OTTAWA – Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre took to social media today to decry the far-right extremist group Diagolon’s threats against his wife, noting that it’s totally cool for Canada’s growing conservative extremists to threaten other peoples’ families, but something altogether different when it’s his own.
The leader of the federal Conservatives made these comments after the group’s leader Jeremy McKenzie took a break from appearing in photographs with Mr Polievre to record a podcast where he suggested sexual violence against Mr Polevre’s wife, Anaida.
“No family should face these sorts of threats,” said Mr Poilievre about the group who, without complaint from him or his office, has threatened black families, gay families, Muslim families, transgendered families, liberal families, city-dwelling families, and families that wear masks in public over the past months.
Mr Poilievre then went on to add “It’s one thing when these people spend a month making the downtown of our capital city unlivable, or issuing violent sexual threats against female journalists, as I don’t really care what happens to my political enemies. But issuing those same threats against my wife? That’s when I go from hanging out with you in coffee shops, to sending strongly-worded tweets!”
“It’s not the threats of violence themselves that are the problem,” an aide to Mr Poilievre said anonymously. “You want to sexually threaten a woman walking because she’s walking down the street wearing a hijab? Power to you, that’s the Canada we both believe in. What we’re asking is that you just not also do it to us.”
When asked whether it was at all hypocritical to care about the group’s history of abuse now, and not earlier in their year-long spree of political intimidation and threats, Mr. Poilievre had a rationale tied to his own political outlook.
“I’m a family values Conservative,” Poilievre explained, his glasses fogging from the heat of his angry little breaths. “This means that I only value my family, and not anyone else’s.”