Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre arrives to Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Oct. 2.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Nine months ago, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre told a television interviewer that if he were prime minister, he would not cut Liberal child care and dental care programs. Or so it seemed.
Mr. Poilievre was pressed in an interview with Quebec’s TVA network on how he’d balance the budget without cutting social programs. Journalist Emmanuelle Latraverse asked whether a Conservative government would keep daycare and dental care programs, and Mr. Poilievre said he’d work with provinces to protect the programs people receive.
But Ms. Latraverse asked again: “You will keep those programs? Or, are you committed to not cutting them?”
“We will not cut in programs that are already in place for Canadians,” Mr. Poilievre answered.
That was pretty clear. Since then, not so much. Mr. Poilievre has been ambiguous. But his words shift. He’s inching along a sliding scale toward the position – later – that that there will be cuts to some of those Liberal social programs.
On Wednesday, Mr. Poilievre’s answer about keeping the dental care program was maybe. “We’re studying it,” he told a radio interviewer.
The definitive answer, Conservative House Leader Andrew Scheer said recently, will come when the party unveils its election platform. That typically doesn’t happen till the official campaign, shortly before voting day.
The reason for delay is pretty obvious. Mr. Poilievre’s Conservatives want to talk about their issues, using their talking points: Axe the Tax, Build the Homes, etc., etc. They don’t want to feed a conversation about dental care, or about social programs, that gets in the way of their message. Not until victory is all but assured.
Still, the little that Mr. Poilievre has said about social programs has shifted. And it’s worth looking at the details.
In that TVA interview nine months ago, Mr. Poilievre notably said Conservatives would not cut programs that are already in place.
But that description doesn’t apply to the proposed pharmacare plan to cover contraceptives and diabetes – which the Liberals negotiated with the NDP. Pharmacare legislation has not yet been passed. Mr. Poilievre has made it clear he’s against that plan, arguing it would displace private health insurance plans.
And when it comes to the dental care program and $10-a-day child care, Mr. Poilievre has at times argued those programs don’t actually exist.
That raises echoes of the way former prime minister Stephen Harper handled things when he took office in 2006. Mr. Harper argued that child care agreements the previous Liberal government had negotiated with provinces were not implemented, so they were just promises – and he wasn’t cancelling programs when he scrapped them.
In the spring, Mr. Poilievre told a Radio-Canada interviewer that the dental care program “doesn’t exist,” and that it was just a promise made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. But recently, the Liberal government has trotted out statistics to prove it now does exist: So far, 751,048 people have received covered dental care.
On Wednesday, Mr. Poilievre said Conservatives “want to find out how many people are actually going to benefit in reality” from dental care, “not the promises, the talking points.” He suggested the program had to be weighed against the economics but Conservatives would ensure the “less fortunate” could get the “essentials of life.”
That’s not very clear, but Mr. Poilievre is certainly keeping open the option of cutting back the dental care program, at least in part.
Mr. Poilievre has kept options open on child care, too – not to cancel the billion-dollar child-care agreements with provinces, but to change what they’re for.
The Liberal program aims to subsidize $10-a-day child-care spaces. But in August, Mr. Poilievre said $10-a-day “doesn’t exist right now.” Presumably, he was referring to the fact that access to $10 spots is still sketchy, and not available to everyone. But it’s also Mr. Poilievre’s way of saying that he’s not committed to subsidizing $10-a-day spots.
And he has promised that he will give provinces more flexibility – which could mean anything from raising the price of subsidized spots, for example to $20 a day, to allowing them to put the money into child-care tax credits, or removing any requirement the money be spent on daycare.
The seemingly clear answer Mr. Poilievre gave last December has shifted. He moved to ambiguity, then to expressing doubt about those social programs, suggesting they need changes, and apparently inching toward the day when he can talk about cuts out loud.