Which way, Canadian boomer?

It's easy to feel that Canada isn't broken from the shuffleboard courts of Del Boca Vista. The reality on the ground for your average full-timer, as well as first-time voters, is much, much different.

See the central banker who has spent 30% of his working life in Canada. He is pale and thin. He wears an equally pale and thin Brioni suit. He stokes the ‘Team Canada’ fire. Outside, thousands of kilometres south, lie palm trees, pickleball courts, and hearts turned dark to a permanent renter class, forced to spend its days fending off economic replacement, wage suppression, government addicts, and an economy rendered inert for all those who missed out on the real estate protection racket.

These darkened hearts they lie in drink, and they quote from Globe opinion columnists whose names are irrelevant to those made to rent $3000 1-bedroom apartments.

The renter — the masses, once great — grow further resentful and unwashed. In them broods a taste for recompense. The opportunity is almost theirs. It’s close. So very close.

Then a tariff threat; the selection of a carpet-bagger; comforting lies, both big and small, whispered to idiots.

The opportunity dims. The future feels further away. It’s time for water aerobics in the over-55 living facility. The air and the water share a pleasing 72 degrees. The paper is folded up, the Great Unwashed tucked away with it.

Carney’s change enough for me.

The beach chair sits empty.

These are days of theft.

Putting aside the inspiration from the work cited in the title, and the endless cycles of human behaviour explored so deeply and profoundly in the works of an author such as Cormac McCarthy, we are at least blessed enough to say we live in interesting times.

Those inherently skeptical of ‘Team Canada’ have been forced to watch Globe opinion columnists opine on American boycotts and matters of escalating performative cost-of-living acts of seppuku from Palm Springs.

We’ve watched the former chair of Brookfield caught in a lie, after directly supporting, signing off on, and writing to shareholders that the best path forward was to move to Trump’s economy.

We’ve watched the same financial elites as last time line up behind said former chair, to expand the influence network of Davos, Beijing, and their ‘Net zero’ corporate extortion racket — lying dormant after historic failure, but soon to be resurrected.

The Carney-Trudeau Nexus: How Financial Elites from Davos to Beijing Are Shaping Canada’s Next Federal Election

We’ve listened as that same pseudo-carpet-bagger admits the Canadian economy is "weak" because of out-of-control immigration and reckless federal spending, and yet, takes none of the blame, despite having served as a deeply conflicted principal adviser.

And, perhaps unbelievably, we continue to see major movement in the polls (although, not as major as the change witnessed in some Liberal ‘push-polls’).

Abacus, Feb 27.

Gee, that 'Team Canada' sure holds a lot of passports, moves a lot of jobs to the United States, and appears to be benefiting from hostile tariff negotiations, while still catering to the Canadian snowbirds of Del Boca Vista!

And herein lies the problem — and the insult:

In desperate need of a crisis, the Liberals were handed the gift of a black swan that now polls higher than any issue save for the cost of living.

They openly courted that crisis, cut the brake lines on the Canadian economy, and starved the nation of its ability to provide cheap energy to its people, and our allies across the globe. Now, they get to reap the benefits, possibly only temporarily — but it’s only coming from one demographic.

Pallas, Feb 6.

This is no culture war; this is now a deliberately cultivated battle of the ages. If it weren’t so cynical and short-sighted, it might be considered genius.

Canadians, overwhelmingly so, are not a happy people. ‘Canadian nice’ is no ‘Minnesota nice.’ We’ve all spent time with our apparent enemies to the south, had someone turn to us at a bar or diner, introduce themselves, and ask for our life story.

Canadians can be nice, but it’s a cheap stereotype; in the modern era, that’s often just a mask for passive-aggression, anti-social tendencies, and weakness — so much weakness.

“Canadians are an unhappy, under-housed, and overtaxed people. And the younger you are, the more unhappy, under-housed, and overtaxed you are. The data is clear. We need the courage to change.”

But when the only traditionally “happy” and hopeful group with eyes to the future happens to be, perhaps ironically, those aged 60 and over who decide elections in the suburbs of Ontario, British Columbia, Atlantic Canada, and Quebec, and vote in advance before absconding for a day under six months to the country they performatively claim to hate, what is there to do about Carney’s Codgers?

As a passably experienced campaigner, you don’t give up on them; Facebook advertising exists for a reason. But you don’t wait up, either.

The market is being carpet-bombed by exceedingly good work, from normal, civilized, family-oriented people, who know that this may well be their last shot at owning a home and stopping the Great Canadian slide. If the racist Tru-Anon grandmothers who respond to tired and emotional calls from Frank Graves at 1 am aren’t going to poll any better, one must accept a loss in the Ottawa suburbs for wins in Toronto-St Paul’s, a Mississauga struggling mightily under mass immigration, a Chinese suburb of Vancouver, and a middle-class, working-family neighbourhood in Halifax.

Most importantly, you turn out the voters the Liberals have never been introduced to — and can no longer count on.

A proper realignment has to happen here. The world’s failing status-quo operators already sacrificed the young for the misguided comforts of the old during the Covid “opportunity for a reset” years. And while no Canadian of a particular vintage should feel guilt for their hard-earned successes of the past, policy by and for the protection of their real estate asset can no longer serve as a once-pretty-darn-great country’s guiding ethos.

That’s no DEI-laden request for a reciprocity-laden, unearned, “equity”-not-equality-laden handout; a country — this country — must be capable of both.

You keep rocking those tight black t-shirts, showing your congenial young family, and talking housing, safety, costs, and immigration. You explain to the ‘youngs’ that the thirteenth-century Transylvanian nobleman with Century Initiative advisers won’t actually help them secure the job taken from them by three million 39-year-olds from Amritsar.

You use every platform available to give young voters “the ick” for continued policies of crime, chaos, and forever renting, carried out by a long-in-the-tooth (and yellow-toothed) European banker who MOVES CANADIAN JOBS to AMERICA, who will be pushed around further by that dastardly president, and who holds all the vim and vigour of Ferris Bueller’s teacher in the depths of an ether binge.

You HELP THE NDP and attempt to undercut the left from its further flank, through whatever means of third-party influence or subterfuge you’re O.K. with deploying for the greater good.

Most importantly, you project confidence, you actually stay confident, and you present yourself as the only choice for the future, because, in truth, that’s what you are.

The next few months won’t be easy, but the greatest sins are reserved for the good left undone.

These are indeed days of theft. They are also days of opportunity.

So steal it right back.