Are we tough enough?
Looks like we're going to have to be.
I’m back in Ottawa, after a long journey through prairie, bog, and forest, down that same Trans-Canada highway that has conveyed a succession of Canadian legends—Terry Fox, James Topp, the Freedom Convoy—to their destinations. After traversing the vast grandeur of four Canadian provinces, I arrived in time to witness the federal election results rolling in at my sister’s home in Gatineau.
And the results?
The results are that we’re deep in it, as almost half of voters in this country understood. There were some encouraging wins, including seat gains in Ontario, British Columbia, and the Atlantic. The Conservative popular vote was the highest since 1988. The event also saw a roster of fresh faces in Parliament, including courageous critics of COVID measures, Roman Baber and Matt Strauss.
But there’s also who will hold political power for four more years—and what they will do with it. Readers can recheck the costed platforms themselves. The stubborn reality is that 43.7 percent of voters elected yet another Liberal minority, which promises to deepen the dysfunction of the past ten years. The results also highlight the perennial inequity in our present electoral system, for which it usually doesn’t matter how people west of Ontario are voting.
As my colleague, Haultain Institute’s Marco Navarro-Génie, emphasized in a post yesterday, power in this minority government will not fall simply to the Liberals or scattered remnants of the New Democratic Party. Likely too, it will fall to the Bloc Québécois:
Now the Bloc wields disproportionate power. If Carney wants to govern, he must appease them.
Meanwhile, the Liberals survive — but only by rewarding their worst instincts.
Despite ten years of incompetence, corruption, Chinese interference scandals, and economic deterioration, they cling to power. This is not a Canadian success story. It is a cautionary tale.
Neither the Liberals nor the Bloc wants those pipelines built.
The West again loses—in particular, the Prairie West, whose voters again withstood the fear propaganda that some pollsters predicted would bring Liberal gains there too.
Yesterday, unsurprisingly, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced amendments to the law governing a citizen’s referendum on separation from Canada.
Gloves off?
The 2025 election campaign clarified much about the Canadian political landscape. Some may find them surprising, if not nausea-inducing.
Yet here we are.
Three factors will only entrench themselves further if we allow it:
The media’s contempt for the electorate. The legacy media—and pollsters and pundits it relies on for “expertise”—no longer respect, much less serve, Canadian citizens. Watching the nightly news this election campaign was like navigating a distorted reality of fun-house mirrors. The constant polling became the narrative and vice-versa. The election result was called before the election occurred, before ballots were counted, before polls closed in British Columbia. Within six years since Trudeau first began subsidizing the legacy media, its new master is clearly the incumbent Liberal hand that feeds.
The brazen dirty politics. The Elbows Up motto and chicken dance, the Brantford Boomer’s double middle-finger that went across the world—these are only external markers of a deeper “goon” style of politics now prevailing at the heart of the federal government. The incumbent Liberal kids in short pants are all back at the PMO, with reinforcements. Carney never ejected that candidate who reminded a crowd a bounty is on the head of a rival candidate. The RCMP warned the targeted candidate, who lost, to refrain from campaigning door-to-door in a Canadian federal election because it was not safe. This is our new reality.
The complicity of Canada’s largest province. Beyond Marco’s point about the Bloc Québécois profiting from the status quo, the Liberals were returned to power with considerable electoral interference not only from Donald Trump’s tweets or Chinese Communist Party threats, but from the Ontario premier and his gang of advisors. The interference was a constant throughout the campaign, reflecting an opportunistic brand of conservatism captured in the spontaneous interview with newly elected Conservative MP Jamil Javani on election night.
This loss was tough, a gut punch—not the least to the federal Conservative leader, who lost his own riding as he campaigned tirelessly across the country. Mistakes were made for sure, and it’s important for leaders to learn from them.
Yet there is no point in dissolving into blame and finger-pointing. More important, there is no time. The Elbows Up crowd will move fast.
It’s crucial to face the reality that is rather than lament what should have been. And we’re certainly not the first to have faced down dirty, authoritarian-style politics.
It’s now, at such times, that decent people lose heart. The eternal temptation is to leave the country, turn away, retreat into a private realm. Yet that response only gives the gangsters a free hand. Apathy, exodus, fear, demoralization is precisely what they want from us.
Not our first rodeo
Too many Canadians wish to continue living as free people in a country we love: uncensored, self-reliant, economically strong and independent. This situation also holds across the country, as we saw during the Trucker Convoy. It holds in many First Nations too, who have struggled longer than anyone against federal bureaucratic rule to regain their self-determination.
On a provincial level, the Prairies could inspire the rest.
Marco put it well in his synopsis yesterday:
In a country adrift in fear and ideological fantasy, the West remains the centre of autonomy, courage, and moral clarity. Because Alberta and Saskatchewan refuse to bend, the attacks against them will only intensify, especially if the Liberals and Bloc become closer allies. The Press remains vastly co-opted by Ottawa. Yet in standing firm, the Prairies hold the last clear voice for a Canada that still believes in freedom over fear, and reality over illusion. If renewal ever comes, it will rise from the places that never surrendered.
Well put, and doable.
Federalism is beautiful—enabling not only local self-government but a beachhead against centralized tyranny. It’s also already embedded in our constitution. This very day, there’s a Crown in the Right not only of Canada, but of Every. Single. Province. There’s also the Clarity Act, 2004 and, in Alberta, a provincial process.
Alberta and Saskatchewan could serve as first cases.
Other provinces, those determined to renew our country’s strength and freedom but don’t want to play dirty hockey to get there, could be inspired by their examples to practice some bull-riding of their own.
Are we tough enough?
We’ll find out.
Further Reading
Marco Navarro-Génie, “The Woke Bloc Wins—and the West Pays.” April 29, 2025.
What a great article! I have spent the last couple of days vacillating between anger, fear, anxiety and despondency. I have even shed some tears. I started to lose heart and thought of retreating and giving up the cause. After reading this I feel some hope and lighter. Thank you for writing this. I will read it again maybe daily for a while to help rejuvenate and as Winston Churchill said “Never, never, never, give up”. Thank you. Reading this really helped me.
Excellent article. Love and respect from your neighbors in northern Idaho. 👍🏻