Brent Chapman, the BC Conservative candidate for the riding of Surrey South, once wrote that Palestinians were “inbred walking, talking, breathing time bombs”. More recently, he suggested the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, the 2017 killings at a mosque in Quebec City, and the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando may have all been faked. And just last month, while appearing on a podcast, Chapman agreed emphatically with the host when she said the narrative around residential schools — that they were terrible, often lethal places for Indigenous children — was a “massive fraud.”
In Saturday’s provincial election, he won his riding with almost 60 per cent of the vote.
He wasn’t the only candidate with a track record of outrageous comments who won, either. John Rustad, the leader of the BC Conservative Party, has his own playlist of preposterous remarks, from talking about kids being forced to eat bugs to suggesting climate policy was really about a pursuing de-population and supporting the idea of a “Nuremberg 2.0” for public health officials and others who tried to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Rustad won his own riding with ease, and he very nearly won the entire election. Depending on how the recounts go in a few ridings, he still might.
There are important lessons here for progressive politicians. First and foremost, they have to accept that there’s almost nothing a candidate can say or do, short of committing a major crime, that’s actually disqualifying. Donald Trump has proved this over and over again, and he may well end up winning the presidential election in November in spite of his numerous criminal convictions, a growing encyclopedia of scandalous statements and his ongoing flirtations with both immorality and illegality. Compared to him — and everything is compared to him now — even the most wretched behaviour or beliefs by a Canadian politician manages to seem small.
The NDP, it seems, has yet to figure this out. In 2019 they ran a campaign against Jason Kenney that leaned heavily on his anti-LGBTQ attitude and actions, including the role he played in the late-1980s repeal of a California law that allowed gay men to visit their dying partners in hospitals during the height of the AIDS crisis. “I became president of the pro-life group in my campus and helped to lead an ultimately successful initiative petition, which led to a referendum which overturned the first gay spousal law in North America,” Kenney said in a 2000 speech the NDP released during the campaign.
It didn’t matter. His United Conservative Party won going away, capturing 63 seats and almost 55 per cent of the popular vote. In 2023, the Alberta NDP tried to run the same campaign against Danielle Smith, one that sought to disqualify her as an option for voters on the basis of things she’d said in the past. Despite having far more material to work with, the result was largely the same. Yes, the NDP increased its vote and seat share, but it still didn’t form government.
David Eby’s team seemed to be running a carbon copy of that campaign in BC, focusing far more heavily on the verifiably awful and occasionally unhinged things said by BC Conservative candidates than the good things his government would do. And once again, the voters have apparently declined to cooperate with this strategy.
There are important lessons for the federal Liberals here as well, if they’re able to pay attention to anything other than the prime minister’s fate and future. I’m sure it’s tempting for them to think that if they simply gather enough of the offensive, obnoxious, or outrageous comments that Pierre Poilievre has made over the course of his long political career, Canadians will start to sour on him. If the last decade or so is any indication, they need to disabuse themselves of that — quickly.
Their dislike of him, after all, isn’t disqualifying. Neither is his fondness for traveling down conspiratorial rabbit holes, enabling and amplifying bad actors, or past examples of him trading in any number of explicit or implied bigotries. Short of calling Terry Fox a loser because he didn’t finish his run, there’s very little Poilievre can say or do on his own that would bring him down.
If the Liberals want to win — and if New Democrats want to stop losing so often — they need to do more than just disqualify their opponent. They need to meet voters where they are, offer them something of real substance and value, and stop running campaigns that focus so much attention on what the other candidates say and think. As we’ve seen time and time again, that just doesn’t work in our current political climate.
Comments
Something else that the NDP and Liberals need to learn is that by consolidating they have a far better chance of being elected. The merger of the Canadian Alliance Party with the Progressive Conservative Party effectively ended their vote splitting and in so doing effectively destroyed the Progressive Conservative Party resulting in a right wing, populist party.
While it seems a thoughtful option, it might also give the cons a bigger target for their anti "woke", "communists!" socialists" evil focus and taunts.
Sadly true and a very good point!
The problem is that while it seems centre-right conservatives will in fact hold their noses and vote for pretty much ANYTHING on the right, no matter how evil, it is not at all clear that left-ish NDP types will vote for Liberals. Or even vice versa. Left-ish NDP types have actual principles and many won't compromise them; they might go Green or invent a new party or not vote. And for that matter, a lot of Liberals have a sort of anti-principle where they really abhor the idea of voting for anyone they don't consider "pragmatic". Finally, a lot of Liberals would jump Conservative before they would jump NDP, because the Liberals are not really a left-leaning party, they're a corporate party that isn't racist and is aware that corporations function in a society so it would be nice if the society didn't fall apart.
It is quite likely that some sort of amalgamated Liberal/NDP party would be significantly smaller than the sum of its parts.
Basically, conservatives are easily led . . . they don't believe in principles, they believe in authority figures. Which broadly conservative bucket they go for depends on the propaganda they're immersed in. And at the time the Cons stuck themselves back together, them being two camps in the first place was still kind of an experiment . . . an experiment that clearly wasn't working. They were just going back to the status quo of one Conservative party. Liberals/NDP is a very different thing; the NDP has much deeper roots and was never conceived of as a split from the Liberals--to the contrary, it saw itself as fundamentally distinct from either "status quo" party, originally seeing little real difference between them.
Since then, the Conservatives have turned into fascists, throwing some important differences with Liberals into sharp relief. So there is an impetus to do something . . . but for a party whose ultimate raison d'etre is socialist to merge with a party dedicated to taking bribes from whatever corporation or plutocrat has the most money is a really massive step. A better solution would be, I think Liberal and NDP governments wherever they are should be pursuing proportional representation. Then, for as long as Conservatives remain fascist, they would be unable to govern without an actual majority of the votes.
I can imagine some kind of co-operation agreement where Liberals and NDP went through the ridings, identified all the ones where one of the two parties had a chance and the other totally didn't, and only the party with a chance ran a candidate in that riding. But actual merger? I really doubt it.
Right on! Running candidates against each other will give the Conservatives 300 seats.
A coalition of progressive politicians can work as as u say tge majority of Canadians are not fascist! Funny how we can see the fascist elements very clearly now of our Conservatives
"Dedicated to taking bribes from whatever corporation or plutocrat has the most money?"
Oh come on. This isn't like a sports team where you stick with one over time because it's your tribe and so part of your precious "identity" or something.
How does the fact that the NDP have never been in charge federally, and in their current, well-steeped incarnation never WILL, NOT provide more perspective on their trademark smug superiority?
Things have obviously changed DRAMATICALLY and have never been more binary, so SHOULD simplify our politics like never before. I say bring on the people who recognize the exigency, please, along with all the stubborn "pragmatism" they can muster. It beats idealism every time, which is often naive, but particularly so under the circumstances.
And in the same context of dramatic change, shouldn't you also consider giving up on the old panacea of proportional representation?
See, this is why the NDP folding its tent for the sake of the Liberals would be horrible: Liberals are cynical as fuck. You oppose proportional representation because you think a merger would give Liberals eternal majorities, PR would regularly force Liberals into minority situations. But you don't want to SAY you oppose it, so as usual with any policy Liberals don't want to do, they dismiss it as a pipe dream. Until they were forced into it during a minority government, pretty sure that's what they said about medicare.
Most of the civilized world has PR, what makes us so much worse? Liberals bestowing learned helplessness, apparently.
But sure, PR is not a solution for the coming election. It could be if Justin Trudeau wanted it to be, but it won't. So I proposed a more limited kind of collaboration--but you don't want to even dignify with your attention anything that doesn't involve destroying the NDP. You should be ashamed.
No decent policy would ever get passed again once the Libs didn't have to look over their shoulders. Why? Because my description which you dismissed is exact. Oh, not the Liberal voters, no. They're just uncritical media consumers; no shame in being fooled. Even lots of the foot soldiers keeping constituency organizations alive have some kind of moral compass, which they set aside carefully any time there's a cynical Liberal policy to explain to themselves. But in the upper level backrooms where real decisions are made and real policies conceived, it's about the corporate lobbyists and what they want. Even Liberal politicians have faint preferences to do nice things, but if the corporates don't like those nice things (which they never, ever do) the choice is clear: Just SAY nice things and do what their corporate friends want. The only time this doesn't happen is in minority government. You know, the thing you don't want to ever happen again--good lord, what if next time the Libs were forced to expand dental and pharmacare into real universal public programs?!
The left wing has been able to fully indulge their political idealism in a field of reasonable Canadian-ness where all the main parties were generally "progressive" anyway and the government funded them in the prevailing spirit of fairness, even the few "fringe" parties; one was even deliberately based on humor. But those luxurious, relaxing times are gone, and scientists of all kinds need to step forward boldly to become OUR novelty factor since we don't have the American situation.
Kamala Harris has tapped into what is now pure nostalgia by reminding everyone of how a peaceful democracy FELT, and how that was its/our STRENGTH. Being a strikingly beautiful but mature female of mixed race has helped made HER the standout, but more importantly it's her deep experience as a crown prosecutor who can rightly say that "the people" have been her only client, made much more believable when she so naturally exudes warmth and caring (not to mention JOY, and the strikingly historical element percolating beneath it all.)
As a bonus, there's her expertise in applying the rule of law as the primary tool of any workable democracy, an essential fact that she articulates frequently, and eloquently.
I think the only thing that can blast through the current, mesmerizing drama of chaos and the cacophony of the internet's deluge of crap is what happened with Obama-- a surge of young, newly-engaged voters, in this case particularly women. Participation numbers are more of that MATH that the left wing remains so stupidly averse to.
And when Trump goes down, the faux revolution kept alive by the army of inferior, entitled, angry and ignorant men will go with him because the American military IS also available to the Democrats after all, and they've lost the crucial, galvanizing element of surprise now.
And the GOP are already starting to regroup.
While I agree that progressive parties need to focus on positive plans, I do not think it will completely penetrate enough eardrums blocked by decades of hate Trudeau messaging over decades. It s a blind emotional mob driven malicious vendetta and a whole of of folks have studied this phenomenon, from historians through psychologists. I d love to hear how they might counter The Big Lies.
What can we do to save our country and our selves, especially in the time frame we have?
Yes the government should have used its clear mandate to change the voting system. They didn t.
They're still letting the opposition own all the messaging and even subsidize the foreign owned msm to bring them down. With our own money. That could be addressed.
People cannot exactly say why they hate Trudeau, just that they do. It s become a deep seated belief.
While things look very grim for the Prime Minister, if anyone can fight his way up from the bottom, he just might. He has what it takes to hold Canada together in the troubled world and internally, even as I personally rail against what I see as too little too late on many home front. I do not see any Kamala Harrisses on the horizon much as I respect Freedland, Anand, and even Carney the political neophyte. The cons want Trudeau gone and Carney in so that s not a good prospect for us.
The government cannot lost this coming election to the cons. Everything we hold dear is at stake, which is why foreign agents form the Russians, Chinese, and Indians( as those that we know of) want to run us.
We have to fight these attacks out in the open somehow and let people really see what s at stake and the fork in the road that faces us all.
Born in the 40s, I remember the bad old days. They were brutal, cold and painful for most of us.
We do NOT want to go back there.
As a Progressive it is sad to see the world and in particular Canada go down the rabbit hole, but as much of the anger is directed at Trudeau I believe his resignation will help.
But, what is the root cause? The Invisible Doctrine, Neoliberalism! 45 years of me firs, t government sucks, say anything, threaten, intimidation and physically be aggressive.
We live in a free country, with social benefits, like senior's pensions, assisted daycare, dental care, pharma care, employment insurance. To me the freest country in the world yet Conservatives harp on freedom, a broken Canada and the carbon tax as if that is all that counts. And the majority has been conned into believing this bbbb ssss. Neoliberalism and our Canadian Conservatives want to destroy our social programmes, reduce government and regulation as well as tax rates on the rich and business. And it doesn't work this trickle down theory we have been subjected to for 45 years, commonly called Reaganomics and Thatcherism. How did we get here? Well Conservatives promise more of the same, only on steroids. One cannot have a country without government, nor capitalism without regulation and that is what is coming. And that is the plan.
George Monbiot's newbook Invisible Doctrine The Secret History of Neoliberalism 2024 is an easy read for those willing and capable of taking a few evenings to read.
But perhaps we Canadians need a good dose of radical conservative Neoliberalism to understand the consequences of what Poilievre, Smith, Moe and Ford want our country to look like, and it ain't pretty
I agree that simply attacking the stupidity or bigotry of your opponent is not enough...perhaps in part because the folks voting for the right wing just now, too often share the prejudices of the right wing politician. That's why he or she sends out the dog whistles in the first place.
Pointing out the places where the right wing rely on rolling back women's rights, or denying the historical wrongs of the residential schools is important however. Falsehood thrives when Truth leaves the field.
Plus, for me, there's a third problem: The reality we face as a country and as a planet is a new reality, though one long in the making. There are so many of us on earth now and the climate emergency is sending many of our number running for Europe and North America. As long as we deny the climate emergency that is growing more threatening by the year, there is nothing left for North Americans/Europeans (1/5 of the world's population) but fantasies of blame, fear and hope for a politics of exclusion.
We don't like immigrants; we do look away from the destruction our Corporations profit from on their lands. We jump on the bandwagon of wars that devastate food sheds and steal the future from local populations. And we try to pass stupid resolutions claiming that CO2 is at its lowest level in 1000 years.!!!
Now I know that's not all of us, but what those of us who see a more complex truth need to do, is a big question. Because the truth of where we are is not simple, or an easy fix. It's a hard truth. The fact is, too many good people would rather live a lie............for as long as it holds.......than face the real threat of a planet in overshoot.
The problem progressives face, is that the Truth isn't simple, or a blame game, or a 0 sum game either. Civilization is under threat. We do have the ability to turn things around, at least for a while, but its not a simple fix. It's going to take sacrifice, hard work, collaboration and a willingness to share, do with less, and continue learning.
Forty years of neoliberal idiotology haven't prepared most of us for any of that. Ergo, the nostrums of the extreme right have a lot of appeal; the truth of what we need to collectively do to guarantee a future for all, likely just makes most entitled heads ache.
So perhaps what progressives need is a more enticing half truth??? A better Lie???
Good assessment, and I like the idea of coming up with an ad campaign that blows away all the dross but the main problem now is finding enough audience.
Personally I like the old, tried and true battle of the sexes that would work because so many still think we've dispatched that when we have NOT; I'm not sure it's even "dispatchable." But because politics so clearly exemplifies the male wheelhouse of "gamesmanship" now like never before, I'd imagine that the majority of the politically disengaged have always been women. Until now.
The Catholic/patriarchal/misogynist and captured Supreme Court's first move being to remove women's basic bodily rights is entrenched, entitled male hegemony finally and officially going too far. Women rising up like this, and the good men will be with them. Looking at the New Brunswick election where a woman and a Liberal won handily, I noticed the crowd in attendance had a lot of women in it, including grandmothers who have truly been waiting their whole lives. If Kamala wins, the collective sigh of relief that will be felt around the world will not just be because of Trump...
I think the article is quite right. I don't think that means it's necessarily impossible to go negative on right wingers, though. Just, not by obsessing over details of what they said.
But the NDP and Liberals really, REALLY need to do some hard thinking about how things have to be on the ground for a lot of people to make them willing to flock to fascists, and come to grips with the fact that in terms of policy they're going to have to go big or go home. They're going to have to actually solve some problems in a big way--spend all the money, change all the laws, tax all the rich people, whatever's applicable. The backroom boys cannot keep simpering "But if we did something real, the Globe and Mail would object!" because the problems are too big and people are too pissed off about them for anyone to give you a vote over minor tinkering.
Meanwhile, if you're going to go negative on the right, it has to be about broad strokes and principles. All the details of what they said, have the lawyers compile it all for if the Cons try to sue you for libel. The lead has to be "Pierre Poilievre is a traitor who works with fascist regimes whose spies unleash gang violence on Canadians!" "The Conservatives talk about liberty, but they want to take away your right to read books, access birth control and get health care! Canada is about liberty for all, but they want liberty only for their chosen few." That one needs to be a bit more snappy, but you get the idea--the point is that sure, if you look at the things the Conservatives say and connect the dots you end up with an overall vision that is very ugly and which is the opposite of the principles they claim. But most of the electorate isn't interested in spending time connecting the dots. You have to just say flat out, these people are trying to shred society by attacking everyone the tiniest bit different from them, they're authoritarians who will take your freedoms, and every word they say about helping anyone who isn't rich, is a lie. Call them racist, call them union-busters, call them all the stuff, and when they get all outraged about it, call them snowflakes and call them all the stuff again. And tell them if they want to sue, you're really looking forward to discovery when you'll get to drag all their secret vile shit through the media.
Reading what people have said before and after my comments. I don t disagree with most.
But let me try again
When writing or commenting on policy, as in Treasury Board driven policy documents to help advise senior decision makers on regular issues, the best approach was to tell a succinct story.
I think that is what is missing today. We progressives need to tell the story line as to why we re the right direction to follow. And make it compelling. What s at stake , what s in play, what are our options, pros and cons, recommendations, what if we get it wrong and then right?
Recommendations?
And absolutely truthful, I certainly believe it as do our opponents.
Maybe hire a big name director?
How fast can it get out there?
What makes a compelling story? Truth springs to mind, in the face of compelling circumstances.
Agreed, I mean we DO live in an age of advertising like no other but several generations now have never been more inundated with the deluge, which makes the competition extremely fierce. But who isn't scanning it with a weary eye, looking for the "motherlode?"
I have mentioned before the campaign for "Participaction" back in the eighties when Nordic countries had excelled in fitness assessments where Canadians lagged. I taught aerobics then and had a large poster I used at my classes that showed a woman with long hair running, bright-eyed, wild hair flying and a stormy sky billowing behind her. The caption read, "Fitness. You've got it in you."