The way through is together

Reflections one week into the federal electoral campaign.

Photo by Neil Thomas on Unsplash

The most surprising thing so far is how many Conservatives are openly, or at least semi-anonymously, criticizing the Poilievre/Byrne duo for fucking up their shot at a majority government.

Politics is a small world and I’m going to bet I know two-thirds of the people complaining. The only one (so far) who’s vocal and very sharp in his public criticism is Kory Teneycke, and sure enough I used to work with him. Let’s say we’ve had our differences, but I have to give him credit for leading the Ontario Conservatives to three straight majorities. And also for being public about what’s happening to the Conservative Party.

Poilievre appears dead-set on sticking with the strategy that brought him the leadership of the party. He’s not one to change his mind very much. In fact I don’t remember the last time he did. So we’ll see I guess. But the fact is, it was always going to be dicey for him to win an election playing angry-trucker dude, because support for that kind of rhetoric is not that solid across the country. And while Poilievre surfed the wave of Trudeau fatigue very well, once Trudeau is gone all you’ve got is a sad puddle.

Some of us (ahem) have been saying for a while that the convoy-inspired, trumpesque toxicity would not be sustainable in Canadian politics. Hell, it’s not sustainable in American politics either. And there is much more opposition to it in the US right now than support for it, from what I can tell.

On April 24 last year I wrote this:

Poilievre needed these people’s support to win the leadership of the party, which he did get and did win. Because he’s not a certified imbecile, Poilievre knows the support of convoy enthusiasts and the Fuck Trudeau crowd is a very dangerous thing. Yes, it brought him the party. But it risks losing him the election because support for the convoy is actually quite thin across the country including in his own Ottawa-area riding. If he wants to win the election he’ll have to move to the centre, like Stephen Harper did in 2011. But doing so will lose him the support of convoy types, which he can’t afford to do just yet, seeing as we’re still a ways from an election. Yes, Poilievre will do what he has to do to win the next election, including repudiate the people who brought him closer to the prize. But not too early. So he’s playing for time.

Time’s up, I guess.

Pierre Poilievre would have helped himself and his party a great deal if, back when Justin Trudeau was still prime minister and he had that press conference when the tariffs first came on, he’d said something like, you know, we have our differences with the Liberals and this prime minister, and we think we’d be doing a better job than he is. But on this issue of threats of annexation and trade wars, we’re all on the same team.

He didn’t. He continued blaming Trudeau and the Liberals for a so-called lost decade. Which is not what Canadians wanted to hear.

This week I’ll be watching to see who else shows their face as they criticize Poilievre’s leadership, and how much worse polls have to get before he starts listening.

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Bruce Fanjoy at the Richmond Fair, long before this election was called.

You’ve heard me talk about the need to use empathy to power our way through this era of foreign threats and uncertainty. Other people — including the wonderful American historian Heather Cox Richardson — speak instead of the need for community. Here in Ottawa we have a new politician showing us the way to build such a community to defeat anger and toxicity in politics.

During a recent research trip to my beloved Huntsville, Alabama, I saw a budding resistance movement to the politics of the Trump administration. Very much including the trade war and threats of annexation. I would introduce myself as a Canadian journalist and people apologized for the threats. My friends down there are making efforts to buy Canadian products. One person I met chose to take her family to Montreal for spring break as a form of protest. Little by little, one person at a time, there is a community that’s taking shape of people — including many Republican voters — coming together to insist on respect for voters and democracy.

We can do that here, too.

A few weeks ago, during the Ontario election, I talked about Brandon Bay’s long-shot campaign in the riding of Carleton, which he lost to former city councillor George Darouze. The riding of Carleton, Bay said, changed a lot in recent years. Not enough for him to get elected, but still.

One man who knows just how winds are shifting in Carleton is Bruce Fanjoy. A few years ago, I wrote about his house in the Ottawa Citizen. We’ve since become friends. A little over two years ago he asked for my opinion on his potential run for the Liberal nomination in the federal riding of Carleton, currently held by one P. Poilievre. I thought it was such a good idea I’ve been a friendly ear and informal (also unpaid) advisor since then.

I have never been and never will be a member of any political party. But Bruce is a friend and I believe what he’s doing, challenging Poilievre’s tone and anger, is necessary.

It’s not something he wanted to do. He was retired after a successful career in the private sector and was getting ready to enjoy life in peaceful Manotick with his wife and adult children. Like many of us in Ottawa, the 2022 trucker occupation got stuck in his craw, as did Poilievre’s public support for it.

Fanjoy spent the last two years wearing out footwear criss-crossing the geographically enormous riding — it includes Riverside South and Stittsville, Manotick and Richmond. And lots of rural areas. Slowly, one handshake at a time, he built an incredible community of supporters. People who, like him, don’t like the current direction of the Conservative Party. Including many conservative-leaning voters.

As he recently said to me, “it’s very hard to demonize someone when you’re looking in their eyes and you see their humanity.” The community of volunteers showing up to canvas and door-knock on Fanjoy’s behalf is united not just by an opposition to Poilievre’s tone but in the belief that we can do better than that.

Community is what we need to fend off undertones of nastiness. It’s our armour. A defensive weapon. Which we need because anger in politics will never go away. There are people who are always afraid, resentful, jealous, unhappy. And when they can’t seem to be able to find redress through normal means, they turn on the very institutions of governance that underpin democratic society. If they can’t make the system work for them, they run a chainsaw through it.

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I want to leave you with something you too rarely see: A politician showing vulnerability, love and respect for a member of his community. Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew was asked to sing a song in honour of Ashlee Shingoose, an Indigenous woman who went missing in 2022 and who was only recently confirmed as one of the victims of a serial killer.

This, my friends, is a leader.