Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre speaks at the National Prayer Breakfast in Ottawa on May 7.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Ever since the Liberals unveiled their surprise increase in the capital-gains tax in last month’s budget, the question on everyone’s lips has been: what will Pierre Poilievre say about it?
Well, maybe not on everyone’s lips. But certainly on some people’s. Conservatives, for instance. After all, conservatives are supposed to be against taxes and tax hikes, of all kinds. And leaders of the Opposition are supposed to oppose.
Surely the Conservative Leader would have to take the bait. Otherwise he would have to explain to his followers why he had once again failed to oppose the governing Liberals on a major question of economic policy – as he had failed to do on subsidies for electric vehicle batteries, for example, or on the ban on replacement workers.
Well, the days have just flown by, and at last we have our answer. Intriguingly, it’s: “What are you asking me for?” Only instead of a craven abdication of leadership, the talented Mr. Poilievre has managed to turn it into a boast, even a philosophical credo.
In a striking piece in Friday’s National Post, Mr. Poilievre acknowledges that, indeed, investors and business leaders have been pressing him to lead the charge on the capital gains issue. Why, they’ve fairly been “blowing up my phone.”
They yelp: “What are you going to do about this?”
My answer: “No. What are you going to do about it?”
Whoa. Who saw that plot twist coming? But there’s a point to it. Business, he complains, has been too content to roll over in the face of Liberal “attacks” on investment and entrepreneurship. “Gutless executives” prefer to “suck up” to the Liberals, relying on their “useless and overpaid lobbyists” rather than taking their case directly to the voters.
Got a beef, then, with the Liberals? You’re on your own. Why should I sell your bleat?
This represents an evolution in the populist, anti-corporate pose Mr. Poilievre has been trying to strike of late. Read quickly, it might even look like Mr. Poilievre is giving business a bit of tough love, urging them to show greater self-reliance, less dependence on government.
And it’s true: business has been all too willing to cozy up to the Natural Governing Party over the years, accepting destructive and intrusive government regulations as the price of government handouts. Any leader that put a stop to this sordid exchange would earn the thanks of a grateful nation.
But if that was what Mr. Poilievre meant he could have said so. He might have said:
Don’t bother coming to a Conservative government for handouts, because we won’t give you any.
And don’t waste your time lobbying a Conservative government, either. We’re going to do what’s right for Canada, whether business likes it or not.
So: You mind your business, and I’ll mind mine. I’ll stay out of business, and you stay out of politics.
But that is not what he says in the piece, is it? He doesn’t say he will stop giving handouts to business. And far from telling businesses to stay out of politics, he’s effectively demanding they enlist on his side.
On the one hand, he warns that he won’t take up any of their policy proposals unless business has already sold the public on it:
[Business] will get nothing from me unless they convince the people first … When they start telling me about your ideas on the doorstep in Windsor, St. John’s, Trois-Rivières, and Port Alberni, then I’ll think about enacting it.
On the other hand, on those policies he does take up, he wants business to provide him with political cover:
If I do pursue your policy, I expect that you will continue to advocate for it with those same Canadians in those same neighbourhoods until the policy is fully implemented.
As campaign messages go, it’s pretty nervy: I won’t lift a finger for you if it involves the slightest political risk to me. But I expect you to carry water for me, for as long as it takes.
It’s not that he wants business to stop sucking up to the Liberals, in other words, so much as that he wants them to start sucking up to the Conservatives: preparing public opinion for policies he can then adopt in safety, and campaigning for them – and by implication him – until they have been adopted.
Notice the language, too. I, me, my. “If I pursue your policy.” “I expect.” “Start telling me.”
I get it: he’s on a roll. He obliterated his rivals in the leadership race. He’s 20 points ahead in the polls. Not only does he not owe business any favours, but he’s in a position to start issuing demands.
But I can’t be the only one left with the impression that it all seems to have rather gone to his head.