Poilievre has plenty to be pleased about
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre may not have, in his words, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “soft blue eyes and fluffy hair and fancy socks,” but he has many reasons to smile.
His two main opponents — Trudeau and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh — are adopting the frames by which he presents issues, demonstrating not only that Poilievre’s messaging resonates with the public, but suggesting they may, in fact, believe them to be true.
As Trudeau criss-crosses the country touting his upcoming budget’s new affordability measures, the prime minister increasingly sounds like Poilievre, who has spent the past 18 months talking about Canada being a place where everything feels broken.
“Our primary preoccupation in this budget,” Trudeau said in French on Friday, “is to recognize that for young families, for young people across the country, the system no longer seems to work. The economy no longer works for them, despite their good jobs, despite the work they do, they do not see themselves owning a home, they have enormous challenges to pay their rent,” echoing the Tory leader.
For Singh, his acknowledgment seemed to come Thursday, in a speech to the Broadbent Institute’s Progress Summit, where he noted that climate change is “literally killing people.” While not addressing it would lead to higher food and home insurance prices, he argued, the Liberals’ climate strategy was dividing people and leading to higher costs.
“Our vision, our plan, we will lower people’s monthly bills, not add more costs,” Singh said. The NDP would “not punish people who can’t afford to change the way they get to work or heat their homes,” he noted, parroting Conservative talking points. The NDP would focus on making big polluters pay, Singh said, although he did not explain how he would prevent those costs from being downloaded onto consumers.
On Wednesday, the NDP supported a non-binding Conservative motion that called on the prime minister to convene a televised first ministers conference on the carbon levy — an event that would see a majority of premiers gang up against the current carbon pricing framework. The Green Party was dismayed: “It’s tragic to see our NDP friends choose to echo the noplan Conservatives’ fear-mongering rhetoric instead of focusing on the real drivers of inequality in this country.”
On Friday, NDP spokesperson Alana Cahill told the Star the party still supports a consumer price on carbon, but will develop a plan based on the principles Singh outlined. The trial balloon, however — if that’s what it was — had already been floated, with Poilievre’s office slamming Singh for “desperately trying to run from his own record,” after, it said, siding with the Liberals and voting 22 times to create and increase the carbon levy.
Those events alone might have made for a good week, but Poilievre also got to see the Liberals shoot themselves in the foot, during the prime minister’s appearance at the public inquiry into foreign interference.
On Wednesday, Trudeau told the commission, in French, that he doesn’t read all the briefing notes placed in front of him. “The only sure way to ensure that I am informed of an important policy issue, it’s never to only slip me a note that maybe I will read or maybe I won’t have time to read if I am on the road or if my schedule is very full, it is to ensure that I have a moment for a direct briefing with my national security and intelligence adviser,” he said, and repeated again for clarity.
That stood in sharp contrast to testimony his chief of staff, Katie Telford, gave parliamentarians last April when she said “everything the prime minister receives, he spends a lot of time with and most definitely reads.”
Trudeau sought to clarify his answer Friday, saying that while he reads “everything that is put in front of me,” he expects “anything that is of particularly high importance or relevance to be elevated, and that’s what happens.”
Still, it was fodder for Poilievre during a speech to the party faithful Thursday at the Canada Strong and Free networking conference in Ottawa, where he basked in the admiration of hundreds of Conservatives eager for what polls predict could very well be a Brian Mulroney-sized majority come the next election.
But perhaps, Poilievre should be reminded of Michael Ignatieff. As Liberal leader back in 2009, Ignatieff successfully made the case that Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper needed to do much more to respond to the global financial crisis.
And Harper did — so much so that voters returned him to power with a majority government.