The federal Conservatives are telling us what they stand for, and it’s not Canadians.
You don’t have to be paying attention to realize there’s a lot happening in Canadian politics right now. Between Justin Trudeau’s resignation as leader of the Liberal Party, the threat of a trade war with the United States and a federal election somewhere on the horizon, the last month has been nothing if not eventful for the good folks on Parliament Hill.
The most concerning developments of all, however, have come from Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and likely shoo-in to become our 24th prime minister, based on most polling. His party has spent the better part of three years in campaign mode, spending approximately $8.5 million on advertising in 2023 alone. No doubt you’ve heard or seen some examples: “Axe the Tax,” “Build the Homes” or the inexplicably phrased “Stop the Crime.”
Not only do these slogans more resemble a drunken chant at a hockey game than robust policy proposals, but they also ring eerily familiar to anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock since Donald Trump was elected U.S. President in 2016 (although if you have been living under a rock, I can’t say I’d blame you). To put it succinctly, Poilievre is the Canadian poster boy for a shallow brand of right-wing populism inspired by the success of the MAGA movement from our neighbours to the south. Evidently, they won’t be putting an import tax on nationalist sycophants anytime soon.
Poilievre refers to his simple — read: painfully stupid — messaging as a reflection of “common sense values,” and has frequently used the increasingly nebulous strawman of “woke politics” to provoke strong rallying emotions among his supporters. The strategy is clear: he wants us to feel afraid, and more than that, he needs us to feel broken.
But now Poilievre has a problem. In a recent CBC article, sources from the Party revealed that the federal Conservatives are scrambling to adapt their messaging after a sudden shift in attitude around our national identity: “The start of a tariff war with the United States is changing voters’ moods. It’s harder to talk about a broken Canada when there’s a growing sense of patriotism,” said one of the Conservative insiders.
Everyday citizens standing in solidarity against the economic bully that is the U.S. can only be bad for the federal Conservatives’ campaign of sowing division. In other words, Trump’s unjustifiably austere tariffs have provoked a sense of protective patriotism that is quickly unifying the country across partisan lines. This is troublesome for the Conservatives because their interests simply do not align with Canadian unity.
It gets even better. In a media address on Feb. 3, Poilievre vowed to “put Canada first” and renewed calls to “protect our borders.” The irony is truly lost on Conservatives if their official response to Trump’s sabre-rattling is just a sad imitation of his “America first” dog-whistle. It should come as no surprise that Poilievre has the backing of “special government employee” and far-right oligarch Elon Musk, not to mention noted pseudo-intellectual and right-wing conspiracy theorist Jordan Peterson.
This begs the question: What can we expect should Poilievre sneer his way to victory? He is, after all, a career politician whose record in the House of Commons is available to the public. For example, Poilievre received a full pension at the age of 31 before voting to raise the age of eligibility for Old Age Security (OAS) and Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) in 2012; he rallied against marriage equality in 2005; and he suggested that residential school survivors ought to have a stronger work ethic in 2008.
One wonders what might become of the $10-a-day childcare program or increased dental and pharmacare coverage — all fruits of the now-defunct Liberal-NDP agreement — under his proposed “budget fixing.”
The Conservatives have also added the CBC to their list of targets. Damien Kurek, the party’s heritage critic, called the network a “broken and failing propaganda machine” and proposed the bizarre image of turning the CBC’s downtown Toronto headquarters “into beautiful homes for Canadian families.” It speaks volumes that Poilievre and company would seethe at the existence of a national public broadcaster whose written mandate is to promote and develop Canadian identity from coast to coast.
If you’re really sniffing around for a propaganda machine, look no further than the overwhelming number of Canadian media publications affiliated with the PostMedia Network, which itself is majority owned by Chatham Asset Management, an American conglomerate with close ties to the Republican Party. A suspiciously high volume of anti-Trudeau sentiment and carbon tax misinformation has been circulated through tabloid rags like The Toronto Sun and even the more innocuous sounding National Post, both of which are PostMedia properties.
Maybe the most concerning fact of all is that Poilievre refuses to subject himself to the rigorous background checks necessary to gain top-level security clearance, as is customary for every Leader of the Official Opposition. That means he won’t receive a briefing on the CSIS investigation into foreign interference among members of the Conservative Party.
Poilievre has argued that gaining security clearance would prevent him from being able to speak freely about government issues. However, declining access to the proper intelligence has led to gross oversights in the past for Poilievre. Consider back in November of 2023, when he hastily labelled a car explosion on the Rainbow Bridge as a “terrorist attack.” Poilievre defended himself by suggesting the error came from the media. Meanwhile, the CBC determined only one outlet had reported the explosion as terror-motivated at the time of Poilievre’s comment. It was Fox News.
All this is to say that the federal Conservatives have made it very clear what they stand for: economic opportunism, anti-intellectualism and national populist rhetoric. We’ve already watched the U.S. go down that slippery slope. Let’s not do the same.