POILIEVRE, CHAREST BREATHE NEW LIFE INTO CONSERVATIVES
The Conservative movement has been grumpy, dumpy and dopey for years.
It has failed to find anything inspiring to unite Canadians. It has focused mainly on barking away at any and all things Justin Trudeau.
It has only grudgingly moved on any issue where Trudeau actually made a good point, such as legalizing cannabis and addressing climate change.
But is that about to change? The two candidates who stood out most in Edmonton's debate for the leadership of the federal Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre and Jean Charest, share a disciplined focus on a single big issue, Poilievre's call for freedom and Charest's for unity.
The two have picked their issues well. Both messages resonate with Conservative voters. Such big ideas might also pull in independent voters.
The two stand in stark contrast in terms of image. Poilievre, 42, comes across as a sharp-tongued, sharp-dressed Generation Xer, Charest, 63, a wise and greying Baby Boomer.
Other candidates attacked the front-running Poilievre for his enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies, with Patrick Brown referring to it as “magic internet money.”
I strongly suspect this attack will backfire. Do not smart and ambitious Canadians share Poilievre's fascination with crypto?
Poilievre threw a stinging verbal jab as he contrasted his and Charest's respective ages, pointedly reminding the now pro-choice Charest he once supported recriminalizing abortion way back in the Mulroney era: “That was your position. You seem to have forgotten it. You've forgotten a lot of things about your record.”
As to their big ideas, Poilievre said the word “freedom” seven times in his 45-second opening address on his vision for Canada: “It's one where you, the citizens, are masters and your government is servant. It is one where people have the freedom to take back control of their lives.”
This focus will resonate with those who question why Canada had some of the most severe COVID lockdown measures in the world on internal movement and stay-at-home requirements, as reported by Our World in
Data.
Poilievre also stands up for anyone who fears speaking their mind in public, lest they say something that offends woke sensibilities and would see them lose friends or even get them fired or lose business.
And while most Canadians, even within the Conservative party, now accept that climate change represents a threat, not all buy that it's the singular issue of our times that should dictate all economic choices, minor and major.
As Conservatives like Poilievre point out, is it not imperative to build a prosperous, free and secure Canada?
Are we not all waking up to the risks of rising inflation, ugly government debt, growing poverty and starvation, and aggressive and powerful authoritarian governments in Russia and China?
Could it be that hunger, lack of medical care in poor nations, and war will kill far more people in the next decade than climate change does this century, especially as we have the ready solution of carbon-free nuclear power to deal with the slow-moving disaster of rising temperatures?
For his part, Charest makes a compelling pitch on the primacy of unity when it comes to Canada's future.
“The reason I'm running is because I see a country that is deeply divided. And I am running because I believe that national unity is the No. 1 challenge of any prime minister in this country, that nothing big, nothing of substance, gets done unless we're able to bridge the country between the East and the West.”
We are indeed divided in unsettling fashion by partisan rage and myopia, largely driven by social media mob dynamics and abetted by political fundraising schemes, where the more scorched earth the dig at your opponent, the more dollars you pull in.
Poilievre is a cagey player in this hyper-partisan game.
Charest brings back memories of more amicable days, where politics didn't pervade every aspect of life, from what you think and say to what you eat and purchase.
He gives an apt warning about the need for unity, to which Poilievre responds that the call for freedom can be the Conservatives' unifying principle.
Whichever of these leaders and messages most resonates with Conservatives, the party has at last rediscovered a reason for being.
No longer will the Conservatives only be “get off my lawn” cranks raging against everything Trudeau-inspired. They will be for something powerful — freedom and unity.
Poilievre's message is compelling enough that his political opponents are already labelling him as “far-right” and “populist.”
No doubt the rhetoric will ratchet up to him being a “white supremacist” as well.
He's got his opponents worried, it seems. Very worried.