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.
