A Matter of Principle
November 9, 2024
This week, I got an email from one of the candidates seeking the CPC nomination here in St. Catharines. This candidate, one who I had met previously and one of a growing number of followers I seem to have acquired (who says no one around these parts cares about politics?), advised me that if I wanted a vote on who would carry the party’s banner in the next federal election, the cutoff date to renew my expired CPC membership was coming up on Friday.
Well, it’s about bloody time, I thought. It’s sure taken them long enough. A candidate should have been in place long before now getting out there hammering away on Chris Bittle and the Liberals.
On the surface, renewing that membership may have seemed like a no-brainer. Loyal readers may recall that I had been a party member dating back to the early Stephen Harper years when I was still in the Old Country. I remember being so thrilled when the previously unknown Steven Fletcher pulled off quite the upset when he beat out Glen Murray, who had stepped down as the mayor of Winnipeg to run for the Liberals in my riding. I would later become a regular at the Fletcher Forums he held periodically at his constituency office and speak with him personally on occasion. Heck, I had even been in his house at a New Years levee.
But like Fletcher himself did in later years, the CPC has lost its way.
To their everlasting shame, they abandoned freedom-loving Canadians in their darkest hour during the height of the war. In fact, it was the silence of the CPC more than Justin Trudeau’s belligerence that made the freedom convoy necessary. Even today, as countless millions die and suffer from the “vaccines” forced upon Canadians, they seem unwilling to acknowledge their role in the greatest violation of human rights the world has seen since Adolf Hitler ruled Germany. Nor have they spoken out against the politically motivated prosecutions of convoy leaders. And why haven’t they been shouting from the rooftops as Bill C-293 made its way through the House of Commons? You know, the bill that would give the government, among other things, the quasi-legal right to come into your home and forcibly inject you with some concoction of toxic and potentially lethal drugs.
Now don’t get me wrong. The party’s new leader, Pierre Poilievre, is a lot better than Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole. But he’s hardly reversed course on the centrist direction this party has taken. In addition to its silence on the heinous war crimes committed by the Liberals, the party remains virtually silent on mass immigration and the ever-increasing power grabs of the UN and the WHO. And they’re in lockstep with the Liberals over funding of never-ending foreign wars.
Just look at the candidates who will be running for them. Take Niagara South, for example, where Fred Davies put his name forward. The same Fred Davies who ran for the Doug Ford Party in the last provincial election. Though he still calls himself a conservative, Ford can’t stop gushing over Trudeau and makes the spend-happy Kathleen Wynne, the Liberal premier he replaced, look like Ebenezer Scrooge. He has betrayed his traditional voter base in every way imaginable. As I told the candidate here in St. Catharines who contacted me, any connection with Ford should have been an absolute disqualifier. Instead, Davies, with Poilievre’s apparent blessing, was instilled as the candidate.
This all said, I remain very interested in who will emerge as the nominee and even though there is no one candidate among the five who really impresses me, I would like a voice in that process. After all, that person is virtually certain to become our next MP. All I would have had to do was go online and fork over the comparatively trivial sum of $15.
But I just couldn’t do it.
Time and again, this party has been selling out its principles. But I’m no longer willing to sell out mine. I couldn’t look myself in the mirror with a clean conscience if I had rejoined the party. It just wouldn’t have been right. And though I won’t say I’ll never return, it’s their obligation to regain my trust and support, not the other way around.
That’s why the next CPC candidate here in St. Catharines will be decided by others, not by me.
| Previous post | Next post |