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Doorstep Postings: Four questions for the Conservative campaign (no real answers, though)

Three weeks down and two to go as Jewish Canadians assemble for family arguments.
York Centre candidate Roman Baber seizing the moment to dunk on PM Mark Carney for what he later explained was a word he didn't hear.
York Centre candidate Roman Baber seizing the moment to dunk on Mark Carney for what the PM later explained was a word he didn't hear.

This is another weekly 2025 federal election edition of Doorstep Postings, the political column written by Josh Lieblein for The CJN. (Stay tuned for more reporting on hot riding races, and conversations on The CJN Daily podcast with Ellin Bessner.)

We haven’t seen any rivers turning to blood, plagues of locusts, or staffs turning to snakes this election cycle— but the story of this election campaign might be more popular than the one we’re supposed to tell when it comes to table talk at Passover seders in Canada.

After all, just this week, we had the guy currently leading the race engage in a Pharaoh-esque double reversal on the topic of whether Israel is engineering a genocide in Gaza.

The moment where the crowd goes from groaning with disgust at the heckler’s demand to cheering for their leader when he decided to apparently flip foreign policy on the fly seems as close as we’re going to get to what the atmosphere in the palace was like those many years ago in Egypt when the king’s officials struggled to rationalize a change of heart by their monarch. Was it a gaffe or mask slip? I’d like to say we’ll never know, but if things don’t turn around soon, we well might.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said the following day he didn’t hear the word “genocide” and was addressing the arms embargo more generally—but those seeking to push the narrative from either side got the soundbite they wanted all the same.

Pierre Poilievre should be benefiting from such an unsteady front-runner campaign, yet it now seems like he will have to wait for Next Election in Jerusalem, if he makes it that far. Everyone has their questions about why the Conservative leader zigged when he should have zagged. Why won’t he be nicer to journalists who are once again jumping on the opportunity to make themselves the story this election? Why won’t he point out all of Carney’s conflicts of interest, which seem to have the effect of somehow making Carney look like exactly the kind of corporate shark that can to deal with Donald Trump?

In that spirit, and the spirit of the holiday, I’ve prepared four questions of my own to truly convey the scope of how the deck is stacked against the Tories circa Passover 5785.

The first question, which is being asked by many journalists and campaign observers in addition to workers: “On all other campaigns there is an atmosphere of joy and positivity, even if they are going through the motions on the way to an inevitable loss. Why is the Conservative campaign so dark, so angry, so unleavened in its negativity? Is it due to a moral defect in their characters, some sort of unexplainable evil deep within their souls?” 

Well, the answer is rather obvious if you think about it for a second, or even re-read it once. Yes, people do believe that Conservatives are like the Biblical Pharaoh—hardening their hearts in response to an unseen force.

Speaking only for myself, I’ve been asked this rather insulting question to my face, in addition to being called stupid, bigoted, illiterate (my columns aren’t that bad, right?), had dogs set on me, been chased off properties, and been sprayed with water hoses for the offence of knocking on doors and asking voters if they would vote for Team Blue. This has taken place under leaders ranging in acceptability from John Tory to Stephen Harper to Doug Ford in his various incarnations. Conservative campaigns are negative and angry because voters do believe the absolute worst about conservatives and aren’t shy about expressing those beliefs. It’s not just that they are wrong, or weird: they are bad.

Second question: “Come on, Josh. Stop whining. Do you expect us to feel sorry for a bunch of jackals who are trying to weaken the fragile ties that bind our nation together? Don’t you understand that there are real problems and real suffering out there and nobody cares if everyone hates the party of rich people? All the other campaigns are working to improve the lives of Canadians—why are the Tories only giving voters bitter herbs to eat?”

OK, anyone who’s read the Passover story and remembers what Moses had to go through leading the Israelites already knows the answer to this one.

When our original chief rabbi gave the wandering Jewish people the straight goods, they hated him for it, and no amount of miracles was enough to keep them from worshipping the Golden Calf. He never even got to enter the Promised Land, because nobody wants a downer guy like that in God’s Country.

Every campaign, Canadians vote for pleasant-sounding nonsense, and then wonder why we aren’t living up to our potential as a nation. Liberals don’t need to actually improve anyone’s lives—all they need to do is convince relatively few voters that the Conservatives will make it worse.

Third question! “You righties want it both ways! You claim to be against the big-spending Liberals yet your party runs up deficits too. You talk about freedom but you want to micromanage everyone’s lives! You act like facts matter more than feelings and then cry like little sucky babies when the public rejects you and your terrible ideas! Why must you double dip and talk out of both sides of your mouth?”

The answer is that Canadians are much, much better at coming up with contradictions in the overall Conservative program than they are with anyone else.

I could list these all day, but I’ll just note the following: At this moment in time, an effectively unilingual anglophone is rocking the Bloc in Quebec. On the other side of the country in B.C., his party has eclipsed the NDP despite the fact that he has barely campaigned in that province. (Elizabeth May is barely making an impression this time around, and she’s been a favourite of similarly eccentric boomers for decades.)

It’s never been so clear that the services of these other progressive options aren’t needed this time around to keep the Conservatives out. Even so, that’s still a lot of built-in failsafes for a supposedly fair system! 

Which brings us to our fourth, final, and most important question: “I know the real problem—it’s the base! The party is a prisoner of the losers who vote for them! Other parties are working to win left-wing and centrist votes! Why can’t they just lean back and recline, just be normal, and then more people will vote Conservative!”

This is a family newspaper, so I hope everyone understands what I mean when I suggest that it is a very large waste of energy to try and convince voters who see Big Daddy when they look at Mark Carney to vote Conservative.

Look, if you want to be “led” by Mark Carney after this month, the only proposal you’re interested in isn’t of the policy variety, if you catch my very obvious drift. The movement around Carney is no different from the movements around Laurier, Pearson, King, Chrétien, or either of the Trudeaus.

If we’re being really honest, however, it’s also no different from the one that grew around Poilievre or Trump. It’s all the same barely sentient, heedless, primal stampede in one direction or another. 

Community lobbyists and associated ‘influencers’ attempting to change the conversation this Passover, let alone initiating a different one, are going to have a very tough time of it if they attempt to take it offline for a night or two. Instead, mark your doorposts—or your lawns—with the appropriate sign, and just pray the Angel of Death doesn’t come for you. 

Josh Lieblein can be reached at [email protected] for your response to Doorstep Postings.

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