Another Win for the Freedom Convoy

The Conservative Party of Canada have a new leader: Pierre Poilievre, Member of Parliament for Carleton, Ontario.

Unlike in the previous two C.P.C. leadership elections, Poilievre's margin of victory wasn't at all close -- he won 70.7 percent of the vote, compared with 11.6 percent for his nearest rival, former Quebec premier and Red Tory net-zero enthusiast, Jean Charest. He dominated in every province and territory -- his worst showing was in Charest's home province of Quebec, and even there Poilievre won 62 percent of available points to Charest's 32 percent. In the Conservative strongholds of Alberta and Saskatchewan, he won close to 80 percent. The Writ's Éric Grenier comments,

It’s an emphatic victory for Poilievre with few signs of regional weaknesses. In 2004, Harper failed to win Quebec and Atlantic Canada. In 2017, Scheer was second in Quebec and Alberta. In 2020, O’Toole was beaten in the Maritimes. But in 2022, Poilievre won everywhere.

Poilievre's rise can be attributed in large part to the same force which brought down Erin O'Toole, namely the Freedom Convoy. As we wrote at the time of his ouster,

[O'Toole's] feeble response to the Freedom Convoy has encapsulated his problems these past several months, at once desperate to hold onto power and terrified of offending the sensibilities of, well, Liberal voters. For the first time since he became leader, there was energy on his side of the ideological spectrum, and Trudeau's Liberals were off balance. But O'Toole was anxious about being too supportive of what you might call the wrong sort of Canadians.

Poilievre, meanwhile, made himself the truckers' most visible supporter, publicly defending them against media attacks and taking part in their protests. Polling being what it was at the time (even if those polls weren't as straightforward as they appeared), that took real courage.

Most importantly for us at The Pipeline, Poilievre has consistently and vocally opposed the Trudeau government's anti-resource sector policies, pledging over and over again that, should he become prime minister, he would end the carbon tax and revive infrastructure projects like the Energy East and Northern Gateway pipelines which were cancelled under Trudeau. Moreover, he's promised to make Canada the “freest country in the world.”

And while we've heard sentiments like this before -- most recently from "True Blue" O'Toole -- the centrality of actual conservatism to Pierre Poilievre's political brand should give Conservative voters some reason for hope.

Will he succeed in any of this? Well, he would have to beat Trudeau first. And as things stand, beating Trudeau isn't a near-term possibility. The "supply and confidence" agreement between the N.D.P. and the Liberal Party will protect Trudeau from facing the voters until 2025. In the meantime Poilievre will set himself to the work of Opposition Leader, with the task of holding the government to account, something he already does quite well. Writing in the National Post before the leadership race was over, Rex Murphy said,

In what field does Poilievre labour? Why, in opposition, of course. In opposition to the Liberal-NDP consortium, that blunt, Commons-allergic, Emergencies Act-stampeding, insanely overspending, Alberta-hating quasi-coalition that now governs our sad country. That engine of the most grievous and rampant wokery, dilettantes on the world stage and social justice/environmentalist crusaders at home. From the Opposition benches, the few days Prime Minister Justin Trudeau opens the House of Commons to air it out and prevent the curtains from fading, one figure stands out, ready to pin the prime minister during question period, and in the most trenchant and incisive manner raise the dire threats of inflation and overspending. For a government that most sorely needs an opposition, Poilievre is the only truly Thermopylae warrior, the chief inquisitor and the one who clearly brings pain and anguish to the feeble front benches of the Trudeau government.

At the moment, that might be just what Canada needs. And if he does the job well, there's a good chance that he will be rewarded with a better one.

Why the Left Hates Workers, Uniting

An important point from Glenn "InstaPundit" Reynolds, writing in the New York Post:

For more than a century, lefties have talked about [a working class] revolt. But if you really paid attention, the actual role of the working class in their working-class revolution was not to call the shots — it was to do what it was told by the “intellectual vanguard” of the left.

A working-class revolution led by the working class is the left’s worst nightmare because the working class doesn’t want what the left wants. The working class wants jobs, a stable economy, safe streets, low inflation, schools that teach things and a conservative, non-adventurous foreign policy that won’t get a lot of working-class people killed. It’s not excited about gender fluidity, critical race theory, “modern monetary theory,” foreign adventures and defunding police.

At least since Karl Marx, leftist intellectuals have valorized the working class, speaking in paternalistic terms about its plight and proposing utopian schemes to put workers on an equal footing with the well-to-do. But when they have to deal with actual workers, they're disgusted. This is because actual workers tend to be, in the words of Pat Buchanan, "conservatives of the heart" who might not "read Adam Smith or Edmund Burke" but who are patriotic and hold to the very traditional values that the Left defines itself against. Marx himself had to condemn religion as the "opiate of the masses" because "the masses" were much more interested in the faith of their fathers than his own harebrained ideology.

Reynolds is right that this familiar story is playing itself out once again in the streets of Ottawa, where truck drivers, sick and tired of Covid restrictions, have descended upon the city to demand things be set right. They've already contributed to the fall of opposition leader, Erin O'Toole, a significant feat in its own right. But they're determined to get more substantive policy changes from the party in power. So of course the government is openly contemplating sending the military after them.

Remember the freak-out when Senator Tom Cotton called on Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act during the George Floyd riots? Mass hysteria, followed quickly by the defenestration of the op-ed page editor who greenlighted the column, James Bennet (who's now in court as the defendant in a lawsuit brought by Sarah Palin over another Times editorial he oversaw). Apparently it's okay to send in the Mounties when it's a Liberal government  being protested and the entirely peaceful protestors are singing and playing hockey.

At the moment it is unclear what, if any, substantive concessions the Freedom Convoy truckers might win from the government. But their biggest success thus far has been demonstrating the contempt Canada's liberals, in government as well as the media, have for people like them.

About Time: O'Toole Gets the Boot

By a vote of 73 to 45, Erin O'Toole has been ousted as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. He had served only seventeen months in the position. Rumors of an anti-O'Toole revolt have been going around for days, along with whispers that O'Toole was working frantically behind the scenes to convince (some would say "bully") members of his caucus to sign loyalty pledges in the hopes of warding off the impending challenge. But to no avail.

The definitive vote was forced by 35 MPs unhappy with O’Toole’s leadership after last year’s disappointing election results. But the root of the anger goes back much further. O’Toole won the leadership claiming to be a “True Blue” conservative — a contrast with Peter MacKay, who despite holding senior cabinet roles in Stephen Harper’s government, was labelled by the O’Toole campaign as a red Tory.

Yet once the leadership was secured, O’Toole took the party in a much different direction. After pledging to scrap the Liberals’ carbon levy, O’Toole promised a version of his own — which he steadfastly denied was a “tax,” despite it applying a surcharge on purchases like gas.

A look back on all of The Pipeline's coverage of O'Toole, from before he was elected leader until today will point you in the right direction. As we wrote in our final piece before last September's federal election (entitled "But is O'Toole Any Better?"), O'Toole had won the "race for Conservative leader running as 'True Blue O'Toole,' a patriotic military man who was going to take the fight to Justin Trudeau. But ever since, he's gone out of his way to remake the CPC in his own Red Tory image." He'd softened his party's position on abortion, guns, conscience protections for healthcare workers, and environmentalism, and generally adopted the characteristic views of the Laurentian Elite, views that were already well-represented in parliament, specifically in the Liberal Party, the NDP, and the Green Party.

Erin, we hardly knew ye.

His flip-flopping on these points were egregious, and on environmentalism most of all. While running for leadership O'Toole had signed a pledge saying:

I, Erin O’Toole, promise that, if elected Prime Minister of Canada, I will: Immediately repeal the Trudeau carbon tax; and, reject any future national carbon tax or cap-and-trade scheme.

But when it came time to for him to actually run for prime minister, he put forward his own carbon tax in all but name, part of a jam-packed, all-in, environmentalist plan that included an electric vehicle mandate, a net-zero by 2050 pledge, and which "finalized and improved" the Trudeau government's Clean Fuel Standard (also known as the second carbon tax). This was a particular own-goal for the leader of a party whose base of support is located in the areas of the country that are most dependent upon the oil and gas industry.

And if it didn't win O'Toole much support among his base, it downright frosted his colleagues in Parliament, most of whom found out about it from the press. They weren't even briefed on this massive change in party policy. It's a good bet that all these months later, a large number of MPs who voted against O'Toole had that fact in mind.

In the end, however, he lost the election, largely because he failed to give Canadians anything to vote for. Especially since he wasn't all that against the Trudeau policies regarding energy and the environment in the first place.

Indeed, throughout his tenure as party leader, O'Toole struggled to find any kind of a footing that would enable him to resist Trudeau's agenda. His feeble response to the Freedom Convoy has encapsulated his problems these past several months, at once desperate to hold onto power and terrified of offending the sensibilities of, well, Liberal voters. For the first time since he became leader, there was energy on his side of the ideological spectrum, and Trudeau's Liberals were off balance. But O'Toole was anxious about being too supportive of what you might call the wrong sort of Canadians, eventually agreeing to meet with some of the truckers, but not the organizers of the protest, which Carson Jerima rightly points out was "a transparent attempt to get credit for supporting the rally and also credit for not supporting it." Of course, no one was fooled.

Au revoir, O'Toole.

As the Wall Street Journal noted yesterday, O'Toole has richly deserved his fate:

Mr. O’Toole’s chief mistake was gambling the September 2021 election on an opportunistic shift leftward. He lost anyway, spoiling the best chance to toss Mr. Trudeau from office. Post-defeat, Conservative Party fundraising crashed...Mr. O’Toole has met with truckers but warned late Monday night that his Conservative critics, some of whom have embraced the protest, offer a “dead-end” and are “angry, negative, and extreme.”

Canada needs a better opposition. The Liberals, long considered Canada’s “natural governing party,” won’t be defeated by mimicry. Unseating them typically requires a formidable Conservative leader. So far, Mr. O’Toole hasn’t shown the right stuff.

Before the vote John Robson wrote:

[O'Toole] stands for nothing but office. And his caucus has had enough because it’s bad being an unprincipled winner, but pathetic being an unprincipled loser.

That's as good a summation of his leadership and its end as anyone could come up with.

What comes next for the Conservatives? John Williamson of New Brunswick has announced his intention to stand for interim leader. He seems like a solid choice. Then there will be a race for a permanent leader, and The Pipeline will be all over it. With Justin on the ropes, now was precisely the right time for the CPC to depose its ineffectual leader. Canada is reeling from fascism disguised as Covid mitigation, and its critical energy industries are suffering from elite contempt and malign regulation; a new strong, forceful, and patriotic leader is precisely what's needed now.

The various aspirants who emerge should take a page from Florida governor Ron DeSantis' book and effectively and immediately form a kind of shadow cabinet or even a government-in-exile against the fleabagging Trudeau to give traditional Canadians something to rally 'round besides the Maple Leaf flag. Hopefully they will have learned from the Erin O'Toole experience, though I wouldn't put it past them to get into office and make all the same mistakes all over again.

O’Toole's Green Hubris

Dan McTeague, of Canadians for Affordable Energy, is dead right about Erin O'Toole's screw-ups which cost him the recent election:

O’Toole’s advisers claimed that the previous CPC campaign of Andrew Scheer had too many votes in the wrong places (Western Canada and rural Ontario) and not enough votes distributed in seat-rich (largely) urban eastern Canada. The solution: go green! Support a carbon tax and related madness. Pander to Toronto. Pander to Quebec. Then win. Here was my favourite quote attributed to an O’Toole insider, about how Conservative MPs should accept the strategy: [they’re] not willing to give up five points (in a Western riding) in order to give that to someone in Ontario for us to win there?” In other words, the CPC had “votes to burn” in Western Canada, and burn them they must in order to win over the “green” voters of Ontario and Quebec.....

In the end, CPC votes were indeed burned in Western Canada: the CPC lost 13.7% of the vote, two more seats in Edmonton and one more in Calgary. The Liberals are back in Alberta! In British Columbia, the CPC shed 70,000 or so votes from the previous election and lost 4 of its 7 CPC MPs in the Greater Vancouver Area. Altogether – so far – the CPC has lost 7 seats in the urban west, with the possibility of another loss in Winnipeg (pending a judicial recount).... But did the Western losses give gains in Ontario? The CPC picked up three new ridings in Ontario, but lost two Toronto area MPs, for a net gain of one. So, down three in Alberta, and up one in Ontario, for a net loss of two seats. And Quebec? The Tories went from ten seats to … ten seats. Zero gain.

McTeague suggests that these numbers need to be front and center as the CPC debates keeping O'Toole on as leader while his Red Tory team tries to spin the recent electoral showing as a success. Read the whole thing.

Trudeau Holds On and Other Election Notes

Just an update on yesterday's election in Canada, where the vote count is still ongoing, but the result is more or less determined -- it looks like it will be a Liberal minority government... just like last time. It is, in fact, hard to overstate how like last time it is:

Two quick notes to follow-up on my election article this past weekend.

First, it's nice to see the enviro-activist Tory insiders I mentioned --  Ken Boessenkool, Mark Cameron, and Howard Anglin -- wind up with egg on their faces. Their solution to the outcome of the 2019 election, when the CPC picked up the vast majority of seats west of Ontario, winning the national popular vote but losing overall, was to encourage the party to "Go Green," with the intention of flipping seats in the Greater Toronto Area. Well, the Conservatives went all in on their advice, and even so it looks like the Liberals have once again swept the GTA. Nice work, fellas.

Second, as Holly Doan points out, current estimates peg turnout at less than 59 percent of eligible voters, lowest in Canadian history and about 8 percent lower than the 2019 election. Some of this is Covid anxiety of course, but even so, this suggests a dispirited electorate, unhappy with the options available to them. Not that we should be surprised by this -- The Toronto Star reported a few days ago that Conservative campaigns were seeing a notable lack of enthusiasm, especially in Ontario, where some ridings were unable to attract more than a handful of volunteers. For all of the belly-aching about the populist People's Party of Canada splitting the vote and tipping right-of-center seats to the Liberals, had the CPC given voters a reason to go to the polls for them, they could probably have sent Trudeau packing.

In my piece I suggested an approach or two that might have been successful -- namely really representing the views of their base rather than running from them and pushing back on the Liberals' environmental policies for the pain they cause the average Canadian. This approach might still work in the future, especially as Trudeau's policies continue to damage the economy and slow recovery, post-Covid. But I don't think Erin O'Toole is capable of making that case.

My advice to the Tories would be: give old Erin the boot, tear the party down to the studs (a different kind of Great Reset, if you will), and start over by playing to your strengths. It isn't like you've got much to lose.

But Is O'Toole Any Better?

The Canadian Federal election is taking place on September 20th, and it seems harder than usual to follow what is going on up there. Recent polling suggests that the Conservatives and Liberals are more or less neck-and-neck, with the NDP pulling in third as expected, but with a surprisingly strong 20 percent share of the projected vote. Why so close? Well, it's partly because of the nature of the contemporary Canadian electorate -- the 2019 election, at least by popular vote, was a nail-biter as well. But it is also likely because the basic positioning of the major parties are so similar that you'd need to be a scholastic philosopher to determine the difference between them.

This should come as no surprise as far as two of those parties are concerned. The brains behind current prime minister Justin Trudeau, knowing well that the resurgence of the NDP was key to Stephen Harper's electoral victories in the early aughts, have continued moving leftward to prevent Jagmeet Singh's iteration of the party from bringing about a similar result. And, anyway, two leftwing parties jockeying for position as the true party of the left is so commonplace as to be almost not worth commenting upon.

But a notionally right-of-center party doing so? That's the puzzler.

O'Toole: Maybe inject some principles while you're at it.

Erin O'Toole won last summer's race for Conservative leader running as "True Blue O'Toole," a patriotic military man who was going to take the fight to Justin Trudeau. But ever since, he's gone out of his way to remake the CPC in his own Red Tory image. According to Gary Mason, in a column entitled 'Erin O'Toole is changing Canadian conservatism as we know it,'

[B]ehind the scenes, there was always a plan to change the direction the party would head in during an election if [O'Toole] became leader – the direction many believed offered the only path to victory.

Mason continually praises O'Toole's sagacity in eschewing the positions of his base on issues like abortion, guns, conscience protections for healthcare workers, and environmentalism; and his overall willingness to adopt stances more acceptable in polite society. Says Mason, a "Conservative Party headed by Erin O’Toole would be in step with the times. Full stop." But it's striking that the supposedly up-to-date positions he describes, purportedly to appeal to the same type of alienated, working-class voters who made Brexit a reality, are in fact the characteristic views of the Laurentian Elite.

Peter MacKay famously blamed the party's loss in 2019 on the "stinking albatross" of social conservatism hanging about its neck, but for Erin O'Toole the albatross seems to be conservatism itself.

Environmentalism is our focus here at The Pipeline, and on that score O'Toole's drift has been particularly egregious. One of the Tory insiders that Mason quotes praising the party's lurch leftward is Ken Boessenkool, who has been arguing for years that the only way conservatives will ever again take power is if they sell out Canada's oil and gas producing provinces by embracing carbon taxation and other extreme (and pointless) regulations in order to win over voters in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). O'Toole has taken this advice, and the advice of other Tory insiders, like Mark Cameron, former head of the environmentalist pressure group Canadians for Clean Prosperity, now a deputy minister in the government of Alberta.

During his leadership campaign O'Toole signed a pledge saying,

I, Erin O’Toole, promise that, if elected Prime Minister of Canada, I will: Immediately repeal the Trudeau carbon tax; and, reject any future national carbon tax or cap-and-trade scheme.

But after he'd won, O'Toole released a document entitled 'Secure the Environment: The Conservative Plan to Combat Climate Change,' which begins "Canada must not ignore the reality of climate change. It is already affecting our ecosystems, hurting our communities, and damaging our infrastructure."

To combat climate change, O'Toole promised that, should he form a government, he would 1) implement his own Carbon Tax, one that's less onerous than the Liberal version, but which could be increased if market conditions make doing so feasible. 2) "Finalize and improve" the Trudeau government's Clean Fuel Standard (also known as the second carbon tax), 3) enact an electric vehicle mandate and invest billions of tax-payer dollars in EV manufacture and infrastructure, which includes, 4) update the national building code such that all buildings will have "mandatory charging stations or wiring required for chargers", 5) reduce emissions in line with the Paris Climate Accords by 2030 and achieving Net-Zero emissions by 2050. And on and on.

That's not just a flip-flop, that's an atomic belly flop.

Coming your way, Canada.

But are these moves necessary to win? Mason quotes Howard Anglin, former Chief of Staff to both Harper and Jason Kenney, as saying "[t]he first challenge that any Canadian conservative party must confront is that Canada is not a conservative country." Maybe. But I can't help hearing in that sentiment the predictions of impending "permanent Democratic majorities" we've been hearing about in the U.S. for the last 40 years. My own theory is that Canadians are rarely presented with a serious conservative alternative to the Trudeaupianism they've been force-fed since the '60s.

Here's just one example of how the Tories might have approached this election differently -- Dan McTeague of Canadians for Affordable Energy recently pointed out that the exploding price of housing has been a major issue in this election, but there has been little mention of the other factors making life in Canada increasingly expensive.

Once someone has a place to live, they are going to need to cool it in the summer and heat it in the winter. They will need electricity to cook and store their food... All of this, of course, takes energy... Every major Canadian political party is committed to at least Net Zero emissions by the year 2050. I have written extensively about how this leads to skyrocketing energy prices. Yet, amid all the talk about housing affordability no one in Canada seems to be saying much about energy affordability.

Policies like carbon taxation are always sold by the Liberals as affecting "Big Polluter" mega-corporations, but in fact they do real harm to ordinary people, both when they 're hit with the tax directly at the pump or paying their heating bill, or indirectly when the price for everything else goes up. Canadians are very sensitive to those pocketbook issues, probably even more so than Americans. Energy affordability could have been a winning issue for the CPC, with the winter months approaching and more than a year of accumulated pandemic-related economic anxiety weighing on people's minds. Instead they chose to go Liberal-lite, a move which rarely, if ever, works.

Still, I do appreciate arguments like those of former Conservative MP and minister Joe Oliver, whose recent endorsement of O'Toole for PM said:

[Trudeau] has exploited the pandemic to set the country on a path of unsustainable spending and intrusive government. Four more years galloping toward a dystopian Great Reset would make it exceptionally challenging for a new government to arrest, let alone reverse, that dire fate.

But I can't help but notice that Oliver's argument -- that Trudeau is awful and Canada just needs him gone -- is only for O'Toole by default.  Maybe that will be enough, and Trudeau fatigue will carry O'Toole over the finish line. But such a strategy just failed spectacularly in the California recall election, leaving Gov. Gavin Newsom in an even stronger position to torture the Golden State than he was before. Canada is likely to experience the same fate.

Erin O'Toole's Carbon Tax Flip-Flop

As I mentioned the other day Erin O'Toole has foolishly decided to flip-flop on the topic of Canada's carbon tax. And that's is the only way to describe this. While running for leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, O'Toole signed a pledge which read as follows:

I, Erin O’Toole, promise that, if elected Prime Minister of Canada, I will: Immediately repeal the Trudeau carbon tax; and, reject any future national carbon tax or cap-and-trade scheme.

That pledge, of course, was a big part of the reason that O'Toole beat out Peter MacKay for leadership. O'Toole appealed to the western provinces by calling MacKay a squish on resource issues. MacKay hit back, accusing O'Toole of secretly supporting the Trudeau climate agenda in one particularly heated debate. Here's Ezra Levant reluctantly commending MacKay for having O'Toole's number, and offering this conclusion on the current leader:

O’Toole supporting the carbon tax is disqualifying because he promised he wouldn’t, and he received support in return for that promise. So he’s untrustworthy. He’s a liar. It’s disqualifying because a carbon tax is a terrible idea, bad scientifically, bad economically.

He might have added that it specifically disqualifies him as a leader, since -- if reports from the Toronto Star and National Post are true -- his own caucus wasn't briefed on the change. “We all first heard about this from the CBC article,” one Tory M.P. told the Post. How can he ever have the confidence of parliament if he does things like this to his own members?

Of course, not everyone was upset by this development. Some were delighted. True North highlights this tweet from Trudeau crony Gerald Butts:

True North also points out a few notable and underdiscussed green goodies contained in the O'Toole proposal:

Other measures... include a study on “new taxes on frequent flyers, non-electric luxury vehicles and second homes to deter activities that hurt the environment.” A Conservative government would also spend $1 billion on domestic electric vehicle manufacturing and an additional $1 billion to deploy hydrogen technology.

Which is to say, he's all in.

Of course, O'Toole's counter to all of this is, first, that it is necessary for winning Ontario, and second, that at least his carbon tax is better than Trudeau's. I previously mentioned Dan McTeague's refutation of the first point. To the second, I would point to Derek Fildebrandt's argument in the Western Standard that the Tory plan is actually the worse of the two:

Under Trudeau’s plan, the federal government taxes consumers in provinces that do not have their own federally-approved carbon tax, and rebates a portion of it back to those consumers to spend as they see fit. Under O’Toole’s carbon tax, the federal government will impose a similar carbon tax, but instead of rebating it, will put into ‘green cards.' These green cards will be managed by a group of bankers appointed by O’Toole, and allow carbon taxpayers to spend the money collected on government-approved green purchases.... The real difference between the Trudeau carbon tax and the O’Toole carbon tax boils down to how taxpayers are allowed to spend the money collected from them. And on this front, Justin Trudeau’s plan is somehow, unambiguously better than O’Toole’s.

Several commentators think that this gamble will hurt the CPC's electoral prospects and O'Toole's career (Brian Platt mentions Patrick Brown as the nearest analogue, who outraged the conservative grassroots when he endorsed the carbon tax, so he had no one to back him up when other scandals arose, forcing him, finally, to resign). But the ever-cheerful sage Rex Murphy is concerned about its effects on the future of Canada itself:

The Conservatives are, if the rumours are true, about to enter an election, as a pale and timid version of the Liberal party, as near-partners to the NDP and the Greens. Out West voters will throw up their hands, sigh very deeply, stay at home, and really start thinking separation is the only way to go. Really, this policy is acid to Conservative support in the West and will, for some, force a rethink of their place in Confederation.

Back when O'Toole won the leadership race, I called on him to follow the advice of his fellow Ontarian, Shania Twain, to "dance with the one[s] that brought" him, meaning the Albertans and Saskatchewaners whose support gave him the 'W'. Instead, he's listened to the political consultant class who have long held that the path to Conservative victory is to copy the Liberals in every particular and to ignore the voters that they find embarrassing.

Well that choice seems to already be paying off... for Justin Trudeau. The latest polls suggest that, going into the rumored snap election to which Murphy alluded, Liberal support sits at 39 percent, six points above what they received in the 2019 General Election, which saw them barely hold on to power with a minority government. The Conservatives, meanwhile, are down seven points from the same election, at about 27 percent.

We tried to warn him.

Canadian 'Conservatives' Offer Carbon Tax

The CBC has gotten their hands on a copy of the Conservative Party of Canada's all new Climate Change plan, and boy are they excited:

After years of criticizing the Liberal carbon tax, the Conservative party is proposing a climate plan that also puts a price on carbon for consumers.... Under [Erin] O'Toole's plan... Canadians would pay a carbon levy, initially amounting to $20 per tonne of greenhouse gas emissions, every time they buy hydro-carbon based fuels, such as gas.... The Conservative party's carbon price... would increase over time to reach a maximum of $50 per tonne.

For comparison, Trudeau's carbon tax structure (not counting the Clean Fuel Standard, a second carbon tax in all but name) has the tax increasing $10 each year until it reaches $170 per ton in 2030.

The other notable provision of the plan is, frankly, bizarre. In the Liberal scheme, Canadians can have their carbon tax expenditures (the direct ones, not the indirect, cost of living ones) rebated back to them at tax time (more or less -- what would be the point if some of that money wasn't skimmed off the top?). In O'Toole's plan, tax revenue would be diverted directly into a "personal low carbon savings account" established for every Canadian, which could be accessed for expenditures "that help them live a greener life."

This reminds me of the old joke that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. "Personal low carbon savings accounts" are a camel if ever I saw one, and they'd be a nightmare to administer.

But that aside, is the 'Carbon Tax, but cheaper' play a wise one for O'Toole's Conservatives? Some smart politicos think so. Here, for instance, is Matt Gurney arguing that Canadians want to feel like their government is addressing climate change, but don't really want it to affect their lives in any way. In that case, a cheaper carbon tax might do the trick -- assuaging the consciences of enough voters in the eastern half of the country to make Erin O'Toole prime minister.

But I find Dan McTeague more convincing. By McTeague's reckoning, the O'Toole plan wouldn't merely cost the CPC a few  points of support out west, it would decrease their support in Ontario -- the big fish -- by as much as 10 percent! After all, Ontario made Doug Ford premier just three years ago on the strength of his opposition to the carbon tax. For every voter in the Greater Toronto Area who might give the CPC a second thought based on this plan, two or three more in the rest of the province might just stay home, disgusted.

That's just another way of saying 'Trudeau Majority."

The Wearin' of the Green

The Conservative Party of Canada are having their (virtual) policy convention this weekend, and one potential inclusion in their new platform is causing quite a stir in that country's monolithically left-wing media. This CBC headline tells the tale: "Conservatives debate whether to declare that 'climate change is real' at policy convention."

The language recognizing the reality of climate change was put forward by the Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier riding association, which added that, "[w]e believe that Canadian businesses classified as highly polluting need to take more responsibility in implementing measures that will reduce their GHG emissions and need to be accountable for the results."

The CBC's report is hysterically transparent, spending some time gawking at delegates who would dare to oppose this change in the platform -- one attendee said "she couldn't support any green policies until the health and safety concerns of 'industrial wind turbines' are better understood," although the writer assures us that this isn't a real issue.

The story then pivots to a discussion of Conservative leader, Erin O'Toole, who is famous for taking every position on every issue and saying whatever he needs to say to get good press:

O'Toole has promised the party's election platform will contain a climate change plan that could cut greenhouse-gas emissions. To attract new supporters — especially millennials — O'Toole has said he wants a made-in-Canada net zero approach that sees government partnering with and pushing companies to bring their emissions down, and carbon pricing that targets only industries, not individuals. "You're going to see a very detailed plan... that will, I think, make our commitments probably faster than Mr. Trudeau without a running-out-of-control federal carbon tax that he's already promising."

Sounds like witchcraft to me.

It's likely that some kind of green language will ultimately end up in the CPC platform, and it will probably get O'Toole a nice pat on the head for not being as backward as his party's voters. But in the end that will just be used as a pretext for the Liberal's positioning getting even more radical, and it won't help him, or his party, come election time.

Meanwhile, Canadian businesses and Canadian workers will be the ones who suffer.

As Canada Goes Green, Canada Goes Broke

It’s no longer news that the Liberal government of Canada under Justin Trudeau and his “social justice” cronies Gerald Butts and Chrystia Freeland have pulled out the stops in an effort to destroy the major source of Canada’s energy sector, the oil-gas-pipeline industry in the province of Alberta.

The oil sands have effectively become a dead letter. Every pipeline project has been quashed and energy companies have decamped for sunnier climes. The decline in Alberta’s GDP is pegged at 11.3 per cent. Unemployment and under-employment are rampant. The Alberta secession movement has acquired momentum and a political party, Wexit Canada, rebadged as the Maverick Party, has been formed—although the province’s Conservative premier Jason Kenney remains a staunch federalist and majority sentiment remains “loyalist.”

What Canadians do not seem to understand is that as Alberta goes, so goes Canada. For more than 50 years Alberta, Canada’s energy producing breadbasket, has been a major net contributor to the rest of the nation via the Equalization Formula in which “have” provinces subsidize their “have not” counterparts.

As Canada under the Liberal administration has now become a heavily indebted “have not” country, Alberta was its last remaining mainstay—until Alberta itself imploded thanks to the energy crushing policies of the federal government. It is now a “have not” province. 

Indeed, as Canada goes Green, Canada goes broke, forcing it to increase its debt load and enact burdensome domestic programs that will impoverish its citizens and devastate the productive classes. At a steadily approaching inflexion point, Canada will face the spectre of default—a time-honored South American prospect.

In an article for the National Post, former Conservative leadership candidate Leslyn Lewis shows why she would have been a far better choice for the Conservative nomination than the waffly, Andrew Scheer-like Erin O’Toole. Lewis reveals how the new creeping socialism operates, confiscating not our property but our wealth via various levies like a home equity tax, a ubiquitous carbon tax, a new tax on the private sale of homes costing home owners a portion of their retirement savings, and a “perpetual debt scheme reminiscent of Argentina.”

What is taking place, she warns, is “a quiet and bloodless revolution that seeks to control our lives through economic dependency.” Conrad Black believes “the government… has lost its mind”—though more likely it is acting quite deliberately, in full knowledge and intent, cleverly pursuing a soft totalitarian agenda. Meanwhile, most Canadians linger in a condition of blissful oblivion as the country they believe is theirs and continue to be proud of is being insidiously stolen from them before their very eyes.

Regardless, Canadians on the whole believe in big government and continue to vote left, ensuring that Trudeau’s Liberals and the New Democratic Party (NDP) helmed by Jagmeet Singh will likely retain control of parliamentary business and national policy. A recent Angus Reid poll indicates that nearly 60 percent of Canadian women would vote today for either the Liberals or the NDP under these two leaders. Such are the wages of feminism.

Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime provinces—aka the “Laurentian Elite”—trend massively socialist, as do the major conurbations like Halifax, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. There can be no doubt that socialism is the name of the game. Trudeau has boasted that China’s “basic dictatorship” is his favorite political system and, as Spencer Fernando writes, is far too week to stand up to Chinese Communist pressure.

Trudeau, we recall, lamented the passing of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, “join[ing] the people of Cuba in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader.” Similarly, Jagmeet Singh had this to say: “He saw a country wracked by poverty, illiteracy & disease. So he lead [sic] a revolution that uplifted the lives of millions. RIP #Fidel Castro.”

Trudeau’s approval rating has taken a hit of late but carrots count in moving the dray electorate forward. A new Angus Reid poll indicates where his strength lies province by province. Many Canadians are happy to allow the government to borrow hundreds of millions to subsidize their idleness with a monetary COVID response package, dubbed CERB (Canada Emergency Response Benefit), recently increased by 20 percent, rendering it difficult for many entrepreneurs and businesses to hire service personnel who relish living off the government dole.

Nevertheless, despite his many false promises, numerous scandals, proroguing of parliament for several months on the pretext of mitigating COVID, fiscal incontinence, 600 million dollar media bribe (sugar-coated as a “bailout”), and overall economic witlessness (“the budget will balance itself”), Trudeau’s carrots to select beneficiaries enable him to retain a considerable voting constituency and markedly improve his chances of re-election.

Indeed, The Liberal Party can count on an ample war chest. A recent special report here at The Pipeline demonstrated that, of the top ten third-party spenders that influenced the previous election, eight of them were leftist groups, outspending their rivals on the right by a factor of over 15 to 1. The CBC poll tracker indicates that the Conservatives are currently trailing the Liberals by 5 percentage points but, as the propaganda arm of the Liberals and favorite son Trudeau, its results should be met with a degree of skepticism.

Nonetheless, the Conservatives are likely no match for the combined electoral clout of the Left in this country. The cash-strapped, media bête noire, the People’s Party of Canada, is the best option for Canada’s (and Alberta’s) future, but it may not garner a single parliamentary seat—as was the case in the last election. This is to be expected. The Liberals may form a minority government once again, but with the NDP hitching a ride it would in any case be tantamount to a majority. Canada’s premier columnist Rex Murphy speculates, with considerable evidence, that Trudeau and Singh have formed “a (silent) concordat.”

Alberta had better get its act together before the Overton window closes. Alea iacta est.