Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre arrives at a rally in Iqaluit on Sept. 9.Dustin Patar/The Canadian Press
Four years ago, on Labour Day 2020, Erin O’Toole stood in front of a camera and told working-class Canadians their lives were being ruined by bad trade deals and “corporate and financial power brokers who care more about their shareholders than their employees.”
Those “elites”, Mr. O’Toole said in his message, “love trade deals with China that allow them to access cheap labour.”
He also announced that growth should not be the “end-all-be-all of politics,” and that government’s goal should be “more than just wealth creation; it should be solidarity and the wellness of families – and includes higher wages.”
It was a remarkable change in direction for a party historically more apt to bow low to capital than to labour. But Mr. O’Toole, the Conservative Party leader at the time, was trying to win over a cohort of voters that had long eluded the Tories: the working class.
It didn’t pay off; the 2021 election left the Liberals with their second minority government. But the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre are nonetheless back at it, targeting working-class Canadians as keenly as ever.
On Labour Day this month, Mr. Poilievre released a video in which he saluted, in reverential tones, “the servers and soldiers, the farmers and factory hands, the nurses and night-shift workers” – the people, he said, who “carry the government on their backs with little reward.”
The question for voters is whether Mr. Poilievre and his party have policies on deck to support the working class, or have merely identified a pool of accessible voters who could help them win the next federal election and are playing to their resentments for political gain.
The Conservatives no doubt took note of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party’s 2022 election victory, in which a strategy of catering to blue-collar workers paid off handsomely. Nine Ontario NDP ridings flipped to the PCs, helping Premier Doug Ford win a second term.
Prior to the election, Monte McNaughton, then minister of labour, tabled and saw enacted the prosaically named Working for Workers Act. Among its provisions was a ban on non-compete clauses, a requirement for businesses with more than 25 employees to have a written policy on disconnecting after hours, and the guaranteed right of delivery people to use the washrooms at the businesses they serve.
Mr. O’Toole had some ideas, too. His platform included a promise to double the Canada Workers Benefit for low-income people – the single most expensive item the party proposed. It also included pledges to create higher employment insurance payments during recessions and to require federally regulated companies with more than 1,000 employees to have worker representatives on their boards.
To date, the only thing Mr. Poilievre has done that could be considered overtly “pro-labour” was to support government legislation banning replacement workers during strikes in federally regulated businesses. It was a defensive move, designed to disarm the NDP and the Liberals.
Other than that, Mr. Poilievre has focused his pitch to voters on eliminating the carbon tax, reducing crime, building houses and cutting the deficit. Polls show that his strategy has won him support across all income groups.
He also hinted at rejigging federal income support programs to reduce the penalties workers face when their wages rise.
But he has not outlined concrete proposals, such as ensuring labour mobility between provinces (more on that later this week) or banning non-compete clauses, that specifically target blue-collar workers the way Mr. O’Toole and Mr. McNaughton did.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been courting working-class Canadians with, among other things, low-cost daycare and public dental care. But a recent foray into the field backfired when all it produced was a news video of him being accosted by a steel worker angry at the cost of living.
The NDP is struggling, too. Polls show its support dropping – a development that won’t be helped by party leader Jagmeet Singh’s recent tweet saying that, “When progressive and working Canadians stand united, we will win together!” It was a comment that carried a condescending undertone.
Mr. Poilievre is well-positioned to win the support from working-class Canadians that eluded his predecessor. But whether that support turns into durable gains for the Conservatives will depend on what he delivers.