“As a nation we tend to shy away from extremes,” said our late great Washington ambassador Allan Gotlieb, “As some wit put it, Canadians are like vichyssoise; we are cold, half-French and difficult to stir.”
So why is Pierre Poilievre trying to get us so mad? Why does anger seep from his every pore? Why does the Conservative Leader insist on being – to borrow a phrase from former U.S. vice-president Spiro Agnew – our “nattering nabob of negativism?”
Opposition leaders of course are supposed to oppose. But has there ever been a Conservative opposition leader so rabid, so given over to the politics of destruction? Brian Mulroney, Bob Stanfield, Joe Clark weren’t like that. Stephen Harper was bitter but he didn’t engage in character assaults like his understudy, Pierre. John Diefenbaker could wield the hatchet but it was often with glee in his eye. A lot of it was show.
With Pierre the Polarizer, there’s only one card in the playbook. The attack card. Run down the country and blame all its woes on Justin Trudeau. The Prime Minister has “vile and racist views.” He bears responsibility for the increased homicide rate. The flooding of British Columbia streets with heroin is partly his fault as well. Jeepers! What’s next? Dutch elm disease? Will he get “Justin” on that, too? How about the shrinkage on the Prairies of those once mighty buffalo herds?
But Mr. Poilievre might have to cool his heels on inflation. It went as high as 8.1 per cent. This was Mr. Trudeau’s doing, of course. But now it’s down to 4.3 per cent and is on track to sink more. Is that his doing as well?
Mr. Poilievre is a career politician with precious little experience in the real world. There’s a problem with many of these guys. They’ve been immersed in political combat since day one. That’s about all that turns their crank. They can’t think outside the box because they’ve forever been in the box.
The Conservative Leader is smart, talented, articulate. But as orchestrated by adviser Jenni Byrne, who specializes in gutter politics, he deliberately lowers his intellect so as to microtarget and fire up his hard-right populist base.
It’s an act. He could reach much higher. He’s only 43. Instead of doing anything that remotely resembles the politics of Donald Trump that brutally divided America, Mr. Poilievre should be advocating a conservatism that unites. He should be about new politics, and he should have some dignity, imagination, humility.
The Trudeau government can well be targeted as tired, overcentralized, out of touch. The dangers of breakaway AI, the creation of masterminds greater than our own, is becoming the issue of our times. But the Trudeau government has barely uttered a word about transformative bots like ChatGPT.
And what’s Mr. Poilievre on about? Steeped in old-think, he’s whining about how the CBC – which just broke a story about Mr. Trudeau vacationing in Jamaica with a wealthy donor to the Trudeau Foundation – is a propaganda arm of the Liberals. As NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh notes, the public network has become a “personal obsession” of Mr. Poilievre who, he says, “wrongfully” accuses journalists of bias.
On the subject of state-funded media, we haven’t yet heard Mr. Poilievre make mention of the conservative Postmedia newspaper chain, which incudes the virulently anti-Trudeau Sun newspapers. Postmedia has received tens of millions in Trudeau government handouts in the past few years, subsidies which its CEO Andrew MacLeod has told shareholders have been critical to its bottom line.
Postmedia is the dominant print-media chain in the country. It employs the majority of the country’s political columnists, who are hardly soft on Mr. Trudeau. Does Mr. Poilievre have a problem with that? Or in Quebec, where right-of-centre Pierre Karl Péladeau’s Quebecor is the biggest player.
How much cause for the angry man’s hostility is legitimate? Is he really that hard done by?
Mr. Poilievre and his party have the advantage of facing a Trudeau government that is getting long in the tooth. The time-for-a-change argument could weigh heavily in Mr. Poilievre’s favour. But if the Conservative Leader is to take advantage, he must get off the anger track and show some statesmanlike qualities. Canadians want more than a troll king.