KAY: Ontario’s Bill 67 is critical race theory in a thin disguise

On Thursday night time Jean Charest, a cipher from the purple Tory previous, introduced he could be in search of the management of the Conservative Get together of Canada (CPC).

Charest’s candidacy brings to thoughts that basic Billy Wilder movie “Sundown Boulevard” that excoriates the quick consideration span of Hollywood as silent movie star Norma Desmond pathetically tries to rediscover her fame and public. “Regular Desmond,” says star William Holden, who performed down-on-his-luck playwright Joe Gillis, “You was once large.”

“I’m large,” Gloria Swanson as Desmond replies, “It’s the photographs that received small.”

Effectively, for Jean Charest, it’s not that he was once large, however the get together he desires to guide is lots greater and actually much more conservative. He’s not the person to guide it. To say he’s yesterday’s man is an inadequate description of his liabilities.

Charest talked about his work with Chinese language 5G web big Huawei and just about sunk no matter marketing campaign he had by proclaiming: “I’m pleased with the work I did to kind out the scenario with Meng Wenghzou”

His VIP tables have been positioned contained in the storage of a craft brewery and occupied by disinterested media; the protesters exterior have been too younger to even keep in mind who this man was. However one signal learn: “We want the longer term, not the previous.”

My thoughts exactly after I first heard the information.

The Conservative Get together simply gave the boot to an English model of Charest when it eliminated Erin O’Toole as their chief — a person who appeared completely in sync with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over the last federal election — on points from carbon taxes to gun management.

The very fact he needed to fake to be a grassroots conservative to win the management says lots — each about O’Toole’s character and concerning the ideological leanings of the get together — however not less than Charest isn’t pretending he had a Damascus Highway second throughout his years away from the hurly-burly of politics.

However that doesn’t make him any extra appropriate to enter this race. And who put the concept in his head anyway? Toronto Mayor John “Purple” Tory? A cabal of Toronto bankers? Some over the hill senators in search of to maintain the get together “center of the street?”

The rank and file of the Conservative Get together are begging for a frontrunner like Pierre Polievre — or Maxime Bernier — who can enunciate, execute and embody the conservative, populist and libertarian beliefs expressed by the Freedom Convoy and so resoundingly condemned by Trudeau and the Vichy NDP.

What’s superb is the mainstream media doesn’t desire a political debate on this nation — doesn’t even need any political cleavage between the main political events in Canada. Take heed to my previous buddy Don Martin — a Calgarian who grew to become utterly Ottawashed throughout his tenure as host of CTV‘s Powerplay — as he wrote in his weekly column:

“Reasonable, extraordinarily skilled, dignified, however largely forgotten 4 a long time after coming into the federal fray, former get together chief and Quebec premier Jean Charest will formally enter the race in Calgary on Thursday, little question sporting a Stetson …

“Being somebody who carries no social Conservative baggage, has a local weather change report, and delivered efficient deficit discount in Quebec, Charest is the candidate Liberals desperately hope will lose.

“And except there’s a kinder, gentler model of Pierre Poilievre than the one I’ve noticed for eight years, the Liberals are salivating for him to win.”

So except the Conservatives select one other O’Toole who seems and acts and talks like Justin Trudeau they’re fated to lose?

That evaluation wasn’t a lot totally different from Andrew Coyne’s ridiculous assertion it wasn’t O’Toole who should be removed as chief, however a lot of the Conservative MPs who must be kicked from their caucus.

Anybody with half a mind is aware of the mainstream media is in Trudeau’s pocket as a result of he’s given them the federal government’s pockets. They routinely repeat the Liberal authorities speaking factors, lob softball questions at Trudeau and his henchmen and ladies at scrums and customarily toe the road. They don’t examine, they don’t incriminate, they don’t interrogate; they only regurgitate. We nonetheless have a free press in Canada; you’re studying it. However it shouldn’t be the exception to the rule.

If the Freedom Convoy demonstrated something to Canadians, it’s that we’ve got a first-rate minister who’s keen to pivot to a dictator at a second’s discover on any whim and a Liberal authorities that’s fairly glad to help his authoritarian governance.

If Trudeau is keen to invoke the Emergencies Act over some vans on Wellington St., if he’s fairly ready to freeze financial institution accounts and use truncheon-wielding police to interrupt the heads of determined, working-class Canadians, then he’s fairly ready to do that once more.

Canadians want an alternative choice to this mounting totalitarianism, this frugality of free speech, and the ever-present menace that your authorities can steal your life’s financial savings in case you help a political trigger with which they don’t agree.

And that’s why the CPC members have to be fastidious of their selection of leaders. The get together wants a conservative at its helm, not a recycled purple Tory from yesteryear.

David Krayden is the Senior Parliamentary Columnist for the Western Commonplace