EDITORIAL – Poilievre’s makeover and the Hobson’s choice facing Canadians
Pierre Poilievre’s new look. (Image: Pierre Poilievre, Facebook)
An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.
IT’S LOOKING MORE and more as though the Conservatives will form the next federal government.
The election is more than two years away but unless Justin Trudeau pulls a rabbit out of his hat and attitudes shift on some key issues, a change is very much in the cards.
Maybe he and the Liberals will come up with a housing strategy that holds enough promise to attract Canadians, and maybe people will accept the levelling off of inflation but it seems unlikely.
An Abacus poll last week showed the Conservatives with a healthy lead, with the Liberals running third among younger voters. Third.
The same poll had them hanging on to second place overall but 12 points behind the Conservatives. That’s huge. In B.C., the gap was 19 points.
Interestingly, voters don’t have high regard for either Trudeau or Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre. A different poll last month found that half of Canadians think they should both be replaced.
Are we living in a parallel universe with our neighbours to the south? Americans overwhelmingly want neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump as their next president but that’s the choice they’re going to get.
Will we be in a similar dilemma? As Trudeau struggles with the fact a lot of people simply dislike him, Poilievre has been busy trying to remake his image into something more acceptable to voters. He’s stopped wearing glasses in an attempt to, what, appear less nerdy?
He now sometimes leaves his tie at home, even wearing T-shirts under his sports jacket. Rumours he’s also taken to wearing Spanx are unconfirmed as far as I can tell but he’s definitely undergoing a makeover.
Underneath this marketing ploy remains a politician who talks up Bitcoin, wants to defund the CBC and consistently spouts populist nonsense.
Before we make this Hobson’s choice, we need to know more about what he intends to do with the country, not what he’s wearing.
I’m Mel Rothenburger, the Armchair Mayor.
Mel Rothenburger is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
I don’t see this as a Hobson’s Choice at all. We have a choice of continued virtue-signaling, continuous corruption and scandal, incompetence on a grand scale, massive and increasing inflation-causing debt, and high and climbing higher taxes, OR, take a new direction with somebody that will perhaps steer us away from the Woke-Left nanny state we have become, re-introduce competence in government, and give Canadians back the individual initiative, self-determination and innovation that built this country in the first place.
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Populism goes both ways. So do cults of personality, identity politics and virtue signalling. It’s all horse manure. Take the virtuous action on single use plastics – if they’ve banned plastic straws, shouldn’t they also ban the millions of discarded plastic syringes? Of course not, because we won’t subject drug addicts to the expected behaviours imposed on taxpayers.
“In 2018, Ottawa Public Health (OPH) estimated it retrieved more than 1.7 million syringes citywide, including from needle drop boxes, harm reduction programs and from “needle hunters” like Grinham.
In 2022, that number was closer to 2.5 million.”
In a single city! God bless the woke.
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I know people who have never voted Conservative in their lives who are openly stating they will do so. Canada is not a better country than it was 10 years ago.
Health care in shambles. Astronomical housing costs. Raging inflation. Growing crime. Increasing homeless and drug addicts everywhere. Fires. Floods. Debt.
This is what woke looks like. Let this be the death knell of progressive, nutter left-wing cancel culture, anything goes, soft on crime, giant prosthetic beasts policy in Canada.
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I’m 100% plus behind Pierre Poilievre BUT I think he looks Nerdy without his glasses. Canada cannot survive a Liberal Majority and not a Liberal NDP minority either. People need to think about the Debt Trudeau is leaving for there children. Thank God we are old and have no children.
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I’m scared of the future for all of us given this dilemma
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Well one thing I can tell you is, if I read one more article on the CBC about gender-affirming for children, I too will vote for the conservatives.
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