Pierre Poilievre is the leader of the conservative party. That party has been in the grips of religious zealots since 2003, when Stockwell Day capitulated the existing Progressive Conservative party to the extremist Reform party.

When he(Pierre Poilievre) was a minister under Stephen Harper, they suppressed scientific research, abolished and ignored environmental laws, ran roughshod over first nations, tried to repeal same sex marriage and tied foreign aid to the passing of strict anti-abortion and anti-LGBT laws in the receiving countries. They also were riddled with scandals, including taking a significant portion of the security budget of a G7 conference in Toronto for various ministers pet projects in their own ridings. They also routinely capitulated to US interests, including destroying BC's forestry industry by allowing Canadian logs to be shipped directly to the US and not processed at all in Canada.

Also they cut so much from the budget and gave to their friends; as an example, they sold the building space for the control tower for Vancouver Harbour to friendly developers. They also sold the land for Vancouver's coast guard base to developers, changing their response time from 5-15 minutes to 45-60 minutes. One of the things that helped Trudeau get elected in 2015 was reversing that sale and reopening the base.

Poilievre and the CPC party have been caught at anti-vaxxer rallies, at anti-LGBT rallies, at the anti-vaxxer riots(both the truck border riot and the attempted coup in Ottawa) during Covid, and he has refused to get a security clearance so he and his party have not been willing to deal with known(according to CSIS) treasonous party members, nor have they done or said anything over Moti's(PM of India) inner circle officially attacking and murdering Canadian Citizens in Canada.

Current polls put his CPC party at getting roughly 60 seats over a majority, and the election has to happen next year.

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What would it take for the Canadian conservatives to turn the country into a fascist dictatorship? Sorry I’m not as familiar with the checks and balances in your parliamentary system.

[–] justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io 5 points 1 day ago

They need a majority of the provinces to have allied conservative governments to re-open the constitution, the charter and pervert both of them.

To that end Alberta spent at least 20 million dollars in the last two months to influence elections in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Poilievre would need to deal with the Supreme Court of Canada. This is one of the things Harper tried to start but he was stymied at several levels because lawyers and justices protested his attempt to insert unqualified judges to that bench.

However, the government also has the Notwithstanding clause that allows them carte blanche to override the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to do what they want, subject to those overrides being refreshed every 5 years. That clause was included over a fear of judges having too much power and was included at the last minute. Outside of Quebec, it has been used 6 times, all of them by conservative governments, mostly within the last 20 years.

Uses outside of Quebec: • 1982 - Yukon - land planning bill • 1986 - Sask. - back to work legislation. • 2000 - Alberta - anti-LGBT marriage, overruled in 2004 by Paul Martin at the federal level. 2015 - Sask. - considered it to override ruling to keep outlawing public sector strikes, but relented and did not use it. 2017 - Sask. - override court ruling against public funding of non-Catholics attending Catholic schools. 2018 - Ontario - used to forcibly change Toronto's municipal council. 2021 - Ontario - overruled court to stifle free speech against them.