For most Canadians, Remembrance Day is a moment to reflect on the sacrifices of the past and how they helped underwrite much of the freedom and prosperity we take as a given. For Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party of Canada, it was apparently an opportunity to sow division within Canada — and confusion within its Christian community.
“Contrary to what Liberals claimed last year,” Poilievre wrote on social media, “Chaplains are banned from prayers at Remembrance Day ceremonies.” As proof, he cited a piece in the Epoch Times, a far-right publication with close ties to the Falun Gong movement and a well-documented history of spreading conspiracy theories. The company’s CFO also faces money laundering charges in an alleged $67-million US operation, one described by the U.S. Southern District attorney as a “sprawling, transnational scheme.”
Not exactly a credible source, in other words.
This is all a deliberate misrepresentation of a decidedly mundane directive handed down in 2023 by the Chaplain General, one that encourages a more inclusive approach to public addresses for military members. “Chaplains must ensure that all members feel respected and included by undertaking inclusive practices that respect the diversity of beliefs within the CAF.”
Daniel Brereton, an Anglican priest in the Diocese of Toronto, provided a more robust explanation on social media. “Once again, the directive from the Chaplain General of Canada does not ‘ban prayer’ or ‘prevent Christians from practicing their faith,’” he wrote. “No one is stopping you from going to church. No one is stopping you from praying. No one is stopping you from actually following Jesus in your life. Prohibiting the hegemony of my religion in a multifaith society is not the same as prohibiting or ‘banning’ my religion.”
Of all the things to lie about, this is one of the oddest. There are, after all, easily accessible videos of the Remembrance Day ceremonies in question, as well as any number of people who can attest to the presence of chaplains at their own local remembrances on Monday. As NDP MP Charlie Angus noted on social media, “I thank the reverends who prayed at our services today and will pray this evening.” It’s as though Poilievre is determined to test that famous line — well, one of them — from George Orwell’s 1984: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
In this, he has an awful lot in common with Donald Trump. The former and future U.S. president routinely gas-lit his own supporters, whether it was about the size of his crowds or the trajectory of incoming hurricanes. As presidential historian Michael Beschloss said, “I have never seen a president in American history who has lied so continuously and so outrageously as Donald Trump, period.”
Poilievre won’t be able to match Trump here, if only because that’s not humanly possible. His lies are appropriately Canadian, by comparison: more modest in scale, less adventurous in content. But they’re still corrosive to our collective understanding of the world and the role that truth plays in it.
Take his continued misrepresentation of the carbon tax and its supposedly catastrophic impacts on the cost of living (and apologies in advance, but there will be some math here). In his social media posts, he routinely claims the federal government plans to “quadruple the carbon” tax on gasoline by 2030 to 61 cents per litre. But his math makes no sense whatsoever. To arrive at that 61 cent figure, he includes the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s modelled costs of the Clean Fuel Standard of 17 cents per litre, then adds the GST on top of it all.
Never mind, for the moment, that the federal government’s modeling shows the CFS would only add 4.3 cents per litre by 2030. Let’s just take Poilievre’s figures at face value. With the carbon tax on gasoline already at 17.6 cents per litre (18.5 if you include the GST, as he has), said quadrupling is already mathematically impossible.
If you strip out the Clean Fuel Standard — and you should since it isn’t actually a carbon tax, much as Poilievre wants to pretend otherwise — the total increase by 2030 is 21.7 cents per litre, or a little more than double where the carbon tax on gasoline is at today. Yes, the rebate would more than double as well, although Poilievre’s not about to tell his supporters that. But why lie about the size of the increase when you can make plenty of political hay over what’s actually true?
Because, I suspect, this is just who he is. No, Pierre Poilievre isn’t Donald Trump, much as some Liberals will desperately try to pretend otherwise. He isn’t nearly as charismatic, for one thing, and lacks Trump’s almost pathological need to be liked and admired. If anything, he has the opposite tendency.
He’s also still beholden to a parliamentary system that, for all of its grotesque exaggerations of our democratic intentions, can still hold leaders to account if they stray too far or act too rashly. And while a Poilievre government would threaten some of our institutions, most notably the CBC, they haven’t yet been tested (or weakened) to the same extent as America’s.
But Poilievre’s wanton disregard for the truth and his willingness to weaponize abuses of it should still be deeply worrying. “Post-truth is pre-fascism,” American historian Timothy Snyder warned in his 2017 book On Tyranny. “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.” We’d all do well to remember that as we watch Trump’s return to power in America — and Poilievre’s continued pursuit of it here at home.
Comments
I ve talked with so many otherwise sane decent folks who have been brainwashed for years on the Hate Trudeau theme. I can t seem to get them to understand that voting against him will bring in the pathetic liar who will drive our country for the next 4 years.
Well he can t do worse they chant. Time for a change.
And I look in vain for counter information, government announcements, journalists who tell the truth, someone who s telling our real story. Who offers hope.
OK props to the Observer, you re doing some great stories although I doubt many will switch their votes because of what you re writing.
and yes occasionally now I catch some small announcement or other on CBC or even CTV. The government just did something good. And Oh lookit Pierre!
I very much doubt the positives are seen by or accepted by that sort of underground club where folks churn over their grievances with the world and decide who has to pay.
I look back to the huge social change forces of my youth: the 60s. Back then, tv, radio, music, students, were coming together around messages to stand up and fight war, fight racism, fight poverty, fight for rights.It was astonishing and powerful.
Now?
Who s standing up for anything good? and who s telling their stories if they are?
Well Gaza. And that s not going well. and isnt going to help us.
It couldnt get worse, the guys say.
Wanna bet?
I remember the bad days. We do not want them back.
The misinformation has two fronts, the lies and misinformation constantly out of Pierre "Snake oil salesman" Poilievre and the numerous fake right-wing groups (i.e. like Canada Proud), spewing the same misinformation as Pee Pee on social media. The 3rd issue is the right-wing base who are brainwashed by the hate Trudeau propaganda campaign spread by the same right-wing social media groups.
It is pretty clear none of them know how to fact check misinformation and lies, and when challenged, their favourite response is to call you a communist for threatening their false beliefs. With the communist name calling, it is pretty clear these same people have no clue what a communist is and what they stand for.
With these fake right-wing groups, they all appear to have ties in some way to the conservative party, but they will never admit that. On top of that, you have Stephen Harper, heads up the IDU (International Democratic Union), which to me is a right-wing propaganda, terrorist organization, pushing a lot of false narratives to help elect right-wing governments around the world. You got to love the dirty robocalls under Harper and say a lot as to how corrupt the conservative party is in Canada.
The "communist" thing with modern conservatives is funny in a sad way. Depending how unfriendly the conversation is, my rejoinder to that is somewhere between "You don't know what a Communist is, do you?" and "OK, say I'm a Communist. What's a Communist, exactly, and why do I not want to be one?"
I've noticed that the right consistently seems to want to define the left in cultural terms--a communist is someone who believes in affirmative action for minorities, or something--to avoid talking about what the left and even communism is actually about: The economy, stupid. Just so we're clear, a communist is someone who wants to take the economy away from billionaires and have it owned and controlled by workers (maybe via the state, which can get problematic). A leftist at least wants to take a bunch of money and power away from the richest and give it to the not-so-rich, and guarantee even poor people a decent living with health care, a home, access to education and stuff. Conservatives don't want to deal with what the left actually IS about, because that might be tempting, and certainly would make it hard to pretend that it's all about being mutant traitors who want to drink your children's blood because reasons.
So they invented "cultural Marxists" and then gradually made that general idea cruder and less of an idea, until they're left with "communist" and "socialist" as these almost empty words that just mean "anything I don't like", and all they're really saying is "You're telling me something I don't like, so you must be one of those 'anything I don't like' people!"
None of which matters as long as the people controlling the media are pushing this crap hard enough.
I know. On the word "communist," which you're right, most people don't know what any of such words mean, let alone the context, but worse than than, they clearly have no interest IN knowing because school wasn't their thing but that just makes their opinion "common sense" so it automatically "trumps" yours anyways.
I empathize with Nova Scotienne who is clearly a far better critical thinker, i.e. is smarter than her "friends," something they may have always resented her for; the same has happened with many people and family members since the pandemic flushed out all the crazies who had found each other online and were now emboldened and ripe for "radicalization."
Remember how we used that word for what were always suspected to be Islamic terrorists while ignoring the obvious fact, that the doctrine of the religion itself was the very definition of the root word? A similar thing seems to have happened wherein the roots or philosophy of CONSERVATISM seems to have been where these people ALL landed politically, so the fact that a disproportionate number of conservatives are also believers is probably not a coincidence. It's a common mindset obviously. Or a "common sense" one.
Back to the word "communist," before the election I read somewhere about the other "C" word in describing Kamala Harris. I think the fact that everyone knows what that means very much contributed to her defeat by "da boys." It was "the bros vs. the hos" was another description that made sense.
"Poilievre isn't Donald Trump, much as some Liberals will desperately try to pretend otherwise." Two things: 1)Stop falling in with the current journalists' bandwagon/con narrative of Liberals being desperate BECAUSE it's a con narrative, and AN ELECTION HASN'T EVEN BEEN FRIGGING CALLED YET and because polls are just polls.
And 2)Quit the fumes of journalistic "bothsidesism" already when we all know that the cons, despite being an embarrassingly derivative wannabe peanut gallery version of MAGA, are STILL very much copying the overall Trump bad-boy style.
Politics have fundamentally changed, so get with the program.
Our language is ahead of us by portraying this; just look at how the names of these right-wing parties have changed (and relatively recently) in keeping with their COMPLETELY altered style, itself causing various other new terms, but all can be summed up as "post-truth" because that has indeed demonstrably now led to "pre-fascism" as Snyder wrote of in his prescient little book.
These bad boys aspirations toward revolution are virtually and entirely based on lies, starting with the premise even when what they're actually proposing is the complete opposite, is in face DEVOLUTION, defined as "descent or degeneration to a lower or worse state."