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Hi from EU! Can someone please explain to an interested outsider what this means?
The two largest political parties in Canada faced off in a polarizing election (at the expense of the smaller Canadian parties): the Liberals (slightly left of centre), vs. Conservatives (right wing big tent party). Canada's political system works as several simultaneous races for a parliamentary representative for their area, then the political party with the most representatives total selects (or has selected beforehand) a leader who will be the Prime Minister.
Now the Conservatives had been expected to take over due to the previous Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau, being blamed for inflation and anything bad by Conservatives, Trudeau not accomplishing much and people being tired of the incumbent. But then, Justin Trudeau steps down and chooses a new leader who calls an election, Trump gets in office and threatens Canada, leading enough people to realize what shit-fuckery Trump style politics in Canada would lead to (not as many as I'd like, but enough).
The Conservatives had a decent vote share, but the leader, Pierre Poilievre who ran on a diet version of populist conservative nationalism, lost his own seat. In the meantime, the province (a sub-national region) of Ontario also held an election. The Progressive Conservative party (right of centre populist) got majority power in the province again due to the party and leader, Doug Ford, campaigning strongly against Trump.
The provincial party had been warning the national one to change tack against Trump, both in private from leaked statements and in public from some current and former campaign managers. The Nova Scotia Premier, (leader of another province, also a Conservative party) also warned them. However, Pierre was too slow to do that, and his campaign style of not letting the press ask questions freely remained, reminiscent of the Trump administration, which partly contributed to Canada's Conservative relative loss of power.
In Trump-style politics, Dear Leader (Pierre who did not get elected in his own election race) can do no wrong, so now that the election is done, it's time for the blame game and the knives are out. The crazies of the Conservative party are going to attack anyone, even if they are politically aligned, if they dared to tell the truth about Poilievre's likeness to Trump leading him to failure.
Great summary! I can't see the Conservatives splitting and giving up their chances of gaining power, but I hope this at least tamps down the PPC elements of the Conservatives.
!lemmysilver for a great summary.
Rentlar's synopsis is really good, but I'll add a tiny bit of backstory. The Progressive Conservative party was the old stalwart, around forever, with not crazy views. Fiscally conservative. In the 90's a new brand of social conservative came on the scene from Alberta, the Reform party. Suddenly the conservative vote was getting split by fiscal conservatives (bring down the debt) and social conservatives (bring down big gay) and so there was a movement to "unite the right" that is now the current Conservative Party of Canada CPC which just lost the election. It has always been a tenuous alliance and shows cracks occasionally, but stays together because they win elections. Losing has caused the old conservatives and the reform conservatives to infight. Doug Ford is east/old style Pierre Pollivre is west/new style. They both really hate each other which is lovely to see from the other side.
Doug Ford is far from fiscally conservative. I'd offer that he's a different brand of populist than Poilievre.
Fiscal conservatives are never and have never been "fiscally conservative". Rather than being conscious of and considerate about how they spend our communal resources, they have always just believed that there should be no communal resources, and the rich should get to run roughshod over us all.
Yes fiscally responsible like a ridiculous hwy that he needs to make new laws to build, a ridiculous tunnel under an existing hwy, removing newly built bike lanes, spening millions to rush booze to shelves to undermine a government labor strike, various land scandas. The list goes on and on highlighting these excellent examples of fiscal responsibility.
True. I meant to highlight the differences and keep it simple. Quite right that Doug isn't the old party, just a different flavour of the Reform guys.
I'd say Doug Ford is old-style conservative in that he's not particularly ethical, he's up for a bit of corruption if it makes him and his friends money, he thinks about business before people, and he doesn't particularly care if poor people suffer. But he's also not really that interested in culture wars or enthusiastic about authoritarian fascism, and that's what distinguishes him from someone like Poilievre. For Doug Ford as long as he can get on with his own schemes, he doesn't really care how other people live. It's not compassionate but it's not hateful, just narrowly self-interested and somewhat amoral, and this is how he's an old-fashioned conservative. Poilievre by contrast wants to police how people live and govern by reactionary moral judgements, wants to impress Trump and the far right, wants to be perceived as a strongman himself despite having no such credentials and giving off incel-doing-weights-in-the-basement vibes, and wants to punish people. Doug Ford is damaging while Pierre Poilievre is poisonous.
@ladicius @Sunshine Depicted is Doug Ford, current Premiere of Ontario, Canada's most populous province. He is a leader of a provincial conservative party which typically is politically aligned with the federal conservative party.
A bit of drama within the ranks conservative political sphere in Canada is brewing whereby critics of the leader of the federal conservatives (e.g. Ford) and his allies (e.g. Jivani) are sniping at each other through the press. Here, Jivani is calling Ford a turncoat.
Thinking ford is suddenly a liberal without addressing his ridiculous highway plans, ridiculous tunnel plans, his loyalty to oil coupled with resistance to green energy, gutting of the endangered species act, and greenbelt scandal is ridiculous. Ford is half the problem most people in Ontario hate Trudeau because his polciies failed to help Ontarians, but his charisma managed to blame the feds.
He also promised buck a beer and what we got instead was an increase in beer prices and now you can buy it at every gas station, which i predict in the long term will increase the amount of drinking and driving as well as increase access to alcohol for minors.
Isn’t he related to the crack head mayor?
Rob Ford, the crack head mayor, was Doug's brother. He died in 2016.
So glad you guys addressed this. I'm in the US and this whole time I was thinking they were the same guy.
Brother.