Finance critic Poilievre talks politics, his path
At a window table at 3 Brewers on Sparks Street on Thursday, I slide across to Pierre Poilievre a printout of the first photographs we ever took of him.
“Oh, God,” he says. “Burn them. Burn them!”
The best one is a candid shot from a hospitality suite at the Westin in 2000, where conservative politicos had gathered to try to unite Canada’s fractured rightwing parties. Poilievre — more Calgarian than Ottawan at the time — was at the convention as a member of the Reform party’s youth wing, along with a bunch of other Tiny Tories-to-be.
Wearing the regulation Stockwell Day uniform of deep-blue shirt and gold necktie, facing mostly away from the camera, Poilievre is talking across a small group of future Hill staffers, exchanging words with a youthful Andrew Scheer.
Now Scheer is the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. The day before we meet, Scheer named Poilievre his top critic, responsible for dogging Liberal Finance Minister Bill Morneau.
In person, Poilievre is more self-deprecating and thoughtful than the person you see on television in question period. He volunteers that he was voted the worst-dressed MP when he was a rookie, and deserved it. Looking at that photo from the Westin, he says deadpan that he’s glad his acne has cleared up, he doesn’t have braces anymore, and he’s stopped frosting his tips.
He points out and names the other people in the picture, several of whom went on to careers in politics. Two of them eventually married, possibly after meeting for the first time in that room.
What would this guy have thought of where you are now? I ask.
“I think he would not have predicted everything would happen so quickly,” Poilievre says.
Five years after that photograph, Poilievre and Scheer were members of Parliament — Poilievre elected in an unlikely victory over a longtime Nepean politician and sitting defence minister. Twelve years and four elections after that, when Parliament sits again, they’ll be sideby-side on the Conservatives’ front bench.
Scheer was Speaker of the House of Commons; Poilievre did a stint as Stephen Harper’s parliamentary stand-in and held two cabinet posts.
Both are trying to climb back into power after an evenworse-than-expected election for the Conservatives in 2015 left Poilievre as the last federal Conservative standing in Ottawa, re-elected by just a couple of points in supposedly safe rural Carleton riding.
“Nothing prepares you for it,” Poilievre says of political life. “Politics is agony and ecstasy. The highs are amazing. The lows are excruciating.”
Even a couple of weeks ago when Scheer called him to give him his assignment, he didn’t expect to be named anything as important as finance critic (or “shadow minister,” as Scheer is styling his team, though Poilievre says not to read anything special into the borrowing from British parliamentary custom).
“I was a little bit surprised, because I knew that a lot of the most senior positions would go to rivals and to supporters, because that’s the way it works,” he says. Poilievre stayed quiet in the leadership race. He hadn’t asked for any particular duty, but he did tell Scheer not long after last spring’s vote that he was keen to work on a conservative agenda to help people climb the economic ladder.
“Conservatives cannot be absent from the debate on inequality and equality in the nation,” he says.
One thing that hasn’t changed since 2000 is his belief in free enterprise and small government. The Justin Trudeau Liberals, and Liberals in general, like to use government programs and aid to make poorer people richer, he says. But the bigger governments get, the more they interfere.
“Work is the only way — the only sustainable way — to escape poverty,” Poilievre says. The tax system and social programs are riddled with quirks that push people away from work, including policies like dollar-for-dollar clawbacks of welfare and welfare-type payments from people who start to earn money. In practice, because having a job costs a little for things like getting to work, in some circumstances it makes no financial sense to take a job or work more hours.
Programs meant to help people with disabilities can be especially harsh this way, making people financial prisoners of handouts when they could be — would rather be — working. Where these perverse incentives are accidental, which is often the case, Poilievre thinks he can get action from the Liberal government.
But he also has it in for Liberal policies he sees as redistributing money upward, like the planned infrastructure bank, which will invite private investment in public construction projects — and guarantee investors’ returns with public money.
Poilievre will be on the Opposition front bench challenging Morneau. Poilievre’s a Doberman, while Morneau is dignified to the point of being a bit of a stiff. Poilievre respects Morneau as “a very smart guy” and an affable person but he vehemently opposes the Liberal program.
Conservatives have always liked Poilievre for his delight in savaging Liberals, even experienced ministers twice his age. Non-Conservatives, not so much. Depending where you sit, Poilievre has either been a fearless warrior or the Tories’ designated jerk. Whichever, expect it to continue, he says. The opposition is supposed to oppose. Parliament is a place for ideas to clash.
“It’s not a self-esteem factory,” he says.
We speak a few hours after new statistics showed the second quarter of the year was great for the Canadian economy: It grew at a rate of 4.5 per cent, making for the strongest first half of a year since 2002. Poilievre nods and agrees that news like that makes attacking the Liberals’ economic record tougher.
Liberal deficits and growing government will take a toll, just not right away. The growth is driven by rising oil and gas prices, a strong American economy and a low Canadian dollar, he says, none of which the government can take credit for.
“I think the government inherited a very good situation,” he says, and flashes a grin. “Even if we do say so ourselves.”