Please Advise! Is Canada Embracing Insult Politics?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

There was a lot of Conservative name-calling last week. Former Progressive Conservative prime minister Kim Campbell called current Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre “a liar and hate-monger.” And newly elected Conservative MP Jamil Jivani gave a victory speech in which he referred to members of Doug Ford's Ontario provincial government as “liberal elites.”

What's with all the feuding?

Signed,

Fight Fan

Dear FF,

Dr. Steve is also puzzled. Liberal elites? Doug Ford? Ontario guy? Heavy-set? On TV a lot? Couldn't be. Dr. Steve searched LinkedIn for any other Doug Fords that Jivani might be referring to. There's a Doug Ford who manages a Save-On-Foods in New Westminster. Perhaps he moonlights as a member of the liberal elite, part time? Arranging two-for-one asparagus deals for elitist Save-On cardholders?

Anyway, it's crazy to think of Premier Ford as part of the liberal elite. He is of course a well-known Trotskyite, identifiable through his unspoken yet clear advocacy of a dictatorship of the proletariat, and also the buck-a-beer plan. The workers shall own the brewskis necessary for production.

Jivani, who won the Durham byelection necessitated by the resignation of former Conservative leader (and possible communist rabble-rouser) Erin O'Toole, seems intent on staking out turf somewhere to the right of a drunken Steve Bannon. Jivani, an author and former radio talk show host, is also pals with J.D. Vance, the acclaimed Hillbilly Elegy author who reinvented himself as a cartoonish nut-job to get elected to the U.S. Senate. That karaoke playlist is right there for anyone ready to pick up the microphone.

In his victory speech Jivani went after those terrible liberal elites — not just Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, he said, but also Jivani's former employers in the media and the Ontario Ministry of Education. This sent the editorial board of the National Post into raptures. “As Conservatives delve deeper into culture war territory, Jivani is the perfect scout. He’s honest when others fear to be blunt,” the Post wrote.

Looks like the Post has a bad case of culture war envy. It's tough being a culture warrior up here. America is the NFL of media culture wars; by contrast, Canadian culture warriors get CFL money.

As for Jivani, he has played a supporting role on the Canadian political stage before. It was none other than Jivani standing beside Poilievre on a voter's doorstep last summer when the Opposition leader was recorded referring to Justin Trudeau and his dad Pierre as “Marxists.”

Poilievre and Jivani made quite the dynamic door-knocking duo, a two-man Freedom Convoy canvassing the neighbourhood, perhaps working themselves into a froth of righteous Thatcherite fury along the way. And who knows how long they've been pals? Perhaps they have spent many happy hours together playing Dungeons & Marxists, casting level-five John Galt spells against the dragons of entitlement. In fact you have to wonder who has been influencing whom. Maybe Jivani has been convincing Poilievre he's too much of an apple-munching softie. Time to swap those apples for grenades, Pete. Stop being so cuddly.

Meanwhile, on a recent podcast Kim Campbell called Poilievre a liar and a hate-monger. This is perhaps not surprising. If the Ford government is now being described as a nest of liberal elitists, that would make Kim Campbell the Canadian Bernie Sanders. Campbell's former party has travelled a long way since her brief tenure at 24 Sussex Dr. in 1993. Just as the U.S. Republican party has migrated from George H.W. Bush to Benito Bone Spurs, Poilievre appears determined to transition his party from the Progressive Conservatives to the regressive alternative.

Javani definitely fits in with the ranks of Poilievre's new model army — a future cabinet minister for sure. Any guy who can characterize the Ford government as a woke mob must be capable of remarkable logical leaps and feats of imagination. Minister of Fisheries, perhaps? You want a candidate who can tell some real whoppers.