The Hub- This week’s leaders’ debates mark a new low for our democracy
We will watch a debate where everything from which leaders are allowed to appear on stage to the specifics of the debate format to who its broadcasts are is determined by a government “commission,” established by the incumbent party and overseen, until recently, by the same government’s favourite political appointee or David Johnston.
After this outburst, why anyone would term Doug Ford a conservative is beyond me. Did he make a deal with Carney and is doubling down now that the Liberals’ lead seems to be evaporating? What’s notable is that while Ford and Teneycke are happy to sling mud at Poilievre, their prescription would make Trump the only substantive issue in the campaign while the Liberals’ record is conveniently ignored.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford fired off another salvo in the on-again, off-again battle between his provincial Progressive Conservatives and Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative party, saying his own campaign manager would have avoided the federal party’s current election woes.
Back in the days of the pandemic, I ran across the analysis of Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet who argued that a mass formation was developing in Western nations whereby public discourse was dominated by a peculiar type of absurdist groupthink. Those who dared to challenge the narrative were subjected to a barrage of criticism while strange ritualistic behaviors became the order of the day. I recently applied Desmet’s analysis to the current Canadian election and came to this conclusion: Canada is in the grip of another mass formation.
The problem is that this focus of anxiety, this latest mass formation, has led to the psychological obliteration of the Liberal Party’s governance record of the last decade. The palpable disappointment and sense of betrayal among voters which previously led to Justin Trudeau’s own cabinet publicly demanding his resignation has seemingly vanished. The new object of anxiety, Donald Trump, demands every bit of the masses’ attention to the exclusion of all other considerations. What matters is not that Canadians think critically, but that they think together, even if that thinking embraces blatant contradictions.
It’s a simple question: Where does Mark Carney pay his personal income taxes? He’s a man with three passports, business interests in the United States, offshore accounts in Bermuda, so asking where he files taxes is a valid question that should come with a simple answer.
Despite repeated attempts to get a clear answer from Carney’s campaign, there is little clarity on where the man who claims to be “all in for Canada” pays his personal income tax.
He won’t say the word “pipeline”, either. Just try to make him.
Literally what the hell kind of scripted event is this?
This is in a pub folks??? pic.twitter.com/N2Tye1rIKu
— Bruce McGonigal (@bruce_mcgonigal) April 9, 2025
Conservative candidate in Mark Carney’s riding of Nepean (that he stole from a guy he fired) asserts that her signs are being stolen and the wood is being used for Liberal signs.
As I was just saying, a fine start.
Mark Carney defends tax havens. pic.twitter.com/T8Ogu6d14D
— Stephen Taylor (@stephen_taylor) April 8, 2025
Sheila Gunn Reid: He’s willing to tank the Canadian economy to change the channel on the scandal.
Notice that he never uses the word “pipeline”.
A journalism outbreak hits the campaign trail.
"Wow! Even CTV aren't covering for Carney's unethical $5.3 billion tax evasion shenanigans"
– @ShaunRickard67 pic.twitter.com/3pYrmcGKVS— Gloriane Blais (@blais_gloriane) April 6, 2025
He’s dead broke, Jim: Singh’s team chose not to wrap it in party branding, explaining there were “better uses” for the funds.
Good morning Canada 🇨🇦✌️
Guess what Mark Carney’s Brookfield bought? pic.twitter.com/RzYMNlbT2P
— 🇨🇦Bob Fact Checker (@Bob31685906) April 4, 2025
Man of the People: “I dont buy my own groceries”.
If I was running the industry that serves as perennial whipping boy for Liberals, I’d screw over their manufactured “price drop at the pumps” campaign stunt, too.
The average retail price of gasoline in Canada increased ¢14 in the last month, which is not coincidentally the amount of carbon tax that is being removed today. pic.twitter.com/JvNFPMapYD
— Martyupnorth®- Unacceptable Fact Checker (@Martyupnorth_2) April 1, 2025
Carney finally caved. Chiang is “standing aside”.
So a certain person wants the federal government to openly speculate in the real estate market. What could possibly go wrong?
A Carney government also would create a new entity, Build Canada Homes, to act as a developer on housing projects and provide more than $25 billion in financing to innovative builders of prefabricated homes.
Ron Butler lays it out for Canada in this podcast: “We’re f***ed!”.
“…you don’t have to move the assembly plant at all; you just have to work out how to produce the same cars in the United States. That’s a big tooling shift [that] could take a few months but in some cases they just may let the that brand run out. Like if we’re making nothing but…Lexus here maybe they just let that brand run low for a few months and then they [move] the tooling [to] Kentucky and away they go.”
The way I see this election playing out is as follows: whoever wins better hope they get a majority because they won’t want to face the voters anytime soon after they cave in to all, or nearly all, of Trump’s demands.
Polling in 🇨🇦 is wild. They literally tell you nothing but sets the narrative for discussion.
Just 1k people interviewed, 67% aged 50 or older.
No worries, the small sample of young adults will be projected, creating a 50% margin of error—like flipping a coin
