Stornoway, Poilievre, And Why We Don’t Need To Be Assholes

We Don’t Need To Boot Poilievre Out

What is the governmental imperative that Pierre Poilievre should be removed from Stornoway?

After Monday’s election, we have a rare, and almost unprecedented, circumstance of a party (at least for now) being okay with the continued leadership of a leader who lost their own seat. It’s happened once successfully, John Tory after the 2007 Ontario election, and it’s kind of happening with Bonnie right now, but it’s unclear whether she’ll succeed. But in the case of Pierre Poilievre, unlike Tory, there’s a meaningful distinction between Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Opposition Party.

Usually, this distinction is irrelevant - the Leader of the Opposition is the Parliamentary leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, and the Parliamentary Leader is almost always the Party Leader. It’s usually a distinction without a difference. Here, it’s not, since Poilievre remains the Leader of the Conservative Party and the Conservative Party makes up His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, but he cannot be the Leader of the Opposition. Someone will take the Leader of the Opposition title for Poilievre - apparently Andrew Scheer or Melissa Lantsman, if you believe the reporting - when the House returns in May, but as of right now it seems Poilievre is staying as CPC Leader.

The problem for Poilievre, and the thing that makes these distinctions more important than when John Tory failed to beat Kathleen Wynne, is Stornoway. The residence for Leaders of the Opposition should, by the letter of the law, be vacated by Poilievre as he is no longer Leader of the Opposition. But as a matter of practical reality, what on earth are we doing here?

Poilievre is a father of young children, one of whom is of school age, and it seems extraordinarily cruel to fuck with a 6 year old’s life just because we don’t like the parents. I hate Poilievre - I think he’s a scumbag who has degraded our politics and will make it harder to solve real problems like climate change, affordability issues, and who would be a bad PM if he wins an election. Spoiler: I’m a fucking Liberal, of course I hold these views about the man. But for fuck’s sake, the 6 year old nonverbal child cannot be collateral damage in whatever petty revenge fantasy we have.

This crusade to evict him is nonsensical on its merits - the drafters of the relevant section of law were providing a residence for a representative of the Opposition. If the Opposition would like to make sure it’s their party leader and not the Leader in the House, that should easily be their right. Oh, sorry, that is their right, as Grant Hill’s decision to let the Harpers stay at Stornoway while Stephen ran for leader of the newly formed CPC and resigned as Leader Of The Opposition, a job he had had when he won Preston Manning’s old seat and became the Alliance leader with a seat in the Commons in 2002. Unless and until Lantsman or Scheer or whoever else both becomes leader and stakes a claim to Stornoway, the Poilievres should stay there.

Various claims about the staff and alleged entitlement is nonsensical - forcing Poilievre to move out and then move back in upon successfully winning some byelection at some future point would be needless expense, whether it stays empty or not. If it were to stay empty, we wouldn’t save any money, unless we’re firing the staff that comes with it and then rehiring them (at which point between man hours into recruitment and severance packages make it a break even proposition at best). If Lantsman or Scheer or whoever were to move in, you’ve now got 4 sets of moving costs in less than a year whenever we could simply let him stay.

If you want to embarrass Pierre Poilievre, don’t worry, we already did. Bruce Fanjoy’s existence as an MP will be embarrassment enough for Poilievre. Every time the Speaker calls for the Member For Carleton to speak, and it’s not Skippy who rises, we will have won. And it will be awesome. The first time Bruce rises to that call of the Chair, and the Liberal benches break into applause for him, will be sweeter than honey. We’ve already won. All that forcing a speedy eviction would do is be petty and vindictive.

It’s also an incredibly dumb position for Liberals and progressives to take. If “the rules are the rules”, it strips us of any ability to take into account context or humanity into our approach - the bedrock principles of why we oppose mandatory minimum and rigid bureaucracy. How many people supported Joe Biden’s blanket pardon of his kid under spurious and nonsensical grounds that the situation was such that it was okay to do something nobody would otherwise accept. If “the rules are the rules”, Hunter Biden should be a felon right now. But he’s not, because the rules are only the rules when we feel like being honest about that fact. But when I made the case that Biden was a piece of shit for pardoning his own kid in direct violation of his own promise to restore the soul of America and defend the justice system from politicization, nobody was talking about how the rules are the rules then and how Biden fucked up.

Would Poilievre ever extend this courtesy to Trudeau or Carney? I’m sure he wouldn’t. I also don’t give a singular fuck, because I don’t take my moral cues from a man that I believe to a vacuous ass clown. What Poilievre would or wouldn’t do is irrelevant to what we should do, because our morality is, and has to be, better than the cesspool we claim to hate. We cannot beat the self obsessed and the selfish by meeting them in the depths of vindictiveness and revenge.

I do not want to extend an olive branch to Poilievre because I think it’s going to get us anything, and I absolutely think we should hold the Byelection to let him into Parliament as far in the future as legally possible - the last possible day to call it, and the longest legal campaign period - unless he gives us major concessions that we could use to beat him across the proverbial head with for years. (Voting for the Mark Carney Abolished The Carbon Tax Act, say, or something of the kind.) That is a political battle and we should play politics to the best of our considerable abilities. But we don’t fuck with the families.

The fact that other families are often uprooted and they survive is not an answer. The fact that Poilievre doesn’t “deserve” to be given dispensation is not an answer. The only question that should matter is whether it is in our power to stop people suffering bad outcomes. It is, in this case. We can ensure that at least one child doesn’t have their entire life uprooted for no functional purpose. And if that doesn’t move you, then yeah, you’re no better than Poilievre.

I am a Liberal because I believe that any time we can make life better for any person it is a worthwhile endeavour. If your politics blind you to the idea that we should use common sense - while saving taxpayers the not inconsiderable cost of moving a family of four’s shit twice in a calendar year - to do what’s best for these people as people, you’re irredeemable.

If we want to lower the tone and tenor of our politics, this dumb adherence to the letter of arcane law and not the plainly understood meaning is the way to do it. Poilievre is the Leader of the Opposition Party. He is the party’s choice to become PM. If Carney failed to get the confidence of the House - he’ll get it easily, but in this hypothetical - Poilievre would be who the Governor General next asked to form a government. He leads the Opposition, even if he is not the Leader of the Opposition.

Progressives clinging to textual literalism to be assholes show their complete contempt for the entire purpose of progressivism. By the arguments used today, Henry Morgentaler is one of Canadian history’s greatest monsters - after all, think about all the rules he broke in giving women access to choice over the decades. Oh, wait, he’s a fucking hero, because there is nothing less progressive than blind obedience to rules.

If your moral compass is actually “what would Pierre Poilievre do”, you’re a bad person. You’re a really fucking bad person, because those advocating for using his moral compass believe he’s a scumbag and think it’s a good enough excuse to act like one too.

We are supposed to be better than this. I know it’s easy to be a dick - the Professional Asshole thing is both a joke but also fair warning for a reason - but we don’t have to always be our worst selves. We won the fucking election and we embarrassed Poilievre by flipping Carleton. We don’t have to throw more punches just because we can.

There’s a reason I reiterated the full title of our Opposition, because it matters. We have a Loyal Opposition in this country because we do not treat the act of opposition to any government as betrayal of country. We have Danielle Smith and Scott Moe playing dangerous games about national unity, and we will need all hands on deck to fight back against them. I think Jason Kenney’s an ass for how he governed Alberta and for some of his Ministerial acts, but right now that doesn’t fucking matter because he’s dunking on Theo Fluery’s ass and that’s more important. We can hate Poilievre and work our asses off to stop him ever becoming PM. But we don’t need to be vindictive and petty for the sake of it.

So long as Poilievre is the Conservative Party’s choice to lead them, he leads the Opposition. Efforts to be a vindictive ass because Poilievre is an asshole make us no better than the people we claim to hate. And I refuse to let us stoop to their level. Stornoway should be his.