What I got wrong about Poilievre
I thought he’d steer the party into oblivion. He’s on course to win the biggest majority in my living memory
I had a very humbling experience recently. I went scrolling through my archive of old columns, looking for one in particular. As I remembered the column, it was an example of my brilliant foresight. But then I got to reading it and, yikes. Not so much.
This was the column. I wrote it in 2021, just ahead of the federal election. In it, I predicted that if Erin O’Toole failed to either outright win, or at least show major electoral gains, he was screwed. And that was the part I remembered, and I was right. Yay me!
Ding!
But I also wrote that if he was toppled by the harder-edge right-wing faction of his party, that would doom the party to electoral irrelevance, and that would be bad for Canada.
Bzzzzzzttt!
Let’s take a look at what I actually said in more detail. Read the full column, if you have time, but if not, here’s a few choice quotes. Here’s something I wrote that I think held up pretty well! (I’m smashing two parts of different paragraphs together here, but this is the stuff I got right.)
It’s not who O’Toole is that matters, but what: he’s head of the moderate, principled faction in that party, and if that faction loses, the party is screwed, and the rest of us with it. There are many Conservatives who think he’s too centrist, too soft, too Ontario — and if they can, they’ll purge him. A disappointing night on Monday is all the excuse they’d need. … If O’Toole can deliver a victory, or even just tangible progress, he’ll probably be able to consolidate his own power, make some internal changes to further the party’s eastern appeal, and start the next election in a stronger position. If he loses, he’s gone, and the hardliners in the CPC and much of the party’s grassroots will be unlikely to try a moderate leader again for … a long time, if ever.
So far, so good.
Now let’s look at what I got wrong — at least if the polls today are to be believed.
… I am confident that if [O’Toole] loses and is tossed, or doesn’t ever become strong enough within the party to actually impose his will on it, then the CPC won’t hold, mere anarchy will be loosed, and you all know the rest. Canada’s democracy cannot function without a viable federal conservative option that can actually win national elections. There is a global populist resurgence afoot and if the CPC doesn’t stop them on the right, or is outright subsumed by them, the only ones left to hold onto Canada’s liberal democracy will be the Liberals, a party so short on talent it kept Maryam Monsef and Stephen Guilbeault in cabinet.
Okay, so the Monsef and Guilbeault stuff, I feel pretty good about. But the rest?
I just watched the non-confidence motion vote and the ‘Nays’ clearly won the day by 200+ or so to 180 for the ‘Yeas’. CTV just declared the vote a fail but I’m not buying that and if I’m right CTV just ended up in the (heavily Liberal) garbage can.
Truth matters in this stuff and we’ll see what happens when the dust settles but if I were a Liberal propagandist I wouldn’t touch this one with a ten foot pole. Somebody out there recorded that vote and it will soon appear on the internet.
Just sayin’!
I have the software and could have recorded that vote but I didn’t because I still have some trust in our media. No more! CBC just climbed on board with CTV. CPAC has yet to publish anything and that says it all.
We need TRUSTWORTHY reporters to contact Ottawa and get the true results of that vote.
It’s important but knowing the Libs as I do those results just ended up in the garbage can.
It’s what they do. Sorta like Russia!