During the "freedom" convoy, Canadian conservative leaders such as Pierre Polievre were falling over themselves to not just show support for the protesters, but be seen with them in the press and social media. Now at the time Polievre was busy running for the leadership of the federal Conservative party and showing that boosted his anti-Trudeau street cred.

We saw the same play out in Alberta with Danielle Smith. Now based on her radio show, Smith was pretty much already in the protester's camp before running to replace Jason Kenney so it was easy for her to use those people to basically hijack the UCP from whatever moderate conservatives were left after Kenney's reign.