RE’IM, ISRAEL – When you come to this quiet place – where the death cult called Hamas raped, mutilated, beheaded, burnt, slaughtered, and shot 364 young people on the morning of October 7, 2023 – some Canadian visitors inevitably ask themselves: where is my country?

Because, make no mistake, Canada’s leadership hasn’t been much in evidence around the site of the former Nova Music Festival. Or at any of the other sad places in Israel, really, where 1,200 men, women, children and babies were murdered by Hamas and Gazans on that terrible day. 

Did you know that every major world leader has been here to pay their respects, but not Canada’s? It’s true. The president of the United States, Joe Biden, ten days after the pogrom. The top leaders of France, Greece, Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom, the European Union. All have come to Israel to pay their respects and bear witness. Not Canada. 

Within Canada, meanwhile, something just as bad has happened: we have become one of the worst places in the world for antisemitism. 

It’s been noted, and reported on, in Israel, too: the schools for little Canadian Jewish kids sprayed with bullets. The Canadian synagogues firebombed. The Canadian businesses owned by Jews firebombed and shot up. Just because they are owned or run by Canadian citizens who happen to be Jewish. 

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A few years ago, I wrote this:

“[Pierre Poilievre]is one of the Conservative Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Like the Biblical Horsemen, everything he says and does is bad. Everything that is good that he touches withers and dies…He is one of the most despicable, loathsome politicians to ever grace the national stage. He is a pestilence made flesh.

Pipsqueak Pierre Poilievre is a disgrace to Parliament. He is a joke.”

Tell us what you really think, Warren!

In the fullness of time, I revised my opinion. I thought the Conservative leader-to-be had matured, somewhat. He jettisoned the WEF conspiracy theories, the pro-convoy idiocy, the dalliances with the Covid kooks. He started to act like a leader should. He grew up.

But the good people of the Carleton riding obviously didn’t agree. They weren’t so willing to forgive and forget. Somewhere between Monday night and Tuesday morning, voters in that riding – the riding Poilievre had held for a generation, just about – sent the Tory leader packing. They chose his Liberal opponent, Bruce Fanjoy, who is probably just as surprised as the rest of us.

Fanjoy didn’t just defeat the Conservative leader – he clobbered him, by 4,000 votes. It was a humiliation. It was a pounding. But even then – tellingly – Poilievre didn’t get the massage.

“We know that change is needed but change is hard to come by,” he said to his stunned followers, early Tuesday morning.

“It takes time. It takes work and that’s why we have to learn the lessons of tonight so that we can have an even better result the next time.”

But is Pierre Poilievre the sort of guy who “learns lessons?” Is he the one who can achieve “an even better result the next time?”

The available evidence isn’t persuasive. Just a few weeks ago, Poilievre had a 30-point lead over the Liberals. He had a massive war chest. He had a party that was united behind him.

And, even after all that, he failed. His party lost. He lost. He blew it.

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