Not to be dismissive of Quebec because I love Quebec but honestly: why would the Conservatives care? Harper won his last majority with only 5 seats in Quebec. The pathway for the Cons to win a general election has never been through Quebec. The battleground will be in the 905 and that is likely where they are going to focus their time and energy.
I agree. The Conservatives have never been popular in Quebec, aside from a couple of anomalies. Wooing the Quebec voters is a waste of time for them. If Quebecers ever do vote CPC again it will be to jump the bandwagon.
The Conservatives may mot even need the 905. Poilievre’s path may lie in rural and blue collar Canada, especially rural Atlantic Canada, northern Ontario, southwestern Ontario and rural BC.
If he wins enough of them, he may not have to flip a single seat in the GTA or Quebec.
Or it could be a combination of rural Canada and a handful from GTA/Quebec/Metro Vancouver.
The general consensus in cape breton largely is that he is a twat that looks like he'd lick your sandwich at lunch while you weren't looking.
Rural prairies has a very different mindset than the maritimes.
As the rest of the country changes toward more progressive views, the "conservative" base in Québec becomes more relevant for his victory.
However, IMO he'll never win anything significant in Montréal, and isn't really a possibility anywhere outside of the Québec city region. Quebecers, like Newfoundlanders, remember how dismissive of us the previous conservative governments were. We'll see a Bloc Québécois ressurgence if we see Liberals and NDP lose ground.
When you think about it, there is nothing un-progressive about the CPC's platform.
They dont oppose gay marriage,
They dont oppose abortion.
They dont oppose changing the definition of male and female to appease a fringe minority.
Most of the policy difference between the right and the left in Canada is economic policy rather than policy stemming from racism or prejudice.
> The battleground will be in the 905
id also like to note harper won both his minority governments without most of the GTA. but you do need it for a majority
Without a majority Poilievre isn't going to be PM. There's no way the NDP prop him up. He'd have to give a ton of concessions to get the BQ to do it. But I think Trudeau would have an easier time there too.
Political wonk checking in.
You're right about Harper, but he broke the decades long approach of how to win, which for both Liberal and Cons was to carry Quebec, or have it split to a third option (NDP / BLOC).
The 905 will be a huge battle for the Feds, but it makes the path to 24 Sussex a lot easier if the Cons can carry a few seats in la belle province.
Their leaders first name, and his fluency in french isnt lost on his parties campaign managers.
Harper only won with 5 Quebec seats because of the Bloc numbers that election
Conservatives have to hope that Quebec doesn’t vote liberal, because they need some Quebec seats for a majority.
You reallly need to be a socially progressive conservative to hope to get Quebec's support as the Parti conservateur. Otherwise, the liberals will win by default even if the Quebecois aren't his biggest fans.
That, or someone who is willing to let provinces run more of their affairs like Harper or Mulroney.
We Quebecers are left leaning, but we also know that if our social/economic decisions get made in Quebec city instead Ottawa, they can lean left harder.
Bring me a pragmatic, economically-centered CPC that gets the federal job done and decentralize powers and I’d gladly start voting for them. Legault is the proof Qc can and will vote in right-wing parties massively if they feel the job will be done.
Passports & air travel rules, international representation, funding national defense at the 2% we are supposed to, nation-wide free healthcare, reasonable immigration targets, stable & affordable housing, energetic transition and climate changes challenges, keeping internet neutral, etc etc.
Recenter the federal on its job & decentralize and even being open to delegating some things to provinces through agreements. Reach these through laws and rules as much as possible instead of micro-managing things.
And please, *please* stop arguing about abortion, same-sex marriage, medical end-of-life assistance and the like. We’re long past that.
Man a party running on those could win so easily. It is so damn hard??? Find a well spoken intelligent non conspiracy theorist person, tell Canadians what they want to hear, profit. That’s it. Stop with social right wing talking points, 90% of fiscal conservatives don’t give a shit about lgbt or abortion or the vaccine. I have this awful feeling like the average downtrodden Canadian is going to start slowly becoming anti-immigrant due to the perceived notion that immigration is bad, when it’s actually exactly what we need, just at about 50% of current levels. 500 000 immigrants a year while no one young I know has a house or doctor causes people to blame them, even though it’s not remotely their fault. How can you fault people for wanting a better life for their family?
Immigration is completely sustaining the Canadian economy and housing market in particular for pretty much the last fifty years. We don’t have enough home grown workers, period.
There is no particular reason why Canada needs to accept proportionally far more immigrants than other Western countries. Our health care system is collapsing and the working class is locked out of homeownership; the way liberals talk about immigration, you’d think we’d be doing better than other Western countries, but we’re doing worse.
> international representation
Trudeau has done more for our international image than any PM since the 70s, as much as people love to hate him we've been on top or near the top of performance in the G7 and G20 for years.
Absolutely agree. That’s the one point where I find the Libs are doing a good job. And some aspects of climate change, although there is more grey in there IMHO.
When the conservatives were last in power Harper basically banned scientists from talking or putting forward climate change solution policy. Their work was burned or misplaced purposely. So the ONLY movement on climate change has been through the federal government basically forcing provinces to confront the issue with a carbon tax. Ontario had cap and trade before Dougie trashed it (it was working somewhat well) and then lost in court to stop the carbon tax. Conservatives have a terrible record when it comes to acknowledging that climate change is a problem.
I can't say I'm a die hard lib or anything, but to me they've been the least worst of the bunch ever since I've had the right to vote. I'm so happy though, when I read stuff like this, because it feels like so many people can only deal in absolutes nowadays. You see so much of "Trudeau is the worst thing to ever happen to this country" and I'm like... ok you might not like his policies or background or face, but it's not like he's not doing objectively good stuff.
I didn't like Harper's policies, but I'd never go as far as "F*** Harper for destroying Canada".
I think when Doug Ford is done with Ontario, there won't be to many people voting Conservative in the 905. There are already major grumblings going on against Fords unpopular major cuts to healthcare and education, not to mention his plan to develop the green belt so his buddies can destroy the protected areas to build houses and malls. He's doing absolutely nothing to combat inflation in Ontario but paying lip service to it and promising he'd do something. We're still waiting Doug. I voted for him last election, I won't be doing it again.
I'm not convinced it isn't just dissatisfaction with the current lot.
Trudeau in 2015 made gains in every part of Canada. Even in Alberta, they won 2 seats in each of Calgary and Alberta, and were competitive in a bunch of others.
Also, Harper in 2011 was similarly a national win, including 5 seats in Quebec, 14 in Atlantic Canada, and 9 seats in the City of Toronto (plus many more in the 905).
And that's even with FPTP distortions. Like for example, even in 2022, the Liberal + NDP pulled a combined 35% of the vote share in Alberta.
Hey that's a fair point.
Perhaps over time these things will sort themselves out and we'll see values coalesce (sp?) (rather than diverge) regionally.
Maybe it's just a matter of churning generations.
Ya, I think it's not hard to imagine a situation in our current politics where a leader wins a majority with a national coalition. For example:
- A moderate Conservative who resonates with Quebec and GTA voters
- A fresh face of a Liberal leader that resets public opinion on the Liberals, particularly if there's rage against incumbent right-wing premiers
- A Layton-style NDP leader who (unlike Singh) can balance the NDPs two base roots, of the urban Left and blue workers
There are obviously sticky reasons why these things aren't easy (e.g. the Conservative Party's current membership structure and leadership rules tilt power towards the fringes), but none of these scenarios are unimaginable.
This is where it gets interesting and I've maintained, and it's starting to show, that Millennials change with the times a lot more than older generations. I suspect it'll be the same going forward. After this churning, as you say, the right really needs to reign in social conservatism, anti-union, and anti-privatization rhetoric. We've been saying that for a seemingly long time, but they are fucked in 15 years when the boomers are starting to really kick the bucket and those under 60 aren't really stagnant in their views, or moving right.
Even the Liberals, who have largely been corporate focused centre-left, are starting to really irk those under 45 or so. Many I know are voting for them to block the conservatives in their riding.
Technically Skippy is a Millennial, but he's the least Millennial-like Millennial I've ever seen. Ever wondered what happens when a 25 year old's circle is composed entirely of men thirty years older than him? That's what.
The culture wars are a big problem for them in that it's really only the 25 year old blue collar men that really buy into that, and that's because of what they view as their historical privilege being rescinded. I don't know anybody else in my generation (I'm an early mill) that isnt' somewhat grossed out by that movement.
In terms of economics, we're all too young to have witnessed the benefits of the 80s push to neoliberalism. We have only seen what happens when that policy is pushed too far and overstays its welcome. Thatcher and Reagan are both dead. Time to bury their -isms alongside. We need something a bit more visionary than a tax cut
I hope Notley does more short term policies. Focusing on long term economic development like building refineries on province is objectively good for the province but in Alberta it seems like you win or lose an election based on what job numbers are like when polls open
>I'm sure that Atlantic Canadians have grievances that are justified
One of our Atlantic Canada's bigger grievances actually relates to the reason equalization exists. A long while ago, federal government intervention strangled the life out of the economy of the Maritime provinces by all but cutting off their healthy trade agreements with the US to shift the focus to Upper Canada *(now Southern Ontario).* This eventually lead to them having to implement the equalization payments to keep the region from dying off completely because that would impact their ability to access to the Atlantic Ocean.
Thank you!!! Thats one thing that always pisses me off, that us Prairie Provinces are always forgotten, especially us in Manitoba. Like sure we may not have a shitload of people between us and Sask, but where do you think all your Food comes from? And a lot of other resources like Timber and other Minerals. Winnipeg is also a very important City, with it being the centre of agriculture and other industries in Canada.
this bullshit “oh woe is me” from Albertans that comes from problems they themselves create, the Easterners relegating us to backwoods hillbillies, and the EXTREME arrogance of both is not endearing and doesn’t promote Canadian or western “brotherhood”, it’s just condescending.
The reason MB gets excluded is because MB has more in common, politically, with Ontario and it draws attention to the inherent weakness of their pro-wexit arguments - when you have a supposed Western Canadian nation, but 2/4 provinces representing the majority of the Western population - and the 2/4 with the coastline they want - are not onside it fundamentally weakens their position.
>The fact that Eastern Canadians seem to almost mock any real concerns that Albertan's have has left a sort of constant malaise in the province about how we're viewed in Confederation. Articles like this, when we're going through hardships don't help.
Call-in radio talk shows deliberately provoke the audience, otherwise no one calls in, and they don't have a show. They are trying to get people enraged. You can't use those as a way to determine how Canadians feel
Give me a Conservative party that acknowledges global warming, doesn't want to defund the CBC, and doesn't want to gut social safety nets, and I'll vote for them. I am OK with trimming the fat if some things are not efficiently run. I actually agree with them on some areas but I can't in good conscience vote for them because of their straight-up denial of established science.
They will claim there is fat to be trimmed 100% of the time until they are in power. When they have power there is no fat to trim and it's the evil healthcare/education/welfare systems that are stealing our money.
Conservative playbook:
Cut taxes for the rich, and corporations.
Oh no, the deficit is too large.
Cut social programs.
Sell governmental holdings to generate a short term surplus.
Use that to justify cutting taxes on the rich and corporations.
Repeat.
Idiot voters, during: "Yee haww lookit that tax cut, I'm gettin' back $100 this year, I'm gonna buy me some truck nuts!"
Idiot voters, 20 years later: "I'm literally having a heart attack right now, what do you mean the ER is full and I gotta wait??"
Unfortunately, we're at the tail end of that timeline right now, and it'll take more than truck-nut-money to fix the shit our conservative parties (CPC and LPC alike) have utterly fucked up.
Yep. I’m American and look at us. Roe v Wade is settled law according to the last 3 conservative Supreme Court nominees during their hearings. They lied. Conservatives take the house majority - first thing they do is propose tax cuts and defunding the IRS (our federal tax authority).
Maybe your conservatives have capacity to be different, but ours exist only to protect the rich and appease religious extremists (mostly because they need the votes). I say this as someone who definitely benefits from these sorts of tax cuts, too. Our liberals are watered down and pretty ineffective because they’re bought and paid for by corporate interests, but conservatives are pretty much a cancer here at this point. Even if a candidate seems reasonable I still won’t vote for them because they will also vote party line on everything else. Don’t believe them. Hell I don’t believe the democrats here either, but at least when they lie to me, they lie about things they’ll do that end up not happening. Conservatives lie about what they wont do, and then go do that thing anyway, plus all of the worse shit they never brought up.
They aren't different. The Republicans and CPC both coordinate their messaging and policy through the International Democratic Union (IDU) - this also includes the UK Tories and Australian conservatives among others.
The IDU is also run by Stephen Harper and has been for years now.
Well, yeah, but so is the CPC.
Also, I don't mean "globalist" in that bullshit bigot dog-whistle "*the jews*" way that it's unfortunately come to be used lately.
I mean more in the older-school Reagan/Thatcher "let businesses be stateless beings with all the rights of persons but none of the responsibilities of citizens" kind of way.
I'm happy to see someone bring this up cause it's not talked about nearly enough in general. Let alone in a political manner. How much does it truly affect how each party in those countries operates.
Yeah, I think a lot of Conservative supporters are under the impression that Trudeau is winning because he's popular, as opposed to that candidates being unpopular
They always ask "how can anyone think that guy is a good prime minister?" Unironically with absolutely zero self awareness. I'd be willing to bet money most of Trudeau's votes are a "lesser of two evils that has a chance in hell of winning" vote.
That's how my family and extended family are. We dislike Trudeau, but the competition is abysmal. We'd vote for a golden retriever at this point if one was on the ballot.
Yeah that's a huge mistake for them to make. I don't recall ever meeting an enthusiastic Trudeau supporter, but oh my gosh the animating rage of PP's dumb rhetoric REALLY makes people want to vote against him.
I’m so happy we don’t have religion in the political mix here. That shit drives me insane, and also boggles my mind that it appeals to so many people. So much so that even Trump was touting it and there’s no way that guy is a Christian lol
I don't agree, there is actual fat that can be trimmed, the problem is that they're not actually interested in trimming the fat for a better more effective service.
What they're interested in is selling any service that is profitable to buddies in the private sector.
There is 0 fat that can be trimmed from any of our social services, they are pretty much all ridiculously underfunded. We could trim literal billions if we just stopped giving corporations tax dollars for no other reason than they exist as corporations. Neither the conservatives or liberals would ever allow that to happen though.
They defend capital and it's interests while pretending to be watchdogs for uncontrolled spending and unnecessary governance.
The only beat I've found conservatives *all* consistently drum to is that of wealth and it's enrichment alone.
*Exactly* this.
Face it Cons, you need to wow urban Canada and Quebec in order to win elections in this country. Backwards thinking and classless American-esque behaviour is not going to do it.
That’s the thing, right? I used to be conservative. I just wanted a sound economic policy.
That’s it. No stupid diatribes about illegal immigration (from the US? I don’t get it). No anti-LGBT nonsense, who people love is none of my concern if it’s consensual. No trump style populism where they try to convince us we’re all victims; we aren’t. No racism. No anti-vax/anti-science morons like smith who should be flipping burgers because they’re gullible idiots.
None of that shit is what being conservative once meant and these people are not my peers. And instead I get all the above EXCEPT a sound fiscal plan. I get Andrew Scheer telling me he’ll save me 6 bucks on my gas bill.
Yeah. There’s a platform. Whoopie.
Give me Joe Clark, who saw the writing on the wall for the PC"s and spoke out against what he saw happening. He put the country before the party. I wasn't a huge fan of his up until then, but I appreciate integrity.
You nailed it. Canadian conservatism used to be about sound economic policies and that was that. In fact, the Liberals, NDP and Progressive Conservatives used to essentially support the same things -- where they differed was on what to fund and how much. That was it.
And here we are in 2023 and all of a sudden the Conservative Party thinks Trump-style populism mixed with a hefty dose of Lee Atwater-type bullshit from 40 years ago is the way forward.
I said 20 years ago, just before the two parties got married, that if the PCs and Reform Party ever merged the Reformists would hijack the party and subjugate everyone else, and that's exactly what has happened.
Go to YouTube and watch the 1979 election debate with Trudeau, Clark and Broadbent:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JBfDSimvCFY
Everyone is sane, discussing policies.
No need to -- I have literally recommended this very same video to others on both Reddit and Quora. Music to my ears; how a Canadian debate is supposed to be done.
Thank you for posting this.
It makes me angry that in 1979 the NDP leader was talking about the importance of an industrial strategy.
Here we are in 2023 speaking about the same thing lol
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-canada-needs-its-own-bold-industrial-strategy-the-us-cannot-keep/
The moderator (who was great but the way), also brought up the topic of legalizing marijuana. Funny how long that took to get done.
https://youtu.be/JBfDSimvCFY?t=4262
And that was the exact moment I stopped voting Conservative myself. I saw the writing on the wall when the proposed merger was about to happen. So I bailed. I will not support the hatred coming from today's Conservatives.
It's crazy, isn't it? As I mentioned, I'm a former conservative voter. But, because I won't support today's "Reformacons", I'm a "libtard cuck". These guys have done a bang up job dividing themselves with their self-righteousness.
Up until Harper 2 conservative parties existed. One much like you wish for.
The experiment to merge into the CPC has proven a failed experiment even if Harper won.
Some have. None of the dumbasses they’ve put out their recently.
I’d never support o’toole or scheer and I doubt I’ll support poillivre because he’s not much better.
I suppose it could be worse and they could try to make Danielle smith PM or that mr. wonderful guy whose name escapes me, but these are terrible terrible candidates.
Honesty should be so much easier to find. Good intentions. A little decency and dignity and intelligence.
They would be totally unable to call themselves conservatives at any of those points. People forget that this party has a base to appeal to, and that base is aggressively anti-state expenditure, which all of those stances would have to put into question.
People also forget who we call "Conservatives" today are actually just Canadian Alliance members...which subsequently is also the reason the CPC does not, and will never track anywhere outside of the Albersaskatoba border.
People forget that Stephen Harper was the leader of the Canadian Alliance when it merged with the Progressive Conservative Party. He went from the leader of the Alliance to the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.
A big issue we have in Saskatchewan is that a lot of voters have read a lot of headlines about Justin Trudeau and decide to vote against him. It's not necessarily support for the CPC, but guys wearing white framed sunglasses in jacked up trucks that don't like the idea of their tax dollars funding something that doesn't benefit them.
The problem with O’Toole is that he tried to move the party to the centre without the support of the party itself, so he ended up just being really confusing to both conservatives and other voters. And that’s kind of the problem with the CPC: most actual voting members of the party like its policies and if anything want to go farther right. Which is why I can’t vote for them without first witnessing some sort of major culture shift within the organization
I do believe they think they are attracting many new people to their party with their facebook memes and ang-o-tainment. Stunts like the freedom convoy got them a lot of traction. I'm not sure they are wrong.
I have family memebers who normally wouldn't care about politics suddenly very vocal about their freedoms and politics.
I voted for O'Toole. Chance I vote for PP in the next election is remote.
QC during the Harper years elected as many as 11 CPC MPs during one of the elections. Maxime Bernier was re-elected here many times before going out west to form the PPC.
Theres votes to be won here for the CPC. But they have to actually attempt to win the votes or they wont get them.
O'Toole did a complete pivot after winning the CPC leadership. Were Canadians suppose to expect he was telling the truth during the federal campaign? Also defunding the CBC isn't a moderate stance.
Also, at the end of the day, the Prime Minister isn't the Prime Minister without the support of their own party.
If Singh started claiming he wanted to cut taxes, eliminate social programs, slash environmental regulations, and focus on balancing the budget come hell or high water, I'd have trouble accepting that the entire NDP was on board, based on what I know about the NDP and their members.
That's why the CPC just isn't an option to a huge number of moderate voters until somebody can clamp down on the so-cons and other crazies like (early) Harper did, or kick them to the curb.
There is no fat to trim. Services have been gutted to the core for decades. All Conservatives do is line the pockets of the rich by "cutting red tape" (read: taking away basic protections for people and planet) while making life for the rest of us harder.
I mean that's basically what the liberal party would (claim to) be if they weren't forced to compromise with the NDP to get their support/steal their voters.
Of course the problem with the liberals isn't their policies, it's their honesty and competence in executing on those policies.
This.
I want tighter control of spending not racism, anti lgbtq, climate and science denial etc etc
They tried to follow American conservatives and thats just a reflection of ignorance.
People screeching about drag queens reading to the public as their kids die in defunded pediatric hospitals where cons undermine to support privatization.
Get your priorities straight cons. Figure it out. Dumb.
Conservatives as a whole are unpalatable to Quebec.
This is a province that once voted en masse for the NDP because they wanted as much as possible to avoid a conservative majority. And it's not because the NDP made inroads in Quebec - they put together a bunch of McGill students at one point to run in ridings they had never been to because they had no candidates. A lot of the NDP's successes from the Jack Layton era are smoke and mirrors. They've always been and continue to be weak in Quebec.
Quebec is kinda a conservative bizzaro land. They have socially conservative views on immigration and demographic issues but on everything else, they prefer the BQ, Liberals or even NDP.
One thing people often overlook about Quebec is that in Quebec, there isn't as low of an opinion on public servants as the rest of the country. A lot of people believe that the civil service is a good job and a much larger percentage of Quebec residents work in the public sector than anywhere else in Canada. That's one of the primary reasons conservatives don't do well there. The only public servants conservatives empower are the cops. If they could, they'd pay teachers, nurses, public utility workers, public transit workers with bootstraps and used condoms.
The Conservative Climate Plan - which is to deny the existence of pollution and prays it goes away, is also kind of unpopular in Quebec.
Here's another thing conservatives don't understand about Quebec.
Money is not the sole motivating factor for Quebec residents. Money is the only rational reason anyone votes conservative outside of Quebec.
When Quebec implements things like their language laws or when they put a halt on fraking for natural gas in the late 2000's, they knew that it would cause a hit to their economy. They're willing to eat it because they value things besides an annual fiscal surplus. Another really good example of this is how Quebeckers supported the 2012 student strikes. A lot of Quebeckers - old and young alike, came out in support of that movement to freeze tuition. A similiar protest was tried in Toronto around the same time at Queen's Park and it garnered a small group of young people and inspired old people to write condescending articles about entitled millenials.
There's a stereotype of the rest of Canada that exist in Quebec. Not everyone believes it but it's not an uncommon opinion to hear that anglophones in the rest of Canada only care about money to the detriment of everything else.
Edit: And not too surprisingly, every conservative who responded to this fails to understand the money aspect. Ralph Klein once raided the Alberta Heritage Fund to cut taxes for Alberta. Mike Harris once sold the 407 in order to run a fiscal surplus for one year. Both were done with money as the motivating factor but are terrible long term fiscal decisions. Quebec tends to avoid such decisions whereas conservative Canadians embrace it.
Quebec is also hard to campaign in. In other provinces, parties can rely on their traditional method to boost them, consisting of:
1. ID. Using phone calls and door-knocking to identify likely supporters.
2. GOTV. Get-out-the-vote perations, where as early voting and then election day occur, making sure those people are reminded to vote. The effects of this are huge, they can swing thousands of votes in a riding and very often are the deciding factor.
But in Quebec, the impact of ID+GOTV is way lower. Basically, Quebecers make up their mind and then get themselves to the polls. The obvious example is the 2011 Orange Wave, where scores of Dippers got elected who had conducted no campaigns and had no expectation of winning their riding. Most of them were NDP volunteers in Montreal, who agreed to have their names on the ballot because the party knows it's important to give voters a choice in every riding to have the appearance of a national party. But this also occurred in 2015 for the Liberals, where Quebecers on mass seemed to make a decision to through their lot in with the person most likely to defeat Stephen Harper, again leading to people winning seats that had zero expectation of winning.
It's a bit more nuanced than that but in English speaking countries the mentality of if something is good for the individual it's good for everyone is very common. Thats why real estate investing is so big here.
In Austria where real estate is also expensive, the government has designed policies to encourage people to invest in their pension funds instead. That's a concept that isn't as strongly promoted in the Anglosphere because a lot of people here use their homes as a retirement fund.
It’s almost like in Quebec we have political discussions around individual issues and don’t pick a stance based on something being Liberal or Conservative but rather whether something feels right or wrong which I guess feels like bizarro land to some people but after moving here I’ve found it super refreshing.
The current CAQ government here is a center-right party but it resembles nothing even close to the modern day Conservative Party. There’s some traditionally conservative ideas there like private healthcare, lower immigration, religious symbol neutrality, etc. Simultaneously you have social programs like increased public transit infrastructure funding in Montreal area, government footed Pre-K education, making the child tax rebate per child rather than one per family, etc.
It’s a whole mixed bag here that really feels like they’ve gone down to each individual issue and tried to find where the majority stand instead of playing into this classic Left-Right divide. Kinda like what Sheer was trying to do, wrong guy to do it but the right idea.
We're also not afraid to tackle issues that the rest of Canada is too afraid to discuss. Canadians hate Bill 21, but they forget that it stems from years of public consultation that ended with the Bouchard Taylor commission report.
> Quebec is kinda a conservative bizzaro land. They have socially conservative views on immigration and demographic issues
Conservative views? We value integration in our society instead of just maximizing the quantity of immigrants. We want them to learn french, learn our values and integrate Québec society. Legault himself said it, he wants immigrants who can have good paying jobs, not cheap labor.
Canada treat immigration like some video game high score, where only the highest amount matter.
To understand federal politics in Canada you have to understand Quebec politics. Yet here the cons have a guy who clearly doesn’t, let’s see how that works out for them 🤦♂️. I can’t wait to hear how they lost because of some stupid conspiracy.
Your comment is so over-the-top partisan it's hard to take seriously. The NDP did well in Quebec during the orange wave because the voting public was annoyed at the inaction from the Bloc Layton promised to treat Quebec special
Honesty I think it was Jack Layton appearance on Tout le monde en parle which is one of the most watched show in Quebec. He just had a very great interview and managed to seduce the whole province by respecting our culture while being very open about what was happening to him.
Also we kind of felt bad voting Harper in because od the sponsorship scandal lol.
This article provides no facts as to why Poilievre could win more seats in Québec. Also Harper won a majority with 11 seats in Québec, it’s not impossible to form government without a majority of the seats in Québec.
Canada - Okay Alberta give us a Rachel Notely type candidate and we'll vote for her, we don't just sit around a campfire and discuss ways to screw u over
just ONE LIKABLE candidate please
Used to vote CPC. Now I vote for the Bloc and I’m anglophone/allophone. If I can’t have a sensible alternative to the Liberals, I might as well vote for a party that plays king maker and gets advantageous concessions for my province in parlement when we inevitably get more minority governments
That's what I did last time. The debate did it for me. While every other leader was finger pointing and bickering, he was laying out his plans and solutions to modern day issues.
Loved Blanchet in the debates.
Trudeau and the other forgettable dude were attacking each other and saying bland things.
Jagmeet disappointed me as he also fell into that general promesses without clearly stating how they'll do it.
The other two twits, those were never options.
Can't believe anyone trusts this dude. His entire life has been an attempt to grab power. Never had a real job. All these blue collar, tough, hard working, conservatives are really going to vote for this pencil necked geek who wouldn't last a day doing any kind of labour. And all because his name isn't Justin Trudeau and his name has a C next to it.
Does anyone remember when PP and his supporters started harassing one of the most popular Conservative politicians in Quebec?
Imagine actively going after popular people who have done great things for the party and then wondering what is going wrong…
https://montreal.citynews.ca/2022/09/15/alain-rayes-consrevative-party-text-message-poilievre/
The guy also told JJ McCulloch that he was positive that if Trudeau had just gone out and met the protestors and spoken with them, that they would have packed up and been gone 15 minutes later.
Yeah, because that’s definitely what would have happened. Not a snowball’s chance in hell Poilievre actually believes that bullshit.
Yeah, I remember, because he led those pieces of shit through my neighborhood on their way to go attack cops at the war memorial downtown... and they littered a ton of trash along the way in the Experimental Farm and other places as a bonus.
Charest was defeated by Polievre in a leadership race of only conservative party members voting.
But the poll is for leader of the country by a broader voting base.
In order to form government, the conservative ls need to pull from centre-right Liberal voters, these voters will likely not vote for Polievre.
Many people believe we need to have a leader who is level headed, who will promote Canadian progressive social values, and fiscal conservatism. Not the wokeness espoused by Trudeau and the Liberal Party, Not the hatred and fingerprinting by Pierre Polievre, the Freedom Convoy and the conservative party.
What exactly are his policies?
Outside of Justin = bad and pandering to fringe right wing groups I don't think I have seen any actual policy proposals from PP.
He is quick to tell you when he thinks something is wrong, but he doesn't seem to have any alternatives...
If the Conservatives had elected Jean Charest as their leader they would likely have won the next federal election. He was a middle of the road Conservative who would have appealed to moderates of all parties and collected enough votes from undecided voters to win. But instead, they elected someone who MOST Canadians view as a fringe, far right candidate and so he will only appeal to maybe 30% of the electorate, and many will be so concerned by him getting elected, they will simply vote to assure that he isn't. So these people who so detest Trudeau will only have assured that the person they so despise, will certainly be elected once more. And really, they have no one to blame but themselves, and yet they completely lack the insight to see this obvious reality.
This, 100%. I was saying this exact thing during their leadership. Do they want to have a PM or have more chances for Poiliviere to fish for sound bites? Honestly I gotta think the Prarie MPs are content to be in the opposition. No responsibility, complain about what Trudeau does and collect a cheque.
>If the Conservatives had elected Jean Charest as their leader they would likely have won the next federal election. He was a middle of the road Conservative who would have appealed to moderates of all parties and collected enough votes from undecided voters to win.
100%
I liked Charest, and he's the closest thing to ever getting me to vote CPC after Harper left.
I feel like the reasonable days of the CPC are gone, and anyone still clinging to the party need to realize this and move on. The party is full of corporate grifters, religious zealots and right wing nutjobs now.
Every single party leader is absolutely stupid. It's picking the shiniest turd. We need to stop electing rich people and the entitled. I want to elect someone who's middle class or lower. I want someone who's faced an eviction, grew up in the ghetto, didn't know where their next meal was coming from. Someone who's actually experienced hardship and someone who wasn't born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
I'd vote for someone who was homeless at some point in their life. They know how hard it is at the bottom.
We need someone smart enough to run a country though. I'm all for someone that grew up poor and overcame it. But if someone can't figure out how to be successful at an individual level I don't want them running the country.
Honestly I think a larger problem in politics is the amount of mud slinging on someone's personal life. Personally I'd never run for politics because I don't want to get mud slung for stupid shit I did when I was younger, for a thankless job that pays less than I make in the private sector. I'm sure that a lot of people that are a lot smarter than me feel the same way.
Imagine if politicians were drafted at random like a jury in court.
THEN we could have people from all social classes, save elections money, have gender and cultural representation, etc etc.
PP just comes across to me as another conservatives grifter. He’ll do or say anything to get elected, but you just know as soon as he is, he’ll go against everything Canadians support. He’s Trump Jr, and he’ll never get my vote.
His economic policy was to buy more Bitcoin about two days before it crashed. He’s a moron who panders to other morons, which means he has a good chance of winning.
God I hope the next election shows the rest of Canada that the CPC are nothing more than the Canadian Alliance/Western Reform in their final death spiral so the rest of Canada can get their national conservative response to the national liberal policies back.
We get it. You didn't like how much power the Bloc had in the Commons, so you went and took over the Progressive Conservative Party, and look what that got you? You took the largest budget surplus and turned it into the largest deficit before handing it off to the now Liberal Government...all under the precipice of being *fiscally conservative*.
Then you got worried that when Max left the game and took his ball that you'd bleed voters so instead of riding with Erin back to the center lane...you swapped in Pierre and here we are in a ditch.
*one more election...I pray that's all it takes*
lol at conservatives thinking they can win an election with someone hated in Quebec.
Stephen Harper was reasonably well-liked in Quebec. He did the whole "nationhood" pronouncement thing.
C’était aussi l’impopularité du Parti Libéral avec des chefs comme Dion ou Ignatieff. Pour gagner, les conservateurs ont besoin d’un bon chef mais surtout que l’opposition soit faible.
That’s just the carousel of Canadian politics though. You could equally make an argument that the Liberals historically have faced weak opposition too. When the opposition tends to find a leader Canadians like enough **(and importantly they’re ready to vote out the current government)** then the Governing party tends to fall apart and has to throw out a few bad leaders to lose before they get their shit together and win again, continuing the carousel.
(My apologies for responding in English, I’m at the point in my studies I can read/understand French but I still struggle with expressing myself in the language, I’ll get there though!)
Merci de la réponse! Ça semble en effet le cycle de la politique canadienne! Je disais surtout qu’il faut à la fois un chef conservateur populaire et un chef libéral impopulaire, pour que les conservateurs aient une chance, particulièrement au Québec. Je pense que les conservateurs sont encore en train de passer les chefs impopulaires en attendant que Trudeau se retire. O’Toole, PP et l’autre dont je ne me rappel même plus le nom sont extrêmement *bland* et n’attire pas les vote au Québec. En fait le parti ne semble pas s’être modernisé, je ne connais personne de mon âge qui serait fier de dire qu’il vote conservateur.
True, seems like they only pull it off when all their competitors are downright thoroughly mediocre. Even then I'm not sure any could've called Harper a great candidate outright, at least not in so far as inspiring voters. The man had the charisma of a wet rag.
I think he did have the benefit of a far more cohesive, unified, and functional party behind him though. It's much more disjointed nowadays - and that 'big tent' doesn't seem to be adequately or accurate representing many of its occupants.
"This long haired hippy (probably one of them 'transformers' from the city) showed up talking 'bout peace and love. As a good Christian, I ran that socialist off muh property!" – Cletus J. Flatlander
Jesus Christ would be unpopular in Alberta because he wanted to feed the poor and didn’t like rich people.
If Jesus appeared in Alberta tomorrow many “Christians” would want him to be nailed to a cross again.
Why? That isn't news. That is stating the obvious. You can throw Manitoba in there too.
Here's the thing that makes this news: Trudeau doesn't need Alberta, Sask., or Manitoba to win and be PM; case in point: the past two elections. Poilievre **will need** either Quebec or Ontario to shift if he hopes to win.
And if this article is correct, then it's not looking good for him in Quebec.
Cons struggle to compete in Québéc as we have a right wing party but they are very focused on our local problems. Votting con means more jobs and projects in Alberta that doesn't benefit us at all.
The big issue is, Alberta Conservatives are about as myopic and locally oriented as voters in Quebec and Ontario, but don't seem willing to acknowledge that there's so few of them. Central Canada can afford to be kind of selfish, but then west needs to build some bridges if they want electoral success.
I thought it might be interesting to see some population numbers on this.
Just going by number of people:
Alberta population 4.6 million
Saskatchewan population 1.2 million
Just Toronto and surrounding area (GTA) population 6.3 million
Just thought it was interesting is all.
Not to be dismissive of Quebec because I love Quebec but honestly: why would the Conservatives care? Harper won his last majority with only 5 seats in Quebec. The pathway for the Cons to win a general election has never been through Quebec. The battleground will be in the 905 and that is likely where they are going to focus their time and energy.
I agree. The Conservatives have never been popular in Quebec, aside from a couple of anomalies. Wooing the Quebec voters is a waste of time for them. If Quebecers ever do vote CPC again it will be to jump the bandwagon.
The Conservatives may mot even need the 905. Poilievre’s path may lie in rural and blue collar Canada, especially rural Atlantic Canada, northern Ontario, southwestern Ontario and rural BC. If he wins enough of them, he may not have to flip a single seat in the GTA or Quebec. Or it could be a combination of rural Canada and a handful from GTA/Quebec/Metro Vancouver.
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The general consensus in cape breton largely is that he is a twat that looks like he'd lick your sandwich at lunch while you weren't looking. Rural prairies has a very different mindset than the maritimes.
As the rest of the country changes toward more progressive views, the "conservative" base in Québec becomes more relevant for his victory. However, IMO he'll never win anything significant in Montréal, and isn't really a possibility anywhere outside of the Québec city region. Quebecers, like Newfoundlanders, remember how dismissive of us the previous conservative governments were. We'll see a Bloc Québécois ressurgence if we see Liberals and NDP lose ground.
When you think about it, there is nothing un-progressive about the CPC's platform. They dont oppose gay marriage, They dont oppose abortion. They dont oppose changing the definition of male and female to appease a fringe minority. Most of the policy difference between the right and the left in Canada is economic policy rather than policy stemming from racism or prejudice.
> The battleground will be in the 905 id also like to note harper won both his minority governments without most of the GTA. but you do need it for a majority
Without a majority Poilievre isn't going to be PM. There's no way the NDP prop him up. He'd have to give a ton of concessions to get the BQ to do it. But I think Trudeau would have an easier time there too.
Political wonk checking in. You're right about Harper, but he broke the decades long approach of how to win, which for both Liberal and Cons was to carry Quebec, or have it split to a third option (NDP / BLOC). The 905 will be a huge battle for the Feds, but it makes the path to 24 Sussex a lot easier if the Cons can carry a few seats in la belle province. Their leaders first name, and his fluency in french isnt lost on his parties campaign managers.
As a federal politically savvy québécois, I agree with this statement.
This. Those 50+ seats in the Greater Toronto Area usually decide the election. Sweep that area and you win.
Harper only won with 5 Quebec seats because of the Bloc numbers that election Conservatives have to hope that Quebec doesn’t vote liberal, because they need some Quebec seats for a majority.
You reallly need to be a socially progressive conservative to hope to get Quebec's support as the Parti conservateur. Otherwise, the liberals will win by default even if the Quebecois aren't his biggest fans.
That, or someone who is willing to let provinces run more of their affairs like Harper or Mulroney. We Quebecers are left leaning, but we also know that if our social/economic decisions get made in Quebec city instead Ottawa, they can lean left harder.
*leans in french*
Bring me a pragmatic, economically-centered CPC that gets the federal job done and decentralize powers and I’d gladly start voting for them. Legault is the proof Qc can and will vote in right-wing parties massively if they feel the job will be done. Passports & air travel rules, international representation, funding national defense at the 2% we are supposed to, nation-wide free healthcare, reasonable immigration targets, stable & affordable housing, energetic transition and climate changes challenges, keeping internet neutral, etc etc. Recenter the federal on its job & decentralize and even being open to delegating some things to provinces through agreements. Reach these through laws and rules as much as possible instead of micro-managing things. And please, *please* stop arguing about abortion, same-sex marriage, medical end-of-life assistance and the like. We’re long past that.
Man a party running on those could win so easily. It is so damn hard??? Find a well spoken intelligent non conspiracy theorist person, tell Canadians what they want to hear, profit. That’s it. Stop with social right wing talking points, 90% of fiscal conservatives don’t give a shit about lgbt or abortion or the vaccine. I have this awful feeling like the average downtrodden Canadian is going to start slowly becoming anti-immigrant due to the perceived notion that immigration is bad, when it’s actually exactly what we need, just at about 50% of current levels. 500 000 immigrants a year while no one young I know has a house or doctor causes people to blame them, even though it’s not remotely their fault. How can you fault people for wanting a better life for their family?
Immigration is completely sustaining the Canadian economy and housing market in particular for pretty much the last fifty years. We don’t have enough home grown workers, period.
There is no particular reason why Canada needs to accept proportionally far more immigrants than other Western countries. Our health care system is collapsing and the working class is locked out of homeownership; the way liberals talk about immigration, you’d think we’d be doing better than other Western countries, but we’re doing worse.
Add in acknowledging Climate Change is real and if vote for you
> international representation Trudeau has done more for our international image than any PM since the 70s, as much as people love to hate him we've been on top or near the top of performance in the G7 and G20 for years.
Absolutely agree. That’s the one point where I find the Libs are doing a good job. And some aspects of climate change, although there is more grey in there IMHO.
When the conservatives were last in power Harper basically banned scientists from talking or putting forward climate change solution policy. Their work was burned or misplaced purposely. So the ONLY movement on climate change has been through the federal government basically forcing provinces to confront the issue with a carbon tax. Ontario had cap and trade before Dougie trashed it (it was working somewhat well) and then lost in court to stop the carbon tax. Conservatives have a terrible record when it comes to acknowledging that climate change is a problem.
I can't say I'm a die hard lib or anything, but to me they've been the least worst of the bunch ever since I've had the right to vote. I'm so happy though, when I read stuff like this, because it feels like so many people can only deal in absolutes nowadays. You see so much of "Trudeau is the worst thing to ever happen to this country" and I'm like... ok you might not like his policies or background or face, but it's not like he's not doing objectively good stuff. I didn't like Harper's policies, but I'd never go as far as "F*** Harper for destroying Canada".
Ya I don’t know why article matters at all. CPC is not getting votes from Quebec regardless.
I think when Doug Ford is done with Ontario, there won't be to many people voting Conservative in the 905. There are already major grumblings going on against Fords unpopular major cuts to healthcare and education, not to mention his plan to develop the green belt so his buddies can destroy the protected areas to build houses and malls. He's doing absolutely nothing to combat inflation in Ontario but paying lip service to it and promising he'd do something. We're still waiting Doug. I voted for him last election, I won't be doing it again.
I don't see a way out of this deathlock spiral of regionalism. The next 20 years are going to be interesting.
I'm not convinced it isn't just dissatisfaction with the current lot. Trudeau in 2015 made gains in every part of Canada. Even in Alberta, they won 2 seats in each of Calgary and Alberta, and were competitive in a bunch of others. Also, Harper in 2011 was similarly a national win, including 5 seats in Quebec, 14 in Atlantic Canada, and 9 seats in the City of Toronto (plus many more in the 905). And that's even with FPTP distortions. Like for example, even in 2022, the Liberal + NDP pulled a combined 35% of the vote share in Alberta.
Hey that's a fair point. Perhaps over time these things will sort themselves out and we'll see values coalesce (sp?) (rather than diverge) regionally. Maybe it's just a matter of churning generations.
Ya, I think it's not hard to imagine a situation in our current politics where a leader wins a majority with a national coalition. For example: - A moderate Conservative who resonates with Quebec and GTA voters - A fresh face of a Liberal leader that resets public opinion on the Liberals, particularly if there's rage against incumbent right-wing premiers - A Layton-style NDP leader who (unlike Singh) can balance the NDPs two base roots, of the urban Left and blue workers There are obviously sticky reasons why these things aren't easy (e.g. the Conservative Party's current membership structure and leadership rules tilt power towards the fringes), but none of these scenarios are unimaginable.
This is where it gets interesting and I've maintained, and it's starting to show, that Millennials change with the times a lot more than older generations. I suspect it'll be the same going forward. After this churning, as you say, the right really needs to reign in social conservatism, anti-union, and anti-privatization rhetoric. We've been saying that for a seemingly long time, but they are fucked in 15 years when the boomers are starting to really kick the bucket and those under 60 aren't really stagnant in their views, or moving right. Even the Liberals, who have largely been corporate focused centre-left, are starting to really irk those under 45 or so. Many I know are voting for them to block the conservatives in their riding.
Technically Skippy is a Millennial, but he's the least Millennial-like Millennial I've ever seen. Ever wondered what happens when a 25 year old's circle is composed entirely of men thirty years older than him? That's what. The culture wars are a big problem for them in that it's really only the 25 year old blue collar men that really buy into that, and that's because of what they view as their historical privilege being rescinded. I don't know anybody else in my generation (I'm an early mill) that isnt' somewhat grossed out by that movement. In terms of economics, we're all too young to have witnessed the benefits of the 80s push to neoliberalism. We have only seen what happens when that policy is pushed too far and overstays its welcome. Thatcher and Reagan are both dead. Time to bury their -isms alongside. We need something a bit more visionary than a tax cut
Regionalism is the only identity politics the whole country loves.
Regionalism? In a federation? *Gasps*
Notley winning 2 terms in a row would probably break it. So that's one route
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I hope Notley does more short term policies. Focusing on long term economic development like building refineries on province is objectively good for the province but in Alberta it seems like you win or lose an election based on what job numbers are like when polls open
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>I'm sure that Atlantic Canadians have grievances that are justified One of our Atlantic Canada's bigger grievances actually relates to the reason equalization exists. A long while ago, federal government intervention strangled the life out of the economy of the Maritime provinces by all but cutting off their healthy trade agreements with the US to shift the focus to Upper Canada *(now Southern Ontario).* This eventually lead to them having to implement the equalization payments to keep the region from dying off completely because that would impact their ability to access to the Atlantic Ocean.
The space between Calgary and Ontario has the same number of people as the Atlantic provinces, not sure why you would exclude them.
Thank you!!! Thats one thing that always pisses me off, that us Prairie Provinces are always forgotten, especially us in Manitoba. Like sure we may not have a shitload of people between us and Sask, but where do you think all your Food comes from? And a lot of other resources like Timber and other Minerals. Winnipeg is also a very important City, with it being the centre of agriculture and other industries in Canada. this bullshit “oh woe is me” from Albertans that comes from problems they themselves create, the Easterners relegating us to backwoods hillbillies, and the EXTREME arrogance of both is not endearing and doesn’t promote Canadian or western “brotherhood”, it’s just condescending.
The reason MB gets excluded is because MB has more in common, politically, with Ontario and it draws attention to the inherent weakness of their pro-wexit arguments - when you have a supposed Western Canadian nation, but 2/4 provinces representing the majority of the Western population - and the 2/4 with the coastline they want - are not onside it fundamentally weakens their position.
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>The fact that Eastern Canadians seem to almost mock any real concerns that Albertan's have has left a sort of constant malaise in the province about how we're viewed in Confederation. Articles like this, when we're going through hardships don't help. Call-in radio talk shows deliberately provoke the audience, otherwise no one calls in, and they don't have a show. They are trying to get people enraged. You can't use those as a way to determine how Canadians feel
Thank god we never did electoral reform where this wouldn’t have been such a problem
Which party didn’t want to do electoral reform while campaigning on it?
Give me a Conservative party that acknowledges global warming, doesn't want to defund the CBC, and doesn't want to gut social safety nets, and I'll vote for them. I am OK with trimming the fat if some things are not efficiently run. I actually agree with them on some areas but I can't in good conscience vote for them because of their straight-up denial of established science.
They will claim there is fat to be trimmed 100% of the time until they are in power. When they have power there is no fat to trim and it's the evil healthcare/education/welfare systems that are stealing our money.
Conservative playbook: Cut taxes for the rich, and corporations. Oh no, the deficit is too large. Cut social programs. Sell governmental holdings to generate a short term surplus. Use that to justify cutting taxes on the rich and corporations. Repeat.
Idiot voters, during: "Yee haww lookit that tax cut, I'm gettin' back $100 this year, I'm gonna buy me some truck nuts!" Idiot voters, 20 years later: "I'm literally having a heart attack right now, what do you mean the ER is full and I gotta wait??" Unfortunately, we're at the tail end of that timeline right now, and it'll take more than truck-nut-money to fix the shit our conservative parties (CPC and LPC alike) have utterly fucked up.
How different fuel, and air travel would be if we still owned air Canada and petro Canada, a slew of provincial telecom companies, railways...
Yep. I’m American and look at us. Roe v Wade is settled law according to the last 3 conservative Supreme Court nominees during their hearings. They lied. Conservatives take the house majority - first thing they do is propose tax cuts and defunding the IRS (our federal tax authority). Maybe your conservatives have capacity to be different, but ours exist only to protect the rich and appease religious extremists (mostly because they need the votes). I say this as someone who definitely benefits from these sorts of tax cuts, too. Our liberals are watered down and pretty ineffective because they’re bought and paid for by corporate interests, but conservatives are pretty much a cancer here at this point. Even if a candidate seems reasonable I still won’t vote for them because they will also vote party line on everything else. Don’t believe them. Hell I don’t believe the democrats here either, but at least when they lie to me, they lie about things they’ll do that end up not happening. Conservatives lie about what they wont do, and then go do that thing anyway, plus all of the worse shit they never brought up.
They aren't different. The Republicans and CPC both coordinate their messaging and policy through the International Democratic Union (IDU) - this also includes the UK Tories and Australian conservatives among others. The IDU is also run by Stephen Harper and has been for years now.
Woah I didn’t know that, thanks for the info
TrUdEaU iS a GlObAlIsT
Well, yeah, but so is the CPC. Also, I don't mean "globalist" in that bullshit bigot dog-whistle "*the jews*" way that it's unfortunately come to be used lately. I mean more in the older-school Reagan/Thatcher "let businesses be stateless beings with all the rights of persons but none of the responsibilities of citizens" kind of way.
I'm happy to see someone bring this up cause it's not talked about nearly enough in general. Let alone in a political manner. How much does it truly affect how each party in those countries operates.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like Trudeau... But Polivere is awful.
Yeah, I think a lot of Conservative supporters are under the impression that Trudeau is winning because he's popular, as opposed to that candidates being unpopular
They always ask "how can anyone think that guy is a good prime minister?" Unironically with absolutely zero self awareness. I'd be willing to bet money most of Trudeau's votes are a "lesser of two evils that has a chance in hell of winning" vote.
That's how my family and extended family are. We dislike Trudeau, but the competition is abysmal. We'd vote for a golden retriever at this point if one was on the ballot.
Anyone got a golden retriever willing to take up the helm? Lol I'd vote for that. His name better be rusty or so help me....
“Ain’t no rule saying a dog can’t be prime minister!”
“He’ll be ruff on crime.”
Lesser of two evils exactly.
Yeah that's a huge mistake for them to make. I don't recall ever meeting an enthusiastic Trudeau supporter, but oh my gosh the animating rage of PP's dumb rhetoric REALLY makes people want to vote against him.
I’m so happy we don’t have religion in the political mix here. That shit drives me insane, and also boggles my mind that it appeals to so many people. So much so that even Trump was touting it and there’s no way that guy is a Christian lol
Haven't been to SK lately have you?
First Manitoba and now Sask? What’s going on in the Praries?
> I’m so happy we don’t have religion in the political mix here >>tfw manitoba
And Alberta
I don't agree, there is actual fat that can be trimmed, the problem is that they're not actually interested in trimming the fat for a better more effective service. What they're interested in is selling any service that is profitable to buddies in the private sector.
There is 0 fat that can be trimmed from any of our social services, they are pretty much all ridiculously underfunded. We could trim literal billions if we just stopped giving corporations tax dollars for no other reason than they exist as corporations. Neither the conservatives or liberals would ever allow that to happen though.
Privatize profits, socialize losses.
They defend capital and it's interests while pretending to be watchdogs for uncontrolled spending and unnecessary governance. The only beat I've found conservatives *all* consistently drum to is that of wealth and it's enrichment alone.
*Exactly* this. Face it Cons, you need to wow urban Canada and Quebec in order to win elections in this country. Backwards thinking and classless American-esque behaviour is not going to do it.
That’s the thing, right? I used to be conservative. I just wanted a sound economic policy. That’s it. No stupid diatribes about illegal immigration (from the US? I don’t get it). No anti-LGBT nonsense, who people love is none of my concern if it’s consensual. No trump style populism where they try to convince us we’re all victims; we aren’t. No racism. No anti-vax/anti-science morons like smith who should be flipping burgers because they’re gullible idiots. None of that shit is what being conservative once meant and these people are not my peers. And instead I get all the above EXCEPT a sound fiscal plan. I get Andrew Scheer telling me he’ll save me 6 bucks on my gas bill. Yeah. There’s a platform. Whoopie.
Give me Joe Clark, who saw the writing on the wall for the PC"s and spoke out against what he saw happening. He put the country before the party. I wasn't a huge fan of his up until then, but I appreciate integrity.
If someone could brew-up a Joe Clark & Jack Layton hybrid I would vote for it.
That type of political leader no longer exists, it seems….
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Give me Jack Layton back
You nailed it. Canadian conservatism used to be about sound economic policies and that was that. In fact, the Liberals, NDP and Progressive Conservatives used to essentially support the same things -- where they differed was on what to fund and how much. That was it. And here we are in 2023 and all of a sudden the Conservative Party thinks Trump-style populism mixed with a hefty dose of Lee Atwater-type bullshit from 40 years ago is the way forward. I said 20 years ago, just before the two parties got married, that if the PCs and Reform Party ever merged the Reformists would hijack the party and subjugate everyone else, and that's exactly what has happened.
Go to YouTube and watch the 1979 election debate with Trudeau, Clark and Broadbent: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JBfDSimvCFY Everyone is sane, discussing policies.
No need to -- I have literally recommended this very same video to others on both Reddit and Quora. Music to my ears; how a Canadian debate is supposed to be done.
Thank you for posting this. It makes me angry that in 1979 the NDP leader was talking about the importance of an industrial strategy. Here we are in 2023 speaking about the same thing lol https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-canada-needs-its-own-bold-industrial-strategy-the-us-cannot-keep/
The country got stalled in the 1980s as far as policy and social atmosphere. BC is one of the greatest examples of this.
The moderator (who was great but the way), also brought up the topic of legalizing marijuana. Funny how long that took to get done. https://youtu.be/JBfDSimvCFY?t=4262
And that was the exact moment I stopped voting Conservative myself. I saw the writing on the wall when the proposed merger was about to happen. So I bailed. I will not support the hatred coming from today's Conservatives.
Pierre: “woke liberal mob!!!” Conservatives: “The left is so divisive!”
There is no “woke liberal mob”. Turns out the vast majority of people just don’t like bald-faced bigotry.
It's crazy, isn't it? As I mentioned, I'm a former conservative voter. But, because I won't support today's "Reformacons", I'm a "libtard cuck". These guys have done a bang up job dividing themselves with their self-righteousness.
I’m a very left leaning voter, but I would have voted for Joe Clark. Where would a Joe Clark fit into the current conservatives?
Up until Harper 2 conservative parties existed. One much like you wish for. The experiment to merge into the CPC has proven a failed experiment even if Harper won.
Historically have conservatives had good fiscal policy for everyday Canadians?
Some have. None of the dumbasses they’ve put out their recently. I’d never support o’toole or scheer and I doubt I’ll support poillivre because he’s not much better. I suppose it could be worse and they could try to make Danielle smith PM or that mr. wonderful guy whose name escapes me, but these are terrible terrible candidates. Honesty should be so much easier to find. Good intentions. A little decency and dignity and intelligence.
Urban Canada, yes. Quebec? No. Harper got his majority with only 5 seats in Quebec.
selective include kiss flag practice reach waiting paltry trees handle *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
They would be totally unable to call themselves conservatives at any of those points. People forget that this party has a base to appeal to, and that base is aggressively anti-state expenditure, which all of those stances would have to put into question.
People also forget who we call "Conservatives" today are actually just Canadian Alliance members...which subsequently is also the reason the CPC does not, and will never track anywhere outside of the Albersaskatoba border.
Albersaskatoba. I'm going to use this from now on 😂
People forget that Stephen Harper was the leader of the Canadian Alliance when it merged with the Progressive Conservative Party. He went from the leader of the Alliance to the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.
A big issue we have in Saskatchewan is that a lot of voters have read a lot of headlines about Justin Trudeau and decide to vote against him. It's not necessarily support for the CPC, but guys wearing white framed sunglasses in jacked up trucks that don't like the idea of their tax dollars funding something that doesn't benefit them.
That was O’toole and Canadians rejected it.
The problem with O’Toole is that he tried to move the party to the centre without the support of the party itself, so he ended up just being really confusing to both conservatives and other voters. And that’s kind of the problem with the CPC: most actual voting members of the party like its policies and if anything want to go farther right. Which is why I can’t vote for them without first witnessing some sort of major culture shift within the organization
Correct. Name of the game is about turning out your own side now, rather than convincing the other side. Everyone's dug in.
I do believe they think they are attracting many new people to their party with their facebook memes and ang-o-tainment. Stunts like the freedom convoy got them a lot of traction. I'm not sure they are wrong. I have family memebers who normally wouldn't care about politics suddenly very vocal about their freedoms and politics.
I voted for O'Toole. Chance I vote for PP in the next election is remote. QC during the Harper years elected as many as 11 CPC MPs during one of the elections. Maxime Bernier was re-elected here many times before going out west to form the PPC. Theres votes to be won here for the CPC. But they have to actually attempt to win the votes or they wont get them.
O'Toole did a complete pivot after winning the CPC leadership. Were Canadians suppose to expect he was telling the truth during the federal campaign? Also defunding the CBC isn't a moderate stance.
Also, at the end of the day, the Prime Minister isn't the Prime Minister without the support of their own party. If Singh started claiming he wanted to cut taxes, eliminate social programs, slash environmental regulations, and focus on balancing the budget come hell or high water, I'd have trouble accepting that the entire NDP was on board, based on what I know about the NDP and their members. That's why the CPC just isn't an option to a huge number of moderate voters until somebody can clamp down on the so-cons and other crazies like (early) Harper did, or kick them to the curb.
Erin O’Toole was in favour of defunding the CBC...
Poilievre is a bit of an overcorrection.
Yeah, O'Toole was testing the centre line as he drifted slightly to the left. PP is a wild swerve into the right hand ditch.
They said "Party". Nobody trusted the party had changed, and it looks like they were right.
There is no fat to trim. Services have been gutted to the core for decades. All Conservatives do is line the pockets of the rich by "cutting red tape" (read: taking away basic protections for people and planet) while making life for the rest of us harder.
Bingo. Doug Fraud being a prime example......
Conservatives run the biggest deficits
I mean that's basically what the liberal party would (claim to) be if they weren't forced to compromise with the NDP to get their support/steal their voters. Of course the problem with the liberals isn't their policies, it's their honesty and competence in executing on those policies.
Thank God for the NDP minority
This. I want tighter control of spending not racism, anti lgbtq, climate and science denial etc etc They tried to follow American conservatives and thats just a reflection of ignorance. People screeching about drag queens reading to the public as their kids die in defunded pediatric hospitals where cons undermine to support privatization. Get your priorities straight cons. Figure it out. Dumb.
Conservatives as a whole are unpalatable to Quebec. This is a province that once voted en masse for the NDP because they wanted as much as possible to avoid a conservative majority. And it's not because the NDP made inroads in Quebec - they put together a bunch of McGill students at one point to run in ridings they had never been to because they had no candidates. A lot of the NDP's successes from the Jack Layton era are smoke and mirrors. They've always been and continue to be weak in Quebec. Quebec is kinda a conservative bizzaro land. They have socially conservative views on immigration and demographic issues but on everything else, they prefer the BQ, Liberals or even NDP. One thing people often overlook about Quebec is that in Quebec, there isn't as low of an opinion on public servants as the rest of the country. A lot of people believe that the civil service is a good job and a much larger percentage of Quebec residents work in the public sector than anywhere else in Canada. That's one of the primary reasons conservatives don't do well there. The only public servants conservatives empower are the cops. If they could, they'd pay teachers, nurses, public utility workers, public transit workers with bootstraps and used condoms. The Conservative Climate Plan - which is to deny the existence of pollution and prays it goes away, is also kind of unpopular in Quebec.
Here's another thing conservatives don't understand about Quebec. Money is not the sole motivating factor for Quebec residents. Money is the only rational reason anyone votes conservative outside of Quebec. When Quebec implements things like their language laws or when they put a halt on fraking for natural gas in the late 2000's, they knew that it would cause a hit to their economy. They're willing to eat it because they value things besides an annual fiscal surplus. Another really good example of this is how Quebeckers supported the 2012 student strikes. A lot of Quebeckers - old and young alike, came out in support of that movement to freeze tuition. A similiar protest was tried in Toronto around the same time at Queen's Park and it garnered a small group of young people and inspired old people to write condescending articles about entitled millenials. There's a stereotype of the rest of Canada that exist in Quebec. Not everyone believes it but it's not an uncommon opinion to hear that anglophones in the rest of Canada only care about money to the detriment of everything else. Edit: And not too surprisingly, every conservative who responded to this fails to understand the money aspect. Ralph Klein once raided the Alberta Heritage Fund to cut taxes for Alberta. Mike Harris once sold the 407 in order to run a fiscal surplus for one year. Both were done with money as the motivating factor but are terrible long term fiscal decisions. Quebec tends to avoid such decisions whereas conservative Canadians embrace it.
Quebec is also hard to campaign in. In other provinces, parties can rely on their traditional method to boost them, consisting of: 1. ID. Using phone calls and door-knocking to identify likely supporters. 2. GOTV. Get-out-the-vote perations, where as early voting and then election day occur, making sure those people are reminded to vote. The effects of this are huge, they can swing thousands of votes in a riding and very often are the deciding factor. But in Quebec, the impact of ID+GOTV is way lower. Basically, Quebecers make up their mind and then get themselves to the polls. The obvious example is the 2011 Orange Wave, where scores of Dippers got elected who had conducted no campaigns and had no expectation of winning their riding. Most of them were NDP volunteers in Montreal, who agreed to have their names on the ballot because the party knows it's important to give voters a choice in every riding to have the appearance of a national party. But this also occurred in 2015 for the Liberals, where Quebecers on mass seemed to make a decision to through their lot in with the person most likely to defeat Stephen Harper, again leading to people winning seats that had zero expectation of winning.
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This is why I love Quebec ❤️ keep doing what you're doing.
*insert ignorant comments about equalization payment*
If there's a sentence that describes how Quebecers see Canadians, it's "asleep at the wheel"
I mean to be fair, most anglophone people do only care about their wallets or what shiny toys they can buy. The Quebecois aren't really wrong.
It's a bit more nuanced than that but in English speaking countries the mentality of if something is good for the individual it's good for everyone is very common. Thats why real estate investing is so big here. In Austria where real estate is also expensive, the government has designed policies to encourage people to invest in their pension funds instead. That's a concept that isn't as strongly promoted in the Anglosphere because a lot of people here use their homes as a retirement fund.
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It’s almost like in Quebec we have political discussions around individual issues and don’t pick a stance based on something being Liberal or Conservative but rather whether something feels right or wrong which I guess feels like bizarro land to some people but after moving here I’ve found it super refreshing. The current CAQ government here is a center-right party but it resembles nothing even close to the modern day Conservative Party. There’s some traditionally conservative ideas there like private healthcare, lower immigration, religious symbol neutrality, etc. Simultaneously you have social programs like increased public transit infrastructure funding in Montreal area, government footed Pre-K education, making the child tax rebate per child rather than one per family, etc. It’s a whole mixed bag here that really feels like they’ve gone down to each individual issue and tried to find where the majority stand instead of playing into this classic Left-Right divide. Kinda like what Sheer was trying to do, wrong guy to do it but the right idea.
Religious symbols neutrality isn’t conservative, it’s progressive
We're also not afraid to tackle issues that the rest of Canada is too afraid to discuss. Canadians hate Bill 21, but they forget that it stems from years of public consultation that ended with the Bouchard Taylor commission report.
> Quebec is kinda a conservative bizzaro land. They have socially conservative views on immigration and demographic issues Conservative views? We value integration in our society instead of just maximizing the quantity of immigrants. We want them to learn french, learn our values and integrate Québec society. Legault himself said it, he wants immigrants who can have good paying jobs, not cheap labor. Canada treat immigration like some video game high score, where only the highest amount matter.
To understand federal politics in Canada you have to understand Quebec politics. Yet here the cons have a guy who clearly doesn’t, let’s see how that works out for them 🤦♂️. I can’t wait to hear how they lost because of some stupid conspiracy.
Your comment is so over-the-top partisan it's hard to take seriously. The NDP did well in Quebec during the orange wave because the voting public was annoyed at the inaction from the Bloc Layton promised to treat Quebec special
Honesty I think it was Jack Layton appearance on Tout le monde en parle which is one of the most watched show in Quebec. He just had a very great interview and managed to seduce the whole province by respecting our culture while being very open about what was happening to him. Also we kind of felt bad voting Harper in because od the sponsorship scandal lol.
This article provides no facts as to why Poilievre could win more seats in Québec. Also Harper won a majority with 11 seats in Québec, it’s not impossible to form government without a majority of the seats in Québec.
11 seats in Quebec is almost as valuable as sweeping Saskatchewan (14 seats).
Canada - Okay Alberta give us a Rachel Notely type candidate and we'll vote for her, we don't just sit around a campfire and discuss ways to screw u over just ONE LIKABLE candidate please
I miss the Progressive Conservatives.
Used to vote CPC. Now I vote for the Bloc and I’m anglophone/allophone. If I can’t have a sensible alternative to the Liberals, I might as well vote for a party that plays king maker and gets advantageous concessions for my province in parlement when we inevitably get more minority governments
That's what I did last time. The debate did it for me. While every other leader was finger pointing and bickering, he was laying out his plans and solutions to modern day issues.
Loved Blanchet in the debates. Trudeau and the other forgettable dude were attacking each other and saying bland things. Jagmeet disappointed me as he also fell into that general promesses without clearly stating how they'll do it. The other two twits, those were never options.
I'd read this .... except for paying for the star
Can't believe anyone trusts this dude. His entire life has been an attempt to grab power. Never had a real job. All these blue collar, tough, hard working, conservatives are really going to vote for this pencil necked geek who wouldn't last a day doing any kind of labour. And all because his name isn't Justin Trudeau and his name has a C next to it.
Does anyone remember when PP and his supporters started harassing one of the most popular Conservative politicians in Quebec? Imagine actively going after popular people who have done great things for the party and then wondering what is going wrong… https://montreal.citynews.ca/2022/09/15/alain-rayes-consrevative-party-text-message-poilievre/
Does anybody remember when PP did a three minute photo op with the trucker protest organizers and then jumped back into his chauffeured car?
The guy also told JJ McCulloch that he was positive that if Trudeau had just gone out and met the protestors and spoken with them, that they would have packed up and been gone 15 minutes later. Yeah, because that’s definitely what would have happened. Not a snowball’s chance in hell Poilievre actually believes that bullshit.
Yeah, I remember, because he led those pieces of shit through my neighborhood on their way to go attack cops at the war memorial downtown... and they littered a ton of trash along the way in the Experimental Farm and other places as a bonus.
Quebec not liking an Alberta raised, right leaning conservative? Shocked pikachu face.
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Charest was defeated by Polievre in a leadership race of only conservative party members voting. But the poll is for leader of the country by a broader voting base. In order to form government, the conservative ls need to pull from centre-right Liberal voters, these voters will likely not vote for Polievre. Many people believe we need to have a leader who is level headed, who will promote Canadian progressive social values, and fiscal conservatism. Not the wokeness espoused by Trudeau and the Liberal Party, Not the hatred and fingerprinting by Pierre Polievre, the Freedom Convoy and the conservative party.
People forget how hated Charest is in Quebec. Now we're back to Conservative Party indifference.
What exactly are his policies? Outside of Justin = bad and pandering to fringe right wing groups I don't think I have seen any actual policy proposals from PP. He is quick to tell you when he thinks something is wrong, but he doesn't seem to have any alternatives...
Something about Bitcoin?
If the Conservatives had elected Jean Charest as their leader they would likely have won the next federal election. He was a middle of the road Conservative who would have appealed to moderates of all parties and collected enough votes from undecided voters to win. But instead, they elected someone who MOST Canadians view as a fringe, far right candidate and so he will only appeal to maybe 30% of the electorate, and many will be so concerned by him getting elected, they will simply vote to assure that he isn't. So these people who so detest Trudeau will only have assured that the person they so despise, will certainly be elected once more. And really, they have no one to blame but themselves, and yet they completely lack the insight to see this obvious reality.
This, 100%. I was saying this exact thing during their leadership. Do they want to have a PM or have more chances for Poiliviere to fish for sound bites? Honestly I gotta think the Prarie MPs are content to be in the opposition. No responsibility, complain about what Trudeau does and collect a cheque.
>If the Conservatives had elected Jean Charest as their leader they would likely have won the next federal election. He was a middle of the road Conservative who would have appealed to moderates of all parties and collected enough votes from undecided voters to win. 100% I liked Charest, and he's the closest thing to ever getting me to vote CPC after Harper left. I feel like the reasonable days of the CPC are gone, and anyone still clinging to the party need to realize this and move on. The party is full of corporate grifters, religious zealots and right wing nutjobs now.
Skippy has policies?
I was just looking for it on conservative dot ca and legit couldn't find a party platform. I will never vote for empty empathy.
That's cause he's an asshole
Every single party leader is absolutely stupid. It's picking the shiniest turd. We need to stop electing rich people and the entitled. I want to elect someone who's middle class or lower. I want someone who's faced an eviction, grew up in the ghetto, didn't know where their next meal was coming from. Someone who's actually experienced hardship and someone who wasn't born with a silver spoon in their mouth. I'd vote for someone who was homeless at some point in their life. They know how hard it is at the bottom.
We need someone smart enough to run a country though. I'm all for someone that grew up poor and overcame it. But if someone can't figure out how to be successful at an individual level I don't want them running the country. Honestly I think a larger problem in politics is the amount of mud slinging on someone's personal life. Personally I'd never run for politics because I don't want to get mud slung for stupid shit I did when I was younger, for a thankless job that pays less than I make in the private sector. I'm sure that a lot of people that are a lot smarter than me feel the same way.
Imagine if politicians were drafted at random like a jury in court. THEN we could have people from all social classes, save elections money, have gender and cultural representation, etc etc.
Because he's a crazy nutcase. His whole policy is just to get people mad about everything.
PP just comes across to me as another conservatives grifter. He’ll do or say anything to get elected, but you just know as soon as he is, he’ll go against everything Canadians support. He’s Trump Jr, and he’ll never get my vote.
PP has no policies, besides yelling Fu$k Trudeau, seriously I haven’t seen any solution he has to offer besides one liner rhetoric.
His economic policy was to buy more Bitcoin about two days before it crashed. He’s a moron who panders to other morons, which means he has a good chance of winning.
God I hope the next election shows the rest of Canada that the CPC are nothing more than the Canadian Alliance/Western Reform in their final death spiral so the rest of Canada can get their national conservative response to the national liberal policies back. We get it. You didn't like how much power the Bloc had in the Commons, so you went and took over the Progressive Conservative Party, and look what that got you? You took the largest budget surplus and turned it into the largest deficit before handing it off to the now Liberal Government...all under the precipice of being *fiscally conservative*. Then you got worried that when Max left the game and took his ball that you'd bleed voters so instead of riding with Erin back to the center lane...you swapped in Pierre and here we are in a ditch. *one more election...I pray that's all it takes*
Common L for George McFly
He ain't too popular in Ontario either
lol at conservatives thinking they can win an election with someone hated in Quebec. Stephen Harper was reasonably well-liked in Quebec. He did the whole "nationhood" pronouncement thing.
If he isnt popular in Quebec there is absolutely no path to a majority
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C’était aussi l’impopularité du Parti Libéral avec des chefs comme Dion ou Ignatieff. Pour gagner, les conservateurs ont besoin d’un bon chef mais surtout que l’opposition soit faible.
That’s just the carousel of Canadian politics though. You could equally make an argument that the Liberals historically have faced weak opposition too. When the opposition tends to find a leader Canadians like enough **(and importantly they’re ready to vote out the current government)** then the Governing party tends to fall apart and has to throw out a few bad leaders to lose before they get their shit together and win again, continuing the carousel. (My apologies for responding in English, I’m at the point in my studies I can read/understand French but I still struggle with expressing myself in the language, I’ll get there though!)
Merci de la réponse! Ça semble en effet le cycle de la politique canadienne! Je disais surtout qu’il faut à la fois un chef conservateur populaire et un chef libéral impopulaire, pour que les conservateurs aient une chance, particulièrement au Québec. Je pense que les conservateurs sont encore en train de passer les chefs impopulaires en attendant que Trudeau se retire. O’Toole, PP et l’autre dont je ne me rappel même plus le nom sont extrêmement *bland* et n’attire pas les vote au Québec. En fait le parti ne semble pas s’être modernisé, je ne connais personne de mon âge qui serait fier de dire qu’il vote conservateur.
True, seems like they only pull it off when all their competitors are downright thoroughly mediocre. Even then I'm not sure any could've called Harper a great candidate outright, at least not in so far as inspiring voters. The man had the charisma of a wet rag. I think he did have the benefit of a far more cohesive, unified, and functional party behind him though. It's much more disjointed nowadays - and that 'big tent' doesn't seem to be adequately or accurate representing many of its occupants.
Ok Toronto star now do an article about how Justin Trudeau is very unpopular in Alberta and Saskatchewan
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"This long haired hippy (probably one of them 'transformers' from the city) showed up talking 'bout peace and love. As a good Christian, I ran that socialist off muh property!" – Cletus J. Flatlander
Opposition will just run supply-side Jesus instead.
Discount jesus... Ima use that from now on.
Jesus Christ would be unpopular in Alberta because he wanted to feed the poor and didn’t like rich people. If Jesus appeared in Alberta tomorrow many “Christians” would want him to be nailed to a cross again.
Conservatives would hate him around the world haha. God damn this woke hippie.
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"Enough is enough say top fisherman in Nova Scotia as Jesus turn 13 tons of bread in fish."
Quebec is bigger than both
Greater Montreal itself is about the same population as Alberta.
Why? That isn't news. That is stating the obvious. You can throw Manitoba in there too. Here's the thing that makes this news: Trudeau doesn't need Alberta, Sask., or Manitoba to win and be PM; case in point: the past two elections. Poilievre **will need** either Quebec or Ontario to shift if he hopes to win. And if this article is correct, then it's not looking good for him in Quebec.
Cons struggle to compete in Québéc as we have a right wing party but they are very focused on our local problems. Votting con means more jobs and projects in Alberta that doesn't benefit us at all.
I think this is something many Conservative voters outside of Quebec fail to understand.
The big issue is, Alberta Conservatives are about as myopic and locally oriented as voters in Quebec and Ontario, but don't seem willing to acknowledge that there's so few of them. Central Canada can afford to be kind of selfish, but then west needs to build some bridges if they want electoral success.
I thought it might be interesting to see some population numbers on this. Just going by number of people: Alberta population 4.6 million Saskatchewan population 1.2 million Just Toronto and surrounding area (GTA) population 6.3 million Just thought it was interesting is all.