There are two interesting things about the list of policy resolutions to be debated at this month's Conservative Party convention in Halifax.  The first is that it was released on a Friday, which is usually what happens to information that the source would rather have people ignore.  The second is that, based on several of the resolutions themselves, the party grassroots may be eager for a more free-market agenda than its leaders have offered.  It's a promising sign for when the Tories are finally ready to be something more than the Stephen Harper Was Right Party.

Oh, there's some nonsense in there, too.  Four resolutions call for new or renewed boutique tax credits.  One calls for a national strategy, typically a Liberal Party fallback.  There are some valiant new attempts at pro-life resolutions, despite the party's allergy to the word "abortion."  But those are too predictable for further detail.  Instead, let's review the highlights:

Tax code simplification: Two Alberta EDAs, Calgary Centre (currently held by Liberal Kent Hehr) and Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan (Conservative, Garnett Genuis), call for "a simplified and understandable Income Tax Act."  But while the second only calls for an independent review of said Act, the first specifies a preference for "broad-based tax reductions" and supports removing "tax expenditures such as deductions and credits."  Expect the second to be the one that passes; to reduce tax expenditures would be to deprive the Tories of their not-so-secret sauce.

Regional economic development: This one comes to us from a pair of Quebec ridings, Richmond—Arthabaska (Conservative, Alain Rayes) and Mégantic—L'Érable (Conservative, Luc Berthold), and calls for regional development agencies to be "depoliticized."  In the next sentence, however, they call for the creation of new ministers for "different development, diversification and economic promotion agencies for the regions of Quebec, Western Canada, the North, and Southern and Northern Ontario."  Wouldn't that be the very opposite of depoliticization?

Heavily regulated industries: A resolution from Vancouver Centre (Liberal, Hedy Fry) calls for increased competition in airlines, banking, and telecom. Another one from Abbotsford (Conservative, Ed Fast), goes one step further and calls for relaxing foreign ownership restriction in these industries, provided that "companies which are vital to Canada's national security and economic interests" are protected. You can guess how many companies in those industries will suddenly be hailed as a vital part of Canadian culture once someone from overseas makes an offer.

Supply management: Carleton (Conservative, Pierre Poilievre) and Red Deer—Lacombe (Conservative, Blaine Calkins) teamed up for this one, which calls for supply management in agriculture to be phased out with some financial assistance for farmers.  This resolution is one you'll want to keep your eye on, because 2018's convention comes after a leadership contest that was essentially decided based on opinions of supply management.  What will leader Andrew Scheer do if it turns out that the party no longer favours the system that he embraced for the sake of his win?

Pornography: From Thunder Bay—Rainy River (Liberal, Don Rusnak), this resolution describes pornography as a "public health risk" and calls for a full-bore education and prevention campaign to shield Canadians from its "harms."  Not child porn, not revenge porn, not non-consensual porn just porn, period.  The Tories have had their Helen Lovejoy moments in the past, but there's no way they're going to be the party that tried to put a run on your spank bank.

Interprovincial relations: One from Edmonton Strathcona (NDP, Linda Duncan) calls for eliminating restrictions on liquor.  Two more comprehensive resolutions from Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo (Conservative, Cathy McLeod) call for the provinces to eliminate all trade barriers and harmonize regulations and occupational certifications.  Since nobody actually seems to like these barriers except for rent-seeking provincial governments, this will likely pass.

Corporate welfare: A resolution from Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek (Conservative, Kelly Block) changes "reducing" in the current text on federal business subsidies to "eliminating" and more explicitly condemns efforts to "pick winners and losers."  Much like tax expenditures, Tories will likely be hesitant to let those efforts go completely, however much they should.

Free speech: Coming from Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas (Liberal, Filomena Tassi), one of three resolutions calling for a condemnation of "compelled speech" also calls for the repeal of "'gender identity' legislation which compels Canadians to utter made-up pronouns like 'ze' and 'zir'." Read the legislation to which this resolution's authors are most likely referring and tell me forced pronouns are part of it.  I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Written by Jess Morgan

Looking back at the Toronto media's coverage of the impending mayoral election over the past couple weeks you couldn't blame a Torontonian for thinking it's a two-person race between incumbent John Tory and former city planner Jennifer Keesmat.

Of course this isn't necessarily wrong, and in a mayoral race with 35 candidates the media, for efficiency's sake, needs to weed out those on the fringe, but one relatively high-profile dark-horse candidate has been conspicuously ignored by the mainstream press and has the potential to to have a major impact on the outcome.

Faith Goldy, notoriously known to many as the former Rebel Media reporter and personality who was fired by self-described Rebel Commander Ezra Levant for going on a Daily Stormer podcast a little over one year ago today, entered the race alongside Keesmat on the final day of registration at the end of July.  Goldy also covered the infamous Charlottesville rally, catching on camera, metres away, a woman being killed by a speeding car that hurtled into a crowd of protesters.  Recounting my reporting on The Rebel implosion of yesteryear, I don't recall Goldy showing much empathy or sorrow for the woman murdered before her eyes, but she did express sympathy and fascination for the white supremacists holding the rally, which descended into riots after Antifa protesters showed up to violently clash with attendees.

Goldy's repugnant flirting and dog whistling with the alt-right, neo-nazis, white nationalist/supremacist characters — take your pick, a rose by any other name is just as thorny — would've been enough to make a candidate, no matter their stature, irrelevant a few short years ago.  But as populist nationalism continues to take the Western world by storm, spurred on by a continued disintegration and decentralization of mainstream media, alongside white native populations feeling marginalized in countries where they're steadily losing their majority and dominance and the establishment remains defiant to their concerns, Goldy's message will undoubtedly resonate with a significant portion of Toronto's electorate.  Those who are fed up with political correctness run amok.

Although a Forum Research poll conducted on July 27 suggests it's a forgone conclusion Mayor John Tory will be re-elected on October 22, polls fluctuate and it's far too early to tell how voters will feel come election day.  Recall how Justin Trudeau's Liberals were trailing in third place in the polls before the last federal election, only to end up winning decisively.  Factor in that the Forum poll only gave Torontonians an option between Tory (70 per cent support) and Keesmat (30 per cent) and the poll is nearly meaningless.  The same poll also found that 56 per cent of respondents approved of Tory's record on the job, suggesting many people of Tory's 70 per cent support only chose Tory when posed with the option of voting for him or a left-of-centre candidate.

What about when Ford Nation is given an option between Goldy and Tory?

Mayor Tory, who has shown he is a Tory in last name only over the past four years, caved to pressure from leftists demanding Toronto abolish the controversial police practice of carding, allowed the school resource officers program to be scrapped — making schools in high-crime areas less safe, and disbanded the TAVIS RRT (Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy rapid response team), which kept streets gangs from being so brazen with their illegal handguns on the streets.

Tory has even backed left-wing councillors calls for a ban of sales of handguns in the city of Toronto, a laughable response to the uptick in the city's gun violence.  Mayor Tory has also shown no leadership in calling out Trudeau's open border policy that has led to tens of thousands of economic migrants flooding Toronto, adding a heavy strain on a city already under-resourced for things like housing and transit.

With a 167 per cent increase in the number of shootings — many critics resting the blame squarely on Tory's slumping shoulders — it's no wonder public safety is top of mind for the majority of Torontonians.

Enter Goldy.  She definitely is not the right messenger, but she mostly has the right message.

She's running as the tough on crime candidate, pledging to return police to schools in high-crime areas, re-enact TAVIS, and give back police the power to card once again.  She also is advocating, however impractical and a gross form of dog whistling it is, to "Evacuate all illegal migrants from Toronto's shelter system by bus to the Prime Minister's official residence, or the nearest jurisdiction that will take them."

These, and other policies from her slick campaign website, will be music to the ears of many right-wing Torontonians.

Yet will her message reach them?

Other than the puritanical progressives at Vice Canada and Liberal-government-of-Canada-sponsored iPolitics feeling the urge to adamantly dismiss Faith's candidacy right out of the gate (the former outlet going so far as to not name her by name, she-who-must-not-be-named, instead opting to immaturely name-call her a shitbird), there has been a virtual blackout on Goldy's campaign (Washington Post columnist J.J. McCullough did write an even-handed column for the American newspaper, suggesting Goldy has a real shot to shake up the race, and how this reveals how patchy the political field is in Toronto.)

Both of those columns suggest Goldy deserves no more attention and doesn't have a chance of doing well in the campaign, begging the question why they felt the need to write about her in the first place.  Oddly, the Toronto Sun has ignored Goldy's candidacy, despite some of their columnists giving their tacit support on Twitter and many of her policies aligning with the paper's editorial stance.

The reality is, Goldy can bypass the mainstream media.  A recent interview she did with the Post Millennial, a relatively new Canadian right-wing news and commentary website, received 20,000 views.  She has just under 200,000 followers when combining her profiles on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.  Her campaign videos are getting tens of thousands or over a hundred thousand views and some of her tweets are gettings thousands of retweets.  Yes, much of this engagement is coming from her alt-right fanboys outside of Toronto, but she is getting enough reach online that a significant portion of Toronto's right-wing electorate will be aware she's running.  All it takes is a pollster including her as a choice in their next poll, and her polling in the double-digits, for the media to have to take her candidacy seriously.  If she's able to make it to the debate stage or pulls some stunt right maneuvers she learned at the The Rebel, if debate organizers shut her out, she'll get even more publicity.

Either way, the mainstream media are going to have to cover her one way or another.  Obstinately continuing a blackout would just confuse news consumers and lend credence that the elites fear her candidacy, while also missing the opportunity to inform voters of her unpalatable past.

Don't mistake the above as a belief Goldy has a good (or any real chance) of winning (although wilder things have happened).  A winning campaign requires many boots on the ground — something Goldy's campaign has yet to demonstrate.  But if she syphons off enough of Tory's former support from the right she could play spoiler, handing Keesmat the victory.  A strong showing could also encourage her to run again in four years' time, and would greatly embarrass the progressives of the city that think her and her ideas are unpopular.

The bottom line is, as Tory ignores Goldy and her populist campaign manifesto, instead backing nonsensical policies like a handgun ban and running on the ineffectual status quo, more and more disillusioned Torontonians will turn to Faith.

Photo Credit: Progress Press

Written by Graeme C. Gordon