“Sergeant, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I’ve rehabilitated myself... ‘cause you want to know if I’m moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein’ a litterbug.”
-Arlo Guthrie, “Alice’s Restaurant”
I may be showing my age, daring to cite a line out of “Alice’s Restaurant,” circa 1967, but it was the first thing that popped into my head when I was reading the article about our riding’s new hopeful, federal candidate for the Conservative Party. “A lot of damn gall,” I thought to myself, or maybe even said out loud.
The first sentence began, “There is a lot to do in order to fix Canada.” The follow-up read, “People are struggling in every single part of this riding in different ways, but it doesn’t have to be that way,” said Keith Roy, the Conservative hopeful.
Those were the only sentences I could agree with. It went downhill pretty quickly after that. It was downhill because Mr. Roy clearly has no idea how to fix things, and like the leader of his party, a slim grasp on reality, a grasp that nonetheless manages to claim miracles are forthcoming.
Mr. Roy’s first grasp at thin air is apparent when he says things are bad in Canada and Pierre Poilievre has a plan to make that better. Anyone who follows any news source not strictly limited to Mr. Poilievre’s social media postings knows the leader of the Conservatives has no plan—at least not one he’s announced—to fix anything.
What Mr. Poilievre has, or claims to have, is a corner on “common sense.” What he actually has is a very unpopular opponent in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a population reeling from the escalating cost of everything, and the comfort of being able to say absolutely none of what they’re suffering from is his fault while all of it is Mr. Trudeau’s fault... not just in Canada, but around the world where most of those ills exist as well.
Clearly in his version of common sense, Trudeau is responsible for inflation; the high cost of housing, of which there is not enough and which is also his fault; food prices; gas prices; rampant transgenderism; elite wokeful thinking; and, if it gets worse, probably the measles outbreak as well.
What do both Messrs. Poilievre and Roy mean by common sense? A trait of righteousness, possibly a super power—like the red sun of Krypton—enabling them to right all wrongs through the application thereof. They both have it, as well as everyone in the country who will vote for them, and most assuredly the prime minister and everyone who supports him or the NDP definitely hasn’t even heard of it.
Their rather Hegelian version of common sense reminds me of the great Canadian debate about what it means to be Canadian. We’re not American!
Common sense shall be the salvation of both the country and the leader of the Conservative Party. When Pierre discovered common sense, he no longer needed his glasses. He no longer needed to rail against wokeism or the elites running the country and their lackeys, the liberal media. He no longer needed to shill for cryptocurrency as the cure for the moribund Canadian dollar and the country’s economy. He no longer had to promise to discharge the head of the Bank of Canada. Common sense answered all questions, and only he and his candidates had it. Eureka! The Holy Grail at last.
Common sense is one powerful mofo, folks. And who could claim otherwise. Don’t think so? Prove it.
That Pierre’s common sense lacks, shall we say, specificity, is irrelevant. Specificity? What kind of elite woke word is that? We’re talking about a force of nature that will, in Pierre’s words, “cut waste and cap spending to bring down inflationary deficits and interest rates.” Common sense will provide, “a new funding formula that links the number of federal dollars cities get for infrastructure to the number of houses they allow to be completed.”
Who knew salvation would be so easy?
And so, Mr. Roy pins his hopes on the five C’s: Common sense, climate, crime, the carbon tax and congestion.
Okay, we know how powerful common sense can be. But what exactly is the Conservative plan to address climate other than eliminating the carbon tax, the one thing those rascally elite scientists believe is the most expeditious way to begin to cut fossil-fuel consumption? Thus far, the Conservative plan is rooted in the whistling-past-the-graveyard strategy of hoping it goes away. Problem solved.
In Mr. Roy’s view, the single most pressing issue in this riding is congestion. In the view of most people who live in this part of the riding, congestion—while an issue—barely makes it into the top five. But it’s an easy swipe at Steven Guilbeault’s faux pas about the feds not investing in new road infrastructure, an ill-conceived comment for which he has been pilloried by, well, everyone in the country, including his fellow Liberals.
In fact, it sounds as wonky as, what was it, “linking the number of federal dollars cities get for infrastructure to the number of houses they allow to be completed.” Yeah, that was it.
But Mr. Roy’s comment that brought to mind the notion he had a lot of damn gall was his gratuitous swipe at our current MP, Patrick Weiler. In Mr. Roy’s common-sense world, he believes Mr. Weiler has achieved “no results” as our MP.
Opposed to that point of view is almost everyone else. The fact is, Patrick Weiler has been the best, most hard working, most accessible MP this riding has had for as long as I’ve lived here, a hell of a lot longer than Mr. Roy.
I know it stretches our ability to remember the distant past, but it was, oh, a whole week ago Mr. Weiler announced $2.7 million in funding for local housing in far distant Pemberton. Not the first local announcement he’s made involving the Housing Accelerator Fund and local housing. And far from being a bootlick Liberal lackey, Mr. Weiler has not infrequently taken positions well outside the party line, most recently concerning the “common sense” proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza.
But then, vilifying your opponent is a time-tested strategy when you’ve got nothing to say on your own behalf, having accomplished, well, nothing.
But what does Mr. Roy say on his own behalf? That his background as a realtor has given him a lot of experience with what Canadians are dealing with at home. Say what? Selling real estate in a place where no one who actually lives and works can afford it is, shall we say, shaky ground upon which to build a CV.
Let the games begin.
