Hello. Nope, that's not it. That's it, Garrison. The episode has begun. It cannot be unbegun. A let's let's roll right into it. Let's talk about so well welcome says it could happen here. Um today, the today. The here is is Canada, that is the that is where it could happen. Um. This is gonna be part two of my little deep dive into Canadian fascism and the far right rumblings in general in the Great White North. And oh god, that is a bad, bad nickname for Canada, the Great White NORTHCCATE did not really think that went through, oopsie doodle. Maybe the yeah, there's a good chance anyway. Um. The last episode we left off with the Canadian yellow vests, um, and you know, frightening increase in Islamophobia and anti human grace and rhetoric around late after Trump selection. And we started the last episode by talking about one of Canada's first fascist political parties. And we're gonna start part two but talking about Canada's new neo fascist political party that also got started inside the province of Quebec just like the National Unity Party did. Uh. This one is called the People's Party of Canada. Um, before we get into the People's Party, and first to give some background on the founder of the party, Maxine Bernier. Um. And that's how that's that's how I'm gonna say his name. Um, no one at me, it's good enough. Um. Brenair was born in Quebec in nineteen sixty three. On is the son of a conservative talk radio host turned politician. Isn't that funny? Isn't that funny? How that keeps happening? Uh? Yeah, So Brenair entered politics into US in six um he ran as the Conservative Party candidate for the House of Commons in the same writing district that his father had represented in the eighties and nineties. Stephen Harper, leader of the new United Conservative Party, initially wanted Maxine's father to re enter politics, but Bernair Senior was less keen on that idea, and instead told Harper that he that perhaps his son should run in his place. Radio and nepotism, radio and nepotism, yep, and politicians, and yeah it is it is starting great. Um. So at this point Bernair was more like a free market libertarian, libertarian type guy, you know, still with some of the same like conservative immigration stuff that's that's common in Quebec, but he was more of just like a libertarian dude. Bernair easily won the writing writings of what we call districts here in the States, ranking at sixty seven percent of the popular vote, which was the largest majority for a Conservative politician outside of the province of Alberta. So he he did, he did very well. Bernair, who had a background in business, quickly rose through the ranks of the Conservative Party. Within the same year he was appointed to be a cabinet minister in the Harper government. Um and he worked as a as an industry minister from to us in six to us and seven before being promoted to a foreign affairs minister. Then in two thousand eleven he was appointed of He was appointed as Minister of the State. So in in spring of sixteen, after the fifth after the federal election, uh Bernaer put in his bid to be the new elected Conservative Party leader. UM So, I'm gonna briefly explain how Canadian elections work. You you don't vote for a prime minister. You vote for a party within your specific district if you if if your party wins, they get a seat in Parliament. Whoever has the most seats in parliament, that's whose prime minister gets elected. So whoever is whoever is the leader of the party, they will be prime minister if that party gets the most seats. So two us. In sixteen, Burner put in his bid to be the new Conservative Party leader. Uh. He got remarkably close to securing the spot as leader of the Conservatives. In the final round of voting, he received forty nine point zero five percent of the vote, losing to Saskatchewan Conservative politician Andrew Shear, who got fifty point nine percent, so less less than two percent difference. He was so close to the comic leader of the Conservative Party, like ridiculous. So yeah, after his extremely slight loss, he continued to work in Shear's Conservative Party for a few years. Um. If you remember from the last episode, Around this time was when these homophobia and anti immigration talking points were starting to gain a new popularity, and Bernaer followed along with this trend. He would tweet out about the dangers of extreme multiculturalism and he had like an increasingly racist and divisive rhetoric and that kind of caused some drama within the Conservative establishment. So in August of eighteen, around the same time the yellow vest movement in Canada was starting up, Berner resigned from the Conservative Party with the stated intention of forming a new federal populist far right political party. Um here here, here's a segment from his resignation speech and he he does talk in a very thick French accent. I'm not going to do that. Um yeah, you're you're channel the energy. Um that was that was just direct audio instead of leading as a principal Conservative and defending the interests of Canada and Canadians. Andrew Sheer is following the Trudeau Liberals. I was told that internal polling is showing that the Liberals response to Trump is popular, and that in six months, if the polls change, the party's stand may change to the same thing happened in reaction to my tweets on diversity and multiculturalism. This is another crucial debate for the future of our country. Do you want to emphasize the ethnic and religious differences or exploit them to buy votes as the Liberals are doing, or emphasize what unites us and the values that can guarantee social cohesion. Just like other Western societies grappling with this issue. A large number of Canadians, and certainly the vast majority of Conservatives, are worried that we are heading in the wrong direction. But it's not correct to raise such questions. So yeah, and I think that I honestly one of the main reasons why Brenaire hasn't been super successful, UM is because of his accent, like he is. It's harder for Protestant white Canadians to support him because he talks with a French Canadian accent. Um. If if if he talked in like good English, I think he would have he would have won Conservative leadership UM and his populist party would be way more popular than than than it is now. So critical support to other French racism is preventing the racist from being racist enough. Yes, you love to see you certainly see it. We do, we do see it. So Brenner faced some pushback from his conservative colleagues, including Stephen Harper, of trying to divide the right and split the right of center vote. UM and some of the less socially conservative members of the main Conservative Party decried Berner's departure and subsequent New People's Party as just a plain attempt to pander to xenophobia and racist right wingers. But Brenner went right to work and ran enough candidates under his new party to secure a spot in the federal election debates that were like that, you know that how we watch presidential debates, same thing, but these have you know, multiple candidates because there are multiple parties, the same thing. But basically he was able to get in the televised debates. Um, the PPC, which is the People's Party of canad I'm just gonna say the PPC now because it sounds funny. Um. They started going viral on the internet after pictures of massive billboards with Berner's face and big text that said saying no to mass immigration. This this this guy very is this guy very Mimi around like these big, these big PPC billboards. Um, I'm gonna I'm gonna read a bit from a write up and it's going down by some local um Montreal anti fascists. There have been suggestions that the PPC spokesperson and architect of its public relations strategy, Martin Mass, has been key to its embrace of the far right. Mass was owner of the publisher of the Capucua Libre, which is an online libertarian news outlet that shut down in and that pp but that PPC's cozy relationship with racist is primarily due to the influence of this one person is highly doubtful, however, that the PPC is positioning itself as the option of choice for those who find the Conservative Party insufficiently right wing. Racism is clearly just one of the most effective tools for such a strategy. Witnessing PPC billboards and tweets against mass immigration, also tweets about being against Antifa and Bernara's diet tribe about radical Islam being the biggest threat to freedom and peace and security in the world today, and how he complains about other parties are are complacent and pandering to Islamists and promising that the PPC will make no compromise with the tolitarian ideology. A number of media articles have revealed the far right connections to people active in the PPC as organizers and members whose signatures were used for the PPC to gain official party status. Um for instance, a Derek Horne, the PPC volunteer and a security agent who accompanied Bernair at a variety offense and media interviews. He has been revealed to be a founding member of the neo fascist Canadian Nationalist Party, which we we briefly mentioned in the last episode. UM. Sean Walker is an American immigrant and organizer with the PPC in St. Catharine's UM, as well as one of the people who signed on for PPC to be an official party. He was revealed to be the president of the National Alliance US, based in the Nazi organization seven. He was also he was also convicted of hate crimes at the time for violence Stands People of Color UM. Following these revelations, Walker was expelled from the PPC and Bernard claimed that he'd slipped through the party's betting process. However, was also revealed that Bernar follows him on Twitter UM. Others who signed up for the for the PPC two beneficial party include Janice Bulch, a founding member of the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamification of Accent, and also Justin L. Smith, leader of this of the Sudbury chapter of the Soldiers of Odin. So a whole bunch of whole bunch of fascist people are working work working for the party UM and unsurprisingly a number of a number of candidates have made headlines, but there as there. You know, social media posts from the past and present have surfaced featuring like racism, islamophobia, and a lot of spreading of far right conspiracy theories. You know that was just kind of common. There's too many, honestly to mention. Um. And it's it's not just that the PPC has a few bad apples in it. It's like the whole the whole party is rife with these kind of one of these kind of sentiments. Um. One gauge of this and the sign and a sign that like this is intentional is that as looking at the candidates who have left the party or have been kicked out when it became clear that there would be no condemnation of the far right from the upper ranks, there was like and and justin like twenty nineteen alone, there was like three candidates who were who left or were either kicked out um because they you know, had objections to the racism rampant within the party. They were like complaining about, hey, these guys seem kind of racist, and then they were kicked out of the party or or or or they left. So yeah, that's that's a not a good problem to have. UM. So in in uh finishing up this this little quote here UM. Indeed, a cursory, accursory look at the Facebook pages of PPC candidates reveals what's been really noteworthy is how selective the news stories about racist tweets or Facebook posts have been. Almost every PPC candidate in Quebec has recently in repeated lye shared articles from climate denialist sources, including many with a conspiratorial bent. A Canada eight for pap and You even produced his own YouTube expose revealing how George Sorrows it's behind an international global conspiracy theory to crash economies and make money spending a panic about climate change. Secondary to climate denial, there's a lot of fears around free speech and mass immigration, which are both recurring themes in the PPC candidates, and roughly one in five have recently shared news articles from what we would deem a national populist or full right sources, including less manchetz dot com, which is the website of the French language of the French language translator of the Christ Church Um Manifesto UM, and that that the guy who reads the website is also involved with organizing in the Montreal In the Montreal chapter of the vests. Um. Yeah, so he he both translated the manifesto and he's also running the Montreal Yellow Best movement. So that's fun. Um, it's not fun, it's bad, um, Andre Pytree pipe poo wow. And it's so you remember, so I didn't learned French in Canada because I was in a weird Christian private school. Otherwise I could be a lot better at this job. But anyway, there's there's a there's a there's a there's just like a far right YouTube channel. But this guy called Studio who a lot of his stuff was shared. Um. And there's a more like eccentric and sporadic mix of of of other news sources including Unite the Right attendee Faith Goldie who also ran from Mayor of Toronto and got third place, UM, Quebec based q and on figure Alexus trudell Um, and the al right YouTuber Black Pigeon Speaks. Of course, the main Yellow Vest page was shared a lot, and also sources from the highly racist The Voice of Europe. So yeah, a lot of a lot of a lot of not not great news sources being being shared by the PBC. UM. So that is the gist of the People's Party as of twenty nineteen UM. Overall, their performance in the twenty nineteen election was it is kind of a flop. Bernair lost his own seat in Quebec. No PTC candidates got into office, and the party only managed to get one uh in the party only managed to get one point six percent of the total national popular vote, so that's good. It only got one point six percent of all of the votes in Canada. So we're gonna take a break from the People's Party for now and we will circle back towards it um at the end. But after after an ad break, we will we will talk about the with the main Conservative party was up to during this time and uh a little bit after the nineteen election. So yep, and now the cats just blocking the whole thing. All right, we're back. The cat is in the bathroom. I moved from my cat blocked from the camera. Hello, um, People's Party not doing great in the first election. That's fun. Let's see what the regular Conservatives are up to. I'm sure it was things that are just good and cool. If I know anything about Conservatives, it's that they're not not hashtag problematic. Yeah, just let's just got okay, so I'll just be sad over here, and the audience can know that I'm sad the whole time you're talking. I would rather as episode not such a not such a downer, but it's it's hard to make it these kind of an upper I'll make a bargain with the audience that if they listen, I will I will do my French accent at least one more time. We'll see doing the French accent. This is the happiest I have seen Robert all day. Like he does look very tired. You did say earlier, Garrison, and this was very funny that you'd be better at your job if you could speak French. But given what we are here, it cools owed media. You would actually be much worse at your job. Um And in act, if you if you were to speak French, I would I would fire you immediate. It's actually requirement that you can't pronounce things to certainly not French. There's other languages you're allowed to know how to pronounce, but not French. No ob lo francaie. So let's pick up right after Maxine Bernair lost the Conservative leadership to Andrew Sheer in um Sheer won the leadership on a on on like a platform of classical financial conservatism and a slightly more socially moderate platform um. When Sheer got into office, though, one of the things he faced criticism for, even among the Conservative caucus was his association with a little media with was his association with a little media outlet called Rebel Media. Yeah so, most most listeners may not know what rebel media is, but you've certainly seen their stuff or felt their effect. Yeah, it's like the rough draft of bright Bart. And also Canadian and Canadian, yes so Canadian. Uh so. Rebel Media is a Canadian far right neo fascist propaganda outlet's start that has a lot of a lot of bright Bardi vibes. Umbel Media, Yeah, bright bartesque. Rebel Media hosts and contributors have included a white nationalist and white genocide proponent, Laurence Southern UM and Proud Boy founder Gavin McGinnis UM. McGinnis produced a quote satirical video for Rebel called ten Things I Hate about the Jews. Yeah, yeah so, and and it's and it is worth noting that both Southern and McGinnis are Canadian. Um. They're actually a lot of alt right figures that are Canadian. Of course we have we have Lauren Southern, Gavin McGinnis, Um, we have Stephen Crowder, uh Stefan malin you and of course Jordan Peterson. All of those people are are Canadian and most of them, most of them still live in Canada. Yes, he's still alive. Made it. He made insane tweet the other day. God, he made the most tweet. That tweet made it all worthwhile. Baby, he got everyone to go check his Twitter feed. It is amazing. You can you can hear his brain shorting out when you read that tweet, like you need to find the tweet it is. It is just it is the most beautiful piece of poetry I ever. It's like somebody taught a stroke out of type. It makes no sense. God, it's so good. Um. I'm going to quote an article by a Global News dot c a on Andrew Sheer and Rebel media. Quote. Despite a string of controversies faced by Canadian right wing media outlet to the Rebel, including allegations of downplaying the Holocaust movie minted, Conservative Party leader Andrew Shear has so far continued to make himself available to the company that other prominent conservative politicians have criticized for its controversial reporting and activism. She Hear's campaign organization also has a direct connection to The Rebel. His campaign manager, Hamish Marshall, is listed as a director of the company's federal incorporation records, which show its most recent annual gathering meeting was in February this year. Following the leadership election in Toronto on Saturday, Sheer granted one on one interviews with a handful of major media organizations, including a face to face interview with The Rebels Ottawa correspondent Brian Lily. Prior to his convention interview, Sheer appeared on The Rebel in February in a studio interview with host Faith Goldie on her show on the Hunt. At the end of the discussion, Goldie asked Sheer if if he would agree to go on a duck hunting trip with her after after he wins the leadership on Canada Day, which he agreed to. UM We briefly mentioned Faith Goldie earlier in her connection to the People's Party UM and her brief campaign for the Toronto mayor, but here's some more background on her UM and her coverage and her coverage of the Unite the Right rally for Rebel Media. Quoting from Winnipeg Free Press. In the course of her dispatches, Goldie argued the events in the Charlottesville were evidence of a rising white racial consciousness that was going to change the political landscape in America. She also wanted to she's actually not wrong there. That was, Yeah, she's not wrong, but I think she's she's on the other side of the island. And whether this is a good or bad thing. Yeah. She went to great lengths to laud the twenty point Meta political Manifesto composed by White National's leader Richard Spencer, a document that includes calls to organize U states along ethnic and racial divides and celebrates the superiority of white America faith. Goldie described Spencer's manifesto as robust and well thought out. Goldie was fired by Rebel in mid August and seventeen, but not due to her participation in Unite the Right. She was fired for appearing on a Daily Stormer podcast to discuss Unite the Right. So yeah, yeah, that's that's fine, So yeah, fine, nice to have her. Interviewing Conservative leader Andrew Sheer asked for his reaction to Unite the Right and Rebel Media UM. After what happened in Charlotte'sville in seventeen, Sheer, who had previously been interviewed by Rebel multiple times, h finally disavowed the outlets, saying, look, I believe there's a fine line between covering events and giving a platform to groups who are promoting a violent, disgusting point of view. I won't be granting interviews going forward. So that's nice that it took someone dying in Charlotte's Bill to realize that you probably shouldn't talk to the fascist media source. UM. So in the aftermath of Unite the Right, the mainstream conservatives kind of had to tread carefully around social issues because it's like, oh, yeah, they're they're still not sias. We probably shouldn't be pandering to them. Um. But as more time and distance let the air cool, some conservatives went back to the same old rhetoric around the twenty nine election. UM. For instance, in his twenty nineteen election campaign, uh Tom Chemick, of the parliamentary representative of one of the parliamentary representatives for Calgary, Alberta, wrote out and spread flyers with the all claps with the all caps header of crisis at the Border UH with text treating deer constituent. The Independent Autor General of Canada has published a scathing report confirming that the Ottawa Liberals have failed to safely and responsibly manage Canada's borders. Since Justin Trudeau you responsibly tweeted out that Canada would open sports to anyone seeking entry, the number of people illegally crossing the board into Canada from the United States has surged past one thousand a month, with almost twenty thou people illegally enteringen alone, and while speaking to voters of COMAC repeatedly insisted that all the problems of people illegally crossing the Canadian border isn't a symptom of a failure of systems to respond to a growing crisis, but merely a failure for border patrol to with to assert control over people. Um quotes and flyer courtesy of about This Tom chemic Guy a courtesy of a. Dan Olson of Folding Ideas. He's a great Canadian documentarian who released a magnificent piece on Q and on and conspiracy theories last year on his YouTube channel of Folding Ideas. Overall, I really, really like Dan, he makes very good stuff. Um, so thank thank you to him for sending me those those those flyers. Um. Anyway, during the election, Sheer led the Conservatives to gain a total of twenty six seats in the inside Parliament, going from ninety five up to one hundred and twenty one. But they did finish thirty six seats behind the Liberals despite beating the Liberals in the popular vote by one point three percent. So that was a thirty four point four percent for Conservatives and thirty three point one percent of the popular vote for Liberals. The margin was just over like two hundred and forty thousand votes. Um. The Liberals lost twenty seats in the election and the NDP lost fifteen seats. And this was the first time since to UH since nineteen seventy nine at a party won the most seats without also winning the popular vote. Um. What what pushed the Conservatives over on the popular vote was due to you know, extremely high conservative turnout in UH in in in various in various writings. So basically more conservatives voted in certain running than they usually do. So even if the Liberals still win the district, there was still more conservative votes to be counted UM. And also they basically swept the Prairie provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, where they won seventy percent of the vote in sixties five percent of the vote, respectively. But their victories in those states and their higher turnout did not convert into many seats because the less population dense areas have fewer federal writings and fewer available seats UM, and the Liberals had to rely heavily for seats in Ontario though, you know, the most populous province that include cities like Toronto, UM and you know other a few other big cities. So you know, Canada doesn't have the most democratic system like so the same way you know in the States were familiar with, you know, p losing popular votes um but still getting elected president and stuff. You know, in Canadas it's it's it's a little bit different because of how you vote for parties in your own little district. UM. But you know, it's still not perfect, right because like it is. It it does feel weird for the leader of the leader of the country to not have his party to not have also won the popular vote because of how you know, districts work out and how higher turn out in some areas doesn't mean that it's going to have more seats, um you know. But the other side of things here is that like Canada also doesn't have ranked choice, so like, still the majority of people voted for left of center candidates if you include you know, the Green Party, the n DP, and the Liberals. So even the Liberals lost the popular vote, there's still like a majority left of center voting. So if they if they had ranked choice, maybe the results would have been different. So Canada's system it definitely isn't perfect for how they do elections. UM. I would I would prefer ranks choice, as you know, basically basically I would prefer that for like every country if they're gonna have elections. Um So yeah, just kind of explaining why they can lose the popular boat but still you know, still win a majority controlling government. Um So. After the election, Sheer announced he was resigning as head of the Conservatives in December of twenty nineteen. Uh. This was after it was revealed that he had used party funds for his children's own private schooling. So good for him. Um A new bid for Conservative leadership went into effect. We're gonna mainly focus on two candidates here Uh there was an erin O'Toole and Derek solan Um. O'Toole fancies himself as another kind of like classic financial conservative and the social moderate. He feels more like the old progressive conservative candidates from back before the two of US and three Unite the Right merger. Um we got some like John McCain vibes here um, but Derek solan is more similar to the farther right parts of the U s IS current Republican Party, like anti abortion, anti LGBT, racist tweets, etcetera. UM, but as a whole, Solon's extremism was rejected by the Canadian Conservatives. Um he got only he got like on the fourth He got fourth placed with fifteen of the vote during the first round of voting, UM and ultimately o'tool one leadership after three rounds of votes. UM and o'tool now has the has the new challenge of trying to appeal to the Canadian conservatives more moderate wing, as well as the more Trumpian wing that's developed the past few years. He's been relatively successful in crafting like a boring, polite Canadian version of Trump's nationalism. With slogans like Canada First and take Canada Back, um, you know, despite supporting trade deals outsourcing Canadian jobs to cheaper overseas markets because they never actually mean what they say, um and the and. As the Liberals have grown more aware of Canada's bloody history and have like toned down the red and white maple leaf patriotism, the Conservative Party under o'tool has seized on this opportunity to make Canadian patriotism more of a right leaning staple, just like patriotism is, you know, it's more of like a right wing thing in the States. So basically, after we were like, oh yeah, central schools were bad, Canada's kind of sucked up, Liberals are like, Okay, we maybe shouldn't be so we shouldn't be waving our maple leaf legs everywhere. Maybe we're not a perfect country. The Conservatives like, no, you have to be proud to be Canadian. So they've kind of taken patriotism to be their new thing. Well, previously it was much more of like a liberal thing. The Islamophobia and overt religious bigotry under a tool has been slightly trimmed down. Um and climate change has at least been mentioned as existing UM, but there has also been increased discussion on trying to hack down Canada's healthcare and privatize more aspects of it, which, yeah, good job, guys, take away the only good part of Canada. UM. Like the province of Alberta under Jason Kenny has done this to a disastrous effect UM, raising the cost of medical care for lower class people, many of whom voted Conservative UM. I have family in Alberta and just the past five years the changes to the healthcare system there has been horrible. UM, it's not it's not great. So basically what what what o'tool wants is he wants he wants to base just privatize more elements of it. He has a specific term he uses like he wants like a. He wants to like split the FED like the like, the taxpayer healthcare and privatized health care into two sections and you can choose which one to join in anyway, it's silly. UM. O'tewal did take a wee little stance to distance himself from the more extreme wings of his party when he decided to remove MP Derek Solan from the caucus. Oh Too announced that Solan will not be allowed to run as a candidate for the for the Conservative Party in the next election either, saying racism is a disease of the soul, repugnant to our core values. It has no place in our country and has no place in the Conservative Party of Canada. I won't tolerate it. Um. Also last year, O'Toole refused to say whether he thinks systemic racism exists um. But the decision to remove Soland was made after it was revealed that he accepted a donation from the Canadian Nazi Paul from during uh during Soland's bid for a Conservative leadership back in the nineties of From was a figurehead of the Canadian far right movement, appearing at Heritage Front rallies and also caught on video at a party celebrating Hitler's birthday, which he lost his high school teaching job over. Well, look, it's just polite to celebrate a guy's birthday, you know, whether or not he's Hitler, under no circumstances to you got us this, This is a hot tike. Um. So there has been a bit of the There has been a bit of a rift in the Conservative Party over how much Trumpian rhetoric should be allowed in the Canadian Conservative Party UM and this kind of rift has definitely increased after January six. UM. The problem for Conservative politicians is that to win elections they need to appeal to the largest swath of voters UM and that includes more socially conservative and increasingly far right rule folks. But if they go too far, they'll lose the moderates to the Liberal Party. So you have it's like this delicate balance. But to kind of give you like an over you of what the current state of the Conservative of Like votership is UM for intent of the Conservative Party of Canada members. So you know, people signed up to vote in the party. You know, regular people UM, four in ten would say that they would have voted for Trump for intents say that they think Democrats told the presential election. And for intents say that the Conservative and four intent believe that the January six riot was staged or was done by the Democrats, were done by Antiva. So that's kind of the state of the Conservative Party in Canada for like the for the voters. So you know, politicians have to kind of in order to win, they need they need still they still still need to appeal to those people, but they don't want to do that thing usually like they usually don't like usually there the like a big talking point is like rejecting the divisive politics of the of of the of the United States. Like that's a big thing people say in Canada. Is that Like they don't want it to become like, you know, like a fighting match, because like the other main difference between Canada's elections in America's elections is like America is like always an election season, right like every you know, even after each election, it's like you feel like campaigns start right up again. Um, Canada's campaigns only run like a few months before the election, like like it is not like those things you guys do objectively better than us, and a lot of the world does. It's not just Canada the idea that like, oh, elections are terrible, we should spend a little time. It's like to like two or three months of campaigning. That's it, Like, it's not it's not like a two year, four year thing. No, that is a thing that we should Absolutely the election should be about eleven minutes from from the start of the campaign to the vote. Everybody gets a minute to explain their their politics and then we vote and then we throw them into the sea. Yeah, so trying to trying to craft marketing to the divided right wing. It's been interesting to watch. You know. There's like videos about Tool walking through you know, downtowns with Pride flags in the background and you know, featuring visible like minority Canadians intermingling. But then you also have a tool like Ralely against cancel culture feeling suggestions that that the liberal government's pandemic response is part of a socialist great reset and pulling out the dog whistle on like China and the coronavirus, you know, as often as you can. UM Tools in the past also downplayed Canadians residential schools program UM and described the efforts of activists pushing to removal of statues of the of the residential of school architects as stupid. UM. So, I I do think O'tool prefers a conservative party resistant too far right branding, but he knows he needs to appeal to thiss voters in order to win elections. So it's it's it's it's just it's the thing that's not great, But it's interesting to watch. UM in August one, Justin Trudeau noted black face appreciator uh called a snap election in an effort to gain more parliamentary seats in hopes of getting a majority Liberal government, something a prime minister should not be allowed to do, by the way, like a priva minister should not be able to decide when to do elections. That is, like should totally not be a thing. Like what, no, you shouldn't do that, but anyway. Um. As snap election ramped up, the Conservative Party under a tool, made some extremely questionable choices for their marketings and their slogans. Um, what does the phrase secure the future bring to mind? Yeah? So that became the new tagline for the entire Conservative Party under a tool. Right, sure, we got, we got, we got, we got Secure the Future, billboards, we got, we got, we got websites Conservative dot c a slash secure the future. We got mailer's magazine covers all emblazoned with secure the future or secure our future. Um, and you know what will secure our future? Garrison the chevron ads that keep popping up. We keep out. Yeah, great, you're welcome. It's a great time Chevron appreciators for everyone. Ah, we're back. It's just appreciating Chevron just like Justin Trudeau appreciate just like Yeah, so secure the future great slogan, not a good slogan. Bad. Um. I'm going to read a bit from a mailer that went out to Conservative Party members after a Tool one leadership quote. I firmly believe Canada has everything. It has everything it takes to recover from COVID nineteen and enjoy a prosperous future if we have a government that knows how to secure the future. If the truth, if the Trudeau Liberals stay in power, they'll continue spending taxpayer money at pandemic era levels long before, long after the virus is behind us. The result, all the things we love about Canada will be in serious jeopardy. Our debt will become out of control, and they'll never be able to get back the Canada you and I grew up in the kind of Canada our children and grandchildren deserve. So either on in the page, oh, Tool says we need to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party and hold Beijing accountable for sabotaging our economy and taking jobs from Canadian workers. Um. And On August sixteen, the Canadian Conservative Party Twitter account tweeted out and I quote Canada's recovery program will secure the future for you, your children, and your grand and your grandchildren. So that's fun. Also, also, guess how many guess guess how many words is in that last sentence. It's fourteen of them. Yeah. Yeah, we're going back to calling Canada Clanada again. It's like a dog whistle, but except for you know, a dog whistle only dogs can hear. It's except everyone. It's just a whistle. It's just it's just a regular whistle. It's it's it's that he just tweeted it tweet. Yeah. So as anyway, um as O'Toole was getting all secure the future piled um. Canada's actual far right populist party, the People's Party, was gaining much more popularity um amid the pandemic and the anti mask, anti lockdown, anti vax protests. The COVID nineteen pandemic was a gift to the far right in general, as it allowed the injection and proliferation of conspiracy theories to accelerate at levels almost never before seen and provided fair recruiting ground to gain new followers. The PPC latched onto this and was extremely successful. They were. You know, they sponsored protests, They did a whole bunch of campaigns that are around like anti mask stuff, anti vaccine, you know, all all of it. Um. So the PPC was able to be not just a safe harbor for anti immigration, white nationalists and neo Nazis and other far right groups, but also now more mainstream anti lockdown, anti vacs and anti government protesters as well as you know, gun rights activists and some general rule workers feeling left behind from even the Conservative Party. So the PPC has changed from a niche white nationalist party to a full blown far right populist force. What bern Air in the and the PPC have done so effectively since the pandemic is to use the broad concerns around COVID and freedom and the more you know, mainstream concerns about economic anxieties, job loss, lots of businesses, immigration and changing culture and manage and managed to rule all of these things up into one tight package, which is really appealing to a lot of Canadians who are very anxious about the state of their country, especially amid the COVID nineteen pandemic. So the results of the September snap election, which was you know last month, Uh, we're basically the same as the election, UM, except the PPC went from one point six percent of the vote to five percent of the vote, a big, big change, uh. They that means they were ranking above the Green Party and nearly tying the block kebu Qua. So they made like, I know, like one percent of five percent doesn't seem like tons, but like this is a really big jump for a brand new party, UM, especially especially if they're ahead of the Green Party and tying the Block Party. That is like a notable shift. UM. The University of Ghulaf Professor of of Political Science Tamra Small said that said this after the results of the last snap election. Quote, I think the only leader who's the static about last night's results is or Air. I don't think they're going anywhere. I think it seems that he's taken the populism and attached to far right politics. The idea that Canada was immune to this sort of far right populism, the idea that Canada was going to be free from the populism that we saw in Europe, like what Nigel Farage is in the UK. But I think lots of people are wondering if Bernard is just gonna say I'm not here to form an actual government. I'm just here to challenge the system and use that as a way of gaining massive support. Um. After us CTV News emailed the PPC for comment for their post election story, uh, the party spokesperson sent back a one line email response, I don't respond to requests from leftists. Activists masquerading as journalists get lost, so that's fun. Also, in late September, Bernard's Twitter account was temporarily suspended for encouraging his supporters to attack journalists. Yeah. Just not like I'm okay with criticizing journalist and stuff, because most journalists are like not great. But when you're using your political Twitter account to just like tell people to just go attack the US, usually it's a bad sign of of like a political party. Usually it's just like, yeah, political parties when they do that usually leads to bad things. Um, we are gonna talk about one kind of wrapping up here. We wanna talk about one Ontario People's Party candidate named Mario Greco, who was a another another high school teacher UM and self proclaimed game developer UM of a few years ago. I I see Chriss Vincent, because like you know, this can't lead to good things the gamers, it can't be good. So a few years ago, Greco made a video game called Happy Culture Shootout UM. Quoting an article from Press Progress dot c A Happy Culture Shootout is a Space Invaders style game that allows players to control spaceship that shoots laser beams at caricatures of various identity groups. Quote this game, it's about an alien order to invade Earth and transport all humans to happy Land, Greco says on his personal website, which includes other games that he authored, like Die Mare, which is about a young, misunderstood heuro who sees to liberate post war Germany. Um in as in a since telated video of obtained by Press Progress, the People's Party candidate delivered a presentation to university students several years ago, offering his post mortem on the game UM. Reco expressed surprise that his students and faculty reacted negatively to the game, with one calling it the most racist game I've ever played. Greco says his game is not racist in the slightest, noting that he made fun of his own Italian heritage. He also claimed that some students thought his Gay Pride parade level was hilarious. My friends and I love people of all cultures, and we also love humor of all types that includes harmless racist jokes. Greco said in the video. The game was intended to make a joke about how ridiculous cultural stereotypes are, so we can laugh about it together and move on with our lives. Um. During the presentation, the People's Party candidate offered a interesting side note about the games Israel level. According according to Greco, a faculty member at the University Stroug, they recommended that he removed Jewish stereotypes from the game. He was like, no, get rid of it immediately. Don't have any religious content whatsoever. I know that subject is very very touchy. So yeah, this is just a game where you race shoe to minority people. Um. Anyway. In twenty six Greco posted a photo on Facebook of an illustration of Peppe the Frog, which he said was drawn by one of his students in in the white board of his York Region high school. Um Pepe had a little speech bubble that said free Kakistan. Great yea. So now the gamers or Nazis. So currently Greco is spending his time tweeting about critical race theory and trying to get into office under the People's Party banner UM. In his Twitter bio, he calls himself an egalitarian, libertarian nationalist and he still also teaches computer science at Ontario. Call themselves fascists. I know it's it's not fun. These people are all all for the worst most scum. UM. And one one more thing before we sign off. UM. Last month, right before the September election, I was forwarded some pictures of some People's Party of Canada posters and flyers put up linking to their campaign website that someone came across UM around town, not not Portland's, like somewhere in Canada. UM under the PPC logo there was you know, pictures of people's faces and big black text that said it's okay to be white. Right, So that's the liberal utopia of Canada. Everybody UM. And basically like the reason why I wanted to put these episodes together because like, we we have lots of like, you know, we make a lot of jokes about you know, escaping to Canada as the States gets too fascist, and I just want to like say, like I'm not saying Canada's getting at the same rate, but Canada is not immune to the same thing. Like it's it's it's, it's it's you can't escape, can't run away from the authoritarianism by moving, yeah to a country with no history of authoritarianism, like I don't know Germany, uh huh yeah. And I think everything's important with with Canada particularly is that like Canada is like affected by American political trends. And you see this absolutely like like one of one of the things that I remember looking at when I was when I was looking into sort of uh if you look at the history of like anti Asian riots for example, So there's a huge wave and nine no seven that goes like it goes all the way up the West coast because a lot of them, and it ends in Toronto, Yeah, a lot of you know, yeah, and you see you see that like and you see that like today to where it's like, yeah, the Toronto I think has the highest rate of anti Asian attacks like in North America. That's not pretty impressive considering like the absolute ship show going on in like New York, in la and Seattle, and it's like, no, Toronto's worse, No, it's real bad. I talk a lot about how the far right's getting a lot, a lot, a lot stronger of an luce in Alberta, and it is spreading into other eastern eastern provinces, not just inside Quebec. You know, there was the inside attack in Toronto a few years ago that killed like I think like a dozen people. Of course, there was the Quebec mosque shooting. There's been a lot of these kind of things popping off, and you know there's there's even more starting in like, uh, British Columbia as well, which is which has a decent far right kind of influence at least on the eastern side of BC, um away from like Victoria and from Vancouver. UM. So yeah, I just wanted to place together and be like, hey, you know, it's it's worth looking at these countries that we usually view as you know, generally doing better and be like no, like, it's the same thing is happening there, and it's all it's all part of the same overarching slide right word that we've seen in both in the UK we were even seeing it now in Germany we're seeing it, you know in this obviously the States under Trump and in Canada, even though the Liberals have won the past few elections, it's still scooting right word. So yeah, I just wanted to put this thing together. If you want to keep up to date on Canadian stuff, you can check out the Canadian Antihit network, which does work tracking extremism in Canada. And yeah, that is ah, that is what I put together exparison. Yeah, you're welcoming, You're welcome. Well, that's the episode that's gonna do it for us here and it could happen here today, come back tomorrow or you know whatever, and we'll talk about another part of the world. Maybe I don't know Portugal. Fuck it, I don't have stuff pulled for a portug You have to by tomorrow. No, that's what we're doing now. Follow us on Twitter, on Instagram and it could happen here, pod and cools on media. Leave five star reviews, whatever, goodbye, goodbye. It could happen here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could happen here. Updated monthly at cool Zone media dot com slash Sources, Thanks for listening.