Pierre Poilievre, champion of the free press? It wasn’t on my 2024 bingo sheet either, but Canada’s leader of the official Opposition tried to use the arrest of Rebel Media’s David Menzies to suggest that Justin Trudeau is the real threat to journalism in Canada. That’s a bold move for a guy who’s been railing against journalists and the media ever since he entered politics, and then turned the volume up on that to 11 when he became CPC leader. If nothing else, you almost have to admire the chutzpah.
Almost.
Poilievre’s attempt to gaslight an entire country into believing he actually cares about things like journalistic integrity and free speech is about three bridges too far, given the obvious joy he has taken in smacking down organizations like The Canadian Press, the CBC, and other professional media outlets in the past. As freelance journalist Dale Smith noted, “This guy’s wannabe goons tried to have me removed from the press gallery for making a joke about how terrible one of his MP’s questions was, so I really don’t think he’s all that concerned about the free press.” Former Global News reporter Rachel Gilmore had a similar bone to pick. “You released an entire press release attacking me, a journalist, for asking you questions you didn’t like,” she tweeted.
Ironically, Poilievre’s own party had Menzies arrested on two separate occasions, once at a 2019 event when Andrew Scheer was leader and once when he tried to ask Melissa Lantsman — Poilievre’s current deputy leader — some loaded questions about her sexual orientation at a July 25, 2021 event. As Menzies said in his video of the incident, “What kind of political party has a reporter arrested and then steals their notebook and takes pictures of it? You think Justin Trudeau’s media party is bad? These are the guys who want to form the next government.”
In a statement her campaign released later that day, Lantsman said, “When Mr. Menzies' line of questioning became homophobic and related to my sexual orientation, I ended the interview. Afterward, I spoke to some constituents but ultimately left the event because I felt unsafe.” She’s not the only Conservative who has issues with Menzies’ style of reporting. “He’s a typical Rebel News lout,” former CPC MP (and journalist) Peter Kent said in a 2021 Twitter exchange with Toronto Sun columnist Sue-Ann Levy. “Create an incident, bully, insult, defy security and police cautions … then [fundraise] as a bogus ‘victim.’”Fundraising theatre. He gets ‘arrested’ all the time.``
It should surprise exactly nobody that there’s already a fundraiser underway over at the Rebel. This is what they do. But it should be a little more alarming to see the Conservative Party of Canada doing essentially the same thing. “Freedom of the press is being buried by the Trudeau government and state-controlled media,” their email says. “Trudeau has divided the media into two camps: those he has bought off with bailouts and those he has censored and arrested. This is a dangerous trend.”
None of that is true, of course, unless you think the entire Postmedia chain — including Trudeau-loathing luminaries like Brian Lilley and Rex Murphy — have been “bought off.” But the email is right about one thing: this is a dangerous trend. Poilievre’s willingness to misrepresent reality and feed it to his anger-addicted base is only going to make them hungrier and hungrier. For a guy who keeps accusing the prime minister of dividing Canadians, he sure seems determined to spend a lot of his time doing the same thing.
As to his apparent crusade for a free press, It’s all in keeping with Andrew Scheer’s resignation speech as party leader in 2021 where he encouraged Conservatives to “challenge the mainstream media” and “check out smart, independent, objective organizations like the Post Millennial, or True North.” There is nothing objective or independent about either organization, least of all when it comes to the Conservative movement in Canada. But for Scheer and Poilievre that’s a feature, not a bug.
If Poilievre is truly interested in supporting a free press, he could stop treating journalists like enemy combatants rather than people simply trying to do their jobs. He could refrain from launching personal attacks against individual reporters, understanding the vitriol that inevitably sends in their direction. He could even stop threatening to defund the CBC. But he won’t do any of those things. After all, Poilievre and his party aren’t actually interested in supporting a free press. Instead, they want to secure their own freedom from it.
Elizabeth May dunks on herself
One of the criticisms most frequently levied at the Green Party of Canada is that it’s out of touch with the day-to-day needs of ordinary Canadians. Elizabeth May did not do herself or her party any favours in that regard with her recent tweet criticizing Pierre Poilievre’s “housing hell” video.
“Memo to Pierre Poilievre,” she wrote. “You need to re-do your housing hell video in light of Economist magazine finding that the most livable and cheapest cities in North America are in Canada!” This might seem like a compelling retort if you didn’t bother to read past the headline or look into the factors that underpin the Economist’s definition of “livable” and “cheapest.” As someone who has seen the Economist rank Vancouver as one of the world’s most “livable” cities for years now, I was immediately suspicious.
Sure enough, the devil was in the details here. The Economist’s rankings were based on “prices for food, drink, clothing, household supplies and personal care items, home rents, transport, utility bills, private schools, domestic help and recreational costs.” It does not include the cost of buying a home, which strikes me as a pretty important component of things like livability and affordability. As economist Trevor Tombe noted, “It is a useful survey, but not for housing.”
Oh, and here’s the kicker: “For the purposes of this report, all cities are compared with a base city, New York City, which has an index score of 100.” What the Economist is actually saying is that Vancouver is cheaper than New York or London if you don’t include the cost of buying a house there, which … sure? I believe that’s known as damning with faint praise, and it’s no comfort to anyone trying to actually get into the real estate market in Canada’s increasingly expensive cities. If you’re under the age of 45, May’s tweet just reads like a combination of unexamined privilege and intellectual blindness.
May, of course, comes from the generation that bought their houses for pennies on the dollars they now cost. This sort of blind spot is, I suppose, understandable, if not the tiniest bit infuriating. I also appreciate the temptation to push back against Poilievre’s relentlessly negative messaging about Canada. Heck, it’s practically a full-time job for me right now. But if you’re going to try to dunk on Poilievre, you need to have a very clear sense of where the net is.
Twitter isn’t the “town square” anymore — it’s the right’s megaphone
In his list of predictions for 2024, The Hub’s Sean Speer sees Twitter (sorry, “X”) playing a “big role in the U.S. election” as Elon Musk “reinforces his cultural significance.” I suspect Speer will be proven right here, but not for the reasons he seems to think. Far from hosting the conversations that will shape the next presidential election, Musk seems determined to use Twitter to directly influence its outcome.
Musk’s own views about Trump and Joe Biden seem increasingly strident. As he said the other day, “The Biden administration is actively aiding and abetting illegal immigration because they are viewed as future voters.” Those are not the words of a man who’s a “centrist,” as Musk has claimed in the past, much less one whose partisan loyalties are up for grabs.
As Max Burns wrote in a piece for The Hill, “Even with X bleeding money and his absenteeism endangering his other ventures, Musk appears completely focused on completing X’s transition from a normal social network into an intercontinental ballistic version of right-wing hate sites Gab and Parler. Judging by how openly Musk is now monetizing white nationalism, he’s making that transition at warp speed.”
There’s a certain twisted logic here. Both Tesla and SpaceX are being investigated by federal agencies right now, and both depend on the federal government for largesse and support. Helping the president, and having him know that you did, would go a long way towards ensuring that support continues — and those investigations disappear.
But let’s assume, for the moment, that Musk isn’t overtly trying to tilt the table in Trump’s direction. Even then, his platform has become incapable of defending itself against misinformation — and that makes it a ripe target for the Trumpist right.
Take the bizarre outbreak of ads about Mary Berg, a Canadian HGTV personality who had supposedly been arrested (she hadn’t). These were flagrantly defamatory, and plenty of people reported them to Twitter to no apparent avail. As journalist Shaye Ganam noted, “My Twitter feed is crammed with really poorly done fake hit pieces about Mary Berg. I've blocked dozens, literally. You still expect these platforms to police misinformation? They actually take money to share it.”
This is the problem — at least, one of the biggest ones. Musk is already down an estimated 71 per cent on his Twitter investment, and there’s a decent chance the company’s bondholders will try to take it from him. He desperately needs revenue — and he just told major advertisers like Disney and other big corporations to “go fuck yourself.” Do you really think he won’t take money from bad-faith influencers and other partisan proxies trying to spread misinformation and shift the U.S. electorate in their direction?
Yeah, me neither.
They’re off with … a whimper?
Rachel Notley hasn’t officially announced that she’s stepping down as Alberta NDP leader or that the race to replace her is already underway, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped one member of her caucus from sprinting ahead. Kathleen Ganley, the party’s former justice minister and current energy critic, released a video in which she declared that she “knows who I am and why I’m here” — and believes Albertans should have access to the basics and also an occasional vacation now and then.
This is pretty obviously a soft campaign launch, even if the message screams “lowered expectations” (and does it with poorly recorded audio, no less). My biases here are clear: I’m a big fan of MLA and fellow leadership contender Rakhi Pancholi and have said so on a number of occasions. I think she brings the kind of energy and ideas that can inspire people to vote for the NDP in Alberta — especially in Calgary, where they need to win seats. Ganley’s video, meanwhile, confirms my pre-existing assessment here: that she’s a useful and talented member of a government team, but lacks the personality to lead it.
Either way, expect more names to get thrown into the proverbial hat now that Ganley has taken the initiative here. One wonders how Notley feels about being preempted like this, but I suppose we’ll find that out in due course.
Your turn
It’s a new year, which means it’s an opportunity to try new things — and that includes this newsletter. Are there issues you want me to cover more frequently? Are there segments you think I should be including? Let me know at [email protected].