Montrealers are building a movement to fight Poilievre by Emma Bainbridge, February 25, 2025, rabble.ca
February 27 protest aims to unite different movements in common struggle.
For months, the threat of a federal election resulting in a Conservative government led by Pierre Poilievre has been looming over Canadians. The date for an election has yet to be announced, but Montreal organizers are already planning to take to the streets to denounce Poilievre’s “corporate agenda” in a protest on February 27.
“I think that the threat of Poilievre presents a wake-up call,” said Stefan Christoff, a Montreal community organizer involved in planning the protest. “As community organizers, as activists, as people who believe in transformative progressive change, we need to find ways to build across movements.”
The protest is being organized by the Courage Coalition, a group dedicated to building connections between different movements, of which Christoff is a member.
The idea for the protest came about in August at an assembly that brought together community organizers from different backgrounds. Speakers included Nakuset of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal, Dolores Chew of the South Asian Women’s Community Centre, Anaïs Zeledon Montenegro of Action Santé Travesti(e)s et Transexuel(le)s du Québec (ASTT(e)Q), Stella Montreal executive director Sandra Wesley, and anti-racist activist Ehab Lotayef. They discussed what they and their communities had experienced under Stephen Harper’s previous conservative government.
Later in January, the group held another assembly where Mostafa Henaway of the Immigrant Workers’ Centre spoke about how a Conservative government would exacerbate existing racist anti-immigrant sentiment and policies. What ultimately united these struggles, according to Christoff, was that “all of them were talking about how another Conservative government would be very devastating for the communities that they serve.”
The speakers are all involved in frontline community work, trying to address issues affecting various marginalized communities such as Indigenous people, queer and trans people, sex workers, and migrants on a daily basis. For Christoff, opposition to Poilievre should be rooted in the work that community organizers are already engaged in, going deeper than “simply putting up a banner and making a signal.” He wants to build awareness about how this community work is connected to the broader federal policy landscape of so-called Canada.
In recent history, Poilievre has opposed environmental protection regulations and called for expanding the oil and gas industry; engaged in racist scapegoating of migrants; associated with residential school denialists; and opposed gender-affirming care for trans youth. He has continuously expressed support for Israel, even as the state has been widely accused of committing a genocide against Palestinians. The Courage Coalition website argues that “he uses Trump-style scapegoating tactics to cover for a corporate power grab that will slash social services, trash our hope for a liveable climate, and make the few absurdly rich at everyone else’s expense.”
At the time of writing, a Pierre Poilievre government no longer seems inevitable. Recent polls have shown the Liberals closing in on the Conservatives’ lead, especially if Mark Carney is chosen to lead the party. Nevertheless, Christoff emphasizes that it’s important to organize against injustice, no matter who is in power.
“The rising extreme right was really enabled by a lot of the systemic injustice that was allowed to pass under the Liberal government here or the Democratic government in the US,” he added. He also warned that many people become demobilized under Liberal governments.
The goal of the February 27 protest is to connect people organizing for different causes such as climate justice, migrant justice, labour organizing, and Palestine solidarity to discuss how to organize across movements and find points of common struggle.
The organizers aren’t expecting a massive action, but they hope that bringing these groups together will start a conversation about building a movement against Poilievre and supporting those targeted by his policies. They understand that movement-building is a long-term process, which is why they’re not waiting for Poilievre to be elected to have these discussions. Ultimately, Christoff argues that getting organized is essential because any progressive change that ever happened came about because governments were responding to public pressure.
“The small group committee that’s organizing this action in Montreal in February 2025 doesn’t have answers about how that should happen, but at least we want to ask the question of how it could happen and open some political space to start talking about it,” said Christoff.
Pierre Picklehead: How to build your own woman.
The billionaire class understands the Conservative Party under Pierre Poilievre is a tool to accelerate its agenda. He uses Trump-style scapegoating tactics to cover for a corporate power grab that will slash social services, trash our hope for a liveable climate, and make the few absurdly rich at everyone else’s expense.
As community organizers, activists and working class organizations, we are calling for street actions and alliance-building to confront this threat.
Join us on February 27th at 17h30, Metro Mont Royal for a demonstration to END scapegoating and STOP the corporate power grab.
(Coming soon to a city near you? Sign up to help make it happen.)
The looming threat of Poilievre’s Conservative Party
Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives blame migrants for the housing crisis. The party validates, supports and emboldens anti-trans bigotry that puts vulnerable people at risk of violence.
Poilievre silences people who oppose the mass slaughter of Palestinians by labelling them anti-semites and terrorists, while unconditionally backing Israel’s bombing and starvation campaign.
At the same time, Poilievre has been on a streak of non-stop hobnobbing with corporate lobbyists. In gaudy mansions, he sucks up to billionaires like Elon Musk and cultivates cozy ties to home-grown Canadian tech billionaires with their own right-wing agendas.
Poilievre’s approach is to scapegoat marginalized and vulnerable communities while unconditionally backing the ultra-rich. We are already feeling the effects.
Poilievre has emboldened the far right, already on the rise in Canada. The Conservative leader frequently echoes their language and legitimizes positions that would have been shunned a few years ago. He visited and cheered on the “Freedom convoy” in Ottawa.
He has had a series of encounters with an armed far-right group, even taking a photo with the founder at one point. This group, like the dozens of other far right groups that grow at the edges of Conservative support, use threats of violence to intimidate racialized people, elected representatives and activists.
That said, things could get much worse if Poilievre gains control of a G7 nation state.
A strong believer in privatization, Poilievre could sell-off the health care system to for-profit providers. He has openly vowed to scrap the new pharmacare plan.
A member of the self-described “Khmer Bleu,” a group of austerity hawks within Harper’s Conservative government, Poilievre has declared that he will cut spending while “restoring” the military. Many other social programs, like child care and dental care, would likely face the axe.
Even as he successfully channels legitimate outrage about housing costs, Poilievre claims that private developers will solve the crisis.
Conservatives, many of whom are landlords (including the leader), have warned that new federal spending on housing would be slashed.
Poilievre has declared that he will defund the CBC and gut supports for nascent non-profit journalism outlets.
His approach to environmental and climate issues echoes Trump’s “drill baby drill” approach: the massive expansion of offshore drilling and a repeal of climate regulations.
Poilievre has voted against environmental and climate regulations over 400 times, a trend likely to continue.
Building a real alternative to Poilievre’s corporate power grab
While other parties are less visibly aggressive than Poilievre’s Conservatives, they are not offering viable solutions. Mark Carney has been courting support among economic elites. At a time when inequality is at a record high, he is already saying “we can’t redistribute what we don’t have.” The NDP’s current policies represent a slowing of the crisis at best, and their corporate ties are cause for concern.
None of the existing parties are meeting the needs of the moment, or of the people who have to live in it. We don’t have the luxury of a wait-and-see approach.
The moment requires independent social movements that can oppose austerity and fight for expanded social programs and badly needed redistributions of wealth.
Against Poilievre’s politics of hate, austerity and exclusion, we must offer visions of a genuine alternative: a politics of life, repair, liberation, decolonization, and genuine democratization. Wealth inequality spirals upward, and corporations capture governments. It is time to tax speculative finance, capital gains, corporate windfall profits, and the assets of the absurdly wealthy. The resulting revenues can restore and extend investment in public services and infrastructures – transportation, medical, child and elder care, non-market housing, higher education, arts and media, and climate change adaptation, among others.
As fires, floods and droughts increase in frequency and severity, it is a time to accelerate, not stall, the transition off of fossil fuels. The recognition of Indigenous rights and Title are the core of meaningful decolonization—and help keep fossil fuels in the ground. With popular power, we can shift economies away from extractive activities and towards socially just and ecologically regenerative alternatives. And as more and more people are displaced by economic, geopolitical and environmental crises around the planet, we need a federal government that takes migrant justice seriously.
To mobilize against the billionaire agenda that Poilievre represents, our movements must create space to build solidarity and unity. Through concrete collective action and trusting relationships, we will make a transformative alternative visible, compelling, and impossible to ignore.
We call on everyone who shares our fundamental concerns to join the mobilization. Individuals, community groups, organizations and unions all have something to offer to the process; together, everything is possible. Join us!
Bruce email hidden; JavaScript is required:
In Canada, this is worth reading in light of Pierre Poilievre only taking English-languages questions the other day from The Rebel and a few other right-wing pretend media, whom he wants to fund if he is Prime Minister.
Pierre Poilievre Signals Plan to Extend Government Subsidies to Right-Wing Media Websites, Conservative leader says he would change Canada Revenue Agency rules designating which media outlets are eligible for government funding by Luke LeBrun, Editor, February 18, 2025, Press Progress
If Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives form government after the next federal election, Poilievre will defund the CBC and expand government funding arrangements to include right-wing alternative media outlets.
Speaking to right-wing online media personality Candice Malcolm with the website “Juno News” last week, Poilievre indicated he would, in his words, “depoliticize news media finance.”
Asked by Malcolm to clarify if he would “get rid of that $600 million newspaper fund that Trudeau gave to newspapers,” Poilievre confirmed he will make unspecified cuts to news industry subsidies but is also interested in expanding which media organizations can access those funds.
“We are going to be cutting back on that,” Poilievre said of the Liberal government’s news subsidies. “You’ll have to wait for our platform to get the details.”
Poilievre then suggested he would also change how “CRA designates” who qualifies for those subsidies.
“We have to depoliticize news media finance,” Poilievre said. “Right now, what happens is that there are subsidies that go to favoured media outlets that CRA designates and then there’s not funding for others.”
“Of course, the worst example is CBC, which gets this enormous subsidy to do largely what Canadians can get elsewhere – Canadians can get digital media, videographical media anywhere else.”
“We need to defund the CBC and have an independent self-supporting media.”
Later while on the same line of questioning, Poilievre said he also believes right-wing content creators and alternative media outlets should be welcomed into the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
“Independent media should be allowed on the precinct, there’s no reason why it should be a small cabal of government approved mouthpieces,” Poilievre said.
“I would love to see a scenario where every different kind of journalist from all backgrounds, of all opinions, is given a chance to report on what happens on the hill.”
Poilievre’s spokesperson, Sebastian Skamski, did not respond to multiple requests from PressProgress seeking clarification about what changes a Conservative government would make to CRA rules that set out the eligibility criteria for media outlets looking to access government subsidies.
Skamski also would not clarify if Poilievre would specifically extend government subsidies to right-wing websites like Juno or Rebel Media.
Frank Zappa, 1989: “It should be clear from recent events that America’s enemy is not the communists over there, but those deranged right-wing lunatics right here.”
In 2019, the federal government introduced new tax measures to support journalism in Canada, including the creation of Registered Journalism Organizations (RJO) which are exempt from paying income tax, are eligible to receive donations from registered charities and also able to issue tax receipts to donors.
“To become a RJO under the Income Tax Act, an organization must first be designated as a Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization (QCJO),” a CRA spokesperson told PressProgress. “The review of the organization’s QCJO application are undertaken by the CRA in consultation with the Independent Advisory Board on the Eligibility for Journalism Tax Measures. If the organization meets the requirements for designation as a QCJO, it can apply to the CRA to be an RJO.”
CRA notes news organizations must meet specific eligibility criteria to qualify, including that more than half of its output be devoted to “original news content” on “matters of general interest and reports of current events, including coverage of democratic institutions and processes.”
Currently, some right-wing websites meet the eligibility criteria while others do not.
Derek Fildebrandt, Publisher of the Western Standard has said his publication is designated as a QCJO, while Rebel Media has been rejected by CRA and a federal court on the grounds that it does not produce enough “original news content.”
Poilievre’s interview was part of the launch of a new “subscription-based” right-wing media outfit called “Juno News,” named after the beach where Canadian troops landed on D-Day. It advertises itself as a source for “daily news podcasts, live broadcasts on breaking news, investigative documentaries and provocative commentary.”
The new start-up was co-founded by Candice Malcolm, who identifies herself as the “CEO of Juno News.”
Malcolm and her spouse Kaz Nejatian, the Chief Operating Officer of Shopify, are the founders and funders of the right-wing website True North, which operates as a registered charity.
While True North’s old website and archive of content is still live and accessible, all of True North’s social media accounts have been rebranded as “Juno News” and several True North contributors now identify themselves as being affiliated with Juno.
In a public statement posted to its website, True North says it will “continue to exist,” but says all of its content will now be published on Juno’s website going forward.
***
