How to Defeat Poilievre’s Politics of Abandonment

In Pierre Poilievre, Canada has a radical free market zealot whose policies will be disastrous for the poor, working and middle classes.

Indeed, if the Conservatives are victorious in the next election, Poilievre will be the most right-wing prime minister in our modern history. Think the gutting of social welfare from the Paul Martin budgets of the early 1990s meets a supercharged dismantling of the fiscal capacity of government à la Stephen Harper.

Poilievre, to the credit of his communications team, has managed to dress up his right-wing program with populist rhetoric that resonates during a time of rising economic insecurity. But scratch the surface and the neoliberal playbook of slashing social spending, tax cuts for business and the wealthy, and abandoning people to market inequities is plain to see.

All of this provides plenty of potent talking points for those who oppose Poilievre’s bid to lead the Conservatives into power in the next election.

So here’s a memo to progressives who prefer to frame the contest as one based on likeability. Poilievre’s personality is flawed by a petty mean streak, we’re told. Voters just don’t feel warmly towards the cold fish. He knows it and that explains his latest ads projecting a friendly family guy. What if his PR blitz makes the public forget he’s a jerk? |Read more https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2023/09/08/Defeat-Poilievre-Politics-Abandonment/|

#PierrePoilievre #CPC #EconomicInsecurity #cdnpoli #conservatives #SocialSpending #Politics

Forsaken and ‘Urgent’: Alberta’s Eroding Coal Roads

The summer heat beat down on Kevin Van Tighem as he traced a steep dirt road up Cabin Ridge Mountain, deep in Alberta’s Rockies. This was no ordinary hike. Van Tighem was investigating the state of industrial coal roads, constructed years prior. As he neared the peak of Cabin Ridge, the signs of deterioration came into focus.

Groundwater oozed from the edges of the roads, evaporating long before it could reach the river. Weeds flourished in the disturbed soil. Drill sites near the peak of the mountain, left by coal prospectors, were in disrepair. Industrial equipment was scattered haphazardly across the flat clearings near the switchbacks.

Van Tighem wasn’t surprised by the ramshackle state of the roads. He has led expeditions to the sites since 2020. Each year he finds the situation becomes “increasingly urgent, but also increasingly hopeless.”

He is the former superintendent of Banff National Park. Over the past three years, he has worked with locals in the Livingstone area, northwest of Pincher Creek, opposing mine development and exploratory roads.

“They are exposed to the elements and are eroding like crazy,” Van Tighem said.

“If you wanted to come up with a prescription for how to ruin a watershed, that is what Alberta has accomplished,” said Van Tighem, who ran in the last provincial election for the NDP and lost. |Read more https://globalnews.ca/news/9945982/socons-push-to-check-poilievre-power/|

#coal #waste #rockies #remediation #erosion #disrepair #environment #abpoli #UCP