Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), was rightfully upset when far-right extremist Jeremy McKenzie threatened to rape his wife.
Weeks before Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was approached by Elliot McDavid and a woman in Grande Prairie and verbally abused and intimidated. She had no protection detail, few escape routes and the situation could have turned violent.
Freeland, who was born and raised in Alberta, said the day after, “Nobody, anywhere, should have to put up with threats and intimidation.”
Prime Minister Trudeau, first condemned the attack, and then said, “It’s time for people to look to assuage fears and angers, to respond with a positive vision for the future, because people are hurting.”
Michelle Rempel-Garner, former federal cabinet minister in Stephen Harper’s government and a current Conservative Member of Parliament from Calgary, said, “the hot, sick feeling of being trapped . . . of not knowing where to run if it escalates, of being confronted by someone hostile and physically larger than you.”
In contrast, the silence of CPC interim leader Candice Bergen, and UCP leadership candidates Danielle Smith and Brian Jean was deafening, and Poilievre’s comment was weak and narcissistic. He called the attack on Freeland ‘unacceptable’, he then launched into a tirade of complaints about those on-line threats that he and his wife were receiving.
Premier Kenney was quick to condemn McDavid’s actions against Freeland as “reprehensible”, quite ironic given he has spent his whole career as premier ‘rage farming’ against Justin Trudeau and Rachel Notley. Both of whom now receive regular death threats and have been forced to cancel political events because of real threats of violence.
Political scientists Jared Wesley from the University of Alberta said aggressive attacks on politicians will increase in Canada as right-wing politicians continue to engage in ‘rage farming’ by advancing false and misleading conspiracy narratives. The public demonization of a person or group leads to the incitement of violent acts and, of course, unintended consequences.
Poilievre hadn’t planned for the unintended consequence that his wife would receive the same treatment as Notley, Freeland and Rempel-Garner. It reminded me of the hymn, Be Careful What You Sow, penned by D.W. Whittle, ‘the weed you plant will grow . . . and he who sows wild oats today, must reap the crop tomorrow’. As a masterful rage farmer, Poilievre naively believed he and his family wouldn’t bear any consequences.
Kenney, too, was surprised that he had to pay the consequences. His rage farming to get the extreme right to support him, eventually cost him his dream job. Extremism, on the left or right, doesn’t have boundaries nor compromise in their DNA. The pandemic, and Kenney’s demise, showed how far his new extreme party members were prepared to go to push absolute individual freedoms.
The man who threatened Poilievre’s wife was Jeremy MacKenzie, a known member of a far-right group, Diagolon, an online community that propagates views about the desire to speed up the collapse of society, and promotes Holocaust denial, conspiracy theories about COVID-19, neo-Nazi and white supremacy. He was a prominent figure in the far-right media online during the Freedom Convey protests and border blockages.
He was also the man caught on camera shaking hands with Poilievre during a conservative leadership race event in the summer. Later when a news reporter questioned Poilievre about Jeremy MacKenzie’s association with Diagolon, Poilievre’s campaign came out condemning the question and called it an ‘attack’ by a Global news reporter!
Poilievre was filmed walking side by side with army reservist James Topp, an anti-mandate and anti-Covid vaccine protester. Topp, a few months back, had been charged with two counts of professional misconduct for wearing the uniform of the Canadian armed forces while making political statements. Topp had also appeared on MacKenzie’s ‘Raging Dissident’ podcast extolling his admiration for MacKenzie.
Later the police revealed that some of the cache of guns and body armour seized near the Alberta border during the blockade at Coutts, Alta. bore patches with the Diagolon symbol.
Playing footsie with extremism, which Poilievre’s campaign did to grow the CPC membership exponentially, may have gained him the leadership but it is moral recklessness.
He and his wife quickly felt the wrath of ‘no moral limits’ by one of his keenest followers, Jeremy MacKenzie.
While calling the Freeland in-person harassment incident, ‘unacceptable’, Poilievre’s reaction to his wife’s online harassment was considerably different.
“These men are dirtbags.”, said Poilievre, “Frankly, like most Canadians, until about a month ago I had never heard of Diagolon and these losers. This kind of garbage has no place in Canada. No one should face this abuse.”
MacKenzie in reply said it was a joke, he’d been drinking alcohol during the broadcast—just boy stuff.
When caught, the two men responded exactly on script—”I never heard of . . .! ” and “I was just joking!”
Trudeau didn’t call the attack on Poilievre’s wife simply ‘unacceptable’, rather he said, “no one should ever be subject to threats of violence or the kind of hatred we’ve seen increasingly—it’s important that we all stand up and condemn that”. He also didn’t go on to complain about the harassment he, his wife and his family regularly receive.
Poilievre also said, “People can attack my politics, they can call me names, they can protest my ideas and what I stand for, but threatening my wife and family is appalling and I will not tolerate it.”
These words show just how naïve Poilievre is about human nature. He seems unaware personal attacks on him also hurt his wife and it will do his child harm when he is old enough to understand.
A civilized society needs good people to run for politics. This current harassment of politicians, whether male or female, precludes many good people from running—which is extremely harmful to Canadian democracy. It’s not just about his wife being verbally violated, it is about every politician, or news reporter, being verbally attacked or physically threatened. It’s about politicians not being able to mix freely among their electorate or hold public rallies.
There is no equivalent on the left for rage farming. It sits solely in the right-wing camp and only they can do something about it. Each year the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) is attracting fewer Canadians by presenting a well-reasoned policy alternative to the Liberals and NDP, and are instead pandering to conspiracy theories and anger.
History teaches, who we associate with eventually becomes who we are.
The CPC, the UCP and the Saskatchewan Party are on the cusp. In each of these parties the weeds are flourishing, and, if their leadership races and winners are any barometer, the good crop of conservatives are being side-lined or pushed out all together.
In the last verse in the hymn, Be Careful What You Sow, it says, “and he who sows good seed today, shall reap good seed tomorrow.” If Poilievre sincerely wants attacks on his wife to stop, he’ll have to first stop his love of name-calling and rage farming.
Brenda Schimke
ECA Review
