The Conservative Party of Canada Is Nationalistic but Not Patriotic ⇥ theguardian.com

Leyland Cecco, the Guardian:

Canada’s Conservative party has deleted a social media campaign video with a heavily nationalist message after much of the video featured scenes from other countries, including Ukrainian farmers, Slovenian homes, London’s Richmond Park and a pair of Russian fighter jets.

I am deliberately linking to the Guardian because this is an international embarrassment. There are many nonsensical things about this ad — the nauseating jingoism, the hyper-specific view of what a Canadian family looks like, and the hack messaging. But it is wild how much of this footage actively avoids being Canadian when you consider the microstock photography model effectively began in Calgary, hometown of Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre. There are so many stock photo and video providers based in this city alone, including Dissolve and Hero Images to name just two; there are more elsewhere in the province, such as Indigenous Images.

Yet, it is not surprising this party’s nationalist rhetoric is not matched by patriotic behaviour. Most of Canada’s major political parties operate some kind of merch store. The t-shirts sold by the Liberal Party are made in Canada. The Green Party’s merchandise is printed in B.C. by a local business. The New Democratic Party does not operate a store, but donors can get a t-shirt which is, based on what I can find, made and printed in Canada. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh previously offered merch made in Vancouver.

The Conservative Party’s merch, on the other hand, does not appear to be made in Canada. All of their t-shirts are “made with ancient dyes, no Liberal nonsense” — I do not know what they mean by that try-hard politicisation of clothing dyes — but I did not get a reply to my email asking where they were made. As with the stock video used in the ad, it is not as though there are no Canadian t-shirt manufacturers — far from it. But I guess the Conservative Party is less interested in actually supporting local businesses than it is in saying it does.