Canada Votes 2025: Conservative strategy to insult journalists, skip debates, avoid scrutiny might be backfiring

Supporters would vote for a blue donkey if the party entered one but this three-pronged anti-democratic approach is a bad way to lure new supporters

Someone messaged me on Thursday to say that they were shocked Conservative incumbent Mark Strahl sent a representative to G.W. Graham Secondary School to speak to students about the Canadian federal election.

"The representative said that 'climate change' is fake, the homeless problem in Chilliwack is the result of immigration," he said "These are only two of his lies. The staff and students were appalled."

That didn't sound right, I thought. I know most Conservatives quietly believe such things but they are smart enough not to admit them in public, especially an incumbent MP. I quickly made an inquiry with a source who was present and he clarified that was not a Strahl/Conservative representative. That was Jeff Galbraith, the People's Party of Canada (PPC) candidate who clearly would say such dumb things.

This was a good example of the problematic nature of the telephone game. The person who messaged me didn't work at the school but someone close to him does and that person was getting updates from someone else who was in the assembly with the candidates and the students. As messages moved along the chain, important details were overlooked.

But the more important point is that Strahl was not in attendance, an example of how Conservatives avoid public scrutiny, awkward questions, any situation where they might look bad.

"Does Mark Strahl campaign?" someone asked yesterday on a politics forum. "I’ve seen Zeeshan [Khan, Liberal candidate] going door to door and he and Teri [Westerby, NDP candidate] are both very visible on social media. I haven’t seen anything from Mark. Probably doesn’t need to do anything to win, but it feels like there’s a real disconnect."

Khan and Westerby have indeed had strong social media presences sharing positive messages and photos of them volunteering and out in the public.

Strahl on the other hand is a ghost. And when he does post, it's not about what he is going to do for his constituents or even very often what his party plans to do if they seize power. Following his leader's attack-dog style of dirty politics, Strahl only shares insults and misinformation about Mark Carney and the Liberal record. There is no promise of hope or optimism or something to vote for, they only despair for the "lost Liberal decade" (a term by my count Poilievre used 11 times in the leaders' debate) and harp on Trudeau who is long gone and fear-monger about who you should vote against.

Exhibit A, below, is six of Strahl's Instagram posts out of nine between April 15 and April 20. The other three were a video of Poilievre complaining about why you shouldn't vote Liberal, a message about advance polls, and one photo of him with one of his big signs.

In addition to an alienating evangelical Christian post with a Bible verse, the rest are attacks on Liberals. Again, no reason why anyone should vote for him, just reasons why you should vote against the Liberals.

Ironically, the only two Conservative politicians the public or media has heard from in the Eastern Fraser Valley are Mike de Jong who was chosen to run in Abbotsford-South Langley by local Conservatives but rejected by party brass in Ottawa, and Ed Fast, the outgoing MP who is supporting de Jong over the choice of the party, a 25-year-old university student and son of a wealthy blueberry farmer and party donor.

Nobody much seems to have heard from Gill in that riding.

In this election there was one virtual all-candidates meeting, not a great way to hear from the incumbent about his vision for Chilliwack or the country. In 2025, this is clearly the game plan and it is nothing new.

Still hiding from the public

In the 2021 federal election, Strahl was responsible for cancelling the only planned in-person all-candidates meeting. The Chilliwack Arts & Cultural Society scheduled the in-person all-candidates meeting for Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2021, a year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic.

I was asked to moderate the meeting, and I agreed. All attendees were to have followed public health orders, which included masks and assigned seating at the venue.

And because it was scheduled for one day after the vaccine passport came into effect, everyone in attendance was told they had to show proof of at least one COVID vaccination.

Far-right wing agitator, high-school teacher, and People’s Party of Canada (PPC) candidate Rob Bogunovic, who bragged that he was not vaccinated, got his panties in a twist when he was told he could not attend in person. He was to be accommodated electronically.

The PPC sent a three-page letter addressed to Fraser Health expressing outrage at the physical exclusion of Bogunovic from the meeting. (It is worth pointing out that PPC leader Maxime Bernier was completely excluded from the televised leaders’ debates in 2021 and 2025 and, again, Bogunovic was going to be accommodated electronically.)

The PPC/Bogunovic idiocy was just the excuse the Conservative candidate needed to get out of facing the public and scrutiny of any kind. In response to the PPC, Strahl sent a statement declaring that he would only participate “if all candidates are treated equally.”

“While I am eligible to appear in person, I will only do so if all candidates running in this election appear on the same platform,” he said.

He suggested the entire event be changed to a 100 per cent virtual forum. The cultural centre board, treading carefully in a non-partisan way as they do, held an emergency meeting and decided they couldn’t go ahead. The meeting was cancelled.

Following that, NDP candidate DJ Pohl issued a statement: “Debates are an essential part of democracy. This must also never compromise one’s safety.”

Then Ted Field from Global BC contacted me, looking to come to Chilliwack to report on the “kerfuffle.” Global did send a reporter who interviewed Bogunovic, Pohl and Velonis. And guess who hid from the media and public scrutiny once again? Conservative incumbent Mark Strahl refused to comment.

The kicker in all of that is that candidates were exempt from the vaccine passport requirement, as confirmed to me by a Fraser Health spokesperson. But even if Bogunovic had been allowed to attend, his anti-vaxxer supporters and campaign volunteers would not have been allowed and he would have had a hissy fit over that, which similarly would have been an excuse for Strahl to cancel.

Hiding from the media is the message

All of this mirrors the broader move by the Conservatives to shun scrutiny, hide from the media, communicate using public relations campaigns. It is entirely undemocratic.

Poilievre and the Conservatives barred journalists from following the campaign on his plane and/or bus unlike all other candidates in all other federal elections. At Conservative events, journalists are penned into small areas far away from PP and unlike with the Liberal and NDP events, only four reporters are allowed one question each with no follow-ups. And if PP gets a question he doesn't like, he'll lie without shame.

At a Conservative campaign news conference - reporters in Sault Ste. Marie are penned in within a space about 8metres across and 8 metres deep in a parking lot that is wide open. pic.twitter.com/XN8cCEsJAp

— Judy Trinh (@judyatrinh) April 9, 2025

At an event in Sault Ste. Marie on April 10, a CTV reporter asked PP about his refusal to get security clearance so he can keep complaining about something he doesn't understand. Not only did he refuse to answer, he said the reporter was "just a protester."

Conservative staffers have also tried to block access to journalists trying to speak to supporters and even local candidates, according to some reports.

Instead, they spend millions of dollars on YouTube videos and social media posts while responding to no questions they don't like.

The strategy might seem obvious to them. Why risk looking bad by stumbling or saying something honest yet terrible to questions from reporters? Pollster David Coletto, founder and CEO of Abacus Data, however, says this strategy might have been a good one when he was far ahead of Trudeau in the polls at the end of 2024 but it might hurt them now. One important reason is that baby boomers like traditional media.

"Baby boomers are the most likely to be tuning in to broadcast news, reading newspapers, listening to the radio," he told CBC for a story on this topic. "If [Poilievre's] not engaging with the media and trying to speak to that audience, he's going to have a hard time convincing them that he's their best choice in this election."

What seems odd about all of this is that Poilievre himself is confident and successful in front of the media. He acts like a jerk but he's articulate and smart. He shouldn't be hiding from scrutiny, he should be relishing it. And the worst part for them is that as they sink in the polls and the Liberals rise, this lame attempt to control the message, and insult or hide from the journalists is itself becoming the story those journalists are left to tell.

"We are a functioning democracy. And there's limits, I think, to how much a person who aspires to be a prime minister should curtail media," says Allan Thompson, director of Carleton University's School of Journalism and Communication.

Indeed.

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Paul J. Henderson
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