Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre arrives to Parliament Hill in Ottawa on June 19.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
No wonder Conservatives are champing at the bit for an election. This week’s cabinet retreat suggests the Liberals have simply run out of steam.
But the Tories could still lose, if they let the next election turn into a replay of the one under way in the United States: a contest between the normals and the crazies.
To prevent that, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre needs to hold his tongue.
For the Liberals, the cabinet retreat turned into a rout, as one minister after another stood before a microphone to boldly reverse previous policies.
A government that greatly expanded the intake of temporary foreign workers and permanent residents is now cutting back on temporary foreign workers and may do the same with permanent residents.
A government that once hoped to conclude a free-trade agreement with China slapped a 100-per-cent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles, matching a similar American move.
A government that has been promising for nine years to jump-start a massive new housing program offered a clutch of federally owned properties that might, somehow, one day, be used for housing.
A government that faces the chronic challenge of internal trade barriers and the increasingly acute problem of lagging productivity has plans to convene a working group to study the situation.
Exhaustion.
A few Liberal supporters, substituting wild optimism for cold reality, believe the revival of Democratic fortunes in the American election campaign could somehow be replicated in Canada.
But that revival began with President Joe Biden making way for Vice-President Kamala Harris as the nominee. Justin Trudeau says he is determined to lead his party into the next election. Unless the Liberals lose Montreal’s LaSalle-Émard-Verdun in the Sept. 16 by-election, to complement the June loss in Toronto-St. Paul’s, it seems likely that he will.
The Liberals may have one hope: that Mr. Poilievre perversely gives them the ammunition they need to brand the Conservative Leader as extreme.
Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz scored a hit when he labelled his Republican opponents as “weird.”
Donald Trump is the same narcissistic carnival barker he was in 2016 and 2020. But this time, instead of having the stolid Mike Pence as his running mate, he has Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance, who did not endear himself when he claimed the country was being run by a clutch of childless cat ladies.
Mr. Trump has also brought on board anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who once ran for the Democratic presidential nomination but who now is full-on MAGA.
If Vice-President Kamala Harris wins the presidency, it may be in part because the Democrats successfully depicted their Republican opponents as a “circle of weirdos.”
Mr. Poilievre is helping the Liberals paint him with the same brush.
There is the old stuff: his hanging out with the anti-vaxxer crowd; his strange fixation with cryptocurrencies; his nod to World Economic Forum conspiracy theorists; his promise to fire the governor of the Bank of Canada and to defund the CBC.
More recently it has become a question of the language he uses. Mr. Poilievre and his advisers call Mr. Trudeau “wacko.” They call university professors “hackademics.” They made fun of an expert “with 23 letters behind her name.” They deride the “bought-and-paid-for media.”
Such language thrills party activists while not drawing much attention more broadly because the remarks are mostly limited to social media.
But the Conservatives’ future hinges on the support of middle-class suburban voters. If those voters come to believe that the Poilievre Conservatives are carbon copies – or even pale imitations – of Trump Republicans, they will turn away from the party.
That’s why every incendiary line Mr. Poilievre and his advisers tweet is likely to appear in a future Liberal attack ad. The Conservatives want to make the election a referendum on Mr. Trudeau and his three terms in government. The Liberals would much prefer the election be about Mr. Poilievre and his alleged extremism.
The election is Mr. Poilievre’s to lose. The one sure way he could lose it would be to make that election a choice between normals and crazies.