Courting the fringe

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This article was published 17/08/2023 (995 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can breathe for a second — Pierre Poilievre has found a new target for his finger-pointing.

At least for the time being.

The federal Conservative leader is spending the summer weaving a new boogeyman into his stump speeches: the World Economic Forum, the international lobbying organization most often discussed publicly during its annual summit in Davos, Switzerland.

The WEF is not a new target of scorn among the conspiracy-minded in Canada and elsewhere: the organization has been given a secure space in an ever-growing lineup of perceived global malefactors, alongside U.S. infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci, and philanthropist George Soros. The argument is that the WEF constitutes an insidious threat to Canadian life — that its members seek to use the group’s influence to press sovereign governments, like Canada’s, into complying with its agenda.

Conspiracy theorists can be a tiresome lot, especially in the age of QAnon, and COVID vaccine paranoia. As a lobbying group, the WEF does hope to sway world leaders on policy, as all lobbyists do. However, while lobbyists seldom earn kind rulings in the court of public opinion, it can hardly be said that them doing exactly what they say they intend to do amounts to a sinister plot.

Some see Poilievre’s invocation of the WEF-as-threat — something he also did during the party’s leadership race — as a sign that conspiracy theories are migrating to the mainstream. That may well be true, as far as it goes for ordinary voters. For Poilievre, however, it smacks of opportunism.

Poilievre is playing all the cards he has in an attempt to secure Parliament come the next election day. He has given himself an esthetic overhaul, ditching the spectacles and swapping his suits for fitted shirts and other casual wear to give himself a more youthful, vigorous look. Advertisements featuring his wife, Anaida Poilievre, have sought to soften his image. These are tried-and-true strategies for any politician seen as stuffy or out-of-touch, and Poilievre has shown he needs particular help with the latter category after a long career in federal politics. (A recent Globe and Mail report quoted Poilievre as guessing the salary of a struggling waitress he encountered in Ontario at “$60,000 a year, $25 an hour” a damning indictment of his perception of Canadians’ financial realities.)

But for Poilievre, attempts to soften his image and relate to the common folk aren’t just old-fashioned political tricks, but necessary counterweights as he continues to throw his support behind a voting bloc decidedly on the fringes of politics.

His allusions to sinister “globalist” actors go part and parcel with his established support for people who have embraced anti-vaccine rhetoric or indulged other conspiracy theories (he was one of the more prominent Tory supporters of the Ottawa convoy protest). Does Poilievre believe any of it? Hard to say. The fact is, this group of voters — call it the convoy bloc, if you like — holds considerable sway among right-leaning politicians.

Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada presents a threat to the right flank of any Conservative leader, and while the going has been slow for Bernier, there’s always a chance he could gain momentum. Poilievre may believe he must keep the conspiracy theorists happy if he is to secure Parliament.

It may make for straightforward, pragmatic politics to court such voters in the name of winning an election. But Poilievre should consider that the opportunist courting of the fringe is likely to end in reshaping his party, and Canadian politics, for the worse.

Poilievre is choosing to lay down with dogs on his road to Parliament. If he ends up winning, he might want to celebrate by adding a flea collar to his new wardrobe.