Pierre Poilievre is winning with his rallies. Mark Carney is winning with the pollsters.

What’s really happening?

Well, Greg Lyle is an old friend. He has a poll out with his Innovative Research Group. Full disclosure: Greg and I helped start a certain consulting firm that shall not be named.

He left before I did to start his own very successful polling firm. (More disclosure: I left when I found out that some there were secretly helping out Big tobacco.)

Anyhow. Greg has a poll out and it shows the Tories ahead by one (1) point. This will be a cause for great celebration among some Conservatives, but it shouldn’t be. They were a point ahead on election day in 2019 and 2021, as well. And they lost those.

Well-attended rallies notwithstanding, Team Blue just are not where they need to be. The debates have therefore become very important indeed.

Now, those of us in the media like to go on and on about the tremendous, life-altering importance of so-called “defining moments” in debates. But, honestly, those don’t happen very often at all.

I’ve gotten Prime Ministers and Premiers ready for debates, many times. The strategic objective is always simple. It’s two things: have your issues dominate, and look and sound like a leader.

In the Liberal leadership debates, Mark Carney was clobbered both times by Karina Gould, an articulate MP half his age. He had never run for high public office before, or participated in a debate like that, and it showed. He was the proverbial fish out of water.

Being the boring and pedantic technocrat has worked for him when the contrast is with Donald Trump, however. Trump is like a Tasmanian devil on Benzedrine. In that frame, Carney just needs to look like an adult who has a basic understanding of economics and logic.

[To read more, subscribe here]

Comments (26)

Since I was a kid – since this day in 1972, in fact, when I started writing a daily journal – I have always taken note of April 4, and said to myself:  “April 4.  Dr. King.”

Today, more than half a Century ago, Martin Luther King was murdered by a racist in Memphis.  Dr. King was a giant of a man, the one whose message continues to resonate across the decades, because racial hatred continues unabated.

He was the one who first said that “anti-Zionism” was, in fact, just plain old anti-Semitism.  Worth remembering in these dark post-October 7 days.

I was a kid, and my family was living in Dallas when he was assassinated. I remember it; I remember how scared we were when he was murdered, how it seemed like the end of decency, and the start of something terrible. It was, too.

So. It’s April 4, so many years later, and here is some of his most remarkable speech.  Surveying the racists who still crowd the public stage in the U.S., I don’t think we will see the likes of him again.

Comments (12)

Before the tariffs hit, before Donald Trump kicked off his three-ring circus in the White House lawn, my genial colleague Brian Lilley suggested I come with him to see the Conservative leader speak to the elite of Bay Street.

So I did. I watched at the back.

His tone was right. Pierre Poilievre looked and sounded like you would expect a Prime Minister to look and sound. His economic plan, and his plan for dealing with the tariffs, seemingly made sense.

But as I stood there at the back observing the guy, it was obvious that he could not bring himself to clearly and unambiguously condemn Donald Trump.

Canadians want him to do that. I’m now convinced he will never do that. Is that bad? Well, it could be fatal.

I had never seen Pierre Poilievre give a speech in person before. He seemed a bit shorter than I expected – although this writer is 6’4″ in my Doc Martens.

He was impeccably suited, there was not a hair out of place, and he seemed a bit younger than he does on TV. Certainly less severe.

At one point he made a joke about snow in mid-April, and I was the loudest laugh in the room. It was funny.

I thought to myself: he should do that more often. He should smile more. He should laugh more.

But in politics, as in life: once you reach 40 or so, how you are is how you are. No big changes are possible.

[To read more, subscribe here]

Comments (17)

“Demographics.”

Back in the Fall, former NDP leader Thomas Mulcair told a story about a revealing exchange with Melanie Joly, then as now the inexplicable choice for Global Affairs Minister for both Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney.

Joly’s position on the Jewish state is easy to ascertain. In October 2023, Joly blamed Israel for bombing a hospital in Gaza and killing hundreds. Even after the facts came out – that Israel did not fire the missile, Palestinian Islamic Jihad did; that hundreds were not killed, at all; and that hospital was still standing – Joly did not recant.

Hamas is a listed terrorist entity in Canada. Despite that, Joly has called for the murderous cult to be given a spot at the negotiating table with Israel. She favours funding UNWRA, even after the aid agency admitted its members participated in the atrocities of October 7 in Israel. And she has refused to condemn South Africa’s dishonest campaign to prosecute Israel at the International Court of Justice for genocide.

Her opposition to the Jewish state was well-known even before she told Mulcair that the “demographics of her riding” – where voters of Arab or Muslim lineage ostensibly dominate – dictate her decision-making.

She’s not alone, apparently.

Liberal leader Carney has been been largely AWOL on the issue, as he is on most issues that are contentious. So, just a few days ago, Anita Anand – Carney’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology – appeared at a Liberal campaign officer to holler: “We will make sure, that we do not allow the forced displacement of people, from their land, including in Gaza.”

Left unsaid: that Israel didn’t want anyone “displaced,” and was living in peace with Gazans – until they slaughtered hundreds of Jews on October 7, 2023.

Another example: “Vote Palestine” describes itself as “a grassroots campaign aimed at putting Palestine on the ballot.” They lobby to get MPs, candidates and political parties to endorse their platform – which, among other things, demands recognition of the Hamas-led “state of Palestine,” continued funding for the terrorist-infiltrated UNWRA, and prosecution of the Jewish state for “war crimes.”

Multiple Liberal MPs or candidates have endorsed all that. Patrick Weiner, the MP for West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast; Fares Abu al-Soud in Mississauga Center; MP Iqra Khalid in Missisauga-Erin Mills; MP Tim Louis in Kitchener-Conestoga; MP Jenna Sudds in Kanata; MP Adam Koeverden in Burlington North-Milton West; and, of course, Salma Zahid in Scarborough Centre. Zahid has even attended a “solidarity event” where a Holocaust denier was present, and has called on the prosecution of Israel for “genocide.”

And so on and so on. There’s a lot of this anti-Israel, anti-Jewish hate if you’ve got the stomach for it. But a question remains.

[To read more, subscribe here]

Comments (6)