Under Pierre Poilievre, radicalization and unbridled populism spread through the Conservative Party of Canada. The fact that he still managed to rise to the top of the polls suggests that dark days lie ahead for him if he comes to power.
• Also read: MP accuses CBC of siding with ‘terrorists’
His support for the Freedom Convoy conspirators was one indicator among others. The same applies to the approval of fundamentalist religious movements that oppose the teaching of gender identity and any form of sex education.
His well-known anger at the mainstream media says the same thing. However, nothing can match his public disdain for the CBC. So he promised to cut funding for the country’s only English-language public broadcaster.
If you’ve noticed that on all these issues the PCC is nothing more than a vulgar talking head for the Trumpian ultra-right, you’re not wrong.
This time the conservative troops have pushed the limits even further. Last week in the parliamentary committee, fellow MP Rachael Thomas bluntly accused the CBC of being “on the side” of Hamas.
She also wrote on Twitter that the CBC was “complicit in the bloodbath” carried out by Hamas in Israel on October 7. Words of nameless demagoguery and untruth.
Ms. Thomas’s comments are so serious that the NDP and Bloc Québécois have demanded she retract. She refuses and in return accuses them of wanting to “censor” her.
The CBC is not an “accomplice” of Hamas
Rachael Thomas, Alberta MP and CPC culture spokesperson, says she is outraged by the CBC’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict. She blames him for two things.
The first is not to use the word “terrorist” to describe Hamas in their reports.
Second, because he “misinformed” the public by initially reporting that the attack on a hospital in Gaza was the work of the Israeli army, while a stray Islamic Jihad projectile was responsible.
It is true that the CBC’s refusal to use the term “terrorist” because it considers it too biased is widely debated. However, analysts and commentators are free to use it on its airwaves.
Although the BBC, like other major media outlets, also refused to do so, it now agrees to identify Hamas as a “terrorist organization recognized as such by Great Britain”.
But portraying the CBC as “accomplices” in Hamas atrocities puts serious limits on what can be said.
Electoral clientelism
The same applies to the projectile that hit the parking lot of a hospital in Gaza. In fact, the initial mistake of attributing it to Israel was made by several Western media outlets.
These include the BBC, Portal and the New York Times, which has since apologized for relying too heavily on Hamas sources. A lesson about the “fog of war” hard learned by the media.
However, this has not stopped Ms. Thomas from standing firm and demanding a public apology from the CBC to the Jewish community and all Canadians.
However, behind the PCC’s latest delirium lies not only its own radicalization and anti-CBC obsession, but also blatant electoral clientelism.
With the Liberals weakening, the PCC is presenting itself as an even more passionate ally of Israel than the Trudeau government. Their goal: to appeal to voters within Canadian Jewish communities.
By using the CBC as a scarecrow, Ms. Thomas is taking demagoguery and disinformation to the extreme. In doing so, it takes advantage of the state of shock in which these same communities have found themselves since the barbaric Hamas attack on October 7th.
It’s a shame. If anyone should have the slightest decency to apologize for this, it’s Rachael Thomas and her boss.
