r/onguardforthee 1d ago

"Only party to bar media from busses & planes… takes fewer questions… reporters vetted… questions vetted… no follow-up questions… making it impossible to bring the same accountability that other campaigns are subject to…" Evan Dyer, A Dispatch from the Poilievre Campaign, CBC, April 4th 2025

464 Upvotes

24 comments sorted by

60

u/50s_Human 1d ago

SkiPPy is a weak leader. He's great in pre-election "canned" rallies with ardent supporters and no reporters. In campaign mode, he's really bad and cannot handle a scrum. He just can't think on his feet and respond intelligently to questions except for spelling out his campaign spiel as the answer to every question. And there you have it why reporters are not allowed on the bus or airplane and CBC is not allowed to ask questions and the right wing media is permitted to ask softball questions. Not a leader. Not fit to be the PM.

39

u/scr0dumb 1d ago

Said it before and I'll say it again. 

If this is how he campaigns imagine how he'll govern.

6

u/Pale-Leek-1013 1d ago

you don’t have to imagine, just look over at danielle smith.

14

u/Concentrateman 1d ago

Sounds like a lack of authenticity to me. Folks can see that. It's always been a problem for him.

25

u/Concentrateman 1d ago

An apple a day keeps the media away.

5

u/SiloEchoBravo 1d ago

"How does one make a scrum scrumptious?"
Not like that, Pierre. Not like that.

2

u/Concentrateman 1d ago

Repeat that quickly five times. :)

2

u/SiloEchoBravo 1d ago

I certainly will not!
(I'm worried a Pipi effigy might appear after the third time)

22

u/cazxdouro36180 1d ago

A dispatch from the Poilievre campaign. Very anti-democratic.

Some excerpts: I’m a senior reporter covering the Conservative campaign this week. We've seen unprecedented efforts at message control from the Poilievre campaign that have broken with tradition in a number of ways. The CPC is the only party to bar media from its campaign plane and buses. The Stephen Harper, Andrew Scheer and Erin O'Toole campaigns all allowed media to travel with the leader, and charged sometimes exorbitant amounts of money for the privilege. The other parties do the same, and also charge.

Poilievre takes fewer questions than other leaders, a maximum of four per event, and insists on choosing which reporters are allowed to ask. After a week following the campaign, neither I nor my CBC colleague Tom Parry have been permitted to ask any questions.

Sometimes, CPC staffers try to get reporters to say what they plan to ask — a question a reporter is not supposed to answer. However, we have seen local media pressured into answering. Obviously, if a reporter declines, that could factor into the decision of who gets to ask questions at all.

The decision on who asks questions is always last-minute. A CPC staffer holds the microphone, ready to pull it away. No follow-up questions are permitted. On occasion, CPC staffers have gotten physical with journalists, such as on the public wharf at Petty Harbour, N.L., where there was pushing and shoving. Today, in Trois-Rivières, we asked to be allotted a question. Party staffers said yes, so long as it was asked by my colleague Tom Parry. We responded that I would prefer to ask it. At that point the party took away our question and gave it to another outlet.

The difficulty of trying to keep up with a campaign that has its own chartered aircraft is a logistical problem that can be mitigated to some extent. But the extreme message control makes it all but impossible to bring the same level of accountability to the Poilievre campaign that other campaigns are subject to. It also protects the campaign from having to answer tough questions and is a marked departure from previous Conservative campaigns I have covered. Evan Dwyer.

Live Story so scroll down the link a bit to see that title.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/livestory/global-stocks-wiped-out-for-second-straight-day-as-trump-sends-markets-reeling-9.6711533#:~:text=Shared,-Update

Watch the full video here. https://www.reddit.com/r/SaveTheCBC/s/pU3xZddzjb

21

u/TrojanRabbit7051 1d ago

Another page out of the DT Handbook. I can understand it, though. It would be exhausting for PP to have to defend the indefensible day in and day out until April 28th.

11

u/SiloEchoBravo 1d ago

Oh, I never said the strategy didn't work! I'd do the same if I was an amoral sociopath with delusions of grandeur and a platform based on the deconstruction of the social contract. (While being an unlikable, uncharismatic try-hard dork with no intellectual rigour and little to show for an entire career in politics, save convincing Russian-bot-brainwashed truckers that a public health emergency was somehow the throes of tyranny to vote for me as party leader).

Speaking of those morons. They railed against Trudeau's tyranny, but somehow seem mum about the actual tyrant destroying life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness just South of the border. Funny how that goes, isn't it. Fuckers.

11

u/Me_thinks_ther4-I_am 1d ago

He can’t think on his feet. He’s not as smart as Carney, so he’s trying to minimize the contrast in intelligence between them.

6

u/eatitwithaspoon 1d ago

This guy has got to be defeated. it's only a matter of time before he's kissing trump's ring if he wins.

5

u/MoragMomma 1d ago

Unacceptable way to conduct an election campaign.

4

u/AgentFoo 1d ago

Seems like the media shouldn't be giving him airtime, then. But that would mean the right wing owned media wanting accountability.

1

u/Peach-Grand 1d ago

Then they’d complain that media was being biased and only showing the other leaders

3

u/Mommal4 1d ago

Weasel without a security clearance! Not up for the job! Elbows up🇨🇦

2

u/CuteDog4558 1d ago

Stop covering them at all. Rightfully pound them on their lack of accountability and every lie, misrepresentation, deception, and moronic conspiracy theory they spew publicly.

They'll come around in a few days. Assholes.

6

u/Ket_Yoda_69 1d ago

Really weird that this story isn't available anywhere except through screenshots.

Not a shady campaign at all, nothing to hide /s

11

u/SiloEchoBravo 1d ago

Oh, you mean like this, here?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/livestory/global-stocks-wiped-out-for-second-straight-day-as-trump-sends-markets-reeling-9.6711533
It's not a direct link (second item on the page) because it's part of "campaign postcards", not an official story. Which, I agree with you it should be.

1

u/mgyro 1d ago

This is pretty standard for a Con, started by Milhouse’s mentor Stevie. Harper vilified the media, eliminating impromptu scrums that used to take place in the halls outside of the legislature and moving it to a formal press conference in the basement. There, he limited questions allowed.

By far the most blatant example was Doug Ford in 2018. He had no platform, and spoke to no one that his handlers didn’t control. It was brutal, basically ran a “I’m not her” campaign and the idiots in Ontario voted him to a majority. This alone should have cost him the election.

Even after he was in power his handlers kept him away from any mic they didn’t control. They made a faux news network and had staffers cosplay as reporters and released the clips as if he was handling the press as his lackies lobbed prepped softball after prepped softball to him.

And the bright and shiny smooth brains in Ontario just handed him a third majority. If you don’t hold someone accountable for their bullshit, it will be emulated as a successful strategy.