Peterson And Poilievre Show The Need For Scrutiny

On That Interview And Liberals’ Inability To Capitalize

There are few people I find less fundamentally interesting than I do Jordan Peterson, so I’m not going to pretend I have watched anything other the bare minimum clips of the Poilievre and Peterson show this week. I’m not a journalist and have never claimed to be one; I don’t have an obligation to make it through this nonsense drivel. In fairness, I didn’t watch Trudeau on Nate’s podcast either, so it evens out. But the discussion about how Canada had to import racism and that it wasn’t a real risk, and the notion that welfare programs transfer wealth up the income distribution, are two things that are godsends to the Liberals, or any competent anti-Poilievre forces.

What Poilievre is confusing on the redistribution stuff is the virtue of progressive taxation - universal programs do end up subsidizing the rich of expenses they could otherwise afford themselves. Your average Bay Street banker or partner at one of the Seven Sisters could afford to pay for their health care outside of the public, sure, but they’re also paying significantly more of the taxes to pay for the system. It is still a wealth transfer down the distribution that nobody has to pay for doctors visits or ER trips.

Poilievre can also fuck off as a Conservative who ran on the 2015 platform of a universal child benefit that paid a working single mother making $27k and renting a basement apartment the same per child as the children of the Desmarais or Bronfman heirs at the same age. It’s a ludicrous proposition that identifies that he’s still an unserious politician on economic matters. It matters, and suggests he’s not actually going to achieve any outcomes on housing or any other issue.

The notion that we have always been a tolerant people is even more absurd, in addition to being obviously offensive. Our treatment of Indigenous Canadians can and should be the start and end of the discourse, but even if you take the (dumb, bad, and incorrect) view it’s not, you’ll lose this game. Be it the Chinese head tax or Japanese internment or decades of mistreatment of Black Torontonians by police or any number of anecdotes about life back in decades past floating on social media, it’s clear we did not have to import racism. And again, all of that is in addition to Residential schools and the various denials of rights and liberties to Indigenous peoples in our history. (Fun fact, for a given value of the word fun: Indigenous Canadians got the right to vote in the fucking 1960s! But yeah, racism was imported.)

In a just world this interview would be a crisis, but the world isn’t just but more importantly the Liberals aren’t in a position to actualize this situation for their benefit. Their leadership crisis doesn’t help, but the fundamental truth is that this leadership and this leader have been given endless opportunities to show they can prosecute a case against Poilievre. They’ve summarily failed. In part because their arrogance has led them to ignore good ideas that have come from sources they’ve deemed disloyal, in part because the PM refuses to engage with mainstream media, and in part because the PM refuses to draw a line under the sand with a sweeping show that he gets he’s fucked up, the government has been a disaster at the basic blocking and tackling of politics. The argument is not that a Trudeau government with better comms would be winning the next election, but it is the case that a Trudeau government with better comms would be down something like 12 and not the pre-Freeland resignation position of low 20s. But this is moot, because we’re now down 25% and Trudeau will be going.

I lead this column with Poilievre’s interview and his obvious unfitness for the job for a reason - plainly, I am sick and fucking tired of being accused of being a conservative or a fascist for wanting my political party to get its head firmly out of its ass. I have never voted for a Conservative in my life, and at every opportunity municipally I’ve voted for a more progressive option than the person who ended up winning. Some large portion of the Ontario Liberals hate me because I’m too stridently left wing and push for Crombie to keep the OLP firmly in the centre-left, as opposed to the centre. I am a progressive, and I am a Liberal.

What those who support the PM’s leadership don’t get is that our position is not one of expediency or petty grudges, nor is it a position any of us have taken lightly. None of us, be it MPs, grandees, members, voters, or even Ministers (both past and present) have come to this place callously or easily. We have come to this place painfully, the end of a long process not the snap decision of vanity and ego assumed. We want a Liberal Party that can stop the incoming calamity that is Poilievre, or at least blunt his power. We are trying to protect the legacy of this party, and this government. It is not an absence of affection for or support of this government and Justin Trudeau that makes us take this stand, but the sheer realities of the situation. More bluntly, the party and the policies are more important than the man.

This is why I despair for the state of our party so frequently. Even if you disagree with my prescriptions for its future, it is undeniable to anybody with an open mind and a sense of honesty that I have tried. I have tried to work within the system. I have tried to fight for good ideas that could help. I have tried so hard that I’ve even tried writing a fucking speech for Trudeau to deliver. They’ve done nothing and they’re all out of ideas. They’re shocked to find they can’t make a difference when the best they have is the occasional press conference. This is so pathetic as to be horrifying. I love the Liberal Party with all my heart, and that is why I will not let it kill itself. It’s too important.