We are still a while from knowing the slate of candidates for the federal conservative party leadership, but there are two Ontario MPs lining up their teams. They are Erin O’Toole from Durham and Pierre Poilievre from Carleton. I think of them as the bland and the pit bull.
Erin O’Toole is so bland that he came third behind Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier in the last conservative leadership race. As the party is going to repeat the foolishness of a preferential ballot, he has to figure that he has a good shot at the leadership this time. You do that in preferential voting by being the second, third or fourth choice of most of the voters.
He is obviously good at mathematics and that must have been why the Canadian air force trained him as a navigator. As a lawyer, he seems to have had little interest in pleading cases and most of his time as a lawyer was spent advising corporate clients.
Between O’Toole and Poilievre, it will be the Ottawa-area based Poilievre who will get most of the media attention. I am hardly the first person to equate him to a pit bull but I feel that comparing him to a pit bull is giving pit bulls a bum rap.
When Ontario tried to ban pit bulls in 2005 (the law is still on the books), it found that pit bulls are not just a single breed. When you have a bad-tempered dog, the first thing you should do is check the owner. Ask whether the dog has been trained, at all? Is it used to being around young people? Should it be muzzled when out in public?
Poilievre was former PM Stephen Harper’s pit bull. He was as nasty as his master. He often seemed to have neither respect for the truth nor any respect for parliament. I think the conservatives would be better off if the party kept him muzzled when out in public.
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Copyright 2020 © Peter Lowry
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