Canada election: Cool heads will prevail; the rage farmers and the damage done
In hockey terms, Canadians have a couple parties that offer a game plan vis-à-vis a bunch of goons who perpetrated a disgrace at the debates in Montréal.
Canadians are not haters.
Glass half full take, sure, with the glass slightly trembling in my hand. There are many, many more of us who believe in Canada, its promise, its history, its capacity for compassion and for remedying even grievous mistakes, than there are of you-know-who.
You know ’em. Those who want to play stupid games, and win stupid prizes they can show off while the boot is on their neck and they are licking it so hard they’re about to swallow it.
At a time when our nationhood is under attack, people are responding to Prime Minister Mark Carney, the Liberal Leader. Carney is bright, enters situations with humility, and is “steady, principled, focused on reason, not rage,” whilst knowing his way around economics backward and forward. That should win in the end.
Carney made hockey imagery part of his interview presentation to become an elected PM. He was a goaltender. As soon who tries to see the good in everyone ‘cause the band Sloan said so, he connects with something another Ivy League-educated goalie of some renown, Ken Dryden, wrote not too long ago — as one reaches a certain age, they realize the most important thing is to be kind.1
Whether one’s lens is hockey or soccer, we know a goalie is a breed apart — analytical, flexible physically and emotionally. When they exude quiet confidence, the team is confident. If they are fighting the puck or overworked like Carney’s predecessor, everyone’s shoulders slump. They are that split-second late to the loose pucks.
And, make no mistake, one party in particular, and one group of disinformation divas, are acting like nothing but a bunch of goons. In classic hockey parlance, there’s a tough guy, an enforcer, or a shift disturber. They can play, but have to fight and pester to get the chance to play.
A goon is just a goon. Their only purpose for being there is to hurt people and intimidate, and drag the entire game through the mud.
The Pierre Poilievre iteration of the CPC;2 Ezra Levant and Sheila Gunn Reid with Rebel Media; all of its spin-offs? They are goons. Hired goons by who-knows-who. They gleefully perform as a cancer on civil discourse, a vital organ in a functioning democracy. You know what happens when cancer is found in a vital organ.
What happened in Montréal on April 17, 2025 was social terrorism — arriving with bad intentions to sow “civic distrust” in the media. They caused all of it.
I have followed the careers of these two callow men since their Reform Party days in the 1990s and early aughts. At least some of their ilk have a talent for drawing and retaining attention. However
They showed up, as La Presse reported, with a van broadcasting scurrilous falsehoods about Mr. Carney. They bullied their way into having five ciphers — they ain’t journalists — credentialed on April 16 to ask ‘gotcha’ questions for Carney and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, which were described as “des questions interminables. Elles ressemblaient davantage à celles que posent des militants dans des audiences publiques ou des citoyens en colère dans des conseils municipaux.”
Rough translation, “They sounded more like those posed by activists in public hearings or angry citizens in city council meetings.” It was farcical.
Journalistic detachment is always up for robust debate, but generally either be a member of the media or a member of the public. This was crackpot behavior. They are normalizing crackpottery when the moment demands cool heads.
When called on it in the media centre by Stuart Benson of The Hill Times, Levant lied through his teeth about the trucks he rented and about his ciphers asking “des questions interminables” on Wednesday. One of these sweet summer children read her question from her phone, before NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh politely declined to answer. You can’t get much further from the classic parry-and-thrust of covering a political campaign than that.
All of that is voter suppression. Anything designed to turn people off from participating in democracy degrades democracy, full stop. It grates since I like participating in democracy and protecting it in any small way I can. That is a pretty basic attitude, and one that many Canadians of my vintage share.
I ain’t even mad, since it is long past the point of being angry with bad-faith actors. Like Binky the Clown in Garfield, they are never going to go away. Neither should our memories. Acceptance should not, must not, happen.
The media workers who earned legitimacy by being honest and hard-working needed police protection to leave the building. That was reported on CBC. Forgive if I find that a bit fäcked in a nation that ranks high for press freedom.
As many friends say, we want something to vote for more than we want to vote against something. The Liberals have some semblance of a plan for the polycrisis of housing shortages, MAGA-Project 2025 aggression, rising living expenses, and climate disaster. Their leader’s “public career has been about reforming capitalism to be more accountable, not abetting corporate secrecy.” Here in Hamilton, Ont., I have the terrific opportunity to vote for Matthew Green, a true social democrat who embodies the purpose of the New Democrats.
The CPC has no costed platform — when did we accept a major party not releasing a platform? — and a leader who has no security clearance. He has also brought coffee and donuts to a lawless occupation, rage-farmed by false-promising that he would ban mandatory vaccines for schoolchildren — and, oh, by the way, how would that work out in practice? Ontario, for one place, has a massive measles outbreak.
Oh, and he wants to “override constitutionally protected rights,” as Benjamin Perrin, a highly credentialed conservative, pointed out every day. You know the meme. Once the leopards eat people’s faces, they don’t stop. That is why we have the rule of law; for the comfort of knowing everyone’s rights are enshrined. One need not look very far to see what happens when the rule of law is ignored.
Just like Mrs. Hoffa kept the porch light on till her dying day, I believe there is some humanity and heart in these folks, at least in the rhetorical sense. They need to go and spend more than two minutes by themselves, and feel shame. In spite of everything. In spite of how they have bullied qualified women out of electoral politics; in some other timeline, we are electing Prime Minister Catherine McKenna. The pollstruck media have scarcely mentioned this, but Carney did bring it up, since he is a person who pays attention to reality, rather than trying to subvert it with alternative facts soaked in virtual kerosene.
Thought follows action. After this election, when the Liberals form government, there needs to be thought about the media we need to hold elected leaders to account, since no fair-minded person wants.
Closing on an analogy, the hate and ignorance on display is like one of those sparklers you probably had as a child on the May long weekend. It seems appealing when it burns brightly, but you hold on to it too long, and you get singed. Then you discard the useless ash.
The true spark is for something sustainable that is connecting. It is daunting, it seems out of reach, but when your team has a good goalie, you know you can go for it.
Afterword
Thank you to everyone who has engaged with the micro-blogging I have been doing on Substack Notes. It is gratifying to feel heard and seen amid the tumult and the shouting.
I will keep posting about current affairs in Notes and on Bluesky (n8sager). Hopefully, this is enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind.
April 17-18, 2025
Hamilton, Ont. : on the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Mississaugas.
From Dryden’s book The Class: A Memoir of Time, Place, and Us.
Conservative Party of Canada, but neither conservative nor of Canada. They are the old Reform Party from the 1990s.