I Think I Finally Figured it Out

 It may be that I am a little slow on the uptake, and it is possible that you figured this out long ago. I think I always knew this somewhere in the back of my brain, but the pieces really clicked into place just this morning when I was thinking about a recent announcement by the Liberal government of Canada.

Yesterday morning, I read that Minster Francois-Philippe Champagne was going to announce that the gas tax vacation that the Liberal government enacted in April and which was slated to end on September 7, was going to be extended until January 31, 2027. This program offered $0.10 per litre of tax relief on regular unleaded gasoline and $0.04 per litre on diesel, among breaks on some other fuels. The media praised Mark Carney for this move originally, and extols his virtues now with the extension.

But wait...wasn't this initially an idea presented by Pierre Poillievre?

Why yes, yes it was. On April 2, 2026, Pierre Poillievre began calling for the immediate suspension of the GST and the federal excise taxes that are collected on gasoline and diesel fuel, and for that temporary suspension to last for the rest of the year 2026. He offered this idea so that Canadians would receive immediate relief on the costs of fuel, and that relief would extend to the costs of all goods that are transported across and within the country. As it turns out, Poillievre made the same suggestion in the spring of 2024, but that Liberal government was loathe to steal his idea at that time. But under Mark Carney, theft comes naturally, so the government was agreeable to it, as long as they had the support of the media to spin it as their idea and not Pierre's idea.

And it worked.

But the Liberal plan was more long-sighted than that. First, they didn't want to lose all of their income from the gas taxes, so instead of suspending all taxes, they only offered the above mentioned relief, which was immediately swallowed up by increasing gas prices anyway, but we have still been paying ten cents less per litre of taxes, while we are still paying the full GST. But the real genius is that they did not agree to suspend the taxes for the rest of the year, but just for a short time.

Why is this the genius of their move? Because the Liberal Party of Canada knows that Canadians are fickle and overly emotional and they play on that emotion to retain power. Just consider how the Liberals won the 2025 election and is currently winning the political battle by dehumanizing Donald Trump and our closest neighbours and allies, the Americans, whole simultaneously destroying our own manufacturing base, with Canadians cheering them on with their elbows up above their ears. 

By offering a short break instead of a long one, they gave themselves the opportunity to come out now, when the school year is about to begin and families are facing increased costs of sending their kids to school, and to make themselves out to be the saviours of Canadians by "benevolently" extending their graciousness by continuing the tax break into the new year. They got twice the press and twice the praise from a plan and a program that they likely knew that they were going to implement way back in April. They are manipulating the population to maintain support, and the population is praising them for it.

This is how the Liberal Party of Canada now operates. It feeds into their Liberal base in ways that the Conservatives will always have a hard time matching or defeating because the Conservatives rely on facts and honesty and not on emotions. 

The reason for the success of this liberal manipulation is very simple; liberal minded people view themselves as being very compassionate towards the needs of other people. It is at the very core of their being. It isn't just what they do, it is who they are. There is a saying about liberals that is used to explain their apparent hatred for anyone and anything conservative, that saying is, "I am a good person, so I am a liberal; and I am a liberal, so I am a good person". This is to say that conservatives are not good people, because they are not liberal, and because they are not liberal, they are not good people. This dehumanizes conservatives in the hearts and minds of liberals and helps to explain the vitriol that is shown by liberals to anyone who dares to disagree with them. You see it online all the time; the 'tolerance' of the left ends as soon as you don't agree with them.

We've all seen it, but we may not have been able to put our finger on what the issue is. When conservatives in a community stand against some type of liberal suggestion, that is not seen as a difference of views, but rather it is an attack on those whom the liberals seek to lift up, and thus, is an attack on the liberals themselves. The liberal mindset is to protect every person from any possibility of harm, be that physical, mental or emotional harm. The value that liberals place on the individual is impressively high. There is an aspect of this to be admired. The problem is that the liberal mindset lifts up the individual regardless of the value of that individual's ideas, which is actually quite contrary to the mindset of the conservative. If the idea is not good for society, conservatives will work to shut down the idea, regardless of the feelings of the individual that holds those ideas.

This is why Mark Carney is so easily able to maintain his support in this country even though he has accomplished absolutely nothing except to saddle Canadians with more debt than we would have ever dreamed of, aligned us with a communist nation without ever revealing what he has signed us on for, intentionally torpedoed our relationship with the U.S., and continually abuses Canadians through emotional manipulation.

This type of manipulation runs against the grain of any true conservative, and this is why Pierre Poillievre is having such a hard time cracking the nut of liberal support. Pierre offers long-term ideas that would improve the country, and he presents them over and over again. They are good ideas and they are necessary to the continued existence of the country, but his ideas have not changed, so they become old-hat to the voters. He has actually been championing the same ideas, the same plan, for over twenty years. His ideas stand the test of time, but they are not new and exciting, so the liberal voter is not intrigued by them.

In an age of 24 hour news and social media, people have become dependent on the latest 'new' thing to wake us from our lethargy. Mark Carney has figured this out, and this is the genius behind the gas tax vacation extension. He put a short life on the original announcement, then just before that end date arrives, he gets to make another announcement that he will extend the program, which gives him the new thing. Even though it is an old thing, it now has shiny new wrapping and he's waving it in front of your eyes. He likely originally planned to continue the program into the new year, at least, but the new announcement gives him a bump in the polls. He is seen to be the guy who cares simply because it seems new to us, while Pierre seems to be holding onto a paper bag of old ideas even though this was his idea in the first place, though his idea went even farther. The liberals offer less to Canadians, but they sell it better, using emotional manipulation and timing to gain and keep support. Canadians are in an abusive relationship with their government and they don't even realize it.

Mark Carney and his government are also using emotionally charged language with every announcement. Just this morning I read a headline that that stated that the Liberal Party is making "historic investments" into VIA rail. And how many times has Mark Carney evoked fear in his speeches and announcements with the phrase, "We live in a dangerous and divided world"? Really? It's only more divided here in the America's because of Liberal lies and policies of division. Remember how the Liberals pounded on Poillievre about his slogans? Pay attention to how many slogans the Liberals are using. Elbows Up. Building Canada Strong.

This reminds me of George Orwell's "1984", which I finally had the opportunity to read just this year. I encourage everyone to read it for themselves and draw the obvious correlations to the manipulations of the modern Liberal Party. In "1984", the powers that be continually make announcements about their accomplishments in order to maintain the support of the people, even if the "accomplishment" is actually negative progress. 

An example of this from the book is the mission of the "Ministry of Plenty". This is one of four government ministries that run the country. The ministry uses slogans to convince the people of how they are supposed to view their situation, regardless of what their eyes may be telling them.

It is mentioned early in the story, the machinations of the Ministry of Plenty. There is an announcement made over the telecreens; "‘Comrades!’ cried an eager youthful voice. ‘Attention, comrades! We have glorious news for you. We have won the battle for production! Returns now completed of the output of all classes of consumption goods show that the standard of living has risen by no less than 20 per cent over the past year. All over Oceania this morning there were irrepressible spontaneous demonstrations when workers marched out of factories and offices and paraded through the streets with banners voicing their gratitude to Big Brother for the new, happy life which his wise leadership has bestowed upon us."

That announcement reeks of the same stench that we witnessed in Parliament in, I think it was December of last year, when Mark Carney told Parliament that Canadians have it better now than we had it ten years ago. Do you remember ten years ago? It is hard to remember, but I know, for a fact, that things are not better for Canadians now than ten years ago, and there are numerous metrics to prove this is the case. But this does not stop the Prime Minister from gas lighting Canadians that we are supposedly better off now. And just like in "1984", the media is claiming that the liberal masses are celebrating the successes of Mark Carney, the Liberal saviour of Canada, even though there is nothing to show for all of his announcements.

Returning to "1984", the main character, Winston Smith, holds a position with the government in which his job is to actually rewrite history according to the dictates of the government, and from his work, he knows that this announcement by the Ministry of Plenty is false. "It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it."

Here it was occurring, that while just a day earlier, the government had made an announcement that the weekly ration of chocolate to the people was going to be reduced to specifically 20 grams, they were now gas lighting the people to believe that due to the successful operations of the government, the weekly ration of 20 grams was actually an increase from what they had been receiving. The real issue is that the people had become so accustomed to the gas lighting, that they believed everything that the government told them through the telescreens. That sounds somehow familiar to me.

As Winston later bemoans, "Day and night the telescreens bruised your ears with statistics proving that people today had more food, more clothes, better houses, better recreations -- that they lived longer, worked shorter hours, were bigger, healthier, stronger, happier, more intelligent, better educated, than the people of fifty years ago. Not a word of it could ever be proved or disproved. The Party claimed, for example, that today 40 per cent of adult proles were literate: before the Revolution, it was said, the number had only been 15 per cent. The Party claimed that the infant mortality rate was now only 160 per thousand, whereas before the Revolution it had been 300 -- and so it went on. It was like a single equation with two unknowns. It might very well be that literally every word in the history books, even the things that one accepted without question, was pure fantasy."

Just like in "1984", our own telescreens are bruising our ears and our eyes with the political messaging of this government. And just like the claims of the Oceania government could neither be proved or disproved, we see the same with the trade negotiations with the U.S. Mark Carney tells us that he walked away from a bad deal in order to protect Canada, and he threatened counter-tariffs on the U.S. starting on September 8. We can't see the deal that he declined, supposedly on our behalf. There is no transparency. He also claimed that the U.S. introduced new terms at the last hour, a claim which the U.S. refutes emphatically. But we still can't see the deal. 

The refusal by Carney was supposedly based on dairy and French language demands by the U.S.; again claims refuted by U.S. negotiators. But by supposedly protecting dairy and the French language from Trump, Carney got a boost in his poll numbers in Quebec right before a Quebec by election, and now Carney has the option of backing down on his counter-tariff threat and returning to the negotiating table without looking weak; now that he won the Quebec seat through emotional manipulation. He "stood up" to Trump for political gain, and now we will see him back down and crawl back to the negotiating table. It has even been reported that the American negotiators asked the Canadian negotiators if they were working to intentionally scuttle the deal at the last minute for political reasons, and the response that was given was, "I'm not allowed to say that". 😒😕 Will we ever get a deal with the U.S. as long as Canadians keep politically rewarding Carney for "standing up to Trump"? I doubt it.

This is the reality in which we now live. The government offers false claims of its' own successes without offering the proof of it; "just look for yourself; see how good things are" they say. Or worse yet, "Just trust us." And when people look into the claims of the government, they find that the claims are patently false, but the media, our modern telecreens, trumpets the successes of the government and never second guesses the claims. Because the government now funds the media, the media have become the fictional telescreens of Orwell's imagination.

And this is the crux of the problem; since the Liberal Party has shown itself to be entirely comfortable with intentionally misleading the electorate, and since the media has shown itself to be entirely comfortable with accepting monies from the government and carrying water for the government in order to protect those monies, it is becoming more and more difficult for the Conservative Party to break through the lies with the truth. They state the truth over and over again, but because the media does not give them a platform from which to speak over fear of losing their cash cow when the Conservatives form government, the lazy masses do not hear the message and simply continue to believe whatever the government tells them. It's the bread and circuses of the Roman times all over again! Keep the masses comfortable and entertained and they won't notice the decay that surrounds them!

Pierre Poillievre is, by all accounts and according to my own estimation of him over the years through observing him through official and candid unofficial on-camera moments, an honourable man. This has also been the observation of those who have met him. There have been too many politicians who are granted the title of Honourable, or Right Honourable in the case of the Prime Minister, who have not been worthy of that title. I believe that Pierre Poillievre is potentially worthy of that title, but he is such a threat to the Liberal political machine that they and their paid-for media work endlessly and tirelessly to smear him and replace him with someone who will be less effective against them. This has been so successful that even those who claim to want to vote Conservative say that they won't because of Pierre Poillievre! They don't even know the man except for the way that the Liberals  and the media have painted him!

Consider this. If Pierre is really such a failure as the leader of the Conservative Party, then he should pose no threat to the Liberal Party, their government or the media, and logic dictates that they should remain quiet and allow him to remain as the leader of the Opposition for as long as he wants the job. This should only serve their own interests, right? So why is it that any time the Liberals need to draw attention away from their own failings, and Donald Trump has been quiet for a while, do they turn to Poillievre and make claims that the Conservatives need a new leader because Pierre can never beat the Liberals? Does that make any sense? Why would the Liberals want the Conservatives to change their leader if they are so confident that they will always beat him?

The reason they are berating Pierre so much, so loud and so often is because they are afraid of him. He is a threat to them and everything that they stand for. His honesty is anathema to them, and they have no other rebuttal to him and his fact-based claims and his own personal integrity other than to try to smear him personally and politically. The Liberals know that eventually, Canadians are going to wise up to their failures; eventually even those who have been well off will begin to feel the pinch of the failing economy and the mounting debt, and their only recourse will be to vote for the Conservative Party and Pierre Poillievre.

If the political class can replace Pierre with a red Tory, that is someone who claims to be conservative but whose ideology leans more liberal, then the laws that the Liberals have enacted, the infrastructure that currently protects them and the people that they have placed in offices of authority may remain in place and they may not have to try to rebuild their kingdom from scratch. But Pierre has vowed to right the ship and repeal many Trudeau and Carney era laws that are killing this country's economy, he is threatening to destroy the cozy relationship between the media and the government (which is what we should all want), and he has vowed to do everything he can to return Canada to the standard of living that we used to enjoy just 11 short years ago.

Honesty and integrity have a long, hard battle to wage against the lies, the grift and the emotional manipulation that the Liberals seem to have mastered. The Conservatives have been trying, for years, to get Canadians to look around and determine for themselves that their lives are becoming less comfortable and their future is looking more bleak than it has for decades, even generations. I encourage everybody to look to sources of information outside of the legacy media in Canada, and to even look into foreign media to see how the world really sees Canada. We are not the beacon that the Liberals claim that we are; we are fast becoming the laughingstock of the world, and the more that we bristle against the U.S. in this so-called "trade war", the more the rest of the world positions itself to take Canada's place as America's largest trading partner. In fact, recently, Mexico has already usurped our position, and the rest of the world is ready to pounce on the American market in our absence.

Orwell may have stated it most succinctly when he had his main character put pen to paper to record his own thoughts, a crime in that time. Winston Smith opined about the citizenry of Oceania, which mirrors too closely the citizenry of modern Canada; "Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious." The first act of rebellion for Canadians right now is still very simple; seek your information from multiple sources, including sources that you have been told to disbelieve, and compare what you are being told to what you are seeing. Then act accordingly. If you do this with intent and a pure motive, this simple act of rebellion will awaken your consciousness, and you will see that rebellion is the only option.

So maybe to summarize what it is that I have just figured out, I would say that for the cultural battle to be won in the political arena, conservatives need to figure out how to get around the emotional abuse that the current, and former Canadian governments seem to have mastered. We cannot resort to the same tactics or we will become that which we despise, which will not free Canadians from the web in which they are trapped, but would rather just trap them in another web. I do not have the answer for the how; I have only just now found my finger on the what. Satan has his claws dug deep into the soul of this country, so the only recourse that I can think of is to pray. Pray hard. Pray long. Pray often. Even pray without ceasing. This is not a cultural war that we are fighting, nor is it a political war; this is a spiritual war, and the victor of the war is already decided. What is undetermined is who will win this battle.