Poilievre gives Trudeau a reason to stick around

HALIFAX—By any normal measure, Justin Trudeau ought to be planning for a career path change. 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. 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. There is much that the PM can be proud of in what remains an undefeated record, but there are a few things relegated to a lesser place in his political scrapbook. 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. Two first-rate female cabinet ministers were sacrificed to the dark imperatives of party politics, where the leader is always right, even when he is demonstrably wrong. It took years for the Liberals to take action against some senior members of the Armed Forces, who were themselves supposed to be making the workplace safe for women, but were instead amongst their tormentors. There were sloppy errors in judgement that earned him official chastisement from Canada’s ethics counsellor, and numerous editorials that kicked the stuffing out of him. On the fiscal side, largely because of the pandemic, the country is facing deficits that will have future finance ministers spending the numbers off the national credit card for years to come. Although Justin Trudeau is not the father of inflation, he is the sitting prime minister, and therefore the blame-bucket for everything that is going wrong in the lives of regular people. That’s just politics. Perhaps the biggest reason one might expect Trudeau to be planning a new look to his future, however, is “the shelf-life" argument. In democratic politics, the electorate tends to get tired of leaders around the 10-year mark; few survive beyond sixteen years. Hillary Clinton bombed around the 16-year mark of her career, with eight years as First Lady, and eight more as Senator from New York, before running for president. Trudeau now has five electoral victories under his belt stretching back to 2008, including three as prime minister since 2015. If history is any guide, with nearly fourteen years in public life, he is rapidly approaching his best-before date. When a leader has been around long enough, the politics tend to get personal. If masks have to be donned during a pandemic, if gas costs too much, if the Air Force needs new jets, if the grocery shelves are partly empty, its more effective to blame “Trudeau” than to delve into the complications of why things are the way they are. By personifying everything that’s wrong with a government, it becomes much easier to defeat it. That’s why Donald Trump won in 2016: he used Hillary Clinton to demonize all things Democrat. It’s how Joe Biden won in 2020: he used the twice-impeached, one-term Trump to demonize all things Republican. It’s what the next leader of the Conservative Party of Canada could do when the time comes. So why isn’t there some hint, beyond the elastic boundaries of mere speculation, that Justin Trudeau is considering leaving the job? The reason is that there is every chance that the CPC will lose the next election before it is ever called. The way the Conservatives would do that is by setting aside the lessons of their own history and selecting the wrong leader—again. 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. Are Canadians really going to warm up to a former finance critic who says with a straight face that Bitcoin is a good hedge against inflation? Really? In just the last couple of days, there has been a $400-billion crypto-crash affecting Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, and Avalanche. According to Forbes Magazine, Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin, UST, slipped from its dollar peg. But Poilievre is not alone in his faith in crypto currency. The president of El Salvador has just added 500 bitcoins to his dubious collection. That could be smart, but it could also turn him into the drip who bought the dip. If Pierre Poilievre becomes the new Erin O’Toole, who became the new Andrew Scheer, who became the new Stephen Harper, there will be no need for Justin Trudeau to hang up the gloves. If Jean Charest or Patrick Brown manage to talk the party base out of its political death wish, if reason rather than rancour goes into the Tory tool-box, if policies rather than trash talk lead the challenge to the current government, it could be a whole new ball game. Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist. The Hill Times

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Poilievre gives Trudeau a reason to stick around

Pierre Poilievre's history is bound to catch up with him if he really does get to run for prime minister.

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