Over the Back Fence

 

My neighbour was by the day before yesterday to help me with my back door. We had not met before; I have just moved into the neighbourhood. A propos of nothing, he volunteered his disdain for Justin Trudeau. It seemed to be something he needed to get off his chest.

He claimed this used to be a solidly Liberal neighbourhood. He himself used to be a Chretien Liberal. Now everybody on the street but one Acadian family is behind Pierre Poilievre.

So much for that nonsense about the need for Tories to “move to the centre.” Never take advice from your political adversaries. Become the centre.

Why did my neighbour feel so strongly? The general sense was that Trudeau was robbing from the poor and giving to the rich—the same sentiment we hear in Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond.” The endless carbon taxes were making everything more expensive, and doing nothing for the environment. Inflation and the cost of housing was crushing the poor. The proposed new restrictions on guns were ignorant and oppressive; the government was out of touch with rural life. They would do nothing for gun crime, since the criminals get their guns from the States. The government’s treatment of the Freedom Convoy was intolerable. It could not be allowed to stand. We should not be funding the CBC: everyone now watches YouTube instead. And everyone should get a VPN to bypass government censorship. He also planned to be in the “Million Man March” on September 20 to protest gender ideology in the schools.

And he stressed that Trudeau was incompetent, a failed drama teacher who did not understand economics.

This tracks pretty well with Pierre Poilievre’s attacks on the government: either Poilievre is reading the public mood well, or he is shaping the public mood. Probably both, like the brilliant rhetorician he is.

There is, I think, all over the developed world, a growing sense that the people and their governing elites are not on the same side. This is a pre-revolutionary atmosphere.

We are fortunate in Canada that we seem now to have an adequate electoral channel for this discontent: Poilievre. The polls show the Tories in majority government territory, and climbing. They may fail us once in power; then the situation darkens. 

But the present situation is more difficult in the US, the UK, France, not to mention China or Russia. There things seem more likely to reach the point of full social collapse.