Situational silence not necessarily golden

Opinion

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This article was published 16/01/2023 (999 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There are many things silence, poetically, proverbially and metaphorically, is purported to be:

Golden. Much more than just a lack of words. The best answer to anger. A fence around wisdom. Music to a wise person. The correct answer to a fool. The soul of all things. A text easy to misread.

Eloquently contemplative though these lyrical descriptions may be, they do not account for the corrosive, situational brand of silence systematically being employed by Conservative Party of Canada Leader Pierre Poilievre.

Mr. Poilievre was scheduled to make a stop in Winnipeg on Friday to attend a couple of events — delivering “remarks” at a late-morning event hosted by a right-wing think-tank, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, and appearing at a “private residence” CPC fundraising event to address supporters who paid $1,700 to attend.

At the former event, media outlets were advised they would be granted access to photograph Mr. Poilievre, but he would not answer questions from reporters — a stance the CPC leader has maintained almost without exception since being elected to the position last September.

It’s a silence that should concern Canadians, since Mr. Poilievre has designs on leading his party to victory in the next federal election, and such an achievement should only be attainable if he has fully and transparently articulated his policy positions and responded to the many necessary questions the media — on behalf of the broader public — has about his intentions and inclinations.

But when a microphone is pointed and a question is asked of Mr. Poilievre … silence. And not of a calming, thoughtful variety.

The Conservative leader’s on-the-record defence of his refusal to endure media scrutiny is, as articulated during a rare press conference last November, that “The press gallery believes it should dominate the political discourse. … I believe we have a big country, with people who are not necessarily part of the press gallery.”

The problem is that when Mr. Poilievre is not not answering media questions that might shed light on his political agenda, fact-check his various claims and force him to explain and/or defend his positions, he is anything but silent in situations in which his statements will not be challenged.

A skilled communicator and, increasingly as his months in CPC leadership tick past, a shameless provocateur, Mr. Poilievre has made the illumination and magnification of grievance the centrepiece of his pursuit of prime ministerial power.

“Canada is broken” is his perpetual rallying cry, and while the reasons for the fractures are many — central-bank policies, inflation, health care, misinformed climate policies, housing prices, failed drug-crisis solutions — the villainy that created the ills is assigned solely to one: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

It’s the job of opposition politicians to demonize, in general terms, the party and leader in power. But Mr. Poilievre, perhaps drawing inspiration from the polarization of politics south of the border, has shifted the narrative from one in which the other party is the opponent to one in which the other party — and, for that matter, anyone who disagrees with his positions as CPC leader — is the enemy.

When it comes to railing against Mr. Trudeau and fomenting the discontent of Canadians who have become convinced they live in a broken country, Mr. Poilievre is anything but silent. When, however, it’s time to answer direct questions regarding how he intends to mend those fractures, the man who would be prime minister falls defiantly and unproductively mute.

Such silence is anything but golden. Rather, it’s the darkest hue of whatever colour cynicism is.