Tories face a Jekyll-and-Hyde image problem

HALIFAX—There are a lot of things to be said about Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s $3-million makeover, few of them flattering. It is cynical, it is transparently manipulative, and it is comical. No T-shirt is ever going to turn Poilievre into Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But the bigger problem is the posturing. After all, when you really have something—in this case compassion and kindness—you don’t have to spend the numbers off the credit card in a media blitz portraying those things. Your deeds, not your ads, tell the tale. Marketing is merely the last refuge of a scoundrel. Something that no one has said so far is that Poilievre’s makeover-for-takeover will not likely achieve the desired result, at least not with the 52 percent of Canadians who hold an unfavourable view of him, according to the latest Angus Reid poll. Why? Because the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), and the conservative movement generally, continues to suffer from "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" syndrome. As candidates, they present one face; in government, they offer another. The same trait has also been on display in the CPC’s leadership races. There is one posture to win the party leadership, and another to appeal to a national audience. The latest example of Jekyll-and-Hyde politics comes courtesy of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. The leader of the provincial United Conservative Party campaigned as a thoughtful—almost moderate—candidate in this past spring's provincial election, eschewing the image of the controversial talk-show host with the sharp elbows that most Albertans knew. She performed much better than expected in the debate with NDP leader Rachel Notley, and obviously convinced voters that she was all Dr. Jekyll and no Mr. Hyde. It worked. With the help of rural Albertans, Smith won a majority government, which she celebrated by paraphrasing the late Ralph Klein: “Welcome to another miracle on the Prairies.” But having secured power, the kinder and gentler Smith began showing signs of Mr. Hyde. She immediately began returning to old and tiresome fights with Ottawa, complaining of the province’s resources being landlocked. Never mind that the feds have to date spent $23-billion on completing the Trans Mountain Pipeline to deliver Alberta oil to a saltwater port. That project is scheduled to be operational in the first quarter of 2024. After her re-election, Smith suddenly put a nearly seven-month moratorium on all new solar and wind projects in Alberta without giving stakeholders a heads-up. When she was criticized, she said that province's regulators had asked the government for the move. Reporters covering the story pointed out that the premier was factually incorrect, but she persisted in her deception, blaming the media for getting it wrong. Sound familiar? Remember Stephen Harper’s mantra: “The words mean what I say they mean.” Smith’s unilateral move on alternative energy projects collides head-on with the federal government’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Smith had already said that she “felt sick” after reading Ottawa’s so-called "Just Transition" plan from fossil fuels to clean energy. In ignoring Ottawa’s multi-billion dollar subsidies to the oil and gas industry for carbon capture and storage, Smith has made clear that she—and she alone—is the champion of an industry that is on its way out. The only question is whether the industry will take the planet with it. Her new government has gifted $100-million in royalty credits to energy companies to clean up the polluted sites of played-out wells. The businesses made the profits from those wells, so why are Alberta taxpayers paying any part of the costs of the remediation? With Alberta separatists now inside the tent of the United Conservative Party, including Rob Anderson, who is executive director of the premier’s office, a lot of Smith’s old promises and policies are back on the table. Anderson co-authored the Free Alberta Strategy back in 2021. That document advocated for a number of things that would virtually amount to separation from Canada: the “absolute discretion” of Alberta not to enforce any federal legislation deemed not to be in the province’s interest; ending equalization and net federal transfers out of Alberta; and an Alberta Sovereignty Act. These hot buttons and others were barely mentioned in the recent election. As former Edmonton Journal columnist Graham Thomson put it in a piece for The Tyee: “Smith may have presented a reasonable and measured face during the election campaign, but it seems the antagonistic Smith, who won the UCP leadership race a year ago with a campaign heavy on half-truths, contradictions, and gaslighting, is back.” Premier Smith isn’t the only Conservative practitioner of expediency. Consider one of the CPC’s recent leadership races. Erin O’Toole won the top job in 2020 by presenting as a battle-hardened, hard-right Conservative to the base. But when wooing the country in a national election, he turned into a soft-boiled political egg edging toward the centre-right. Canadians didn’t buy O’Toole’s strategic conversion on the road to what he hoped would be 24 Sussex Dr. In 2021, they gave him fewer seats than they did to the dithering and evasive Andrew Scheer in 2019. Why? Voters decided that the kinder and gentler O’Toole was merely a charade of convenience, a political disguise to persuade independent and progressive voters that they had nothing to fear from him. Pierre Poilievre’s advertising push to turn himself into to the guy you could trust to feed your cat when you are on vacation is the latest instalment of two-faced conservatism—red meat for the base, porridge for the general population—until they win. The CPC is hoping that money and marketing can make Poilievre electable in a way in which his record does not. It is a big ask. Even the stone-hearted U.S. presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has more of a personality than Poilievre. The CPC is hoping voters will fall for the folksy guy in Poilievre’s video selfies, rather than the politician who authored the legislation that made it easier to cheat and harder to vote in our elections. It was diametrically opposite to the legislation that was needed after the robocalls scandal of 2011. The party is praying that voters embrace Poilievre’s newly minted image, rather than recall his cynical use of both the pandemic and the calamitous truckers’ occupation of Ottawa and border crossings across Canada to further his own political ambitions. How do you tell if something is glass or crystal? You flick the nail of your index finger against the rim. Crystal sings, and glass makes a dead clink. Canadians are getting quite good at discerning the difference when it comes to political authenticity. Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist. The Hill Times