M. Grégoire@rainer
I'm feeling tempted to defend PM Trudeau's progressive bona fides...
Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸@mpjgregoire @rainer @zazzoo @Em0nM4stodon his government will certainly be seen as more progressive than Carney's
@chris
Yes, I'm much happier with the Carney government, though there's still plenty of room to improve.
Zazzoo 🇨🇦@mpjgregoire One side effect of Carney, however, is the CPC being forced to differentiate themselves on social policy. Not to be putting you on the spot, but also out of curiosity, what do you think of Poilievere's chances of staying on as leader beyond January if all he's really got left is his DEI [sic] vendetta?
@zazzoo
1. I listened to a podcast with David Coletto last week in which he discussed Pierre Poilievre's popularity. He pointed out that, while many Canadians have a strong negative view of Mr. Poilievre, there is a significant number who strongly support him. Let us not forget that the #CPC won 41% of the votes in #elxn45, the highest for the Right since 1984. Why has he had such high support?
1/n
@zazzoo
From the start of his leadership campaign, Mr. Poilievre has appealed to the many Canadians who feel the country is broken: that they're worse off than their parents, that they can't afford homes of their own, that many more Canadians are homeless, that crime is up, that the system is rigged against them. (You may say that these are misperceptions, but perhaps you'd agree that many Canadians do feel that way.)
2/n
@zazzoo
As you may recall, the initial reaction of the Liberals to the "Canada feels broken" message was to deny that there was any problem. So people with such beliefs have identified strongly with Mr. Poilievre and still back the #CPC; https://338canada.com/federal.htm shows the party has about 40% support. Mr. Coletto polled about other potential leaders for the #CPC: they all did worse.
3/n
@zazzoo
To answer your question then, yes, it appears that unless the affordability crisis is resolved, or Mr. Poilievre drops the issue, he has a strong base of support among voters and within the party. PM Carney has some policies, economic and otherwise, that conservatives support, but I don't think his recent budget shows a focus on affordability -- unless you're buying a yacht ;-).
4/n
@zazzoo
2. As I argued above, Mr. Poilievre's key issue is affordability, not DEI. Other people on the Right care more strongly about DEI than he does: his politics have always been more about liberty and economics. So far as social issues go, expect the #CPC to focus on crime. Many Canadians (and almost all conservatives) want to see a stricter justice system, and the Liberals will not stand up against the bien-pensant on that issue.
5/5
@mpjgregoire Thank you for the summary. It's nice to see it in a conservative framing.
There are a couple issues when it comes to Poilievre I would think would give pause to classic conservatives.
1 - Pandering to the far-right and echoing MAGA talking points. Even granting that he focuses mostly on economics, he seems to have nothing against throwing vulnerable populations under the bus. And a lot of what he says seems to echo MAGA extremists in the US. In what is just the latest example, they spread disinformation about DEI programs, he goes after 'DEI' here without even translating to Canadian terminology or implementation.
2 - He's a volcano of empty rhetoric. Poilievre's solution is always tax cuts. If he were serious about affordability he would look for ways to reduce costs rather than bribing people with their own money while gutting the services people rely on. That's more a policy stance, yes, but a lot comes down to his delivery as leader.
@zazzoo
1. You and I see different media. Looking at Mr. Poilievre's Twitter feed, YouTube channel, what I read in the National Post and hear on CBC, the only two "culture war" type issues I've come across in the last month are about chaplains' prayers for Remembrance Day and the Supreme Court's ruling about minimum sentences for possessers of CSAM (in both cases, he's right to object). Mostly it's inflation, jobs, affordability and high government spending.
1/n
@zazzoo
Is that MAGA? Seems like regular conservative rhetoric to me. You can probably find rhetoric that's less in the normal conservative style and more MAGA if you look for it, but that's not representative of the man.
2. DEI means different things to different people. You may think it means fairness, understanding cultural differences, and being alert to prejudice; conservatives think of e.g. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/can-job-postings-in-canada-exclude-white-people-short-answer-yes . Many people oppose the latter.
2/n
@zazzoo
3. When conservatives look at problems in society, one of the first questions we ask is, "Is this partially government-caused? Let's end counterproductive policies first, and then see if there's something we should do." Taking the housing affordability issue as an example, conservatives see supply not meeting demand, and both are the result of bad policy: increases in immigration numbers on the one hand and fees/restrictions on housing on the other.
3/n
@zazzoo
So the #CPC policy to make housing more affordable included tax cuts, yes, but also involved cutting immigration numbers back towards what they had been in the Harper years, and forcing municipalities to make building easier by threatening to cut off federal transfers to them. It's not only tax cuts, but the solution to many problems in Canada is more about pruning away unhealthy policies than adding new programmes.
4/4
@mpjgregoire We could argue about whether supply-side incentives are adequate in addressing affordability when markets demand prices cannot go down and there is no room for wage increases. But let's focus on Poilievre the culture warrior.
He declared war on woke and promises to hold back funding for universities - with no definition of the word. In the US this has played out as "anything MAGA doesn't like." This is politicization of our education system.
Anti-EDI we talked about. A great number of private corporations have embraced diversity programs and see value in a workforce that mirrors society. Examples such the one cited by NatPo are exceedingly rare and yet provide a cudgel against the entire concept.
His politicization of our medical, mental health systems through his opposition to puberty blockers for trans youth is politicization of our medical system.
And it's about timing also. Most of his culture statements coincide with similar talk south of the border.
1/2
Compressed the language as much as possible but still ran out of room. Here are some links:
Poilievre and anti-woke military mirroring US rhetoric:
https://www.conservative.ca/cpc/a-warrior-culture-not-a-woke-culture/
Poilievre's opposition to puberty blockers:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-pierre-poilievre-puberty-blockers-minors/
Poilievre's promise to defund woke universities:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/federal-election-2025/article/pierre-poilievre-says-hell-end-woke-ideology-he-isnt-saying-what-that-means/
Poilievre is not aware of there being more than two genders:
https://halifax.citynews.ca/2025/01/22/poilievre-not-aware-of-more-than-two-genders-says-there-are-other-priorities/
Poilievre and pronatalism:
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2025/04/08/Poilievre-Biological-Clock-Talk/
Edit to add:
Poilievre's plan to defund "anti-semitic wokeism":
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/terry-newman-poilievres-plan-to-defund-woke-antisemitism-cant-come-soon-enough
2/2
@zazzoo
OTOH, from the CityNews link:
"Poilievre was then asked whether he would ask the U.S. to recognize the gender-neutral “X” marker available on Canadian passports, Poilievre pivoted to talking about the cost of living instead. He said other politicians can discuss gender identity while he prioritizes ensuring Canadians are able to afford everyday essentials."
More generally, how reasonable it is to be anti-woke depends entirely on what one means by "woke".
@zazzoo
And let me address the comment that "markets won't let housing prices go down". That's a decision of politics, not markets. In free markets, prices go up and down depending on supply and demand. The unwillingness for housing prices to go down is a desire of many homeowners, which results in their backing politicians who resist lower housing prices. For instance, https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2025/05/15/canada-housing-minister-home-prices/ (I believe he clarified his position later.)
@mpjgregoire @chris @rainer @Em0nM4stodon Of course it's a political decision, I'm not suggesting otherwise. The thing is that a reduction of housing prices wipes away homeowners' equity, as you say, creates a sense of unfairness where people end up holding a mortgage in homes that aren't worth the debt they've committed to it. Banks don't like it as it destroys the value of their collateral. Developers don't like it as it cuts their return on investment. And the government itself doesn't like it because a 'housing market crash' leaves them open to criticism when discussing their economic performance.
So given that nobody, not Poilievre or anybody else, is actually going to literally 'reduce the price of homes' - what is an affordability plan if it doesn't also address wages?
@zazzoo
Let me say that I would be happy if my house price were to fall by 50%, if that meant that rents in Montréal would fall correspondingly. It's not as if I did anything to deserve the increase in value that I've seen over the last ten years, and I'm not relying on it either.
I think that policies should aim at that sort of reduction, but I don't expect any politicians to describe their policies that way. They need to highlight the advantages.
@mpjgregoire I am also a homeowner, and I strongly agree with you on this point.
Erin Dalzell (He/Him) 🇨🇦@mpjgregoire @zazzoo @rainer @Em0nM4stodon until you remove speculation and treating housing as a ROI rather than shelter, all the supply in the world won’t matter because there will be infinite pressure to bring immigrants/investors in to buy those new homes and ever increasing prices.
Neither the Conseevatives or Liberals have acknowledged this. The NDP has scratched the surface but for the most fall into the same trap.
Just an aside :)
@zazzoo
For further analysis of the polling regarding #PierrePoilievre and possible successors, I recommend watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQYeHlHZ4C0
(You might want to turn up the playback speed though.)
