Roundup: “Canada First” is mostly just Poilievre’s greatest “hits”

Posted on by

Pierre Poilievre had his “Canada First” rally on Flag Day, Saturday, and in front of a crowd of about 800 in the smallest room in the Rogers Convention Centre in Ottawa, laid out his new vision of Canada, being the attempted pivot from just an “axe the tax” slogan, to the aforementioned “Canada First.” (Full speech transcript here). And aside from some newer talking points about retaliatory tariffs if Trump goes ahead, he nevertheless was incoherent even in his performative toughness. In saying that America has two options—a trade war, or an even deeper trade relationship with Canada, in the very same breath, he castigated the Liberals for “forcing” dependency on the American market for entirely bullshit reasons, with some revisionist history about the ghosts of energy project proposals past. Like, what? You say you want an even deeper relationship, but the Liberals were bad because they couldn’t force businesses and industry to divest from that market? What?

From there, it went into his greatest hits of stupid talking points, like his refrain about how we have the most land but aren’t building houses on it—as though we’re building residential subdivisions on the Canadian Shield or the Arctic tundra. He claimed he was right about everything, from the carbon levy to the capital gains changes (he wasn’t), and then played the victim about how nobody believed him but he was proven right. (He wasn’t). He went on some bullshit about pipeline projects that was, again, revisionist history, and then went on a tangent about the Canadian Pacific Railway and how Liberals wouldn’t get it done today. “Would some squeaky, keep-it-in-the-ground liberal cabinet minister like Guilbeault have chained himself to a tree to stop it?” My dude, do you know how many people died to make it happen? The dispossession of land, the immigrants coming over as indentured labour, those indentured immigrants blowing themselves up to create passageways through mountains? Seriously? Meanwhile, his promise to rapidly approve projects won’t actually get them built, and neither will bribing local First Nations with the promise of a greater share of royalties, and his vision of a west-east pipeline won’t change the economics.

https://twiiter.com/andrew_leach/status/1890058822175347027

There as more reheated nonsense about how he’s going to miraculously abolish interprovincial trade barriers with a magic wand. He promised to militarize the border, which is a Very Bad Thing. There was more rehashed tough-on-crime nonsense with repeated promises to repeal laws that have nothing to do with what he claims they do. He repeated his promise from last-week to unilaterally build a base in Iqaluit, with no input from the Inuit. And then it was the usual culture war bullshit, with the absolutely risible claims about how the Liberals “divide people by race, religion, gender, vaccine status.” No, they acknowledge that differences exist, that it’s not all middle-aged straight white men as the “neutral” and “norm.”

While centre-right pundits swooned at the notion that Poilievre was laying out a vision, he wasn’t really saying anything more than he’s been saying for the last two years, and all of it was vacuous noise. He was still playing it incredibly safe to avoid pissing off the MAGA supporters he’s trying to court so that they don’t go back to voting for Maxime Bernier, no matter how performatively tough he was about Trump’s threats, because he still had to mediate them with claiming that Trump was still right about the border and fentanyl (which he’s not). Apparently, nobody has actually paid attention to anything he’s said over those two years, but just instead paid attention to his churlish tone. (Oh, and I am also looking very askance at CBC for their credulously repeating everything he said without actually challenging any of it. That’s not journalism, guys, even if you’re stuck on the weekend shift).

https://bsky.app/profile/lindsaytedds.bsky.social/post/3licue34m6c2h

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine downed 33 out of 70 Russian drones overnight Friday, and an overnight drone attack on Saturday damaged a thermal power plant in Mykolaiv, leaving 100,000 people without power in subzero temperatures. Russian troops have also intensified their attacks toward Pokrovsk. Elsewhere, the ammunition acquisition programme on Ukraine’s behalf has delivered 1.6 million shells to date and is carrying on, while Emmanuel Macron is hosting an emergency European summit on Ukraine in the wake of JD Vance’s attack on liberal democracy.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau attended the final day of the Invictus Games in Vancouver with Prince Harry.
  • An internal report a year ago warned the government that if they didn’t push back about falsehoods about the border it would result in problems, and here we are.
  • Here is a deeper dive into trade deficits, and how the imbalance actually benefits the US given how highly leveraged they are with fiscal debt and deficits.
  • Canadian LGBTQ+ advocacy group EGALE is avoiding travel to the US, including a UN event, because of uncertainty thanks to Trump’s recent executive orders.
  • Mark Carney finally did a CBC interview and said he would run a deficit to invest in growing the economy, and claimed that Harper tried to tap him as finance minister.
  • There is a measles outbreak in BC’s lower mainland. Thanks, antivaxxers!
  • Kevin Carmichael marvels at the sudden willingness to tackle interprovincial trade barriers, and regulatory hurdles in general, hoping it will help spur productivity.
  • Senator Peter Boehm writes from the Munich Security Conference and how the Americans used it to attack liberal democracies in Europe vs Zelenskyy’s address.
  • Dan Gardner looks at the drive to create the international rules-based order after the horrors of WWI, versus Trump and company rushing to pull it all down.
  • Susan Delacourt notices that Poilievre is still signalling to the “convoy” crowd, as their hero Trump is in ascendance in the US.
  • Delacourt also remarks on the changing poll numbers for Carney and Poilievre, and how Trump is forcing the landscape to change even more dramatically.
  • Likewise, David Moscrop also notes that Trump has changed the calculus of what was supposed to be a “change election.”

Odds and ends:

Want more Routine Proceedings? Become a patron and get exclusive new content.