Election Preview

If you want to know what the next federal election will look like, take a look at Question Period in the House of Commons. Susan Delacourt writes:

The Conservative leader acknowledged his lack of vocal prowess in the Commons this week after attempting to sing a few bars of “New York, New York.”

“I cannot sing very well, but at least I pay for my hotel rooms,” Poilievre said, asking whether Justin Trudeau would be footing the bill for his own foray to New York City this week.

Trudeau did not have a musical rejoinder, which was also fine. First of all, as the Commons Speaker reminded the House, singing is not permitted in question period. As well, Trudeau has received mixed reviews in the past for his own singing — notably his version of Bohemian Rhapsody, belted out at a hotel piano while he was in London last year for the Queen’s funeral.

Trudeau and Poilievre will likely not be facing off against each other in any future musical duels. As things now stand, however, they will be going up against each other in a future election.

In the past few months, they’ve been turning Wednesdays in the Commons into a little preview of that battle, with the prime minister fielding all the questions (as has been his practice once a week since he came to office) and Poilievre doing his own solo act, asking most of the questions in the time allotted to Conservatives.

It's obvious that Trudeau and Poilievre despise each other:

Poilievre is gleefully, unabashedly personal in his attacks on Trudeau, going farther than any opposition leader I can remember in trashing the leader of government. Daily, he presents Trudeau as a corrupt elitist — even memorably accusing the PM earlier this year of disloyalty to Canada and allowing the Chinese to rig elections in the Liberals’ favour. Once upon a time, this line of attack was more the stuff of anonymous commenters on the internet — now it’s part of the daily script for Conservatives in question period.

Trudeau seizes every opportunity to frame Poilievre as the candidate of rage and anger, in what seems to be a bid to position the next election as a choice between hope and despair.

No one really knows when the next election will arrive, but the Wednesday faceoffs in the Commons are giving us a good sense of how nasty the battle will be if it is a match between Trudeau and Poilievre. It will be intensely personal. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it won’t be a musical.

Disharmony will be the order of the day.

Image: The Toronto Star

Can He Do It?

Michael Harris writes that Pierre Poilievre won't bring Justin Trudeau down:

“I don’t see any signs of traction for Pierre Poilievre.”

These words were spoken on background by a senior Liberal who is less than enamoured with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. With a long history in the party running back to Pierre Elliott Trudeau, he is critical of the way in which the current prime minister has shunned veterans in the party, dissolved the Liberal caucus in the Senate, and chose not to consult old hands. They have seen a thing or two in their time, and still believe they have something to contribute.

And recent polls seem to bear out his assessment:

Canadians don’t seem to think that being a far-right attack-dog confers the credentials to be prime minister. Even with painful inflation, and a PM with obvious baggage after three terms in power, Canadians in the Nanos Research poll gave Trudeau a huge lead over Poilievre. If only Trudeau and Poilievre appeared on the ballot, 46 per cent of respondents would choose Trudeau as PM and just 30 per cent the new Conservative leader.

Nik Nanos rightly observes that the incumbent always does better in these polls, because they already have the position and are “a better known commodity.” But the fact is, Poilievre has been in politics longer than Justin Trudeau. And he is very well known from his long record both in and out of government: supporter of Stephen Harper’s Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act, rabid anti-vaxxer, and champion of the infamous siege of Ottawa that masqueraded under the name of the Freedom Convoy. For Poilievre, the occupation of Ottawa by a mob was just another opportunity for a selfie.

And the Nanos Research poll revealed another key weakness in Poilievre’s attempt to appeal to Canadians, other than the ones who downed the Kool-Aid inside the circled wagons of the recent CPC leadership race. When it comes to women voters, Trudeau leaves Poilievre in his vapour trail, with a stunning 52 per cent favouring the PM, against just 22 per cent for Poilievre. Those are not only losing numbers for Poilievre in the all-important suburban areas, but just about everywhere else.

As predicted by those who know him best, Poilievre has not moderated his right-wing messaging. In what appears to be a spiteful response to some key MPs who didn’t support his leadership, Poilievre dropped two of his strongest members from his shadow cabinet: Ed Fast and Michelle Rempel Garner.

And the CPC’s new civil liberties critic is none other than Ontario MP Marilyn Gladu. Gladu was an early and vociferous opponent of the Trudeau government’s masking and vaccination mandates. Like Alberta’s new premier, Gladu seems to think that it is more important to have the right to say no to a prudent public health measure than it is to save thousands of lives during a deadly pandemic. Talk about looking through the wrong end of the telescope.

At the next election, Justin will have been in office for close to ten years. He'll be well beyond his best before date. We'll see what the future holds.

Image: The Hill Times

Groundhog Day

By this time in his political career, Michael Harris writes, Justin Trudeau might have been plotting his exit. But Pierre Poilievre has given him a reason to stick around for awhile:

Not many people in federal politics win the PM’s job and a majority government on their first try. Even fewer win three consecutive federal elections, albeit by lesser margins, in the age of drive-by-smear politics.  

Few besides Trudeau have inherited—and navigated—a deadly pandemic that stole lives, liberties, and economies. Trudeau has also answered the international bell in two staggering tragedies, the Syrian War, and now Putin’s sick assault on Ukraine. Canada was there with both humanitarian and military assistance.

It hasn't been all sweetness and light:

Trudeau’s record on climate change has been mixed. But while slow to end subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, setting carbon emission targets more aspirational than real, and actually buying a rickety pipeline, he did give Canada a meaningful carbon tax. He also gave the country a piece of environmental assessment legislation that could be a game-changer: that is, if the Alberta Appeals Court decision striking down Bill C-69 is itself reversed on appeal by a higher court.  

His much-vaunted feminism was put to the test and failed during the SNC-Lavalin scandal, and the government’s handling of harassment of women in the Canadian military.  

Most prime ministers have mixed records and those records eventually catch up with them. But Pierre Poilievre presents a problem for the Conservatives:

The political odds right now favour Pierre Poilievre to become the next Conservative leader in September, another ex-Harper acolyte who has no chance of becoming prime minister.  

“Freedom” might pass for public policy at a biker rally, or in a non-representative trucker’s convoy. It will be merely comical during a federal election campaign. Canadians are cosmopolitan citizens of the planet. They know that few countries in the world can boast the freedoms, social safety net, and opportunities that Canada does. 

Who could take a candidate seriously for PM who argued against mandates that saved people’s lives during the pandemic, including crucially important vaccines?  

This is the same man who championed the right of fringe-truckers to tie up the national capital for weeks over COVID-mandates, but who wanted First Nations protestors immediately kicked off the railway tracks to guarantee the public’s right to move.

This is the MP who as a Harper cabinet minister endorsed a “snitch line” so neighbour could rat out neighbour over so-called “barbaric practices.” He was also the author of the laughably named Fair Elections Act, which would have put a Cheshire Cat smile on the face of any Texas Republican.  

Jean Charest -- another Quebec native son -- would be a much more formidable opponent for Trudeau. But it appears that, for the Conservatives, every day is Groundhog Day.

Image: You Tube

Cousins?

Susan Delacourt writes that there are similarities between Pierre Poilievre and Justin Trudeau:

There’s something oddly familiar about Pierre Poilievre’s campaign in the early days of the Conservative leadership race. Intentionally or not, it bears some of the hallmarks of Justin Trudeau’s leadership campaign nearly a decade ago.

Ten years ago, Trudeau talked of how he made Conservatives “nutty.” Meanwhile, former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole famously said Poilievre makes Liberals “quiver” — a boast that drew scoffs from Trudeau’s side of the House. But there’s no question that Poilievre can get on the nerves of the Liberals in a way that most other Conservatives don’t.

Poilievre’s campaign is hooked on data collection and selfies, just as Trudeau’s was. “Every rally features a photo line, giving people a chance to get a shot with Poilievre and often his wife Ana as well,” Levitz noted after attending a huge event last week in Ottawa.

There are differences:

It’s true that they both came to their leadership campaigns after spending a lifetime around politics, but the 42-year-old Poilievre’s experience is a career politician, an MP since he was 24.

Trudeau was also in his early 40s, with a young family, when he embarked on his quest for the top job, but he didn’t enter elected politics until he was in his late 30s. Also unlike Poilievre, Trudeau has never been fond of the theatrics in the House of Commons.

Liberals would also be quick to point out that Trudeau would never align himself with the “Freedom Convoy” types who are filling up Poilievre’s events.

Still, it's hard not to notice the similarities:

Their leadership campaigns, although a decade apart, have many of the trademarks of a front-runner’s romp to victory: big crowds, lots of curiosity and lots of selfies. And they’re similar in one other important way, too: their rivals are incredulous that these are the men the parties would choose to chart a path out of opposition wilderness.

Perhaps they're cousins -- from different sides of the track.

Image: You Tube