Poilievre’s clarification still leaves things muddy

Sometimes, even a clarification doesn’t do much to actually clarify things.

On Monday, federal Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre did his best to walk back his recent criticism of the RCMP.

Maybe he’s hoping the clarification won’t be read too closely. Or maybe, because he released it as a written statement from his office, instead of actually saying it out loud, it won’t be read at all by those he was trying to reach during his appearance on the Northern Perspectives YouTube channel last week.

His complete statement is devilishly difficult to track down online. It doesn’t appear in his X feed — and it doesn’t appear among the recent statements that the Conservative Party has posted online over the last few days, but sections of it have been reported.

But first, the YouTube webcast comments that started the whole thing.

“Trudeau broke the Criminal Code … If the RCMP had been doing its job and not covering up for him, then he would have been criminally charged,” Poilievre said. “The leadership of the RCMP is frankly just despicable when it comes to enforcing laws against the Liberal government. Yeah, I would fire them.”

What he wrote now is that he stands “shoulder to shoulder with the brave men and women in uniform who put their lives on the line every day to protect and serve,” and that “My comments were directed to former RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki who has a lengthy track record of publicly documented scandals, deception and political interference to the benefit of the Liberal government. … We called for her resignation. We stand by that call to this day.”

Lucki retired from her role as commissioner in 2023 — so standing by a call for her resignation “to this day” is meaningless.

And since she’s retired and no longer in the force, why would Poilievre — if he truly had been referring to Lucki — say to the webcast hosts that the RCMP “leadership” was “despicable” and go on to say, “Yeah, I would fire them.”

The kindest way to refer to this whole mess is to say it truly looks like Poilievre’s trying to have it both ways: one way is to sound tough in a video segment for his diehard supporters, another thing for those who are rightfully angry that he would cast aspersions on the independence of the RCMP. (Current RCMP leadership stands by the Lucki-era finding that there were no grounds to charge Trudeau, and offered to explain their process to Poilievre.)

It may sound like a small issue to raise during such a fraught time of tariffs, trade and living next to a renegade U.S. president whose every whim and wiggle seems ever more bizarre.

And we can understand why Poilievre would be on the horns of a dilemma — a message intended for, and tailored to, one part of his audience has unfortunately made its way to an audience that doesn’t find unsubstantiated calls of jailing and firings as legitimate commentary. Poilievre might now be counting on the fact that those two audiences get their news in different places. So, a mainstream media audience might hear him taking the words back, while that same half-clarification travels under the radar for the crew getting amped up on Northern Perspectives YouTube channel.

The fact is that words matter — even, and sometimes especially, when you carefully aren’t saying them.

Character should also matter among our elected officials as well, on all sides of the House of Commons.

Let’s hope that Poilievre changes his approach.

The last thing we need in these difficult times is unsubstantiated attacks, followed by unsuccessful “clarifications.”