Over the years I've learned to expect crippling, crushing and constant letdowns when it comes to Canadian politics. On every level. Even your political opponents can be counted on to behave in such a boneheaded and amateur-hour fashion that somehow, you end up disappointed in them.
You see, I expected that left-populism would come to Canada. Why, I even predicted it on this here website. I didn't want it, to be clear, but I knew it would become a thing, and I thought I'd prepared myself accordingly.
I dared to dream that the long-awaited left-wing deliverer would be a Canadian Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, plucked from the ranks of the burgeoning youth movement against conservative politics, or perhaps some rookie provincial representative elected in Ontario, PEI, Quebec, or Alberta. An honest to goodness bottom-up resistance would result, and be, in the long run, a good thing for our country, bringing fresh blood into the political arena and forcing our crochety multi-party consensus to adapt.
And then, all of a sudden, our media cut any hope of change off at the knees by anointing everybody's favourite slightly dotty aunt, Elizabeth May, as the heir apparent. It is hereby decreed, by all the seasoned advisors and venerable pollsters, that the Greens are ascendant in Canadian politics! Look out, traditional parties, because Canadians are "preoccupied!" They're actually taking a second look at May despite the loony things she says. This is not a drill, people!
Conservative-adjacent media folk immediately took to social media to drive the Israel wedge, but May already did the work for them by booting Holocaust denier Monika Schaefer and conspiracy-spinner Dmitri Lascaris from her fold. Green figureheads such as Mike Schreiner in Ontario have successfully blunted the charge of having crazy and threatening radical views by being so dull that they make John Tory look like Mick Jagger.
If you seriously think the Greens are turning Canadian politics upside down, let me ask you: Quickly, what's the name of the Green Party leader whose party holds three seats, and thus the balance of power, in New Brunswick? You had to Google him, didn't you? (It's David Coon.)
Do I actually have to explain that in order for a party to be considered populist, they have to represent a clear and present threat to the established order? Or are we so naïve as a country that we actually believe that things in Canada will shift if we just elect a new bunch of no-name politicians who tell everyone that unlike everybody else, they're really, REALLY concerned about climate change? Has nobody considered the possibility that under Prime Minister Elizabeth May, we will have a Green Party who isn't really Green, to go along with our Liberal Party that isn't liberal, a Conservative Party that isn't conservative, and a New Democratic Party that is neither New nor Democratic?
If we didn't already know that our politicians don't believe a word that comes out their mouths, but instead virtue signal this way and that in hopes of winning votes, then we could derive this understanding by noting the relative lack of so-called "bozo eruptions" from the Greens. Populists say wacky things because they believe wacky things, and thus we can assume that if an alleged "populist" party is only slightly farther away from the Neutral Zone in their words or deeds, then it is either because they do not actually believe the wacky things they are accused of believing, or because they do not believe in those wacky things sufficiently to speak out and risk the consequences.
But then again, we are only in this completely stupid state of affairs where Elizabeth May has the Consensus clutching at their pearls because the almighty centrists cannot be bothered to stand up in defence of keeping the status quo either. They believe that their own point of view is so self-evidently correct that being called upon to defend it is unnecessary, and that's why they're so incredibly bad at it when they're forced to do so during an election campaign.
And so, we have no need to fear change of any sort, because once again everyone's incompetence and dishonesty balances out perfectly!
Photo Credit: The Narwhal
Written by Josh Lieblein
