick.

Nah given the context of Trump’s comment . Laura Ingram was pushing back on the tariffs and then said “You are helping the liberal party come back with these tariff threats” and then Trump responded with these comments .

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

Just point out that when Poilievre says he'd be a tougher negotiator to Trump, that he's referring to the different negotiations of negotiating Canada becoming the U.S 51st state.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

“See, nobody likes Poilievre, not even Donald fu-king Trump!”

[OSR stands with Israel]

“See, nobody likes Poilievre, not even Donald fu-king Trump!”

I wonder if someone told him , Poilievre is like "Ron DeSanctimonious"

[Whale Psychiatrist]

“See, nobody likes Poilievre, not even Donald fu-king Trump!”

I wonder if someone told him , Poilievre is like "Ron DeSanctimonious"

Close
https://twitter.com/KirkCox_/status/1864324551825391637

[OSR stands with Israel]

“See, nobody likes Poilievre, not even Donald fu-king Trump!”

I wonder if someone told him , Poilievre is like "Ron DeSanctimonious"

Close
https://twitter.com/KirkCox_/status/1864324551825391637

One of the dumbest analogies as I doubt a Canadian Romney backs the Truckers lol .

[HagridOfTheDeep]

Ted Cruz, more like.

[adma]

Its arguably what the NDP deserve for sticking so long with a leader who was very clearly not up to it.

So in November when the NDP was polling at 20% did you think Singh was twice as good a leader as he is now?

I'm not sure the NDP would be doing any better with anyone as leader in the current circumstance. If they had picked some crackpot like Niki Ashton as leader in 2017 - they probably would have been wiped off the map in 2019

Actually, a *really* interesting what-if speculation would be if they picked Charlie Angus, given how more than anybody else in Parliament, he's become a social-media Ground Zero for Canada's anti-Trump resistance.  (Then again, maybe his pending retirement from politics "frees him up" a little)

[adma]

Ted Cruz, more like.

In their heart, the Thiel axis would have been rooting for Maxime Bernier libertarianism.

[MillennialModerate]

I’m a little more well versed with UK than Canadian…. I know it’s custom the party with the most seats forms government - coalition ideas be damned. But someone tell me why if CPC wins a plurality the government can’t just be brought down almost immediately by the remaining parties? (Unless the BLOQ sides with CPC)

Also - it’s wild to me the vote efficiency - I read CPC needs an 8-10 point margin to win a majority.

[Flyersfan232]

I’m a little more well versed with UK than Canadian…. I know it’s custom the party with the most seats forms government - coalition ideas be damned. But someone tell me why if CPC wins a plurality the government can’t just be brought down almost immediately by the remaining parties? (Unless the BLOQ sides with CPC)

Also - it’s wild to me the vote efficiency - I read CPC needs an 8-10 point margin to win a majority.

after what happened last time the ndp form a offical agreement with the lpc i highly doubt they will do that  again anytime soon plus the bloc will have more influence with a minority cpc government

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/CBCNews/status/1902693328732192844

[#UnbanTender]

Here we gooooo

[Farmlands]

Yeah, the best time to call the election for the Liberals was definitely now, without Carney having much of a record to attack as PM and riding the momentum of the Trump-Canada spat that fully upended the polls.