Right in the centre - Canada needs a leader that can build a bigger Canada
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- Published on Thursday, April 3, 2025
By Ken Waddell
Neepawa Banner & Press
Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre is holding daily rallies across Canada. Attendance is over 2,500 at every one. According to reports, the rally in Winnipeg had 3,500 people attending. Ironically, or perhaps as expected, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) is downplaying the numbers. In comparison, Mark Carney’s rally in St. John’s was reported to be around 1,650 by the Liberals, but the crowd photo looked to be less than 500.
I say, as expected, as CBC is totally opposed to Poilievre as he has promised to cut the funding to the CBC. I can agree with that as the CBC gets $1.3billon each year from the federal government. Between the CBC and the Canada postal system, the drain on the taxpayers is over $2 billion per year with no end in sight.The CBC is so biased against the conservative side and so cuddled up the liberal side that it is annoying to say the least.
In the past few years, the Liberals made a lot of errors in managing the COVID-19 pandemic, they committed about $50 billion into electric car battery plants and they put a tariff on Chinese EVs when we don’t even make EVs in Canada. That tariff triggered crippling tariffs against Canadian pork and canola. If you just review these few categories, you can see many reasons the Liberals should not be re-elected. Their policies have been not only misguided, they have been self serving.
Justin Trudeau got elected for two basic reasons. One, he promised to legalize marijuana and promised to talk nicer than Stephen Harper so as to attract voters that had a hate-on for Stephen Harper. I used to know Stephen Harper, having met and talked with him several times. His last campaign was not good as he let himself get into policy discussions that didn’t even need to be discussed. For example, the face-covering controversy in Quebec.
I attended the CPC annual convention after the Harper defeat and there were a ton of angry people attending who had some choice words of criticism about the election handlers who steered Harper and the party into useless and silly debates.
When conservatives lose elections it’s usually because some folks, who have never run in an election, all of a sudden become experts in politics. Trust me when I say this as I have observed, ran in, or been involved in elections since 1967. When an election is imminent or called, the “experts” jump out of the weeds and start holding “focus groups” and reading polls to try and mould the party’s platform into an often misguided estimation of what people want. I have seen some very dumb election policies and re-imagined party logos to try and depict a mythical platform.
I like the 2025 CPC motto of Canada First For a Change as it is meaningful and current. Liberals stopping oil pipelines and not pursuing Liquid Natural Gas production certainly didn’t put Canada first. The EV battery commitment didn’t put Canada first and placing tariffs on EV cars, if they stay in place, may be a disaster for Canada. Not really increasing the capacity for the Port of Churchill since it was built 90 years ago has been a big mistake. Not buying proper jet planes has been a mistake, flying ancient helicopters is a mistake. The list goes on and the mistakes haven’t only been Liberal mistakes. As noted above, some have been CPC mistakes as well.
In this election, the question is not who can best wrangle with President Donald Trump, it’s who can best lead and develop Canada so we don’t stay so dependent on the United States or be distracted by Trump.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column are the writer’s personal views and are not to be taken as being the view of the newspaper staff.
