Poilievre limps away from spectacular campaign crash, gets hit by fact-filled EV

Opinion

For weeks now, political reporters have been trying to figure out exactly which version of Pierre Poilievre is going to rise from the political ashes of last April’s federal election.

The leader of the Conservative party and former Opposition leader lost his seat and is in the early stages of campaigning for a byelection in the Alberta riding of Battle River-Crowfoot that will be held sometime after Aug. 4. But other than a few photo opportunities and social-media posts, Poilievre has fallen pretty much off the federal political radar.

Until last week.

The Tories launched a renewed attack on the Liberal government’s current electric vehicle (EV) policies. The Conservatives believe that if Prime Minister Mark Carney retains a policy to phase out gas-powered cars and light-duty trucks by 2035, it will devastate Canada’s auto industry and increase average vehicle prices by tens of thousands of dollars.

Poilievre posted a video assailing the EV mandate as an infringement on the rights of Canadians to drive wherever they want, in whatever damn vehicle with whatever damn motor, they damn well want to.

Before tracking the madness of this strategy any further, it’s worth remembering how the Conservatives engineered one of the greatest electoral collapses in Canadian political history.

After two years of aiming a Trump-style firehose of hyperbole at voters, Poilievre found himself second choice behind the more moderate-speaking Carney.

After spending the six months prior to the election musing about how big their majority might be, the Conservatives found themselves musing about whether the architect of this disaster deserved a chance to continue leading the party.

Now, back to the attack on the EV mandate.

The Tories’ attack on this policy is very much in keeping with the hilariously dishonest and fallacious tack the party took before and during the election. They have not met a fact that could not be perverted to their own cause. Their talk-track on EVs is a perfect example.

Last week, both Poilievre and interim leader Andrew Scheer cited a “new” study that said the automobile sector would lose more than 90,000 jobs if the Liberals pushed through with the eventual ban on the sale of new gas-powered vehicles. Although this “new” report was cited in numerous social media posts and YouTube videos, neither Scheer nor Poilievre cited a source.

I’m embarrassed to say that my attempts to find the source were unsuccessful.

What is really weird is that 90,000 is a pretty small number compared to some of the estimates that have come from right-wing, crackpot economic think tanks.

The crack-pottiest Fraser Institute, for example, claimed last year EV mandates would take 135,000 jobs from the auto sector. In retrospect, that’s a pretty hilarious estimate given that identical U.S.-based think tanks such as the America First Policy Institute believe total job losses in its country — which has a much larger auto sector — would be about 117,000.

Even so, the Tories not only failed to source the allegation, they also failed to acknowledge there are credible estimates that the growth in clean-energy industries — EVs are one — will add more than 300,000 jobs over the next decade.

The most honest thing you can say about this issue is that no one knows for sure how a transition to clean energy will impact employment or GDP. There are going to be jobs lost and jobs gained, and our ability to come out better on a net basis will depend heavily on the extent to which government supports clean energy.

Remember that EV mandates are, first and foremost, a reflection of the urgent need to address climate change. Anyone who ignores the growing human and economic costs of climate change, while arguing that mandates to promote zero-emission vehicles are an attack on some perverse notion of personal choice, is only turning up the temperature on an already-overheated planet.

Why would a battered Tory party reach back into its colossally unsuccessful 2025 election playbook for a new frontal assault on the Liberal EV policy?

Because the Tories know Canadians are somewhat conflicted about EVs.

Public opinion polls show overwhelming support for the idea of zero-emission vehicles but concern about the availability, cost and access to recharging infrastructure.

Even so, more than 80 per cent of Canadians in a recent poll said they wanted Carney to reduce or remove the 100-per-cent tariff imposed on Chinese-made EVs to make them more affordable.

Those are all issues that any government of any political stripe could address quite easily, but only if they understand the threat that we all face by not moving quickly to zero-emission vehicles.

What is definitely not helping is a political party, fresh off an electoral humiliation, flooding the intellectual free zone that is social media with unfounded, alarmist claims of economic doom and gloom.

There is room in this debate for a broad spectrum of policy ideas. Everyone would welcome a Tory policy that achieved the same goals with a better economic forecast.

But hey, if at first you don’t succeed — try, try to fool voters again.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca