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Tag: Pierre Poilievre
As the Cabinet retreat concludes in Halifax, the assembled journalists and pundits following the meeting are looking to see what kind of “reset” the prime minister is going to offer voters in order to rescue his abysmal polling numbers, whether that is the persistent rumours of a Cabinet shuffle, or the ultimate play of his realizing that he needs to step down for the good of the party, and getting a leadership contest underway. Of course, that’s not actually going to happen, but there are a whole lot of people in the media space who are looking for something like it to take place because they’ve spent their summer months hooked on American news, and are looking to replicate what they have seen in terms of the bounce the Democrats’ polls have undertaken since president Joe Biden made the decision to drop his quest for re-election and to step aside in favour of Kamala Harris. But Canada is not the United States, and Justin Trudeau is not Joe Biden.
This kind of political drama-envy is not new to Canadian politics, nor is the problem of Canadian political media trying to import American narratives because they think it will somehow help the audience relate more. Hell, for that matter, it’s also not new for political parties in this country to import American narratives wholesale and try to do things like simply dividing them by ten in order to Canadianize them, even though that’s not actually how this works (and I’m looking at you most especially, NDP). This particular situation with Trudeau’s poor polling numbers and what happened with the Democrats is catnip for this particular kind of political media in this country, and they cannot resist its lure, so the attempts to force Trudeau into this narrative box are coming on particularly strongly, and there’s little that anyone can do to stop it, unfortunately.
Cabinet shuffle speculation is a constant in Ottawa, but aside from Seamus O’Regan’s decision to step down and be replaced by Steve MacKinnon, it’s hard to see just what kind of reset will satisfy the media narrative, aside from a leadership race (which isn’t going to happen at this point in the game). I know that a number of backbenchers have been agitating and doing the Anonymous Liberal™ schtick over the summer, but there frankly isn’t a lot of untapped potential on said backbenches that would make a noticeable difference in Cabinet if they were swapped in—assuming that a manner could be found to do so that wouldn’t completely unbalance it in terms of geographic, gender, and cultural representation. The notion that Trudeau will recruit Mark Carney directly to Cabinet without having won a seat first is little more than a technicolour daydream, but nevertheless one that the political media have deluded themselves into believing for months now, for some reason.
So just what kind of change can the Liberals actually offer if this is what the voting public is craving, if you believe the polls? That’s become the million-dollar question. One of the things that has been creeping into the discourse is the notion of the “politics of joy” that the Kamala Harris/Tim Walz ticket has been employing, in contrast to the dourness of Trump’s declinist assertions, but once again, this is hard to try and make a direct import into Canada because Trudeau has tried to focus on the “sunny ways” shtick, to the point of toxic positivity at times (and certainly their happy-clappy pabulum talking points are meant to reinforce that toxic positivity), while Poilievre is the one asserting that Canada is “broken” and that only he can fix it. Even Poilievre’s attempts to present an “It’s morning in America” positive vision fell flat, and not only because of the ridiculously poor choice of foreign-sourced stock images that his social media geniuses edited together for a Twitter video that they were forced to delete, but because his entire slogan-filled message rings hollow.
Meanwhile, any minister that was asked about change or resets at the Cabinet retreat basically said the same thing—that they’ve heard the message loud and clear that Canadians are frustrated and angry, and they’re going to focus on “delivering results for Canadians.” And hey, re-focusing on “deliverology” like they did back when they took office in 2015 would be a welcome change, and it would be new and novel for them. This is a government that has opted not to focus on managerial competence since about mid-2018, but rather has devoted their energies to finding shiny new baubles that will try and recreate the energy and excitement of 2015 all over again, to ever-diminishing returns. If they want to really double-down on “delivering results for Canadians,” this could be one way to do it, and finding a level of change that would be unique to Canadian politics rather than just aping the American narratives and dividing by ten.
But let’s not kid ourselves—this is Trudeau we’re talking about and he will try to find some shiny new programme that he hopes will wow the socks off of everyone, that leaves the Conservatives and NDP unable to compete, but he also has to do it while being fiscally prudent, or to offset the costs in some way that may or may not include class warfare (which the Liberals seem to believe is working for them). We’ll have to see what it is, either when the final press conference of the retreat is held, or possibly in a surprise Speech from the Throne when Parliament returns (but that’s less of a sure bet because the NDP, whose support they rely upon, have come to distrust prorogations after Stephen Harper abused them), but you can count on something to be cooking from the Liberals that they hope will capture voters’ imaginations just enough to get them over their dislike of Trudeau and push the Liberals just far enough over the edge electorally to squeak out another win based on voter efficiency alone. Meanwhile, political media will continue to try and find an American narrative to import, and the Liberals will resist the notion that change is what people are looking for when the next election rolls around.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
When politicians of any stripe give sob stories about the plight of their constituents, it’s best to take them with a shaker’s worth of salt. Miraculously, they always have a message that happens to be exactly the party line, whichever party it is, and whether it’s praise or scorn for the current government, these fictional constituents always know just the right thing to say. It’s absolutely uncanny. But sometimes, the messages defy any sort of credulity when you think about them for half a second. One such example was when Lisa Raitt was, in sombre tones, worrying about the family who couldn’t afford to fill up their minivan to take their kids to hockey practice thanks to the carbon levy when it was then much, much lower than it is today. It was plainly obvious that the carbon levy was adding pennies to a tank of gas, which that fictitious family was getting back in the rebates, but the point of the message was not veracity, but to play to emotions. Oh, those poor suffering families!
Another such example was Mark Strahl’s invention of “Briane” during the occupation of downtown Ottawa, claiming in the House of Commons that her bank accounts were frozen after buying a bit of merchandise in support of the occupiers—a ludicrous proposition given that there was certainly no tracking of donations, nor would the RCMP have any ability to track that in order to inform the banks to freeze accounts. It was risible on the face of it. We also know in hindsight that the only people whose accounts were frozen were those who could be traced to the vehicles parked in front of Parliament Hill, which was pretty much the intention all along—to make it uncomfortable for them to remain part of the occupation. But the Theatre of Lies has proven that lies that manipulate emotions are effective, and to this day, people claim that accounts were frozen for mere expressions of support for the occupation.
Another particular case in point is Conservative MP Michelle Ferreri, who has a habit of saying a lot of incredibly dubious things in Question Period, such as the repeated claim that seniors in her riding are reduced to eating cat food thanks to the policies of the federal government, or that the carbon levy has created a “mental health crisis” among teenagers. No, seriously. And Ferreri was a local journalist before she got into politics, so she knows how to do things like check facts and verify sources, but she doesn’t. This past week, she tweeted another incredibly ridiculous lament of life in Canada in 2024.
“I spoke with a Dad today, he told me he is heartbroken for his son who is an electrician and his girlfriend who is a nurse. They have worked hard to save $120,000 but still cannot afford a home in Canada. @JustinTrudeau call an election, Canadians cannot afford you.”
So, to be clear, nowhere in all of Canada can $120,000 get you a downpayment on a house. Bullshit. If you’re going to make up a sob story, which this is clearly attempting to be, then try to make it remotely plausible. In addition, one particularly astute commenter responded with the incredibly apt “What, exactly, would an immediate election do for them? Do they get a house for voting? Does your leader plan to implement price controls?”
This is one of the reasons why the fact that politics has been reduced to slogans is making Canadians as a whole dumber, because so much of this is raising entirely false expectations. Poilievre getting elected and “axing the tax” (which is not a tax but a levy) will do pretty much nothing for affordability. It will have a negligible impact on the price of fuel (there are bigger variations over the course of a long weekend than with the levy), it will do pretty much nothing about the price of food because its impact has also been negligible (when the real reason why most of the increases happened was because of climate change-related droughts or other severe weather like flash flooding or hurricanes, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine turning commodity markets for grains and cooking oils upside down). It will do nothing for the price of homes, nor will any of Poilievre’s proposed policies, because his proposals would punish and reward municipalities for things outside of their control, and attempt to incentivize them with cash that is about one percent of their overall budget, using a mechanism that he couldn’t actually touch because it involves funding agreements with provinces and not individual municipalities. (Paul Wells did that math here). These slogans will not help the fictional constituents the MPs regale us with tales about, nor will they help anyone in real life, but they are playing on emotions.
Promising that a change in government will provide a quick fix for issues that are either global in nature (like inflation) or which have become structural after decades of bad policy choices by all levels of government is asking for trouble. It’s immediately setting the population up for disappointment, and if you say that they should have known that those kinds of promises were impossible from the start, or that they aren’t meant to be taken literally, then that kind of proves the point, doesn’t it? Even the very narrative of “Canada’s broken” falls into this same pattern. These are all lies designed to make people angry rather than to think about either the problem they are claiming to be pointing out, or about the solution that is claiming to be offered.
It’s unfortunately proven that this kind of tactic resonates in voters’ brains, and part of what makes any of this so difficult to combat, either from the government or the press, because those emotional responses can override higher brain functions. That’s also what makes it so dangerous for both sides—dangerous for a government who can’t counter this kind of messaging effectively, but also dangerous for those spreading these lies, because the moment they can’t deliver, all of that anger and resentment that they created has the very real potential to blow up in their faces, and that could have serious consequences for us all.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
This content is restricted to subscribers
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
This content is restricted to subscribers
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
This content is restricted to subscribers
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
This content is restricted to subscribers
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
This content is restricted to subscribers
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
This content is restricted to subscribers
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
This content is restricted to subscribers
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
