Michael Harris has supported Justin Trudeau pretty consistently. Now, he writes, it's time for Trudeau to go:
Nothing is clearer in Canadian politics than that the next federal election is Pierre Poilievre’s to lose.
According to the latest Nanos poll, the Conservative Party of Canada has a 13-point lead over the governing Liberals. Poilievre has a 10-point lead over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as the choice for PM, though according to the polls, neither man is the rage.
There is no mystery about why Canadians are unhappy with the current government. Times are undeniably tough. Canadians still have a COVID hangover, feel angry about affordability issues on everything from homes to groceries and worry about the stalling economy.
A lot have also developed a visceral dislike of Trudeau. There are a variety of reasons for that, from deficits stretching out to a distant fiscal horizon, to his occasional lapses of personal judgment. You don’t feast on caviar when a lot of your fellow citizens are staring into stone soup.
So what about the alternative? He's big on grievance but short on details:
Poilievre is currently mopping the floor with his political opponents. And he will keep doing that until they come up with a better approach to dealing with his relentless and consequential attacks.
The Conservative leader has a daunting list of grievances. And they resonate profoundly with Canadians. But he remains decidedly thin on solutions.
Poilievre’s greatest vulnerability is on how, or even if, he would fight climate change. He might rage against carbon pricing, but he has so far declined to flesh out the Conservatives’ policy, promising to release details later.
That is textbook opposition politics. The longer you delay revealing your policies, the less time your opponents have to pick them apart.
What the Liberals need is change. And Harris suggests that change should start at the top with a leader who can pick Poilievre apart.
Image: Sean Kilpatrick, the Canadian Press.
12 comments:
Not sure about Ottawa, but the grass is pretty green and brown here in T.O. I suspect it's too late for JT to take that walk in the snow, and the Libs will be saddled with him in the next election. The knives certainly aren't out like they were when Chretien was getting stale.
Since none of the parties have anything like an inspiring leader and vision, I may find myself in need of a good soak in the tub on election night. This despite knowing that this response is exactly what PP's strategy is designed to elicit.
Unfortunately, Cap, Poilievre knows what he's doing. It's completely cynical, but it's worked before.
Yup, pp knows what he’s doing because all he’s been doing for two years is telling us it’s trudeau’s fault and we should hate him and voila, people hate him. Well past time for the libs and others, many others, to pick this stupid simple tactic apart. We are letting pp off far too easily with limited to zero pushback.
I get that jt’s time is up, were it my decision he'd have been gone last year and a new leader would be making pp look like the schmuck he is.
I can’t figure out why the opposition to pp is sooo weak. Don’t we have good people in the other parties that can counter this nasty piece of sh…? Don’t we have intelligent and knowledgeable people who can pick apart his nasty political style and turn his rhetoric and hyperbole and invective back on him and his party? C’mon on!!!
Quite right! The longer the opposition delays its policies and programmes, the less time the government will have to prepare its responses in detail. But worse still, the less time the opposition will have to create and analyse their own commitments. How can people vote intelligently if the policies aren't addressed in detail and accurately budgeted?
One could ask the same question about Donald Trump, Graham. It has something to do with the fear of taking him on.
You're quite right, hels. It's about policy. Rhetoric is merely words, words, words.
Yes, there is a fear in taking these thugs on but I think it’s because of their followers and supporters who they don’t want to rile up.
The supporters are like the flying monkeys in the wizard of oz story who will swarm and attack. As bad as trump and pp may be their supporters are even worse.
I say we shouldn’t care about upsetting those folks as they will never, ever, vote for a person or party they deem to be progressive.
These people won't change, Graham. But fearing them only increases their influence.
'Why is the opposition to Lil'PP so weak?'
It is partly the self-censorship of the corporate media. I glance at the headlines in the G&M, N.POST papers etc. All about how Trudeau is toast while treating Lil'PP's every utterance with gravitas. Meanwhile the CP site, (Canadian Press) has news articles, not opinion pieces, and it is full of 'Trudeau funds housing deal with BC, Nova Scotia etc, '
Lots of 'own goals' by Libs and NDP for sure, but nothing at the level of Lil'PP's convoy support. And zero hard questions re lack of policies.
Voters have short memories and the media reinforces that.
NPoV
Real investigative journalism would take a good hard look at Poilievre, PoV.
NPoV is right on. The corporate media, mostly owned by a couple companies and right leaning, is definitely self censoring. It’s not about what they report it’s about what they don’t report. And they don’t report the good news on jt, at all. There is some good announcements lately regarding funding for housing and pharmacare for all the provinces and yes, the ndp had a big hand in that.
Instead we’ll get the faux outrage from pp and the likes of Alberta premier marlaina smith about the online harms bill or the pharmacare bill or the feds moves to do something, not enough, about our part in climate change.
Boom, boom, boom, goes the steady drumbeat from pp, his media friends, the sycophants. It’s all jt’s fault, it’s all jt’s fault.
What we need to do is break up the media monopolies, as well as other monopolies. They do not serve us well.
The big money is lining up behind Poilievre, Graham.
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