Conservatives can’t seem to pivot
Many Canadians have been forced to acknowledge Donald Trump’s focus on changing our relationship with the United States. From his decision to disrespect the Office of our Prime Minister, and making good on a promise to put economic pressure on Canadians and businesses here (many of which have ties to and within the U.S.), to his consistent trolling of our nation’s sovereignty and national security, Mr. Trump has only doubled-down on his determination to damage the relationship our countries have had since the second world war.
After an entire year, none of this should be in dispute.
Mr. Trump violated the trade agreement he negotiated with Canada by putting tariffs on our exports. Mr. Trump has consistently spoken of Canada simply casting off its right to act as a sovereign nation. Mr. Trump has threatened to violate NATO agreements with allies.
These are things that have been happening since Mr. Trump’s re-election. They are not “feelings”, or “spin”; they have happened and will, by all accounts, keep happening.
Canadians reacted in ways that were foreseeable. We rallied around our flag. We sought alternative vacation destinations, started paying closer attention to the country of origin from which our groceries and other goods and services came. We went shopping in-person instead of online. We cancelled subscriptions or sought Canadian alternatives. We discovered that we are far too reliant on goods and services from a foreign nation to adequately protect ourselves from their overreach.
None of this should be in dispute.
However, certain others have chosen to ignore it because they seem to believe that admitting it would damage their position in political spaces. That acknowledging this new reality might damage their team’s electoral fortunes, or their relationships with their republican brethren, or diminish some imagined “strength” that comes from never, ever, agreeing with a rival party. Yes, I’m talking about the Conservatives.
It’s been a shocking lapse of judgement from a party whose history in this country is as long, storied, and embedded in our nation’s history as their rival’s.
Never 51
How we got here isn’t entirely a story about what has been happening elsewhere. We are a nation of people who have mostly come together from elsewhere in the world and many of us have ancestral or lived attachments that are just as strong as our hope for better here in Canada. Those attachments come from all over and the most wonderful thing about being Canadian is that we get to maintain, showcase and celebrate them, with our neighbours. I think the department that changed the official messaging from “melting pot” to “mosaic” deserves to be lauded for the distinction.
That mosaic isn’t always what we want to see. Some don’t like “importing problems” from struggling nations (yet I’m almost certain they would not consider the creeping authoritarianism from our southern neighbour as an equally worrisome “imported problem”) and it’s a sad reality that bigotry almost always plays a part.
I said a couple of weeks ago that former Harper Cabinet Minister and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney was in a unique position as a known quantity in and of the Conservative Party, as well as an Albertan, to push back against Donald Trump as much (and as easily) as he pushes back against separatism. It’s an unfortunate reality that the two are, thanks to the separatist mouthpiece Jeffrey Rath, now inextricably intertwined.
Mr. Rath, whose position has long been that the push for separatism would make it “easier” to join the U.S. as a vassal state, has tried to walk that back in recent weeks; despite also shooting his mouth off to anyone who will listen about how he’s getting access to people in the Trump Administration and they’re going to lend him $500 billion to help through the transition. While it’s entirely possible the decrepit leadership of the separatist Alberta Prosperity Project voted for Mr. Rath to be their spokesperson on the matter, it’s an insult to every Albertan who is still wondering who this jabroni is and why he is “negotiating” separation from Canada with a foreign power.
There are about 35 Members of Parliament who have been noticeably silent about the separatist agenda in the province in which they are elected to the House of Commons in Canada (including from the person who is ostensibly still running to be Prime Minister). I like to think Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre was so entirely out of touch with the province he decided to run in that this has all taken him completely by surprise and he’s just hoping media continues to ignore the fact that he’s now an Alberta MP, running to be Prime Minister, from a province trying to separate from Canada. Seriously though; how is the most recent statement from him May of 2025?
Instead of asking what he thinks about it, I’m hoping he’s asked, continuously, what he plans to do about it. The guy loves to campaign— so campaign.
Speaking of which, the convention where he will likely receive an incredible amount of support from the delegated membership is this weekend. Voting opens in the morning of January 30, results will be delivered (I presume) sometime on the 31st before the closing ceremonies begin at 5:30 PM MT. Rumour has it that there are a few more MPs patiently awaiting Mr. Poilievre’s official coronation before announcing their decision to step away from the party.
Polls go up, polls go down
Early 2026 polling is in and it doesn’t look great for Mr. Poilievre outside of his most ardent supporters. In a Nanos poll released the day after Prime Minister Mark Carney gave his speech in Davos, the Prime Minister’s approval was at 51 per cent and Mr. Poilievre was a distant 25 per cent. Liberals were holding steady at 39 per cent support while the Conservatives were down slightly at 34 per cent.
Abacus Data is taking some time to look specifically at the Conservative Party, its membership base, and its leader. They’ve posted their findings from a long form, in-depth survey, that showed Mr. Poilievre has a real problem. His popularity is entirely within committed conservative voters and falls steadily from them, to accessible conservative voters, and further with the general public. It’s almost as if Mr. Poilievre has truly become the PPC leader Maxime Bernier always hoped to be.
The Conservative Party has replaced its former strategy team with Steve Outhouse, the same guy who helped make Danielle Smith appear less like a crazy person who was going to dismantle and build further distrust in our institutions and cause a national unity crisis. Making the wholly unpalatable at least partially palatable is, apparently, his raison d’etre.
We’ve already seen some changes recently. Canadians have overwhelmingly projected a desire to see Canada’s MPs work together in this difficult time. Yes, this problem goes back to the party’s representatives being so deep in their own partisan bullshit that they’ve been unable to meet the challenges they were actually elected to face. Mr. Outhouse will be working to change that, at least in perception, if not reality.
These “united” parties, man; just Tommy Callahan’s dump in a box marked “guaranteed”.
Foreign relations and trade
There’s some debate over whether we’re in a good, great, or worse space since the Prime Minister’s speech at Davos. When we consider where we were beforehand, where our relationship with the expansionist, arrogant twatwaffles in the Trump Administration is as low, and as useless, as they want it to be, we’re probably not “worse”. Mr. Trump is still trolling Denmark and Greenland about annexation, as well as Canada, through memes because they are a very serious Administration.
Trade and securing better relations with other countries is still a top priority for Canada as there seems to be no end to the Trump Administration’s threats.
As Jason Kenney rightfully pointed out the other day, this situation was not of our doing. And no, not liking the PM personally does not mean it’s okay to threaten the people of another country; this isn’t the 1300’s.
It’s actually a really good post:
Martin, with precisely zero provocation, Trump said a year ago that he intended to “annex Canada” and make it the 51st state by applying “economic pressure;”
- He imposed lifted, increased, decreased, re-imposed and repeatedly threatened tariffs on everything imported from Canada, in gross violation of the CUSMA agreement that he signed, calling it “the greatest trade agreement in history;”
- He initially did so on the entirely specious grounds that Canada was a major source of fentanyl imports and illegal migration to the US, both claims completely contradicted by data, and US law enforcement agencies. The claims were so ridiculous - even for Trump - that he has not repeated them for the past ten months;
- He has repeatedly said the US needs “nothing” from Canada, specifically mentioning our energy
- He continues to maintain crippling sectoral tariffs on Canadian steel, aluminum and certain auto components in violation of CUSMA, tariffs that are costing the Canadian economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs;
- Senior Administration officials (Greer, Lutnick et al) have been intimating for months that CUSMA will not be renewed;
- Trump has repeatedly referred to the Canada-US border as “imaginary” and “fake.”
- His insults and provocations are too many to list, but just in the last week he has said that Canada has been “completely taken over by China” because of a discrete tariff agreement requested by western provinces and initially *endorsed by Trump*; and insulted the honour and memory of our troops, claiming that they “stayed a little back from the front lines” in Afghanistan.
Given all of that and more, you blame the Prime Minister of Canada for CUSMA being in jeopardy? WTH?
After a year of this, how can we still have some Canadians blaming Canada for Trump taking a wrecking ball to the relationship?
Under these circumstances, Prime Minister Carney has exercised remarkable restraint.
What would satisfy you? Grovelling subservience? Giving the US total control over our trade relations with the rest of the world?
We Canadians can and should debate the most prudent way to deal with the completely unpredictable and destabilizing threat from Trump. (I, for one, don’t support the recent deal with China.) But surely no reasonable person can conclude that Canada provoked or is any meaningful way to blame for this crisis.
No; I don’t think we’re in a worse position than we were before.
That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re in a better position. The Prime Minister’s speech was exceptional; it laid out the reality of the situation for Canada and it also included a call to action for other “middle powers” who share our values. Canada wasn’t the only country under attack by the Trump Administration, but our PM was the first to say that there is little hope for a return to the way things have been.
Prior to Davos, the Prime Minister was in China to repair Canada’s relationship with President Xi Jinping (who also didn’t have a great relationship with our former PM and even they didn’t threaten Canadians; just saying). He left with reduced tariffs on canola and beef, as well as a lifted ban on a number of other exports. In return, Canada will accept a limited number (49,000) of Chinese electric vehicles. Mr. Trump said he will tariff all Canadian exports at 100 per cent, which he probably won’t because people in the U.S. can’t afford to pay that and our supply chains have not yet been disentangled enough to try.
Howard Lutnick, one of the more outspoken anti-Canada minions was full of bluster about the deal with China, again threatening CUSMA trade negotiations that will be under mandatory review this year. Yes, we get it; they’ve have been threatening it for a year and no one thinks there’s any good faith negotiations to be had with them now anyway.
Of course, the Administration’s threats aren’t just reserved for Canada. While the Administration was trying to apply pressure to both the EU and India, EU President Ursula von der Leyen and Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed what Ms. von der Leyen posted on social media “the mother of all trade deals”.
In a speech later, she said the accord was a tale of “two giants” — the world’s second and fourth largest economies — “who chose partnership, in a true win-win fashion”.
She also said it sends “a strong message that cooperation is the best answer to global challenges.”
It’s sad that something that would easily be said by any leader about a fulsome deal like this anyway lands like snark on the Trump Admin. Bragging about a massive trade and defence deal, and sending digs about “win-win” and “cooperation”? The news had Adminions (oh! I like that) sputtering again.
Energy Minister Tim Hodgson will be in India this week and Prime Minister Mark Carney is hoping to follow in March. He also has plans to address Parliament in Australia.
Minnesota gets rid of some ICE
The Trump Administration has said they will move “most” ICE officers involved in murdering at least two citizens out of Minnesota. The announcement came with a bonus; a not-really-official firing announcement of Gregory Bovino, ICE chief thug. It’s not really official since they only locked him out of his social media accounts, but he is publicly musing about retirement; as one does after the boss changes the passwords.
Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noam also managed to fit more than one foot in her mouth after she suggested that if U.S. citizens bring a gun to a protest they should expect to be shot. Minnesota is one of 29 “constitutional carry” states. The statement from Ms. Noam was so anti-second amendment that the National Rifle Association (NRA) was forced to make a public response.
Mr. Trump’s approval rating continues to drop. The Economist says it’s gone from +2 to -18 since his inauguration with 60 per cent of respondents now saying they believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, while the New York Times has him at 55 per cent disapproval and just 41 per cent approval.
Midterms are this year and everyone is watching and wondering if the U.S. will be allowed free and fair elections. Mr. Trump has mused that since midterms don’t typically reward a sitting President, maybe they shouldn’t have them. Everyone says he can’t cancel the midterms, but people probably said he couldn’t create his own gestapo, too.
From the link above, the greater concern is gerrymandering districts, and that the Administration has demanded Democrat and swing states hand over voter identification information… to the Administration.
I don’t want to suggest that selling Dominion Voting Machines to one dude who also has an election check-in pad that poll workers use to check people in is a problem, but concentrated power doesn’t seem to be working out well down there. I’m sure is totally nothing to worry about. Just… don’t give them the voter ID, I guess?
Final thoughts
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Well Deidre you had me scrambling for a dictionary three times today!
Love your writing.
I ask separatists if they have ever delved into Rath and the alberta poverty project master plan. If they did, and they haven’t, because this is fueled 100% by rage, emotion and disinformation on a grand scale; they would find it impossible to come to any conclusion other than these tools are grifting for self profit.
Where do the institutions get fixed, where’s the investment in - fill in the blank, who’s paying to set up embassies, police forces, armies, postal service, international relations….
FM Rath can’t even properly run a law practice, a one man law practice at that, let alone lead a province.
As we all know herding cats is easy. So controlling 40,000 separatists should be easy for a man who hasn’t got temper control issues. It’s all in the separatists hand book!
So here’s the new plan for the separatists. Apply to get your individual CPP paid out to you, renounce your Canadian citizenship and crawl over the Medicine Line to be with your favourite fascists. And take Mrs David Smith Moretta with you. She can’t run a train car restaurant let alone a province.
See ya grifters!
So glad you are back.....intelligent and clear as always... Thank you.