If you don't want accusations "going there" (despite constantly doing it to the other parties yourselves with groundless, disingenuous FUD), don't lead the way with your own actions. You, Danielle Smith, have thoroughly disgraced yourself, as does Lisa Raitt and any other double-speaking conservative apologist trying to gaslight away a bald-faced plea for foreign interference.
You asked a foreign -- and currently hostile -- government to act in a manner benefitting your preferred party's electoral outcome. By extension, you implicitly acknowledged that doing otherwise is demonstrating to voters why your guy shouldn't win, and that you want breathing room so voter attention can be redirected. You even sold it in a manner that implied stronger influence over Canada at best, and outright quid pro quo at worst -- literal collusion from our highest office with a hostile foreign entity against Canada.
Neither option so much as entertains the possibility Poilievre could actually be fit to defend Canada's national interests. That's why you like him, isn't it? What is Canada to you but an obstacle to your Oil & Gas masters? Every word of that interview carried layers damning all that Poilievre's CPC and your UCP represent, from values to character to political objectives to even basic loyalty to your own nation and for that matter the ecological future of the planet itself.
I didn't think there could be a Canadian politician worse than Poilievre, yet here you are and this incident is all about you, Smith.
You put yourself on tape directly confessing and doing far worse than everything you and the entire Conservative movement have managed to conjure as insinuations against everyone else combined. You literally betrayed our entire nation for a chance at personal gain. If there's any coming back from that at all, then my faith in the basic cognitive capacity of our average Canadian voter is seriously shaken.
If no laws were broken, there will be new ones named after you.
Resign.
Emigrate.
Shred your passport.
You have no business standing on Canadian soil.
While there is no established, traditional definition, I'm pretty comfortable with the one I invented (claiming no originality, but so far not finding it elsewhere):
the intersection of working class and capital class
I think it captures the underlying idea that a middle class person is somewhere between the two real classes (rulers/owners and subjects/workers) in a way that dovetails with democratic ideals: collective self-rule/governance and economic self-determination/independence.
Further explanation:
To fit this definition, you need to be wealthy enough to own real assets (like your home, a small business, a farm, etc.) but you can't be so wealthy that you (and the rest of your household) don't need to work (unless you've all reached retirement age). It's still a loose definition -- does owning a car count, is a house really yours with a mortgage, etc. and why doesn't being able to afford renting an opulent apartment count -- but that's because to me it's not about lifestyle or social status. It's only partly about how well your needs are met. Power coupons have real influence, but money is still only a social construct -- and worse it's based on power taken from someone else. It can and will be manipulated by those who already have the most of it. But assets and especially land have intrinsic value based on utility that cannot be indirectly manipulated; when the price of land goes up, what's really happening is the value of money going down.I think the heart of the matter is, what is the nature of your stake/holdings within your own country? Do you have a form of power and agency that the political machinery must respect but does not revere? The numbers aren't what matters and would necessarily vary wildly across the nation anyway. What matters is how vulnerable you are to the effects of wealth inequality. That vulnerability is what should be getting highlighted, and I think it captures what was on people's minds back in the 90s as they talked about the middle class shrinking. It was not just wealth but power concentrating either on you or (far more likely) away from you.
In capitalism, capital is the only real power and politics only a moderating force. So the health of a democracy can be measured by the distribution of power -- i.e. the size of the middle class. While you can live a good life in the lower class (which may be inescapable due to such things as being disabled), it's by the grace of whomever holds power over you or the social systems that a majority (hopefully) dictates shall respect persons rather than property and ability. The lower class has no intrinsic power, so when middle class falls below majority
Below middle class, you are disenfranchised even if you still have a vote, because the economy sees you only as a burden and markets have no natural incentive to consider you. If you are lower class and the system hasn't the grace to protect your interests and quality of life, that is the system's failure. Above middle class you are privileged with the capacity to force economic changes others do not want, and on top of having a vote the political system will defer to you wherever you hold the capacity to help or harm -- and ignore the voting power of your lesser opponents. That's to say nothing of your ability to influence lower and even some middle class people to vote your interests instead of their own. If you are upper class and the system hasn't the fortitude to both constrain and redistribute your power, that is the systemic failure that most erodes middle class power. Once middle class no longer holds the majority of power, capitalism spirals into "late stage" and steadily grows the lower class while undermining their supports.
Middle class is where fair equity lies, by virtue of resilience against the abuses of wealth inequality. And yet though it should be as big as possible, middle class is the only one that can definitely be entirely empty.