Don’t expect a different Pierre Poilievre as PM

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This article was published 20/12/2024 (609 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s as if he just can’t help it.

Conservative Party of Canada Leader Pierre Poilievre, the man who would be prime minister, is this week closer than ever to having his political dreams come true. With the sudden and calculatedly injurious resignation of federal finance minister Chrystia Freeland from cabinet, the leadership — and, therefore, government — of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is hanging by the thinnest of threads.

Poilievre continues to voice his oft-repeated assertion that Trudeau must go; that he has lost the confidence of Parliament, the Canadian people and indeed his own Liberal Party; and that it’s time to end this minority-government charade and let a federal election confirm what is widely believed: that this country’s next government will be a Poilievre-led Conservative majority.

By any logical measure, he’s right.

It might not have been completely true for all the many months he’s been saying it, but at this advanced stage of the Liberal Party implosion, it’s hard to argue that Trudeau’s time isn’t up.

Poilievre also stated this week that the one person standing in the way of an almost-immediate federal election is NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, whose party propped up the Trudeau government via its supply and confidence agreement and, since exiting the deal last September, opted not to support the Poilievre-induced non-confidence motions that might have brought the government down.

Again, for all intents and purposes, an accurate assessment. But then, in calling for Singh to cease his indulgence of the minority government and join with the other opposition parties that have declared they’re prepared to support the non-confidence motion, Poilievre suggested — as he has numerous times — the reason Singh refuses to join Poilievre’s government-toppling crusade is that he’s intent on keeping the Liberal government alive until February, when he will become eligible to collect a cushy MP pension upon reaching the age of 65.

There’s nothing to suggest such a notion is true. But Poilievre (who, by the way, became eligible in 2010 for a much-cushier version of that same MP pension) repeats it, because inflammatory rhetoric is a big part of what Poilievre has chosen to be as a politician: someone who’ll seemingly say just about anything for the sake of political advantage.

Borrowing heavily from the confrontational playbook that has twice ushered Donald Trump into the White House, Canada’s prime-minister-in-waiting traffics regularly in misinformation — such as concocting wild theories that Trudeau is responsible for high grocery prices, or Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem was somehow the cause of global inflation — and resorts often to the sophomoric sort of name-calling (“Justinflation,” “Sellout Singh,” “Carbon Tax Carney”) that are a signature part of Trump’s style.

It’s unnecessary, and it’s undignified. But it has become a favoured approach of right-of-centre parties in many countries in what has become known as the “post-truth” era, and it’s the style of politics Poilievre has embraced — clearly, with considerable success — in his rise to the top of the CPC.

With the office of prime minister now completely within his reach, some speculate Poilievre as PM might set aside the superfluous bombast and adopt a more measured and statesmanlike approach.

Those cockeyed optimists would be well advised to recall how many observers of U.S. politics predicted Trump would adopt a more refined and “presidential” posture once freed from the rough-and-tumble rigours of the campaign trail.

It didn’t happen there, and it won’t happen here. Poilievre has spent the past couple of years showing Canadians exactly who he’ll be as their prime minister. At this point, it seems, he can’t help it. And when someone tells you who they are, you shouldn’t be surprised when that’s exactly who they turn out to be.