Poilievre visits convoy camp, claims Trudeau is lying about 'everything'
Trudeau responds, accusing Poilievre of welcoming ‘extremists’
The Conservative leader is facing questions after stopping to cheer on an anti-carbon tax convoy camp near the border between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, where he bluntly accused the prime minister of lying about "everything."
In response, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused Pierre Poilievre of welcoming "the support of conspiracy theorists and extremists."
In videos posted to social media, Poilievre is seen thanking and encouraging protesters who have camped out in a self-described convoy-style "hold the line protest" since the carbon tax increase on April 1.
"Everyone hates the tax because everyone's been screwed over," Poilievre is heard saying in the video, which shows protesters with "Axe the tax" and "F--k Trudeau " signs and flags.
"People believed his lies. Everything he said was bullshit, from top to bottom."
Poilievre, who has been beating Trudeau's Liberals in the polls since last summer, then claimed the prime minister's policies haven't helped the middle class, as promised.
In another video from his visit, Poilievre is seen leaving a RV with a drawing of the black and white Diagolon flag on the door.
According to RCMP documents tabled at the Emergencies Act inquiry last year, the national police force believes Diagolon is a militia-like network whose supporters subscribe to an "accelerationist" ideology — the idea that a civil war or the collapse of western governments is inevitable and ought to be sped up.
The group's founder disputes that characterization and argues it's a fictitious meme.
Poilievre's visit with the protesters has caused a stir among his political opponents.
A
still image from a video of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre
meeting with anti-carbon tax protesters. The black and white flag seen
at the bottom right is the symbol for the controversial online community
Diagolon. (Tommy Everett/Facebook)
"Every politician has to make choices about what kind of leader they want to be," Trudeau said when asked about Poilievre's comments during a media availability Wednesday.
"Are they the kind of leader that is going to exacerbate divisions, fears and polarization in our country, make personal attacks and welcome the support of conspiracy theorists and extremists? Because that's exactly what Pierre Poilievre continues to do, not just when you see him engaging with members of Diagolon but also when he refuses to condemn and reject the endorsement of Alex Jones."
Jones, a notorious broadcaster who has been ordered to pay more than a billion dollars in damages to the families of the Sandy Hook victims after claiming the school shooting was a hoax, reiterated his support of Poilievre. In 2012, an armed man killed 26 people at the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, most of them children between the ages of six and seven.
"This is the kind of man who's saying Pierre Poilievre has the right ideas to bring the country towards the right," said Trudeau during a stop in the Toronto area, where he was touting his recent budget. Recent polling suggests last week's budget release hasn't done much to sway voters.
"So the fact that Pierre Poilievre hasn't stood up to condemn that endorsement, the fact that he continues to encourage the kind of divisive approaches to Canada that I don't think Canadians want to see, really shows that he will do anything to win."
Poilievre's team says they don't follow Alex Jones
In a statement issued to CBC News, Poilievre's spokesperson Sebastian Skamski said "we do not follow" Jones "or listen to what he has to say."
"Unlike Justin Trudeau, we're not paying attention to what some American is saying," said the statement.
Skamski did not respond to CBC's question about whether Poilievre was aware of the Diagolon symbol.
Skamski said Poilievre noticed an anti-carbon tax protest while driving between stops in Atlantic Canada.
"As a vocal opponent of Justin Trudeau's punishing carbon tax which has driven up the cost of groceries, gas, and heating, he made a brief, impromptu stop," he said.
"If Justin Trudeau is concerned about extremism, he should look at parades on Canadian streets openly celebrating Hamas' slaughter of Jews on Oct. 7."
The comment appears to cite a recent pro-Palestinian rally on Parliament Hill. Ottawa police say they're investigating allegations of hate speech after widely shared video showed a man on a megaphone praising Hamas' attack on Israeli civilians that killed more than 1,200, according to Israeli figures. More than 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in Israel's military campaign since then, health officials in the territory say.
In a separate news conference, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh accused Poilievre of deliberately dividing Canadians.
"A leader shouldn't be someone that is irresponsible with language, that stokes division, that stokes hatred," he said.
"He is someone that's been endorsed by the likes of Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson. This is a divisive person who is giving life to and giving breath to folks to continue his irresponsible approach, to his divisive approach."
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Why are the Liberals struggling to sell their economic plan to Canadians? | Power & Politics
WATCH | Chaotic heckling between MPs during question period
Pierre Poilievre having RCMP Look Into Jeremy MacKenzie Over Comments Made Online
Poilievre’s New World Odour
Happy International Women’s Day from Jeremy MacKenzie!
It’s been one kick in the goolies after another for poor Jeremy MacKenzie (Franks passim.)
Just a year ago the cerebral Diagolon goon got himself arrested for harassing Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Robert Strang.
In August the accelerationist nutjob posed for pix with Pierre Poilievre, then took to his podcast to muse about raping Anaida Galindo, the fragrant Mrs. Pepe.
Autumn found Jeremy reposing in a Saskatchewan jail after being picked up on a Canada-wide warrant (the last time Jeremy was in Saskabush he allegedly pummelled his ex-girlfriend, Tiegan Doman, and stuck a gun in the face of his Diagolon 2IC, Bryan Trottier).
When he finally got out of jail, Scotiabank closed his accounts and told him to take his business elsewhere.
February found Jeremy and his latest girlfriend, Morgan Guptill, appearing at a peace bond hearing in Halifax.
Former friend Samantha Monaghan applied for a peace bond because she claimed MacKenzie and Guptill’s harassment was making her suicidal. (Even after Monaghan’s 11-year-old son, Luc, died in November, Guptill kept tormenting her.)
Guptill accused Monaghan, in a series of texts and Facebook posts, of “grifting” for funeral expenses. On Christmas Eve Guptill lambasted her for not having life insurance on Luc, who had a variety of terminal medical conditions from birth.
Guptill also accused Monaghan, a former leader of the Freedom N.S. collective which organized the earliest protests against lockdowns and mask mandates, of stealing from the Freedom Convoy.
MacKenzie’s ‘Ragecast,’ of Jan 2, 2023, co-hosted by Guptill, ran a crawl along the bottom calling her a “drunk driver and a thief”.
“I was suicidal because of all the harassment,” Samantha testified.
“I was at my limit, with the death of my child, with everything… I was big in the community, people trusted me and now nobody even talks to me. And that was you guys’s fault,” she added, addressing Jeremy and Morgan directly.
The hearing also introduced a handful of fringe characters inhabiting the Maritime freedom community, including Cindy Macdonald, a disgraced nurse who dispenses drugs and medical advice from a clinic out of her house near Fredericton.
Morgan urged Samantha to take Luc to see Macdonald, a prominent member of the the anti-vaxxer collective ‘Canadian Frontline Nurses.’
At Cindy’s ‘Wellness Hub,’ Samantha told the hearing that the nurse, unable to find a proper blood collection needle, poked her son’s finger for a blood sample and let it drip into a “pee bottle.”
Promising to send the sample for analysis, Samantha then said Cindy handed her another pee bottle full of Ivermectin, the alt-right miracle cure. She instructed Samantha to start giving it to her son immediately. She didn’t.
In her defence, Guptill testified she was still concerned about Samantha’s mental health, but Justice of the Peace Darlene Lamey wasn’t buying.
“(Guptill) was aware of the death of Ms. Monaghan’s child… aware that what she was doing was causing harm… [and she] crossed the boundary into cruelty…cruel and beyond the pale.”
Lamey ruled that Guptill, who owns property in Cole Harbour but lives with Jeremy in his parents’ basement in Pictou, must refrain from contacting Monaghan and not mention her on social media for one year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHDTDMw00EQ&ab_channel=CBCNews
‘F--k Trudeau,’ from fringe to mainstream | Front Burner
Apr 30, 2024 Front Burner | Daily Podcast
From the fringe to the mainstream, how did hate for the prime minister become so visible in Canada?
The Pierre Poilievre Media Circus
I incur the wrath of the paranoid populist ringleader
There’s an old Russian saying: Those who have served in the army never laugh at the circus.
Anyone who has been to Pierre Poilievre’s increasingly-absurd roadshow recently probably won’t get much of a kick out of the carnival, either.
Poilievre has now been the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada for more than a year. He rode into the job on a wave of popular support from the anti-vaccine ‘Freedom Convoy,’ and has done everything he can since then to make that crowd proud.
He has pandered to conspiracy theories around the World Economic Forum by vowing to forbid his ministers and staff from attending the annual thought-leader hobknobbing event in Davos. He has made good by the anti-vaxxers by tabling legislation to ban COVID-19 vaccine mandates of any sort. He has winked at the anti-Ukraine camp by bashing a new Ottawa-Kyiv trade deal.
Poilievre has insisted, however, that he is well outside the culture wars and terminally-online discourse that has dominated right-wing political movements elsewhere. He has, instead, focused on a few core messages: Cutting taxes, getting tough on crime, building homes. It is all, as he repeats at least once a minute, “common sense.”
Despite his bread-and-butter pitch, Poilievre and his team are obsessed with maintaining a strong relationship with a small but influential group of far-right media outlets, conspiracy influencers, reactionaries, and online trolls. And they’ve found a very clever way to do it.
On Tuesday I trekked down to one of Poilievre’s press conferences here in Montreal to see this shtick for myself.
This week, on a very special CanCon edition of Bug-eyed and Shameless: The man slated to become the next prime minister of Canada is playing a pretty cynical game.
Danielle Smith has a lot of bad ideas.
On her Locals page, Smith told her paying subscribers that the media now falls into two camps: Those which tell the truth, and those which don’t. Identifying which is which isn’t hard.
“If you read an article or hear a speech calling something dangerous, trans-phobic, racist, alt-right, oppressive, conspiracy theory, misinformation or contributes to climate change,” Smith wrote. “You should definitely consult another source.”
As longtime readers of the newsletter will know, Smith was clearly taking her own advice. She shared articles from Holocaust denial blogs, anti-vaccine pseudoscience rags, pro-Russian propaganda outfits, and random Twitter denizens. (Dispatches #23, #24)
When one pseudoanonymous Twitter account, claiming to be an employee at a big tech company, cast a dystopian picture of “BLM/LGBTQ, trans flags hanging in office[s]. Pronouns stated before meetings. Special affiliation groups for everyone but white men,” Smith reacted with horror: “Dudes — if this is what is going on in big city offices everywhere, we have a lot of healing to do as a society.”
Smith was, then, just an out-of-work radio host. Now she’s the premier of Alberta.
Late last month, Smith announced that she would follow the example of numerous Republican-led U.S. states and institute a ban on gender-affirming care for youth.
The draconian measures would forbid all gender-affirming surgeries for those under the age of 17, and outlaw hormone therapy and puberty blockers for those under 16.
The new measures are simultaneously performative and dangerous. For starters, the Canadian Paediatric Society already has guidelines which say surgery should wait until a patient is at least 18 years old. A prescription for hormones, similarly, is generally only given after years of therapy, evaluations, and consultations with both the teenager and the parent, so rarely before 16. The big change, however, is on the restrictions for puberty blockers, a reversible pharmaceutical intervention which is governed by well-researched guidelines. Their use, as the name implies, generally occurs before puberty. Smith’s policies will effectively ban their use altogether.
The Canadian Paediatric Society was categorical that these changes “will lead to significant negative health outcomes, including increased risk of suicide and self-harm.” Others have put together exhaustive explanations for why these policies are dangerous and wrong-headed.
The thing is, I actually don’t think Smith is a hateful person. She shared at a recent press conference that a young person in her family is in the process of transitioning — and I’ve every reason to believe that Smith is kind and supportive towards them. The problem is that Smith is clearly opting to reject expert advice in favor of scaremongering and anecdotal horror stories pushed by her self-selected sources of information. She has, in other words, convinced herself that the doctors, experts, and journalists are part of the same cabal of wrongthink, and that she and her cohort have found the truth by a process of elimination.
That, to me, is really sad. And we — the media — deserve some blame for that. We were too quick to codify skepticism and caution as bigotry and transphobia. We missed an opportunity to try and forge, if not consensus, at least collaboration and understanding.
But Smith bears more blame. She has so gleefully deputized herself an expert on questions around healthcare for vulnerable youth because she watched a few Youtube videos. She has become the I-Did-My-Own-Research Premier.
She’s also been a success. She vaunted to the helm of her party, despite stiff opposition, and won nearly one million votes in a general election. She has attracted the adoration of Tucker Carlson, while her digital army is committed and rhetorically well-armed.
Smith won her election specifically because she was able to bifurcate her appeal: Speaking directly and plainly to those who fear COVID-19 vaccines and think renewable energy is a scam, while claiming to be more focused on jobs, jobs, jobs.
I believe that Smith is, for better or worse, a true believer. I believe, on the other hand, that Pierre Poilievre is an opportunist trying to scale Smith’s winning formula up to a national level in order to satisfy his own ambition.
And, thus far, it’s working.
The thing you have to know about Pierre Poilievre’s carnival is that the absurdity is the point.
Canadians may see a snippet of these press conferences on the news — or, more likely, on social media. More often than not, the clip is of a particularly dramatic moment: The Conservative leader crunching on an apple and browbeating a local reporter; Poilievre peering over a lectern, calling a reporter a “heckler”; or trolling the Canadian Press wire services for issuing corrections.
Most recently, on Monday, Poilievre was asked repeatedly about his position on Smith’s ban on transgender healthcare. He took the opportunity to tee off on a rant, accusing the media of working with the government to spread “disinformation.” (Journalists are also partly responsible, he insisted, for inflation, rising home prices, and crime.)
Over the course of his answer, he bashed reporters for asking about the issue, insisting it was a way to “drive a wedge,” while tacitly suggesting he supported Smith’s policies.
It’s true that this topic may not carry the geopolitical weight of war in Palestine nor the economic pressures of inflation, but it does matter. It matters in an actual sense, because teens are going to be denied healthcare services because of misinformed policy — and Poilievre’s party would like to see him adopt similar measures at a national level. But it matters in a more general sense, because it represents Poilievre’s relationship with those who hope to hold him to account. If he opts to respond to every critical question with trolling, then we risk a more serious declension between the fourth estate and the possible next leader of the country.
Late Monday, I noticed that Poilievre’s next tour stop was right here in Montreal. So, frustrated with his bullshit answer, I headed down to an icy parking lot near the Port of Montreal on Tuesday morning to listen to Poilievre explain his plan to reduce car thefts across the country.
His lengthy remarks were packed tight with ideas, accusations, policies, and recriminations. Some were good — reducing the use of management consultants (Dispatch #36) and reallocating funds to front-line inspections at Canada’s major ports. Other parts were half-baked, like his idea to massively scale-up x-ray scanning of shipping containers at the already-clogged up ports; or his accusation that car thefts were directly funding terrorism. The whole thing was punctuated with the apocalyptic language that has come to define his leadership: “Crime,” “chaos,” “suffering.”
Normally, at press conferences such as these, reporters try and ask a few questions specifically on the topic at hand, before moving on to other unrelated topics or the news of the day.
But Poilievre’s team have recently instituted a policy whereby journalists may only ask one question each, no follow-up, five in total. (His flacks cite “time constraints” at each event.) This practice revives an old tactic from the previous Harper government, which grew tired of the media by the end of its nearly-ten-years in power and clamped down on all the pesky question-asking.
The Conservative media wranglers snatch the microphone out of reporters’ hands as soon as they ask their question, depriving them of any retort to dear leader’s rants.
In responding, Poilievre generally lumps these questions into one of two categories — ones he likes, which he can use to deliver an answer that may go viral; and ones he doesn’t, whereby he can attack the journalist for asking them and achieve even more virality.
I fell into the latter category:
You often say you support medical freedom, that you oppose the state imposing medical choices on Canadians. Yesterday, you were asked about a new policy in Alberta, which restricts health care for transgender youth, in particular. You refused to say where you actually stand on those regulations. You attacked a journalist who asked you that question as peddling disinformation for the Prime Minister. So can you say, now, where you stand on the state restricting healthcare access for transgender youth? And can you confirm whether or not your caucus is allowed to speak freely on this issue?
Poilievre: First and foremost, you are spreading disinformation. And you refuse to even describe the policy proposals that are being debated. You refuse to even list any of them. And and the reason that you the reason you-
[off mic, because the microphone was taken out of my hand]: I will! I’ll explain them right now.
Poilievre: Let's be clear why you don't do it, because you don't want to lose the debate. And so if you think if you keep it vague, and you actually refrain from actually describing the policies that Premier Smith is putting in place, then you think that you can misrepresent them, and misrepresent conservatives. This is exactly what Justin Trudeau has done. You’ll notice that Trudeau has not given a single example of any of the policies that Premier Smith has brought forward that he individually disagrees with, because he doesn't want to be specific about it. And that's because he, and you, want to peddle in disinformation in order to demonize Premier Smith and parents. And Justin Trudeau has spread hatred against parents. He's accused Muslim parents of being hateful because they were standing up for their kids. He's attacked Christian parents. He is suggested that parents cannot be trusted with their kids. And I disagree with them. I think we have to trust parents. No one cares for their kids more than parents. And that's why Justin Trudeau should butt out. He should let parents raise kids and let provinces run schools and hospitals. Thank you.
[still off-mic] But these policies overrule parents, as well.
Poilievre: No.
This isn’t how this is supposed to work.
I’ve been at a lot of press conferences, scrums, and gaggles with politicians in my career — from the White House Rose Garden to a beach in Barcelona. While they can descend into peacocking and performance, they are a pretty extraordinary thing: A chance for anyone at the microphone to ask anything of a person who wields extraordinary power. If both sides respect that process, they are incredibly useful for both sides and for the public at large.
A tough question is supposed to be a chance to actually address the reporter directly: Offering a rebuttal and a counterpoint. Really good politicians can change a reporter’s focus or analysis on the spot, fundamentally reframing — or, at least, neutralizing — their story through a well-reasoned and factual answer. Reporters often go overboard in asking critical and piercing questions, specifically to elicit a more charged and pointed response.
Unfortunately, these great equalizers have become less and less useful over the years, for a variety of reasons. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau holds lots of press conferences but rarely actually says anything, regardless of the question. Donald Trump basically stopped doing them altogether.
What Poilievre is doing is far more cynical.
As I watched the Conservative leader deliver his acidic and nonsensical answer, I knew immediately that his answer was being clipped. He wasn’t answering me at all, he was speaking to the crowd on Twitter, Youtube, Rumble, and so on. And, sure enough: It was uploaded to Twitter in minutes by Rebel News. The tweet glowingly quoted Poilievre and pointed readers to a section of their website entitled “trans madness.” The site warns that “not only are our governments, the mainstream media, and even the police doing nothing about it — they're actually pushing for even more of this Trans Madness!” The tweet appears just below a sponsored post warning that “the WHO and WEF have formally endorsed the planning process for ‘Disease X,’” the feared sequel to COVID-19.
This is no accident. Poilievre uses these press conferences to perform for outlets like The Rebel, True North1, and random Twitter Blue-subscribing supporters. And those supporters happily oblige.
Poilievre’s predecessors had tried to put distance between themselves and The Rebel, in particular, given its long history of hosting literal neo-Nazis, antisemites, and conspiracy theorists.2
Now, however, Poilievre gleefully takes questions from, and does sit-down interviews with, True North and The Rebel. When one of The Rebel’s on-air trolls, David Menzies, got arrested after hounding Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Poilievre leapt to his defence. (This, despite the fact that Poilievre’s own deputy once had to call the cops on Menzies in a similar incident.)
These press conferences have become content generation exercises for his supportive media partners. By my count, The Rebel has uploaded more than 40 videos of Poilievre just since the beginning of the year — often pointing towards some microsite echoing his policy positions, such as “stop the carbon tax,” “no green reset,” or “stop the shots.”
Poilievre isn’t the first to turn these sorts of press conferences into a combat sport. But he may be the first to understand the power of making them a participatory exercise.
The Conservative Party is now practically begging The Rebel, True North, Greg Gutfeld, Elon Musk, Jordan B. Peterson, and the whole gang of anti-woke, conspiracy-minded online influencers to pick up on his performative displays and help him go viral.
It won’t be lectures on car thefts and port security that rack up the retweets, of course. He’ll rely on the mainstream press and broadcast news to run those comments. To get the critical clip of him hopping all over Justin Trudeau’s disinformation-peddlers or standing up for all of those downtrodden parents, he’ll need someone to poke him first.
This media circus is designed to reach those more fanatical fans while forcing more and more Canadians who stumble across these clips into a choice: Do I side with the journalists asking tough questions, or the guy with the microphone running circles around them?
The comparisons between Poilievre and Trump are often lazy and half-cooked. They are fundamentally different politicians with very different temperaments, policies, and styles. They seem similar, however, because they both recognize the power of their most ardent supporters, and they recognize the power of building dedicated movements. And sometimes they use the same tactics to get there.
What do we do about this?
Well, I don’t know.
I’ve got some general criticisms of my industry: At a time of dwindling resources, we need to move away from covering politics-as-sport and towards more thoughtful conversations on problems and policy solutions. But it would be foolish to think that if mainstream journalists did better, Poilievre would ease up. The Conservative leader has identified a boon to his chances of becoming prime minister, and he’s going to keep using it as long as it’s successful.
I’ve got criticisms of Poilievre: But I’m not going to tell you to tell Canadians to rise up and oppose the guy. Because, unlike some of his preferred media outlets, I don’t believe journalists should engage in partisan politics. And, the fact is, he’s identified some real problems in the country and he’s proposing some actual solutions. All I can really do is kick the tires on some of those proposal solutions and let you know if they make sense or not. (His housing policy is good-ish, but doesn’t go far enough, e.g.)
And I’ve got criticisms of this ideological, conspiratorial press and its social media enablers. I’ve made that clear. (Dispatches #62, #89)
But, really, this is a more philosophical problem. We now have a positive feedback loop which rewards weaponizing institutions — as mundane as the press conference and as serious as our electoral system — and discourages actual conversation. I think more and more regular people are disconnecting from this toxic trend, just as politicians are beginning to use it more aggressively.
So, for the time being, the circus will continue travelling.
That’s it for this special dispatch.
If any of my non-Canadian readers made it this far: Good job. I hope this wasn’t too bewildering. I had planned an actual primer on Poilievre, which may still come at a future date.
If you enjoyed this dispatch and are not a paying subscriber, please consider upgrading. I would have normally sold a piece like this, but decided you all might enjoy it, longer-form, here.
As always, I’m keen to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Until next time!
Bug-eyed and Shameless readers will know I’ve interviewed True North host Andrew Lawton for the newsletter before. (Dispatch #12) While we don’t agree on plenty of things, I still think Andrew is a good-faith actor — although I think the idea that True North is some kind of effective counter-weight to the mainstream press is absurd.
Full disclosure: Levant once sued me for noting these facts. After some legal wrangling, we settled the lawsuit: I agreed to let him withdraw the case if he made a $500 donation to the Red Cross.
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