Canada's Conservative Party is 'IN THE SH1TTER' After WASTING $100M on Pierre Poilievre

Welcome to the Bill Kelly podcast, critical discussions in critical times.Here's your host, Bill Kelly.Welcome to another edition of the Bill Kelly podcast, critical discussions in these critical times.I'm your host, Bill Kelly.Good to have you with us today.According to an article in The Hill Times published this week, infighting among senior conservatives leaves caucus staff and volunteer morale in the absolute shitter.

their word, not mine.That's according to some of the MPs and veteran party members.Well, we were told a few weeks ago that this summer break from Parliament was going to be an opportunity for the Federal Conservatives and Pierre Polya to kind of, well, get their act together.Apparently, that's not happening.This is a report that was done by Abbas Reine for the Hill Times, and I want to share some of the perspective on this for you, because I think it's very telling about where this party is.The Maple Maga Party, of course.

Well, they still call themselves conservatives, but we know better, don't we?Persistent internal squabbles among senior conservatives have dampened the morale of caucus members, staff, and party volunteers who devote countless hours to helping the party succeed.The morale is in the absolute shitter completely, said one conservative MP that didn't want to be identified.It's very, very unproductive and is going to hurt us, says another, a staunch supporter of the leader, by the way, who just doesn't like what's going on with the party.It's destructive to our movement.Lots of people who help on campaigns and put little free time have towards a political victory, and it's just not working out that way.

That's the attitude.Now, that's not what they want to say publicly.You'll notice those two quotes were unattributed because the facade they want to put forward here is that they're a united party and they think Pierre is their guy, and that's what we're supposed to swallow.But as Brennan reports in the Hill Times article, the start of the current round of infighting can be traced back to the 2025 federal election campaign.Now, we talked about this extensively on the podcast at that time.because it's still burning in our memories, because they're absolutely right in the Hill Times.

I think that was a turning point for Polyev and the Conservative Party.And one of the central figures in that was Corey Tanake, who was a longtime Conservative advisor.

Public Relations did an awful lot of work in the Stephen Harper administration.And that also has been a major factor in Doug Ford's success here in Ontario with a number of, well, three in a row now when it comes to majority governments.Anyway, during that 2025 campaign, Tanek reportedly urged Polyev to pivot the message towards the United States and Donald Trump and the issues about the 51st state and the tariffs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.Said that was the strategy.

He said, that's the information we have.That's what Canadians are worried about and thinking about.Polyev refused to do that.

that he was going to stick to this whole idea, you know, the little catchphrases that he used in the slogans about, you know, public quality of life, yada, yada, yada, yada, which were important, but anybody that was paying attention understood that as important as those issues were and still are, they were superseded by the concern about what Trump was doing and American influence and tariffs, et cetera.Polio refused to acknowledge that.Now, We talked on the podcast at the time that one of the reasons for that clearly is that Polyev is a big fan of Trump and the MAGA movement.He embraces an awful lot of the same sorts of policies, plus the fact that the Conservative Party has been overrun by what we call the Maple MAGA group, which are the extreme right wing of the party, ideologically and otherwise.And Polyev thinks that's his base.I mean, it probably is.

Maybe, you know, I don't think he's just doing that to try to appeal to them.I think he's that sort of a guy, too.And we articulated, you know, we think that if Polya had become prime minister, I still shudder every time I think of that, that a lot of the stuff that Trump is doing in the States, Polya would have attempted to do here as well.Anyway, Tineke understood that and simply said, you're missing the ball here.If you don't relate to voters, you're not going to win.Well, Polly have refused to pivot.

And we saw the election results, of course.Carney did win with a slight minority, rather.And that's since, of course, evaporated and become a majority government.But Polly F hasn't changed and never will.

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And therein lies the problem, I guess.Polly Evans' senior campaign officials believe that Tanek's repeated interventions actually distracted from the message.In other words, stop talking about alternatives, just, you know, fall in line with me and we'll be fine.Tanek wouldn't, and others wouldn't either.But, of course, when they lost, instead of Polayev saying, maybe I had the wrong strategy, he simply blamed the guys who were saying he was going the wrong way and said, you're the ones that did that.You sent a message that we're not together.

Well, they weren't together.That was not a message.That was the reality that was going on, especially as we've articulated here on our podcast.The numbers are out now because of the bookkeeping, rather bookkeeping's all been done.Polyam's Conservatives spent over a hundred million dollars on that election and still lost.As a matter of fact, they emptied their coffers.

They're in debt now because I think they only had like 87 million dollars, I think, to spend and they overspent and still did not work out for them.So, that's then, and you'd like to think, well, come on, the election's over, it's stopped, stop looking in the rearview mirror and let's move forward.Well, they can't do that.Paulieff can't help himself.And the most importantexample, as the Hill Times article points out, was just a few weeks ago at the Calgary Stampede with, and of course, that's Alberta, that's New York.

kind of ground zero when it comes to the Maple Mega movement, of course.And Pauliev with his white cowboy suit with all the cute little, you know, decorations on it.I don't know who the hell told him that was going to be a good idea.But anyway, he introduced, of course, leadership winner Carrie Lynn Findlay from British Columbia, a former federal MP, saying the future premier of British Columbia.Now, she had just won the race, of course, to be the leader of the Conservative Party in British Columbia.The problem is, is that the person that she defeated for that leadership is a progressive conservative, if I can use that phrase.

I know that they don't like that phrase anymore, but a more middle -of -the -road, pragmatic conservative.And Tinnake and others were the ones, Caroline Elliott was her name, supported her and worked on her campaign.And the fact that he pretty much dissed her in favor of Polioff's favorite candidate really irked an awful lot of these people.We're told, according to the article in the Hill Times, it triggered a wave of reaction from veteran conservatives, including one Anthony Cook, who was a senior advisor during Paul Abe's old leadership campaign.In other words, he worked on this campaign, but he was supporting the other candidate for this because they don't necessarily swing to the extreme right like most of the other ones do.And he wrote a couple of editorial pieces, did Mr. Cook.

where he wrote in part, apparently, if you care whether conservatives can actually form a government, you are called a fake conservative.If you think candidates should avoid obvious goals, you're a sellout.If you think messaging matters, you're weak.And if you suggest that screaming into the void isn't a practical political strategy, you're accused of wanting liberal light.And on and on it goes.And obviously, there's a concern here about the way

that's being driven here.And what he's referring to in those op -ed pieces is how Polyev and his team had to completely not just disagree with people that held alternative opinions, but try to denigrate them publicly whenever possible.Now, the cherry on top of this whole thing was, let me swing back to Corey Tanaik, who's been a vocal critic, of course, of Mr. Paul Ibsen, day one.You may have seen him on some of the television talk shows.I think he appears on a pretty regular basis on a couple of them.And whether you agree with his politics or not, he's a pretty insightful individual, and he knows how to win in politics, too.

And he wrote just a couple of days ago now in a magazine, a publication which is called Curse of Politics Podcast.And here's what he had to say.He says, when you elect leaders who are completely and utterly unaccomplished prior to entering politics and who have entered politics in their 20s, you're going to be very vulnerable to running against somebody who has actually done something with their life.And why Andrew Scheer is still sitting in the caucus is the same reason why Paulieb will end up sitting in the caucus after he's done leader.is obviously the guy who's been in there ever since day one, and we've talked about the fact that he's never actually had a real job as opposed to just being an MP.And Tanek says they're going to sit there forever and ever and ever because they're probably going to get re -elected, he says, but it's because they are unemployable in any other job.

Pretty sharp criticism from a guy who has a strong reputation in the conservative movement, but not the maple -mega movement, certainly.Another critic is a gentleman who you may have heard of as well, Nick Kouvelis, who is a top progressive conservative strategist in Ontario.He worked on a number of the Ford campaigns too.And he wrote something that was a little more pointed about Polyev.He says, F Pierre Polyev can go F himself.I won't use the word, but the whole word was out there.

too.He says, I've gone from being a big supporter to being disappointed, but still a supporter.And now he's got out of his way to make me his opponent, idiot.Pretty strong words, but again, that's the sort of thing that's going on.This is the inner fighting that's happening.And I know that the conservatives are trying to deflect the criticism and they're trying to say, no, no, look over there.

Forget about what's happening.We're all happy here.One big happy family.Well, they're not.And you'll notice the article in The Hill Times, to this point, they've quoted a number of very well -respected critics within the Conservative Party who just don't like Polyev.But they've, until this point, ignored the fact that one of the main reasons for the discontent there, of course, are the defections.

And they do touch on that right near the end of the article.that one of the other reasons, of course, are the number of people that have left the caucus because they don't believe in the leader or they don't believe that they can win either or.I mean, I guess you get the same result, don't you?That they're abandoning ship.And I know that could sound like a pretty harsh criticism, but that's the reality.If you believe in the leader and you think you got a shot to win and be in power and form government, you're going to stick around.

But more and more people, I guess, are just deciding, no, they don't want to do it.Some are defections.Another most recently just retired or resigned, rather, so he could join the Senate.Prime Minister Carney had appointed him to that, too.But the essence of this whole thing and the essence of the article in The Hill Times underscores much to the chagrin of the Conservative Party, that they just can't get along.And it's a very, very deep grift here.

And the reason why is the leader.It's Pierre Polyev, and certainly the policies that he drags into the boat here.And I know, and you know, we've seen numbers that indicate this, that there's still an awful lot of people in the Conservative Party that believe in this guy, because they believe in the Maple Magga movement.And we've talked about this time and time again, that a large percentage of people in the Conservative Partyand in the conservative caucus are strong Donald Trump fans, strong supporters, and they'd love to see their party form a government and use some of the same policies that Trump's using.Here's the reality here.

Trump's policies have just decimated the United States of America.Their economy sucks.Price of gasoline, as it is here, is just totally off the map right now.Farmers are giving up their farms because they can't afford them anymore.Prices have gone outrageously high.People can't afford to buy groceries anymore.

That's Trump's America.And of course, we talk about the infighting that's going on.in this country, the fighting down there is going on in the streets.So you've got, you know, these armed ICE agents going around shooting innocent people.That's Trump's America.And that's the kind of thing that they want to bring up here.

So it's no wonder that there are some conservative supporters, not just within the caucus or the party, but people that maybe have voted conservative traditionally, who just can't stand Pauliev and can't stand where he's taken the party.And that's the reality here that these guys are facing.And I'm glad that The Hill Times printed this today, because I think that has to get out there.Because as we've mentioned, and it bothers me to bring this up again, the traditional media, the major TV networks and a number of the newspapers, will not say anything about this, and they will not do anything to try to denigrate or to diminish Pierre Paglio's standing in the Maple Mega movement.I don't know why, Well, I do to a certain extent, of course, most of the major newspapers here are owned by American hedge fund who are major Trump supporters and don't think that doesn't have an impact on their editorial policy.And we're talking, of course, about the National Post, the Sun Newspapers, the Financial Post.

They're all basically American owned.A number of networks, of course, also have, first of all, traditional right of center political views, including global, including CTV.And that has an influence on their political policies and their editorial policies.And that's bothersome because they don't declare that.You just assume that they're trying to be as objective as they can.Well, they're not being as objective as they can.

But the Canadian people, I think, need to know this.And we're going to talk about this on our podcast.And I know others have talked about it in the past too.Here's the thing.is the conservatives are never going to form government with this guy as leader.I know they're always going to bring up the example of Stephen Harper and say, well, he lost the 2004 election and they were ready to dump him.

I remember, I covered that.And you're right, there was an awful lot of frustration and consternation.And he did win the next election, albeit with a minority.But of course, he was in government and formed government for 10 years after that.But the circumstances were different.All right.

The Liberals self -destructed to a certain point.There are just a couple of things that have gone on.We've talked about governments that are in play for a number of years and they just seem to fall apart.Harper's government did the exact same thing.and the Khrushchev government, which turned into the Martin government, had a lot of baggage.And people just got tired of it and tired of the infighting and just said, maybe we do need to have a change.

And frankly, in as much as I find Harper to be a very, very dispassionate person, and probably one of the main reasons why we're in some of the conundrum we're in these days, people respected Harper.Not so much me, but an awful lot of other people did.Harper, don't forget, was the prime minister that basically tore up the very legislation that protected us against a U .S.influence in our media.He tore that up and allowed these American entities to buy in and eventually control that.

So that's something that we can never forget when it comes to Harper's contribution to Canada and to deficits and to a number of other things.And yeah, he's endorsed Polyev and has in the past as well.This guy is a great guy.the problem.And we've talked about this.Conservatives are never going to admit that, except for some conservatives, as the ones we've just talked about here, Corey Tanig and others, that are realizing that if you really believe in the Conservative Party, you're going to have to come to some admission that you're responsible for it.

And that's really what this comes down to.I have no sympathy for the Conservative Party.because they brought this guy.They're the ones that elected this guy.They're the ones that selected the guy that has absolutely zero experience in almost any facet of government or any world experience, nothing at all.I mean, he was a backbencher, sat there for years and years and years.

Eventually, in the last year or so of Harper's 10 -year run, he stuck Pauli Evan cabinet, and he was a non -entity there.But now they figured he's the guy to lead them in this country.Well, you get what you deserve in situations like that.And if the Conservatives truly want to try to better their standing with Canadians generally, but especially with Canadian voters, they've got to face some harsh realities.They caused this problem, as that Famous American commander said during the war of 1812, he says, we have seen the enemy and they are us.That's it for this edition of the podcast.

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