Pierre Poilievre announced that he intends on using the notwithstanding clause. This is not normal politics by any means.
Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, was never Prime Minister material. He is divisive, constantly flirting with far right extremist groups and is constantly pushing an agenda framed as ‘us vs. them’. This while his policy agenda is wafer thin, reduced down to doing whatever Big Oil demands and leaving almost everything else to bumper sticker style policy making. Because of this, Poilievre has long been referred to as “Tim Bit Trump” because he is basically Trump-lite. Not helping matters is the fact that his supporters are frequently seen wearing MAGA red hats and even throwing in the odd swastika here and there for good measure.
Unfortunately, the Canadian mainstream media has routinely ignored many of these fatal flaws and tried to dress up the Trumpian politician as just a normal every day politician. Combine that with the numerous screw ups of then Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau, and it’s actually not that hard to see why Poilievre went into the election with a polling lead of 25 points. A combination of making mistakes and the media trying to make a horrible personality seem electable is never a good combination for you. You can already see shades of the fate of Joe Biden, really.
Much like Joe Biden, Trudeau decided to step down just before all of this insanity of Donald Trump started cropping up. This move actually represented a one-two punch for the Conservative party as a whole. For one, Trump’s constant assaults on Canada changed a heck of a lot in the political landscape. For another, the Conservative party seemingly built a whole campaign around the idea that Trudeau would always be the leader of the Liberal party and no contingency plans were put in place in the event that changes.
This led to a very awkward position of the “Murica lovin’ Conservatives” trying to present themselves as the perfect response to the Trump insanity. After all, the Conservatives are all about doing whatever the American’s want even if it comes at the expense of Canada. Right now, that is a really bad election strategy in an environment where most Canadian’s are really hating Trump and the direction the US has taken in the first place. This has led to some very awkward moments for Poilievre who gave speeches where he gave a milquetoast “knock it off” response to Trump threatening to tariff Canada into bankruptcy. Unsurprisingly, that politically fell flat.
With the Conservative campaign struggling to think of how to frame the new Liberal leader, Mark Carney, it’s not really surprising that the Carney Liberals went from being on the “Snowballs chance in hell they’ll get elected” ticket to likely taking power and wondering if it’s going to be a minority or majority government. All Carney had to do is say that he fully intends on fighting back and he gets to enjoy a runaway success of a campaign – and that’s exactly what he did.
For Poilievre, he’s facing the prospect of blowing a 25 point lead in the polls where he went from little more than a few ceremonial steps to being Prime Minister to losing this campaign. The humiliation factor on that one is off the charts should that come to fruition. Over the last few weeks, the Conservatives have been floating trial balloon after trial balloon trying to find something – anything – that sticks. Unfortunately, all they are floating are trial balloons that his core base supports as opposed to things that might receive broad support among the Canadian population. So, little surprise nothing has really worked as his campaign is not only caught flat-footed with someone else as leader of the Liberal party, but a seemingly empty campaign that seems like it was improvised at the last minute despite the leader screaming for an election for the last few years.
While the Conservative campaign is in the midst of clearly needing a major rebranding after everything else not working, yesterday, Poilievre did something absolutely shocking. He said, as a campaign promise, to override the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to carry out his agenda. It’s stunning announcement that really shouldn’t be treated lightly. From the CBC:
But the issue has returned to this election campaign and this time it’s the Conservative leader who has raised it, with a politically groundbreaking promise to become the first prime minister to invoke the clause in office.
“It’s a major step obviously,” said Thomas Axworthy, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s principal secretary, who advised Trudeau during the Constitution consultations that led to the creation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“One of the last remaining restraining or constraining conventions about the notwithstanding [clause] is that no federal government has used it. Now we have someone enthusiastically proposing that. That’s major,” said Axworthy, who is now chair of public policy at the University of Toronto’s Massey College.
Stéphane Sérafin, an assistant professor of law at the University of Ottawa, echoed that Pierre Poilievre’s pledge to use the notwithstanding clause is significant in the sense that the provinces are the only ones that have actually used it so far.
“Just generally that’s a game-changer,” he said.
There are two takeaways from this report. The first takeaway is that it is clear that Poilievre is trying to shake up his campaign by promising to override the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to carry out his agenda. The second takeaway here is the media is just passing off this frightening prospect of overriding Canadian constitutional rights as little more than just a normal campaign idea floated by a politician during the election. With all due respect to the Canadian mainstream media, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Seriously, in a normal timeline, announcing that you plan on overriding the Canadian Charter which enshrines our constitutional rights is immediately a campaign killing pledge. When a political leader is announcing such a thing, that leader is basically committing political suicide by waving a giant flag saying “Do not, under any circumstance, elect me.” There’s no “well, let’s look at the context” or “I wonder if that leader has a point in that” or anything like that. It’s a straight up campaign killing pledge.
To offer a general explanation, the notwithstanding clause is something that was added to the Canadian Charter so that, in the case of extraordinary exceptional circumstances, the Canadian government can override the Charter and do something. There is no legal effort to really “appeal” anything. That is the Canadian government saying “I have the final say no matter what”. I don’t agree with the existence of this in the first place, but it’s something we have to live with. It can be used to override anything including a, for example, Supreme Court decision.
So, for context on why Poilievre is pushing this insane idea, he says he wants to do this to add time to what is legally considered a life sentence for serious criminal offenders. Right now, the worst criminals can receive a life sentence which is 25 years behind bars with no chance of parole until after that time expires. Part of the thinking behind this is that if you are in jail for 25 years, an entire life time has passed. People have moved on with their lives, different acquaintances are made, and the world becomes a very different place whenever you get out. What’s more, anything past 25 years can be considered cruel and unusual punishment. What’s more, there is nothing stopping a judge from deciding that the criminal in question can’t spend more time in jail when that 25 year sentence is up. More time can be added in pretty serious cases.
All of this was already decided by the Supreme Court of Canada, so this is (or rather, should be) settled caselaw. Poilievre has decided, with his personal political beliefs, that this is unacceptable and that he is announcing that he’ll override all of that so that judges can elect to implement back-to-back life sentences. In fact, he went even further and said that the only way they are leaving prison is in a casket. So, not only is he wanting to override the Canadian Charter, but he’s also pretty flippant with his remarks on top of it.
The only real response to such a staggeringly stupid thing to say is to respond by saying that Poilievre just ended his political campaign. There’s just no getting around that. Yet, the Canadian mainstream media has taken the approach of “OK, that’s an interesting comment, let’s talk about it.” This as if to say a political leader running so roughshod over our constitutional rights is just the normal course of politics in Canada when it absolutely is not. The comments should be replayed with headlines like “Shocking statement by Conservative Leader” or “Is Poilievre’s Campaign Over?” Things like that are really the only direction the Canadian mainstream media should have taken.
The ridiculous thing in all of this is that all of that is in a political vacuum if simply focusing on what is going in Canada. The Trump insanity only compounds this even further. Already, the Trump administration is doing some ridiculously illegal things like disappearing people for their speech, cracking down on judges for the crime of not ruling in his favour, cracking down on lawyers for the crime of representing political opponents, freezing bank accounts of non-profits that he doesn’t personally like, pushing to jail all political opponents, ending birthright citizenship, and even saying that he intends on deporting US citizens to other countries. The rule of law means nothing to him. For Trump, laws are meant to serve his own personal and political interests and, if they don’t, that’ll get ignored or corrected accordingly.
What Poilievre is doing is, once again, mirroring Trump and saying that he plans on overriding the rule of law to carry out his agenda. There is a reason why Poilievre is referred to some as the Donald Trump of the North and it’s not just because they don’t like him personally.
This leaves open numerous questions. Indeed, when Stephen Harper, the previous Conservative party leader, was in power, he announced that he was planning on labelling environmentalists as “eco-extremists“. In other words, if you point out that climate change is real, you are considered a terrorist. While the strategy ultimately fell flat, it shows that the Conservative party of Canada has a tendency to crack down on speech they personally disagree with. So, already, the Conservative party has that as part of their political baggage. If Poilievre were to take power (God help us all), does he plan on continuing on with that strategy of cracking down on political opponents? Already, Poilievre flat out stated he intends on overriding the Charter once in power, so the question is, would he also crack down on speech that he disagrees with as well?
These are not unreasonable questions to be asking. After all, it is already quite clear that Poilievre is trying to emulate the Trump campaign and carry out far right ideological goals such as cracking down on journalists he personally disagrees with (re: “defund the CBC”). So, where does this sort of thing end? Is throwing pollsters in jail for getting a poll wrong a bridge too far? Is fining a news outlet for publishing something that is unflattering to the Conservative party too much? Seriously, where is the line for the Conservative party now that the Charter of Rights and Freedom is no longer a barrier to their political agenda?
What Poilievre said yesterday was extremely stupid in my view (and that’s being as generous as humanly possible here). The only thing fortunate for him is that this is the most fascist friendly environment in living memory where fascist extremists comments are considered just normal acceptable politics at this point. It’s a dumb timeline and, after seeing those comments, I’m grateful that the Conservatives are trailing the Liberals in the polls at this point in time. At least there is some hope here in Canada.
