Untangling Anti-Poilievre Pension Propaganda

 

Pierre Poilievre on Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

 

Untangling Anti-Poilievre Pension Propaganda

 

By Hendrik van der Breggen

 

With Canada’s federal election coming soon (April 28, 2025), political “discussion” is often reduced to—and stymied by—memes.

Sadly, a meme/bullet-point-list titled “Pierre’s Record,” sponsored by the Liberal Party of Canada, led by present Prime Minister Mark Carney, is such a case.

It tells us that Conservative contender Pierre Poilievre “[r]eceived a government pension at 31 then raised the retirement age on hard-working Canadians.” The not-so-subtle suggestion is that Mr. Poilievre did a couple of really bad things—so he shouldn’t become Canada’s prime minister.

Whether we support Poilievre or Carney or whomever (or nobody), fair-minded Canadians should realize this Liberal talking-point reeks of political propaganda.

 

Receiving vs. becoming eligible

First, it should be noticed that Poilievre didn’t start receiving a government pension at age 31. Rather, at age 31 he became eligible for the government’s pension plan.  The government pension payments would kick in later, at retirement age.

In fact, it is standard policy for Canadian members of parliament—whether Conservative or Liberal or whatever—to qualify for the government’s pension plan, which begins payments at retirement age, after they have served as an MP for six years. Poilievre was 25 when he became an MP, so he became eligible at age 31.

Yes, Poilievre, Leader of the Official Opposition of Canada, is the youngest MP to do this, but that is because he was elected into parliament as a very young man—unlike most of his colleagues.

Yes, Poilievre’s pension is a lot. But that’s because Poilievre, now 45, has contributed a lot into it (MPs pay about 20% or more of their pay into their pension plan). Significantly, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s pension is also a lot—and more than Poilievre’s.

MPs earn considerable incomes (at least compared to me and most other Canadians) and their pension plans are “gold plated” (unlike mine and most other Canadians). If we Canadians have concerns about MP pensions, it seems unfair to focus on Poilievre when we should put all MPs—and the former PM—into the spotlight. (And what about PM Mark Carney’s pension?)

Again, contrary to what Liberals would have us think, Poilievre hasn’t been receiving a government pension since he was 31. Becoming eligible is different from receiving—a distinction blurred in anti-Poilievre pension propaganda.

 

About raising retirement age

Now, consider the point about Poilievre raising the retirement age for Canadians (so their retirement benefits don’t kick in until later).

Yes, in 2012 Poilievre, along with then-prime minister Steven Harper, did pass a plan to increase retirement age (for eligibility for benefits) from 65 to 67 (to commence in 2023). And this plan was rescinded by Justin Trudeau in 2016 (Trudeau became PM in 2015 when he defeated the Harper Conservatives).

But it helps to know why Poilievre and Harper wanted to raise the retirement age. It turns out that they were concerned about Canada’s national debt. It was part of an attempt to cut back on costs. This is not a bad thing (though, understandably, many Canadians were not happy).

Trudeau, on the other hand, didn’t care about Canada’s national debt. Sadly, Trudeau’s record over his ten-year tenure as PM shows he spent like a teenager who had stolen his parents’ credit cards, and Canadians are the parents footing the bill. In fact, Trudeau increased national debt so much that our grandchildren and great grandchildren will be paying for the retirement benefits we enjoy.

Presently, Poilievre is promising to keep the retirement age at 65, but he is also working on plans to sell Canada’s clean energy to pay down the national debt. It helps to know this, but the meme doesn’t make this clear.

Don’t be fooled by the anti-Poilievre pension propaganda.

 

For additional thought

“Poilievre is wise to resist Canada’s weird security clearance law,” APOLOGIA, March 31, 2025.

“Tar baby: Unsticking Anti-Poilievre Propaganda (and sticking it to the Liberals),” APOLOGIA, April 2, 2025.

“Carney’s view on abortion is deeply problematic,” APOLOGIA, April 6, 2025. (I add this article in this list because Poilievre seems to hold a similar view on abortion as Carney and so my criticisms of Carney’s view seem to apply to Poilievre, too. I hate propaganda, regardless of which political party is espousing it. In other words, I am an equal-opportunity political offender, though I presently see a great deal more anti-Poilievre propaganda coming from the Liberals than anti-Carney propaganda coming from Conservatives.)

 

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Hendrik van der Breggen, PhD, is a retired philosophy professor who lives in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada. Hendrik is author of the book Untangling Trudeau: MAID, COVID, ABORTION, LGBTQ+. (Hendrik’s book may be helpful to Canadians for better understanding Prime Minister Mark Carney and those who have staunchly supported former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Also, the book should be read by Conservatives and others who hold views similar to Liberals on medical assistance in dying, Covid mandates, abortion, and LGBTQ matters.)

The Problem of the Misleading Headline

 

The Problem of the Misleading Headline: Yet another way news media promote anti-Israel bias

By Hendrik van der Breggen

(Originally published May 22, 2024, at The Stream.)

For many in today’s TikTok world, awareness of news is limited to mere headlines. Instead of carefully reading reports, screen-fatigued people tend merely to scroll from one headline to the next. I’m guilty of that. Probably you are, too.

Enter: The problem of the misleading headline.

This is a mistake (or is it?) whereby a news headline doesn’t convey the truth (or full truth) contained in the story. Those who’ve been made stupid by their smartphones are especially susceptible to this issue.

Sadly, misleading headlines can create or reinforce propaganda and distort public opinion about any number of issues. But for our purposes, let’s focus on the anti-Israel protests in major cities and university campuses. (For my assessment of anti-Israel propaganda, such as the idea that Israel is committing genocide, apartheid, and oppression, see my recent Stream article “Untangling Anti-Israel Propaganda for Today’s College Students.”)

Let’s analyze three recent headlines.

 

Misleading CNN Headline

“Nearly half of the Israeli munitions dropped on Gaza are imprecise ‘dumb bombs,’ US intelligence assessment finds.”

This headline gives the impression that Israel is bombing Gaza indiscriminately (because “dumb bombs” are not guided). Such bombing is a concern because it violates the just war principle of distinction. In war, combatants should distinguish between civilians and enemy soldiers, and aim only to destroy enemy soldiers. Israel claims to be targeting Hamas terrorists, not Gazan civilians, so this headline suggests Israelis are liars — and war criminals.

But if we read only the headline, we would be misled. Deep in the article we read the following:

“A US official told CNN that the US believes that the Israeli military is using the dumb bombs in conjunction with a tactic called ‘dive bombing,’ or dropping a bomb while diving steeply in a fighter jet, which the official said makes the bombs more precise because it gets it closer to its target. The official said the US believes that an unguided munition dropped via dive-bombing is similarly precise to a guided munition.”

Even deeper in the article we read that: “the US also provides Israel with systems that can transform those dumb bombs into ‘smart’ ones….”

Clearly, a headline that’s less biased against Israel would go something like this:

“US assessment: Israel uses precision to strike Gaza — even with ‘dumb bombs.’”

(Acknowledgment: I learned about this CNN example from former Israel spokesperson Eylon Levy in his excellent interview with military reporter and defense analyst Yaakov Katz on Israel: State of a Nation with Eylon Levy.)

 

Misleading Headlines from Various News Sources

“Palestinian death toll in Gaza climbs to 34,844.”

This is another headline that can shape public opinion against Israel in its war with Hamas, and may even encourage allies to withhold military aid. Even President Joe Biden used the headline’s casualty number in a speech. This headline and slight variations of it have been often presented in recent news reports around the world. See links above and see Google.

That is a large number of casualties, for sure. The impression the headline leaves is that Israel is simply doling out a whole lot of death!

But we should think for a minute. Yes, that’s a lot of ended human lives. And, yes, we should mourn such a terrible loss.

It turns out, however, that the number comes from Gaza’s Ministry of Health — run by Hamas — so it’s dubious at best. Reminder: Hamas is the terrorist group that murdered 1200+ Israelis, injured many more, and took 240 hostages on October 7.

Reminder: Hamas lied about the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, saying it was destroyed by an Israeli bomb that allegedly killed nearly 500 civilians when in fact, the bomb was a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket (Islamic Jihad is a Gazan ally of Hamas) that landed in the hospital’s parking lot, killing, according to US intelligence, about 100 to 300 people.

Surely, numbers provided by known murderers and liars lack credibility.

But for the sake of argument, let’s say the number of almost 35,000 is accurate. (Keep in mind that more recent news tells us Gaza’s Ministry of Health cannot verify about 10,000 of the alleged casualties, which makes it reasonable to suspect the actual number is considerably lower.)

But even if we say 35,000 Gazans have been killed in the war so far, we should realize that this number (and the new, perhaps lower number) fails to indicate that a large portion are Hamas fighters, not just Gazan civilians.

The Israel Defense Forces estimate they have killed 14,000 Hamas fighters (if we take a terrorist’s number seriously we should at least take a democratic state’s number seriously). Now, let’s do the math.

The number of Hamas fighters killed is about 40% of the total casualties in Gaza. This means that for every combatant killed, 1.5 civilians are killed.

Of course, each civilian death is tragic. But the combatant-civilian death ratio shows how careful and precise Israel actually is when compared to other instances of recent urban warfare.

For example, in Mosul, Iraq, US-backed forces killed 4,000 Islamic State terrorists and 10,000 civilians. This means that, for every combatant killed, 2.5 civilians were killed. And, in the fight against Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, for every combatant killed, five civilians were killed.

Keep in mind, too, that in Gaza many civilians are killed by misfired rockets launched by Hamas and its Islamic jihadist friends. Since October 7, 2023, Hamas has fired well over 10,000 rockets into Israel. And it’s estimated that between 10% and 20% of those rockets (1,000 to 2,000 rockets) misfired and landed in Gaza. That’s a lot of Hamas’s rockets landing in Gaza — which is populated densely with Gazan civilians.

There’s no doubt, then, that many Gazan civilians are killed by Hamas, not the IDF. Clearly, this reduces the IDF’s combatant-civilian death ratio even more.

Moreover, keep in mind that Hamas — unlike ISIS in Iraq and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan — has had nearly 20 years to embed itself in the Gazan population, where it routinely uses civilians as human shields, and to build hundreds of kilometers of attack tunnels under Gazan homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques. This has made it all the more difficult for the IDF to target Hamas and minimize civilian deaths.

Clearly, in view of these difficult circumstances of war, the above combatant-civilian death ratios demonstrate that Israel has minimized civilian deaths in a way that will no doubt be hailed by Western democracies which value human life as the gold standard in urban warfare.

All this to say: Without further details, the headline “Palestinian death toll in Gaza climbs to 34,844” makes Israel look bad — but misleadingly and unjustly so.

 

Misleading Headline from Reuters

“Satellite images show 35% of Gaza’s building destroyed, UN says.”

 

Wow. That is a lot of destroyed buildings! If you scroll on without reading the article (or without reading it carefully), you can’t help but think: Those darn Israelis.

But wait. The article tells a significantly different story.

Consider this (from the article): “In its assessment, the United Nations Satellite Centre, UNOSAT, used high-resolution satellite images … [and] found that 35% of all buildings in the Gaza Strip—88,868 structures—had been damaged or destroyed.”

Put on your thinking caps.

 First, notice that to say 35% of all buildings are damaged or destroyed (according to the article’s text) is not the same as saying 35% of all buildings are destroyed (according to the article’s headline). Logic (and common sense) tells us that something can be damaged but not destroyed.

So the headline misleads us by telling us that 35% of the buildings are destroyed, while neglecting to tell us that the 35% includes buildings that were merely damaged. That is an important difference.

Second, and more significantly, notice that the article goes on to say: “Among these [the 88,868 damaged or destroyed buildings], [UNOSAT] identified 31,198 structures as destroyed, 16,908 as severely damaged, and 40,762 as moderately damaged.”

That means of the 88,868 damaged structures 35% were destroyed, 19% severely damaged, and 46% moderately damaged.

Here’s the rub: The headline makes it seem that 35% of all of Gaza’s buildings were destroyed, when in fact only 35% of the damaged structures were destroyed.

That’s a huge difference in meaning. And terribly misleading.

 

Don’t be bamboozled by misleading headlines, especially if you are interested in truth about the Israel-Hamas war and wish to avoid anti-Israel bias.

Read more — and read more carefully.

P.S. On the broader theme of misleading articles about the Israel-Hamas war, this recent article by Douglas Murray is important: “All eyes should be on Al Jazeera for being founded, funded — and directed — by terrorists,” New York Post, June 20, 2024.

 

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Hendrik van der Breggen, PhD, is a retired philosophy professor (formerly at Providence University College, Manitoba, Canada) and author of the recent book Untangling Popular Anti-Israel Arguments: Critical Thinking about the Israel-Hamas War. A PDF of this book is available for free at his blog APOLOGIA or the paperback can be  purchased at Amazon.

New article at The Stream

 

New article at The Stream

Dear readers of APOLOGIA,

I have a new article at The Stream (a Texas-based news and commentary site, with an office in Washington DC): “Untangling Anti-Israel Propaganda for Today’s College Students.”

Al Perrotta, The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, describes my article as “a really delicious piece … that you must share with your college-aged family members and friends.”

Yes, please feel free to share my article!

Hendrik

 

Correction of mistakes, again

Correction of mistakes, again

Letter to the editor, by Hendrik van der Breggen

The Carillon, May 9, 2024

EDIT/CORRECTION: My letter was not published in The Carillon (I don't know why). I thought it had been published there (maybe it will appear next week). My mistake. Nevertheless, below is my letter.

 

Rick Loewen in his recent letter to The Carillon (May 2, 2024) continues to accuse Michael Zwaagstra and me of justifying baby killing in the Israel-Hamas war. This accusation is serious—and false—so I feel obliged to reply.

Mr. Loewen fails to realize, as I argued in my previous letter (April 18), that Michael and I are not defending infanticide. Rather, we are discerning that the moral culprit of the death and destruction in Gaza is Hamas, not Israel.

In fact, Loewen’s latest letter completely ignores my point that Hamas started the war on October 7 by murdering 1200+ Israelis (including women and children), injuring many more, and taking 240 hostages. If this isn’t starting a war, what is?!

And Loewen completely ignores my argument that, although the death of Gazan civilians (including children) is a tragedy, for Hamas it’s a strategy. Hamas uses Gazan civilians as human shields (so-called “martyrs”), knowing Israel will inadvertently kill them while targeting Hamas—because Israel is morally obligated to protect Israeli men, women, and children from Hamas.

Why would Hamas do this? It’s because Hamas is a fanatical Jew-hating, genocidal, Islamist-jihadist terror group that has vowed to destroy all of Israel. (I’m not making this up. See the Hamas Charter.)

Instead of acknowledging that Hamas is the moral culprit, Loewen argues that Israel is an apartheid state, as if this alleged apartheid justifies Hamas’s brutal attack. But Loewen is once again mistaken.

Loewen points to the West Bank in which Palestinians and Israelis are, sadly, segregated. But the segregation in West Bank is for security reasons, not apartheid.

The West Bank is a disputed territory of which parts are controlled by the Palestinian Authority and parts by Israel. It’s messy and no doubt difficult for Palestinians, but it’s not racism or apartheid. The segregation and occupation is Israel’s response to past Palestinian attacks and suicide bombings against Israel.

At this juncture, it should be emphasized that the West Bank is not Gaza. We are talking about the war in Gaza, after all. So pointing to West Bank is a dodge. We should maintain our focus on Gaza if we wish to know why Gaza attacked Israel.

Perhaps this brief history lesson will help. Prior to 1967, Gaza was controlled by Egypt. In May of 1967, Egypt and its Arab neighbours were poised to invade and destroy Israel. But in the Six Day War of June, 1967, Israel pre-emptively defeated Egypt and its Arab neighbours. Subsequently, Israel occupied Gaza as a defensive measure against Egypt. But in 2005 Israel completely withdrew from Gaza and allowed Gaza to become its own independent state. The hope was for peace.

Sadly, in response to Israel giving Gaza its freedom and independence, Gazans embraced the genocidal, Jew-hating, Islamist-jihadist terror group known as Hamas. Then, over a period of almost 20 years, Gaza fired thousands of rockets at Israel and constructed a vast tunnel-based war machine to launch further attacks against Israel. This climaxed on October 7, 2023, when Hamas (and Gazans) invaded Israel.

All this to say: Islamist antisemitism, not apartheid, was the reason for Gaza’s brutal attack against Israel.

The fact remains, then, that Israel is a democracy whose minorities, including Arab citizens, have democratic rights. Sure, Israel is not a perfect state (no state is!), but it’s not an apartheid state.

I call on Mr. Loewen to agree to a ceasefire: Please stop spreading falsehoods about Israel, Michael Zwaagstra, and me.

P.S. Perhaps read my book Untangling Popular Anti-Israel Arguments: Critical Thinking about the Israel-Hamas War. It’s available for free (in PDF format) at my blog APOLOGIA or it can be purchased inexpensively (in paperback) at AMAZON.

 

Correction of mistakes

Correction of mistakes

Letter to the editor, by Hendrik van der Breggen

The Carillon, April 18, 2024

Thank you to columnist Michael Zwaagstra (The Carillon, April 4, 2024) for providing a positive review of my new book Untangling Popular Anti-Israel Arguments: Critical Thinking about the Israel-Hamas War.

I wrote that little book because there is so much poor thinking about the terrible war between Israel and Gaza (led by Iran-backed Hamas), a war that is now (as I write this letter) threatening to expand directly with Iran.

Sadly, the need for my book was confirmed by a recent letter to The Carillon by Rick Loewen (Columnist justifies infanticide, April 11, 2024). Mr. Loewen makes three serious mistakes, which I wish to correct.

Mistake 1

Loewen says Hamas did not start the war with Israel.

Correction

On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists (and Gazan civilians) illegally crossed the Israel-Gaza border and brutally murdered 1200 Israelis, injured many more, and kidnapped over 200. If this isn’t starting a war, what is?!

Mistake 2

Loewen tries to redirect the blame for starting the war from Hamas to Israel by claiming Israel has been “imposing its brand of apartheid on the Palestinians for years.”

Correction

In fact, there is no apartheid. Israel is a democracy in which Arabs and other minorities have full rights.

Loewen should take a look at the short PragerU video Is Israel an Apartheid State? And he should take a look at the National Post article “It is not apartheid: A quick debunking of the most obvious lies about the State ofIsrael.” [Also see Yoseph Haddad's interview She said Israeli apartheid but doesn't know what apartheid means - Unbelievable! Epic Video‼️ For a deeper dive, also see Chosen People Ministries article Is Israel an Apartheid State?]

Mistake 3

Loewen accuses Zwaagstra—and, by implication, me—of justifying “baby killing.”

Correction

No, we are not justifying baby killing. We are discerning the moral culprit of the death and destruction in Gaza. The moral culprit is Hamas, not Israel. This takes intellectual effort, which is sadly lacking in Loewen’s letter.

Yes, in war many innocents are killed. This is a tragedy. But for Hamas it’s a strategy.

Hamas (who murdered Israeli babies on October 7th) hides behind and knowingly sacrifices its own civilians (including children) in its fanatical and genocidal war to exterminate Jews. In fact, Hamas has no qualms when its own rockets land on its own people (including a hospital) as long as it can lie to gullible Western media by saying the rockets are from Israel.

Remember Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital? Western media, believing Hamas, blamed Israel. But the rocket came from Gaza, not Israel.

Remember Israel’s Barzilai hospital? Probably not. Much Western media was silent about the fact it was struck by at least three direct rocket hits from Hamas.

Because of the horrible images of dead Gazans supplied to us daily by Western media, we might be tempted to think Israel’s military response is not proportional. But this misunderstands proportionality, which is what Hamas wants. (This has been called the CNN Effect, employed by Hamas, whereby the horrific images of bloodshed play on the oft-emotion-based moral reasoning of Western observers, thereby thwarting sober-minded moral discernment.)

Proportionality in war is not mathematical equality (one side rapes and murders 100 people, so the other side rapes and kills 100 enemies in response). Rather, it’s complex: It involves weighing, on the one hand, possible deaths on one’s own side if opposing military targets are not struck, and, on the other hand, possible deaths of civilians on the other side if the military targets are struck.

Because Hamas, which is supported by the majority of Palestinians (and Iran), has vowed to commit October 7th over and over and over again—to wipe out Israel—Israel has been forced by Hamas to defend itself against Hamas by striking Gaza. And this is no easy task, because Hamas has spent nearly 20 years embedding its fighters in hundreds of kilometers of tunnels located under Gaza’s hospitals, homes, schools, and mosques. And this task is all the more difficult because Israel is attempting to target Hamas without targeting civilians (even though many of those civilians have aided Hamas in building its war machine). To Israel’s credit, the civilian-combatant death ratio is low when compared to other cases of urban warfare in recent history.

Hamas knows that Israel has a duty to protect Israeli citizens from annihilation and Hamas knows that many Gazan civilians will be killed in the process, yet Hamas launched its October 7 attack on Israel and continues to wage war on Israel, continues to hold Israeli hostages, and continues to hide behind Gazans.

Michael Zwaagstra’s and my work is, then, not a justification of baby killing, as Loewen alleges. Rather, it’s a justification of not allowing a death cult—Hamas—to murder millions of Israelis and sacrifice Gaza in the process.

In other words, proportionality in war involves careful reasoning, which is, in Loewen’s letter, missing in action.

On the notion of proportionality in war, which needs careful examination—not superficial or biased examination à la Loewen—I encourage a look at my book. The pdf version is free and can be downloaded at my blog APOLOGIA. [The book is also presented, chapter by chapter, as instalments on my blog.]

 

Hendrik van der Breggen, PhD, is a retired philosophy professor who lives in Steinbach, Manitoba.