Relevant to the above: if anyone here doubts that the Canadian mainstream media is full of disingenuous hit-pieces against Pierre Poilievre, I invite you to read Andrew Coyne's article today about the proposed changes to self-defence laws. Coyne grips his pearls so tight his head nearly pops off, while totally misrepresenting the modest change in onus proposed using dreaded comparisons to scary US "castle doctrine" - while this same proposal has been criticized elsewhere as not really changing much at all.
I'm not sure what advice you give to a politician in an environment where no matter what the guy says, it will be misrepresented in an "asshole" direction by most of the country's media, and if he moderates he just looks weaker as well.
The situation was perfect when he was massively ahead in the polls due to Trudeau's unpopularity and lack of the Trump Factor: he could just tell the MSM to go fuck themselves and look forward to defunding. Unfortunately when the race got closer outlets like the Globe and Mail and CTV got their revenge by pushing 24/7 Trump and meaningless "elbows up" nonsense leading (directly IMHO) to his downfall.
For decades, Coyne was my all-time fave Canadian journalist. I can't even read his tweets now, let alone a whole article by him. Should have retired before people started wishing he'd retire.
I think he is one of those whose 'brains got broken' during Covid. Seldom had an issue with him before a few years ago - seemed like a reasonably thoughtful columnist. He's gone down the hole of total derangement when it comes to anything Conservative or conservative recently. He had some surprisingly good stuff on democratic decline in Canada a few weeks ago but that was way out of the norm for his content these days.
The Globe has like half a dozen featured columnists with the exact same "can do no right" take on Poilievre. Pretty much all of them except maybe Robyn Urback (who is just equally cynical about all the parties).
I think Coyne started with Trump, then went downhill from there. He was always one of those journalists that I would read even if I disagreed with him on a particular issue because he always articulated his argument so well. It's sad to see what he's become. Agreed on Urback, but I can't access a lot of her stuff because it's behind the Globe paywall. I used to have a workaround, but don't anymore. And I try not to subscribe to media that are gov-subsidized. I figure I should automatically get access haha.
I'll keep this vague but a lot of 'questionable' plugins that got removed from browser extension stores are still available if you search around. Just requires a bit of manual side-loading.
Why would you want to read paywalled articles without paying for them? I gather this could come across as hopelessly old-fashioned, but don’t you think taking something you haven’t paid for is stealing?
Poilievre reaffirmed that he was an impulsive rage-farmer the moment that he decided to rewrite a criminal law in response to a single case, a case that we do not even know is going to end in a protracted trial, let alone a criminal conviction. It is common sense that you do not rush changes to law in response to potentially-fringe exceptions when the systematic impacts of the law at large should be carefully scrutinized.
It is stunts like these that prove how ignorant Poilievre is on public policy.
To more directly address the substance of your arguments: you are claiming that Coyne has misrepresented Poilievre, but neither you nor Poilievre are citing what the actual text of existing law actually is. Who is doing the misrepresentation here?
It's common sense that you presumptively should not be charged if someone breaks into your home with criminal intent and you treat them to a chest full of buckshot for their trouble.
The existing law involves a 9-element test and in practice results in defenders being charged far too often in a system where the process is so onerous that it often overlaps 100% with the punishment even when someone is guilty and far greater when they aren't.
Here's what Poilievre said: that he would change (s.34 of the Criminal Code) so that “the use of force, including lethal force, is presumed reasonable against an individual who unlawfully enters a house and poses a threat to the safety of anyone inside.” I read this as adding a slight change in presumption, still very much subject to judicial discretion - which might not even help a home defender much! How that's more extreme than Texas Stand Your Ground Law as suggested by Coyne, is totally beyond me. A more extreme law would use language like listing a series of criteria where charges against a defender "shall" or "must" be withdrawn.
But we can form a committee of professional academics, get the criminals' take on this proposal, interview 100 witnesses and 'stakeholders', mull it over for 15 years, do a 300-page white paper, conclude that everything is awesome already and make no changes because that's the opposite of what a populist would do and therefore always the right decision.
"It's common sense that you presumptively should not be charged if someone breaks into your home with criminal intent and you treat them to a chest full of buckshot for their trouble."
So if someone broke into your home to steal a lamp, you should be free to kill them? That would make the cure worse than the disease.
"The existing law involves a 9-element test and in practice results in defenders being charged far too often in a system"
How much is "far too often"? Police regularly press charges that do not result in convictions to many kinds of people. A few memorable cases that get media coverage do not prove systemic discrimination.
I am no expert on the Texas Stand Your Ground Law, but a quick Google search identified its principle as "The use of force is justified when a person reasonably believes that it is *immediately necessary* to protect themselves against unlawful force or imminent harm." Poilievre's proposed law would not extend to public spaces like the Texas law, but Poilievre's law seems to say nothing about force being "immediately" needed to contain a threat. An intruder who is armed with an office stapler could be considered a legitimate safety threat, whom it would then be legal to kill even though a killing was not exactly urgent.
Agree. It’s this kind of scenario game playing that drives me crazy. If someone breaks into my house and I’m there, tell me why I shouldn’t assume the worst?
Under existing law you would not need to know what the purpose of the intruder was. Existing law permits you to use violence as "reasonable in the circumstances".
"The guy broke in, and headed straight for the lamp; he grabbed it and headed for the door. I was going to slap him in disgust, but it was at that very moment when he grabbed my Snickers bar I'd left sitting on the coffee table--I knew then I had to shoot to kill."
If an armed intruder breaks into your home in the middle of the night, are you going to take the time to ask what their intent is? Or take the time to strike up a conversation?
Reasonable people would assume that a) an unidentified person broke into my home and b) they are armed therefore the intent is not to simply steal a lamp. It’s a situation that usually requires a split second decision.
The correct non-partisan response, if there is time for one, is ‘What the fuck are you doing in my house?!? Get the fuck out NOW!’
Except the victim, not the intruder is charged in almost every instance. The fact they are not convicted is irrelevant because they are still subjected to lengthy and expensive legal proceedings. Our police, our legal system and our governments seem to be paralyzed from fear of … you tell us because our system is rife with whatever it is.
Andrew Scheer was fairly consistently a nice guy with a perpetual smile. He still got branded as some alt-right scary man. Ditto O'Toole. Poilievre has a good side, but when he shows it, the media doesn't really seem to care. (And that's fine. "Pierre is a nice guy" isn't newsworthy.) Let Pierre be Pierre, and let the chips fall where they may. Nothing matters because the Liberals will just bring out guns, abortion, and some newly manufactured crisis in advance of the next election, and Canadians will take another kick at the football.
Scheer was an insufferable liar. He completely made up imaginary positions that he would attribute to his opponents, such as claiming that the Liberals would be increasing the GST.
Poilievre is all too much like Scheer in shamelessly engaging in a firehose of falsehoods. O'TOole was simply done in by campaigning as a moderate after running for leadership as a hardliner, such that neither hardcore conservatives nor centrists could be confident what his true leadership style would be.
Of course not. All politicians lie.... partly because we want to be lied to. You have to judge it on a case by case basis. Scheer also neglected to mention he was an American citizen. The Conservatives were apoplectic about Mulcair and Dion having dual Canada/France citizenship but somehow Scheer was okay. An honourable man would have resigned his American citizenship when he became leader of the party.
The horror! I personally don't have a problem with it but I'm more leery of someone with American citizenship especially these days.
I just checked. It seems Carney has done The honourable thing.
"Mark Carney has Canadian citizenship and previously held both Irish and British citizenship until 2025, when he revoked the latter two to become Prime Minister of Canada. "
All politicians are liars. The biggest offender based his entire campaign on lies. Some of the more egregious examples:
"They want our land, our resources, they want our water, they want our country"
"President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us, and that will never happen. Canada is not America, and it never will be, but we need to do more to just recognize that. We need a plan to deal with this new reality.”
A Bizarro World election where the least controllable and distinguishable things were blown up into decisive "ballot questions" and real, desperately needed change was relegated to a trifle to be sneered at.
The Liberals are master campaigners and know that emotion drives the electorate more so than does rationality. Fear is the most powerful emotion and the Liberals successfuly played the electorate's irrational fears around health in 21 and Americans in 25.
Scheer lost because he tried to emulate Doug Ford's "my opposition is so pathetic I don't have to answer questions about anything" election strategy.....after a year of Doug Ford: it didn't hold water.
I disagree. He wasn't a bogeyman at all. He was arrogant in the sense that he had no requirement to answer any questions during his "job interview". He should have won a landslide because of SNC and so many other Trudeau fuck-ups, he, like Pierre, found a way to lose an election that was his to lose. Pierre should have learned from that. Erin would have won the landslide this time, too.
I've said it before but I will say it again. I have watched Poilievre for years, even prior to him becoming leader and thought he had true promise. I have never seen him being an asshole to anyone nor have I seen him as weak ever. So I think that those who say such things are actually trolls and can be ignored.
Yeah, I've watched him for years in the House as well. He knows his stuff. He's eloquent. I figure he might end up being the best PM we never had. But if he can effect policy from the opposition bench, then that's good as well. I'm glad he's back in the House. He belongs there.
How about Poilievre happily associating himself with and never condemning the "F*** Trudeau" flagbearers? That's insufferable behaviour which no prior Conservative leader ever stooped to.
My first impressions of Poilievre were quite negative when I watched him behaving as a Harper sycophant and mocking any and all critics of Harper government legislation.
So it's okay to incite rage against a political opponent if you have a big enough mob on hand to shout alongside you?
Yes of course they are all wrong, people who fantasize about violence and rage against their political opponents are imbeciles who should be driven out of the political sphere.
I am not questioning the legal right of juvenile characters to wave their profane flags, just faulting a particular politician for being juvenile enough to gleefully associate with them. Matching the standards of grace of pre-2016 Conservatives should not be such a tough ask.
"Saying fuck trudeau is a few steps removed from inciting rage."
What, is directing "fuck" towards someone supposed to be a gentle expression of disappointment? Come on now.
What about his alter ego, Pierre Poutine? Remember the importing of Republican voter suppression techniques and trying to undermine Elections Canada? I'll respect him when he comes clean on that one.
I enjoy that it's just accepted lore on the partisan left that Poilievre was the one in charge of those robocalls and also was dumb enough to pick a pseudonym so similar to his real name.
I left out the part where Stephen Harper and Poilievre vigorously denounced election cheating and vowed to get to the bottom of it and let the chips fall where they may. No wait, that was a dream I had. They stonewalled as hard as they could and threw a junior guy under the bus. PP also owned a piece of the robocall company. Yes, the name "Poutine" probably was made up by one of the geniuses who are actually doing the dirty work.
"Preston Manning, who was a key player in the formation of the current conservative movement in Canada, indicated that he found the robocall and voter suppression tactics "deplorable".[128] In Ottawa for a gathering of other conservatives, Manning reiterated to reporters that the use of voter suppression tactics is a concern for all political parties. A second concern voiced by Manning is that the revelation of such voter suppression and the use of unethical robocalls means that the Conservatives "have to worry and all the politicians have to worry about this declining respect – it's bordering on contempt for political people".
You literally said Pierre Poutine was Poilievre's alter ego. That alias was logging into the same computer within seconds of a specific staffer, if you want to get detailed about that scandal, so might more likely be that guy.
I'm not even saying this wasn't real or wasn't probably the worst scandal of the Harper years. All of which was thoroughly investigated and though the party stonewalled as is typical Canadian fashion, it was highly embarrassing and damaging to them.
But this is going on 15 years ago and Trudeau kind of reset the scale on scandals. There are hundreds of millions of dollars still missing and hundreds of millions more in likely MP and senior bureaucrat self-dealing contracts from Covid - i.e. hundreds of Sponsorship Scandals (which was $1.5M - how quaint) worth of funds and nobody apparently gives a shit, least of all Liberal voters still obsessed with the boneheaded actions very possibly restricted to some idiot CPC staffers 15 years ago.
Also wtf happened with those virologists in Winnipeg in 2019? Did we ever figure that out? Trudeau called an election to not produce documents on that one - maybe something interesting was there?
Yeah, well that’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it. I mean your approval of Poliver’s behaviour. You’re the guys that like the nastiness and negativity and you’re PP’s people. It’s you he’s got in mind when he’s acting like such a jerk.
Can you see Brian Mulroney or Jean Chrétien acting like that? I don’t think so. They didn’t like the press any more than any other politician of any era, but they at least treated them with some kind of respect.
They had it in them to respond with grace and restraint. Not Poliver. It ain’t in him.
“Agenda”. That reporter had no more of an agenda than you guys sticking up for your fearless leader. He was only doing his job. Chrétien and Mulroney et al recognized that. PP can’t, and most Canadians see that, which is why they don’t trust him.
Ooh! Goalpost change! Always the sign of an insincere argument. Anyway, Chretien strangled someone, Trudeau Senior gave the West the finger, and Junior just ignored the media he didn’t like and rewarded those he did.
And I’ve interviewed people for articles and had worse responses from people, one of them a Vancouver Sun columnist that I interviewed when I was a student. He actually told me to fuck off re one question and went on a total rant re another one. It was hilarious in hindsight because he misunderstood my question. It is what it is.
Pierre Poilievre (note the surname spelling) is neither nasty nor negative. There is more nastiness and venom in your comments than I have ever heard Pierre utter. He is bright, articulate, knowledgeable, extremely competent, solution oriented, caring, and witty. He is genuine. He cares about Canada and Canadians. That’s why “PP’s people” like him. Also, there was/is nothing particularly gracious or charming about Jean Chrétien.
Poilievre can keep his attack dog approach, but he's going to need to back up the bark with some serious policy muscle. The punchy slogans of the last election weren't backed up by a lot of detail or analysis. Without that detail, voters are left to take it on faith that Poilievre and the Conservatives actually have a plan and the managerial chops to run the government.
Playing to the populist crowd is a political necessity for Poilievre and other right wing politicians today, but they can end up being a dangerous distraction. The "red meat" stuff the populists get excited about not only doesn't resonate with the majority of Canadian voters, it actually turns them off. Take the whole Trucker Protest issue: the populist types are still energized by that event 3 years after the fact, as evidenced by the comments section on this site. They're still on the 20% end of an 80/20 issue; the rest of Canada has moved on and is sick of hearing about it.
Canadians would not vote for that! It would mean addressing our shortfalls in things like, um "free healthcare," drug issues, crime, lack of defensive capabilities, etc.
Poilievre's problem has always been his shameless pandering to whoever are the loudest conservative/Conservative bigmouths in the immediate room (with the exception of an instance in the campaign where he corrected one supporter's suggestion that Carney should be jailed). Changing that would require him to become a more courageous politician than he ever has been, but only a weak leader is incapable of learning and adapting.
Nailed it on the comment section here at The Line haha. There’s a half-dozen people who try to make every thread about “but do you UNDERSTAND that Justin Trudeau RUINED THE LIVES of many innocent people making a MEDICAL CHOICE for themselves?”
Carney, if nothing else, appears to at least have a post-Covid agenda and politics. He wants to talk about and address the very real problems of 2025, not relitigate impossible tradeoffs that politicians had to make in 2021 to try to prevent Covid overwhelming our medical system.
The problem is that these "enthusiastic" supporters are toxic to the kinds of swing voters Conservatives need to capture if they want to win, because they're the literal embodiment of what animates ABC voters. Poilievre should absolutely hang them out to dry, but that would require him to have principles that aren't "Liberals bad" and "winning is all that matters", and I don't think he has the fortitude to abjure anything that comes from a rightward direction.
I worry that the Conservative brain trust (ie. Poilievre and his close advisers) are going to fixate on the 41% of voters that they secured in the last election and overlook the 44% of Liberal voters that delivered a LIBERAL GOVERNMENT.
The Conservatives own the bread and butter issues that are gnawing away at everyone's pocket books. Sound bite blasts at the newest carbon tax target is not a seller to swing voters who voted Liberal. These people want someone who speaks in full sentences, understands and feels their hurt and demonstrates that they have the mettle to fix the mess. I hate to say it, but Poilievre comes across as Junior Varsity when the normal leadership track is usually found in the Senior Class.
Finally, the Conservative election campaign was built around a faux rock star status of Poilievre, who as Mr. Stinson states runs miles behind the popularity of his own Conservative Party. Going forward, the focus needs to shift to team building and showcasing competent Cabinet material of a future government. These people exist in the Conservative Caucus but you would never know it.
He's been required to disclose conflicts since he became MP, so if there were anything, we'd have likely heard about it by now. And Poilievre gets way more media scrutiny than Trudeau and Carney. It's Canadian tradition to be more concerned about the opposition leader than PM. Unless the PM is Conservative, of course :-D
Carney accepted many more questions from the media during the campaign than Poilievre did. If Poilievre got more "scrutiny" than Carney did, perhaps it was because the former exposed himself as a wimp who was fearful of maximal scrutiny (with the exception of Poilievre being willing to join in a TVA debate).
I doubt if the average Canadian will be affected by any of the above issues. But they do like angry morons as evidenced by Doug Fraud’s popularity. Watching him take forever to empty a bottle of Crown Royal because one of his dipshit Sunshine List salaried assistants hadn’t thought to remove the flow restrictor from the bottle would be hilarious if weren’t so head shakingly sad. Canadians seem to primarily vote for “ their” idiots so that the “other” idiot doesn’t get in.
An interesting wrinkle on PPs defeat in his Ottawa riding. Apparently prior to the election Elections Canada redistributed his riding and replaced a large portion of his rural area with the city of Manotick which is a Liberal enclave extensively populated (pullulated?) by senior and middle level Ottawa civil servants. While I doubt the Elections Canada staff have the mental capacity to come up with this gerrymandering on their own initiative, I’m sure the US based elections consultants on the Liberal payroll would see this as an opportunity to jump on. It would be poetic justice if Liberal cutbacks would purge many of these civil servants from both Elections Canada and elsewhere. 😡😡😡
Elections Canada's data shows that more 2021 Conservative voters were shifted into the riding than were shifted out.
Poilievre actually won more votes in the riding than he did in 2021, the trend there more or less matched the trend across the country. It just so happens that the Liberals increased their votes in the riding much, much more, it was the highest turnout riding.
How does Elections Canada know how many conservative voters were shifted? AFAIK Canadian voters don’t register by party like they do in most (not all) states, nor does elections Canada know party memberships ( unless they somehow access Revenue Canada political donation data. I can only see their accessing data from previous elections by polling data. ??? And how good a predictor is that?
Anyways, it’s a fun topic to explore. Thanks for the info and perspective.
Manotick isn't a city. It was a small town which is now part of Greater Ottawa. But the whole area is still more rural than suburban.
And this was not 'jerrymandering' on the part of Elections Canada. The boundary changes were based on the results of the last census. Elections Canada does this exercise after every census. Sometimes the boundaries of ridings change, sometimes they don't.
And yes, I'm sure there are a lot of civil servants in every Ottawa/Gatineau area riding. And human-nature dictates that people prefer not to vote for people who propose eliminating their jobs. :-)
I lived in Manotick when it was a village but left before it was slurped up by Ottawa. Thanks for the correction. And Justin’s adding 125000 new civil servants during his reign certainly helped in establishing the Liberal dynasty.
My reading of the census results in redistricting is that the results are used to determine how many seats each province gets. ( similar to the US except that no province loses seats so the total number of seats in Canada keeps growing).
There are nominally independent commissions in each province but the public and members of parliament are involved. The population equality rules are plus or minus 25 percent which pretty much leaves a huge amount of discretion to the commissions.
"Poilievre shouldn't be a dick." Maybe yes...maybe no. Rather, he should continue the strategy of defining what he'll get done...and not on whether he'll be a nice guy-- or a dick-- in doing it.
Vastly too much Canadian (and American!) energy has focused on HOW Trump gets things done. The deplorable economic, social and international conditions in both countries demand substantial change. Trump, for all his warts, is delivering valuable change--in warp speed. Carney is not.
Canada needs a clear-eyed, determined leader oblivious to the whining of the obstructionists. Such a Canadian leader is also likely to be described by the whiners as a dick.
"Trump is delivering valuable change"? Let's talk again in a year. I think he's doing incredible and, possibly, irreparable damage to the USA. He is certainly no fan of democracy or the Constitution.
Puh-leeze. Who’s the pearl-clutcher now? Your high-minded outrage is a little forced there, NS.
Though a little crudely put, that sums up Poliver’s MO succinctly. You can’t deny that he went out of his way to piss off everybody he, and his more rabid supporters, didn’t like. The guy fairly drips contempt, and he always has.
Since the Liberals" became "Liberals" sometime around 2000, I have also dripped with contempt for the "Liberals". Before 2000, I voted Liberal at least once that I remember.
The old saying "He who rides the tiger may find it difficult to dismount" comes to mind. PP has always focused on emotional manipulation of his base. That kind of tactic won't reach anybody outside the target demographic and, if you switch your tactics to reach the rest of the population, you will lose your fans who want to hear the "hits". PP thought he could get a majority without offering anything to the majority of Canadians - which is possible with our FTP system. Everybody being sick of JT plus the collapse of the NDP changed the whole game.
So far as I’m concerned, if he wants to keep acting like an asshole, that’s fine by me. He’ll continue to fester in his dark hole and the average moderate Canadian will continue to avoid him.
Relevant to the above: if anyone here doubts that the Canadian mainstream media is full of disingenuous hit-pieces against Pierre Poilievre, I invite you to read Andrew Coyne's article today about the proposed changes to self-defence laws. Coyne grips his pearls so tight his head nearly pops off, while totally misrepresenting the modest change in onus proposed using dreaded comparisons to scary US "castle doctrine" - while this same proposal has been criticized elsewhere as not really changing much at all.
I'm not sure what advice you give to a politician in an environment where no matter what the guy says, it will be misrepresented in an "asshole" direction by most of the country's media, and if he moderates he just looks weaker as well.
The situation was perfect when he was massively ahead in the polls due to Trudeau's unpopularity and lack of the Trump Factor: he could just tell the MSM to go fuck themselves and look forward to defunding. Unfortunately when the race got closer outlets like the Globe and Mail and CTV got their revenge by pushing 24/7 Trump and meaningless "elbows up" nonsense leading (directly IMHO) to his downfall.
For decades, Coyne was my all-time fave Canadian journalist. I can't even read his tweets now, let alone a whole article by him. Should have retired before people started wishing he'd retire.
I think he is one of those whose 'brains got broken' during Covid. Seldom had an issue with him before a few years ago - seemed like a reasonably thoughtful columnist. He's gone down the hole of total derangement when it comes to anything Conservative or conservative recently. He had some surprisingly good stuff on democratic decline in Canada a few weeks ago but that was way out of the norm for his content these days.
The Globe has like half a dozen featured columnists with the exact same "can do no right" take on Poilievre. Pretty much all of them except maybe Robyn Urback (who is just equally cynical about all the parties).
I think Coyne started with Trump, then went downhill from there. He was always one of those journalists that I would read even if I disagreed with him on a particular issue because he always articulated his argument so well. It's sad to see what he's become. Agreed on Urback, but I can't access a lot of her stuff because it's behind the Globe paywall. I used to have a workaround, but don't anymore. And I try not to subscribe to media that are gov-subsidized. I figure I should automatically get access haha.
https://www.removepaywall.com/ fixed it for you.
Doesn't always work, but most of the time.
Thank you!
I'll keep this vague but a lot of 'questionable' plugins that got removed from browser extension stores are still available if you search around. Just requires a bit of manual side-loading.
I used Pocket. They've become some other thing that doesn't actually allow you to read paywalled articles anymore.
Why would you want to read paywalled articles without paying for them? I gather this could come across as hopelessly old-fashioned, but don’t you think taking something you haven’t paid for is stealing?
Poilievre reaffirmed that he was an impulsive rage-farmer the moment that he decided to rewrite a criminal law in response to a single case, a case that we do not even know is going to end in a protracted trial, let alone a criminal conviction. It is common sense that you do not rush changes to law in response to potentially-fringe exceptions when the systematic impacts of the law at large should be carefully scrutinized.
It is stunts like these that prove how ignorant Poilievre is on public policy.
To more directly address the substance of your arguments: you are claiming that Coyne has misrepresented Poilievre, but neither you nor Poilievre are citing what the actual text of existing law actually is. Who is doing the misrepresentation here?
It's common sense that you presumptively should not be charged if someone breaks into your home with criminal intent and you treat them to a chest full of buckshot for their trouble.
The existing law involves a 9-element test and in practice results in defenders being charged far too often in a system where the process is so onerous that it often overlaps 100% with the punishment even when someone is guilty and far greater when they aren't.
Here's what Poilievre said: that he would change (s.34 of the Criminal Code) so that “the use of force, including lethal force, is presumed reasonable against an individual who unlawfully enters a house and poses a threat to the safety of anyone inside.” I read this as adding a slight change in presumption, still very much subject to judicial discretion - which might not even help a home defender much! How that's more extreme than Texas Stand Your Ground Law as suggested by Coyne, is totally beyond me. A more extreme law would use language like listing a series of criteria where charges against a defender "shall" or "must" be withdrawn.
But we can form a committee of professional academics, get the criminals' take on this proposal, interview 100 witnesses and 'stakeholders', mull it over for 15 years, do a 300-page white paper, conclude that everything is awesome already and make no changes because that's the opposite of what a populist would do and therefore always the right decision.
Most journalists are lazy and don’t even want to research that Castle Doctrine is a UK law - it did not originate in the “big bad USA”.
What? It's not named after American castles? ;-)
"It's common sense that you presumptively should not be charged if someone breaks into your home with criminal intent and you treat them to a chest full of buckshot for their trouble."
So if someone broke into your home to steal a lamp, you should be free to kill them? That would make the cure worse than the disease.
"The existing law involves a 9-element test and in practice results in defenders being charged far too often in a system"
How much is "far too often"? Police regularly press charges that do not result in convictions to many kinds of people. A few memorable cases that get media coverage do not prove systemic discrimination.
I am no expert on the Texas Stand Your Ground Law, but a quick Google search identified its principle as "The use of force is justified when a person reasonably believes that it is *immediately necessary* to protect themselves against unlawful force or imminent harm." Poilievre's proposed law would not extend to public spaces like the Texas law, but Poilievre's law seems to say nothing about force being "immediately" needed to contain a threat. An intruder who is armed with an office stapler could be considered a legitimate safety threat, whom it would then be legal to kill even though a killing was not exactly urgent.
How in the world would I know you “broke in to steal a lamp”?
Agree. It’s this kind of scenario game playing that drives me crazy. If someone breaks into my house and I’m there, tell me why I shouldn’t assume the worst?
Under existing law you would not need to know what the purpose of the intruder was. Existing law permits you to use violence as "reasonable in the circumstances".
"The guy broke in, and headed straight for the lamp; he grabbed it and headed for the door. I was going to slap him in disgust, but it was at that very moment when he grabbed my Snickers bar I'd left sitting on the coffee table--I knew then I had to shoot to kill."
You've just outlined the kind of edge case paralysis that prevents many useful changes from happening in our laws.
And don't underestimate the damage you can do with a stapler. Better to err on the side of caution. Click clack BOOOOM!
If an armed intruder breaks into your home in the middle of the night, are you going to take the time to ask what their intent is? Or take the time to strike up a conversation?
Reasonable people would assume that a) an unidentified person broke into my home and b) they are armed therefore the intent is not to simply steal a lamp. It’s a situation that usually requires a split second decision.
The correct non-partisan response, if there is time for one, is ‘What the fuck are you doing in my house?!? Get the fuck out NOW!’
That is why existing law permits violence as "reasonable in the circumstances".
Except the victim, not the intruder is charged in almost every instance. The fact they are not convicted is irrelevant because they are still subjected to lengthy and expensive legal proceedings. Our police, our legal system and our governments seem to be paralyzed from fear of … you tell us because our system is rife with whatever it is.
Or he could just stop being an asshole....except he can't.
Andrew Scheer was fairly consistently a nice guy with a perpetual smile. He still got branded as some alt-right scary man. Ditto O'Toole. Poilievre has a good side, but when he shows it, the media doesn't really seem to care. (And that's fine. "Pierre is a nice guy" isn't newsworthy.) Let Pierre be Pierre, and let the chips fall where they may. Nothing matters because the Liberals will just bring out guns, abortion, and some newly manufactured crisis in advance of the next election, and Canadians will take another kick at the football.
Scheer was an insufferable liar. He completely made up imaginary positions that he would attribute to his opponents, such as claiming that the Liberals would be increasing the GST.
Poilievre is all too much like Scheer in shamelessly engaging in a firehose of falsehoods. O'TOole was simply done in by campaigning as a moderate after running for leadership as a hardliner, such that neither hardcore conservatives nor centrists could be confident what his true leadership style would be.
Only the Liberals are honest, right, Stefan? 🤣
A casual reminder that all politicians lie.
Of course not. All politicians lie.... partly because we want to be lied to. You have to judge it on a case by case basis. Scheer also neglected to mention he was an American citizen. The Conservatives were apoplectic about Mulcair and Dion having dual Canada/France citizenship but somehow Scheer was okay. An honourable man would have resigned his American citizenship when he became leader of the party.
Carney has three 😂
The horror! I personally don't have a problem with it but I'm more leery of someone with American citizenship especially these days.
I just checked. It seems Carney has done The honourable thing.
"Mark Carney has Canadian citizenship and previously held both Irish and British citizenship until 2025, when he revoked the latter two to become Prime Minister of Canada. "
He had all three when he first became de facto PM, no? We have no idea Scheer would not have done the same, do we?
How did you check? He had all 3 on his swearing in day?
All politicians are liars. The biggest offender based his entire campaign on lies. Some of the more egregious examples:
"They want our land, our resources, they want our water, they want our country"
"President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us, and that will never happen. Canada is not America, and it never will be, but we need to do more to just recognize that. We need a plan to deal with this new reality.”
A Bizarro World election where the least controllable and distinguishable things were blown up into decisive "ballot questions" and real, desperately needed change was relegated to a trifle to be sneered at.
The Liberals are master campaigners and know that emotion drives the electorate more so than does rationality. Fear is the most powerful emotion and the Liberals successfuly played the electorate's irrational fears around health in 21 and Americans in 25.
Scheer lost because he tried to emulate Doug Ford's "my opposition is so pathetic I don't have to answer questions about anything" election strategy.....after a year of Doug Ford: it didn't hold water.
None of this is relevant. My point is that he was “nice” but still considered the bogeyman. It’s the game the Liberals play.
I disagree. He wasn't a bogeyman at all. He was arrogant in the sense that he had no requirement to answer any questions during his "job interview". He should have won a landslide because of SNC and so many other Trudeau fuck-ups, he, like Pierre, found a way to lose an election that was his to lose. Pierre should have learned from that. Erin would have won the landslide this time, too.
He was a bogeyman to a lot of people. I remember it well. Have a good day.
I've said it before but I will say it again. I have watched Poilievre for years, even prior to him becoming leader and thought he had true promise. I have never seen him being an asshole to anyone nor have I seen him as weak ever. So I think that those who say such things are actually trolls and can be ignored.
Yeah, I've watched him for years in the House as well. He knows his stuff. He's eloquent. I figure he might end up being the best PM we never had. But if he can effect policy from the opposition bench, then that's good as well. I'm glad he's back in the House. He belongs there.
How about Poilievre happily associating himself with and never condemning the "F*** Trudeau" flagbearers? That's insufferable behaviour which no prior Conservative leader ever stooped to.
My first impressions of Poilievre were quite negative when I watched him behaving as a Harper sycophant and mocking any and all critics of Harper government legislation.
lots of people supported the F Trudeau so called flagbearers so whatever. Are they all wrong? Your comments do not surprise me.
So it's okay to incite rage against a political opponent if you have a big enough mob on hand to shout alongside you?
Yes of course they are all wrong, people who fantasize about violence and rage against their political opponents are imbeciles who should be driven out of the political sphere.
Saying fuck trudeau is a few steps removed from inciting rage.
You may not like the message, but it's called free speech. Look it up, it's a thing.
I am not questioning the legal right of juvenile characters to wave their profane flags, just faulting a particular politician for being juvenile enough to gleefully associate with them. Matching the standards of grace of pre-2016 Conservatives should not be such a tough ask.
"Saying fuck trudeau is a few steps removed from inciting rage."
What, is directing "fuck" towards someone supposed to be a gentle expression of disappointment? Come on now.
So if I told you to fuck off, you would take it as inciting rage? Or just the mere insult that it's supposed to be?
OK Stefan, you be you.
What about his alter ego, Pierre Poutine? Remember the importing of Republican voter suppression techniques and trying to undermine Elections Canada? I'll respect him when he comes clean on that one.
I enjoy that it's just accepted lore on the partisan left that Poilievre was the one in charge of those robocalls and also was dumb enough to pick a pseudonym so similar to his real name.
I left out the part where Stephen Harper and Poilievre vigorously denounced election cheating and vowed to get to the bottom of it and let the chips fall where they may. No wait, that was a dream I had. They stonewalled as hard as they could and threw a junior guy under the bus. PP also owned a piece of the robocall company. Yes, the name "Poutine" probably was made up by one of the geniuses who are actually doing the dirty work.
"Preston Manning, who was a key player in the formation of the current conservative movement in Canada, indicated that he found the robocall and voter suppression tactics "deplorable".[128] In Ottawa for a gathering of other conservatives, Manning reiterated to reporters that the use of voter suppression tactics is a concern for all political parties. A second concern voiced by Manning is that the revelation of such voter suppression and the use of unethical robocalls means that the Conservatives "have to worry and all the politicians have to worry about this declining respect – it's bordering on contempt for political people".
You literally said Pierre Poutine was Poilievre's alter ego. That alias was logging into the same computer within seconds of a specific staffer, if you want to get detailed about that scandal, so might more likely be that guy.
I'm not even saying this wasn't real or wasn't probably the worst scandal of the Harper years. All of which was thoroughly investigated and though the party stonewalled as is typical Canadian fashion, it was highly embarrassing and damaging to them.
But this is going on 15 years ago and Trudeau kind of reset the scale on scandals. There are hundreds of millions of dollars still missing and hundreds of millions more in likely MP and senior bureaucrat self-dealing contracts from Covid - i.e. hundreds of Sponsorship Scandals (which was $1.5M - how quaint) worth of funds and nobody apparently gives a shit, least of all Liberal voters still obsessed with the boneheaded actions very possibly restricted to some idiot CPC staffers 15 years ago.
Also wtf happened with those virologists in Winnipeg in 2019? Did we ever figure that out? Trudeau called an election to not produce documents on that one - maybe something interesting was there?
Clearly we have different recollections of a certain apple-eating incident
That was hilarious. That reporter went in with his own agenda and got it thrown back in his face.
Yeah, well that’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it. I mean your approval of Poliver’s behaviour. You’re the guys that like the nastiness and negativity and you’re PP’s people. It’s you he’s got in mind when he’s acting like such a jerk.
Can you see Brian Mulroney or Jean Chrétien acting like that? I don’t think so. They didn’t like the press any more than any other politician of any era, but they at least treated them with some kind of respect.
They had it in them to respond with grace and restraint. Not Poliver. It ain’t in him.
“Agenda”. That reporter had no more of an agenda than you guys sticking up for your fearless leader. He was only doing his job. Chrétien and Mulroney et al recognized that. PP can’t, and most Canadians see that, which is why they don’t trust him.
I absolutely could see Chretien, Trudeau Senior, and Trudeau the younger doing that. Not Mulroney.
Except they never did, did they? Don’t recall hearing about it.
Ooh! Goalpost change! Always the sign of an insincere argument. Anyway, Chretien strangled someone, Trudeau Senior gave the West the finger, and Junior just ignored the media he didn’t like and rewarded those he did.
Buried by MSM.
And I’ve interviewed people for articles and had worse responses from people, one of them a Vancouver Sun columnist that I interviewed when I was a student. He actually told me to fuck off re one question and went on a total rant re another one. It was hilarious in hindsight because he misunderstood my question. It is what it is.
Pierre Poilievre (note the surname spelling) is neither nasty nor negative. There is more nastiness and venom in your comments than I have ever heard Pierre utter. He is bright, articulate, knowledgeable, extremely competent, solution oriented, caring, and witty. He is genuine. He cares about Canada and Canadians. That’s why “PP’s people” like him. Also, there was/is nothing particularly gracious or charming about Jean Chrétien.
Wow! How does one get to your world?
Open your eyes, ears and mind AND stay away from CBC, for a start. Oh, and leave the Liberal manipulation, fear-mongering and hubris behind.
I thought it was fine...no problem for me and I did not view that as a negative.
Poilievre can keep his attack dog approach, but he's going to need to back up the bark with some serious policy muscle. The punchy slogans of the last election weren't backed up by a lot of detail or analysis. Without that detail, voters are left to take it on faith that Poilievre and the Conservatives actually have a plan and the managerial chops to run the government.
Playing to the populist crowd is a political necessity for Poilievre and other right wing politicians today, but they can end up being a dangerous distraction. The "red meat" stuff the populists get excited about not only doesn't resonate with the majority of Canadian voters, it actually turns them off. Take the whole Trucker Protest issue: the populist types are still energized by that event 3 years after the fact, as evidenced by the comments section on this site. They're still on the 20% end of an 80/20 issue; the rest of Canada has moved on and is sick of hearing about it.
I wish we could see in our lifetime a would be politician that campaigns solely on principles, opinion polls and political consultants be damned.
THAT would be refreshing. I'm so exhausted by politics that constantly shift with the winds.
One can dream.
Canadians would not vote for that! It would mean addressing our shortfalls in things like, um "free healthcare," drug issues, crime, lack of defensive capabilities, etc.
One can dream.
Poilievre's problem has always been his shameless pandering to whoever are the loudest conservative/Conservative bigmouths in the immediate room (with the exception of an instance in the campaign where he corrected one supporter's suggestion that Carney should be jailed). Changing that would require him to become a more courageous politician than he ever has been, but only a weak leader is incapable of learning and adapting.
Nailed it on the comment section here at The Line haha. There’s a half-dozen people who try to make every thread about “but do you UNDERSTAND that Justin Trudeau RUINED THE LIVES of many innocent people making a MEDICAL CHOICE for themselves?”
Carney, if nothing else, appears to at least have a post-Covid agenda and politics. He wants to talk about and address the very real problems of 2025, not relitigate impossible tradeoffs that politicians had to make in 2021 to try to prevent Covid overwhelming our medical system.
Perhaps the current person in charge can move past the COVID era in governing for 2025 and beyond.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't hold the other accountable for the past damage.
Another one of your many bullets that not only misses the target, but flies entirely out of the range area.
The problem is that these "enthusiastic" supporters are toxic to the kinds of swing voters Conservatives need to capture if they want to win, because they're the literal embodiment of what animates ABC voters. Poilievre should absolutely hang them out to dry, but that would require him to have principles that aren't "Liberals bad" and "winning is all that matters", and I don't think he has the fortitude to abjure anything that comes from a rightward direction.
This ⬆️
I worry that the Conservative brain trust (ie. Poilievre and his close advisers) are going to fixate on the 41% of voters that they secured in the last election and overlook the 44% of Liberal voters that delivered a LIBERAL GOVERNMENT.
The Conservatives own the bread and butter issues that are gnawing away at everyone's pocket books. Sound bite blasts at the newest carbon tax target is not a seller to swing voters who voted Liberal. These people want someone who speaks in full sentences, understands and feels their hurt and demonstrates that they have the mettle to fix the mess. I hate to say it, but Poilievre comes across as Junior Varsity when the normal leadership track is usually found in the Senior Class.
Finally, the Conservative election campaign was built around a faux rock star status of Poilievre, who as Mr. Stinson states runs miles behind the popularity of his own Conservative Party. Going forward, the focus needs to shift to team building and showcasing competent Cabinet material of a future government. These people exist in the Conservative Caucus but you would never know it.
There are vast crowds of people who are OK with Poilievre just the way he is, consistently being mostly himself and sticking to his principles.
Has anyone found out if he has any conflicts of interest, let alone vast conflicts of interest, like Carney ?
Has anyone found out if he keeps vast majority of his personal assets outside of Canada, outside of CRA jurisdiction, like Trudeau and Carney ?
Had anyone noticed that he lies, ahem, has an uncomfortable relationship with truth and facts as often as Trudeau and Carney ?
He's been required to disclose conflicts since he became MP, so if there were anything, we'd have likely heard about it by now. And Poilievre gets way more media scrutiny than Trudeau and Carney. It's Canadian tradition to be more concerned about the opposition leader than PM. Unless the PM is Conservative, of course :-D
Carney accepted many more questions from the media during the campaign than Poilievre did. If Poilievre got more "scrutiny" than Carney did, perhaps it was because the former exposed himself as a wimp who was fearful of maximal scrutiny (with the exception of Poilievre being willing to join in a TVA debate).
Do you consider making many hundreds of thousands of dollars off of the public purse, as Poilievre has done, a conflict of interest?
Pierre needs to act like a leader, not a whiny 5-year-old. He doesn't have it in him.
I doubt if the average Canadian will be affected by any of the above issues. But they do like angry morons as evidenced by Doug Fraud’s popularity. Watching him take forever to empty a bottle of Crown Royal because one of his dipshit Sunshine List salaried assistants hadn’t thought to remove the flow restrictor from the bottle would be hilarious if weren’t so head shakingly sad. Canadians seem to primarily vote for “ their” idiots so that the “other” idiot doesn’t get in.
An interesting wrinkle on PPs defeat in his Ottawa riding. Apparently prior to the election Elections Canada redistributed his riding and replaced a large portion of his rural area with the city of Manotick which is a Liberal enclave extensively populated (pullulated?) by senior and middle level Ottawa civil servants. While I doubt the Elections Canada staff have the mental capacity to come up with this gerrymandering on their own initiative, I’m sure the US based elections consultants on the Liberal payroll would see this as an opportunity to jump on. It would be poetic justice if Liberal cutbacks would purge many of these civil servants from both Elections Canada and elsewhere. 😡😡😡
Elections Canada's data shows that more 2021 Conservative voters were shifted into the riding than were shifted out.
Poilievre actually won more votes in the riding than he did in 2021, the trend there more or less matched the trend across the country. It just so happens that the Liberals increased their votes in the riding much, much more, it was the highest turnout riding.
How does Elections Canada know how many conservative voters were shifted? AFAIK Canadian voters don’t register by party like they do in most (not all) states, nor does elections Canada know party memberships ( unless they somehow access Revenue Canada political donation data. I can only see their accessing data from previous elections by polling data. ??? And how good a predictor is that?
Anyways, it’s a fun topic to explore. Thanks for the info and perspective.
Manotick isn't a city. It was a small town which is now part of Greater Ottawa. But the whole area is still more rural than suburban.
And this was not 'jerrymandering' on the part of Elections Canada. The boundary changes were based on the results of the last census. Elections Canada does this exercise after every census. Sometimes the boundaries of ridings change, sometimes they don't.
And yes, I'm sure there are a lot of civil servants in every Ottawa/Gatineau area riding. And human-nature dictates that people prefer not to vote for people who propose eliminating their jobs. :-)
I lived in Manotick when it was a village but left before it was slurped up by Ottawa. Thanks for the correction. And Justin’s adding 125000 new civil servants during his reign certainly helped in establishing the Liberal dynasty.
My reading of the census results in redistricting is that the results are used to determine how many seats each province gets. ( similar to the US except that no province loses seats so the total number of seats in Canada keeps growing).
My info comes from https://electionsanddemocracy.ca/system/files/2019-10/Teacher%20fact%20sheet_EN.pdf
There are nominally independent commissions in each province but the public and members of parliament are involved. The population equality rules are plus or minus 25 percent which pretty much leaves a huge amount of discretion to the commissions.
"Poilievre shouldn't be a dick." Maybe yes...maybe no. Rather, he should continue the strategy of defining what he'll get done...and not on whether he'll be a nice guy-- or a dick-- in doing it.
Vastly too much Canadian (and American!) energy has focused on HOW Trump gets things done. The deplorable economic, social and international conditions in both countries demand substantial change. Trump, for all his warts, is delivering valuable change--in warp speed. Carney is not.
Canada needs a clear-eyed, determined leader oblivious to the whining of the obstructionists. Such a Canadian leader is also likely to be described by the whiners as a dick.
"Trump is delivering valuable change"? Let's talk again in a year. I think he's doing incredible and, possibly, irreparable damage to the USA. He is certainly no fan of democracy or the Constitution.
Have we ever had a PM who came to form government via a strategy of "act the total cunt, all the time"?
Your mindset, beneath contempt, is the kind of mindset which is destroying Canada. Any criticism of "Liberals" and their policies is forbidden.
Puh-leeze. Who’s the pearl-clutcher now? Your high-minded outrage is a little forced there, NS.
Though a little crudely put, that sums up Poliver’s MO succinctly. You can’t deny that he went out of his way to piss off everybody he, and his more rabid supporters, didn’t like. The guy fairly drips contempt, and he always has.
Since the Liberals" became "Liberals" sometime around 2000, I have also dripped with contempt for the "Liberals". Before 2000, I voted Liberal at least once that I remember.
Wexit.
Pierre Trudeau
That's your most eloquent argument?
The answer is very, very simple.
This isn't the US. There are more voters here in the middle than in the extremes.
That's why PP went down last time. Will he ever figure it out?
The old saying "He who rides the tiger may find it difficult to dismount" comes to mind. PP has always focused on emotional manipulation of his base. That kind of tactic won't reach anybody outside the target demographic and, if you switch your tactics to reach the rest of the population, you will lose your fans who want to hear the "hits". PP thought he could get a majority without offering anything to the majority of Canadians - which is possible with our FTP system. Everybody being sick of JT plus the collapse of the NDP changed the whole game.
So far as I’m concerned, if he wants to keep acting like an asshole, that’s fine by me. He’ll continue to fester in his dark hole and the average moderate Canadian will continue to avoid him.
Wexit.