Under Pierre Poilievre, radicalization and unbridled populism took hold in the Conservative Party of Canada. That he nevertheless managed to rise to the top of the polls suggests dark days ahead if he were to take power.
• Read also: MP accuses CBC of siding with ‘terrorists’
His support for the freedom convoy conspirators was one indicator among others. Ditto for its approval of fundamentalist religious movements opposed to the teaching of gender identity and any form of sex education.
His known anger against the mainstream media says just as much. Nothing, however, rivals his public disdain for the CBC. Hence his promise to cut funding to the only English-language public broadcaster in the country.
If you have noticed that on all these issues, the PCC is nothing more than a vulgar speaker of the Trumpian ultra-right, you are not wrong.
This time, the conservative troops have pushed the envelope even further. Last week, in parliamentary committee, their MP Rachael Thomas bluntly accused the CBC of being “on the side” of Hamas.
On Twitter, she also wrote that the CBC is “complicit in the bloodbath” perpetrated on October 7 in Israel by Hamas. Words of nameless demagoguery and falsehood.
The words of Mme Thomas are so serious that the NDP and the Bloc Québécois have called for her to retract. She refuses and in return accuses them of trying to “censor” her.
The CBC is not “accomplice” of Hamas
Rachael Thomas, Alberta MP and CPC heritage spokesperson, says she is outraged by the CBC’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict. She blames him for two things.
The first, not to use the word “terrorist” in its reports to describe Hamas.
The second, for having “misinformed” the public by initially reporting that the attack on a hospital in Gaza was the work of the Israeli army while a stray projectile from Islamic jihad was responsible.
It is true that the CBC’s refusal to use the term “terrorist” because it considers it too biased is widely debated. On its airwaves, however, analysts and commentators use it freely.
It is also true that the BBC, like other major media, also refused to do so, but now agrees to identify Hamas as a “terrorist organization recognized as such by Great Britain”.
But to present the CBC as an “accomplice” of Hamas atrocities, there are serious limits to saying anything.
Electoral clientelism
Same thing for the projectile that fell in the parking lot of a hospital in Gaza. In fact, the initial error of attributing it to Israel was made by several Western media.
Including the BBC, Reuters and the New York Times who has since apologized for relying too much on Hamas sources. A lesson on the “fog of war” hard-learned by the media.
However, this does not prevent Mme Thomas to persist and demand a public apology from the CBC to the Jewish community and all Canadians.
However, behind this latest delirium of the PCC hides not only its own radicalization and its anti-CBC obsession, but also obvious electoral clientelism.
Faced with the weakening of the Liberals, the PCC presents itself as an even more fervent ally of Israel than the Trudeau government. Its goal: to appeal to voters within Canadian Jewish communities.
Using the CBC as a scarecrow, Mme Thomas pushes demagoguery and disinformation to the limit. In doing so, it exploits the state of shock in which these same communities have found themselves since the barbaric Hamas attack of October 7.
It’s a shame. If anyone should have the minimal decency to apologize for this, it’s Rachael Thomas and her boss.