Poilievre’s sales pitch is failing so far
Justin Trudeau’s government has been on the defensive in the House of Commons for months. By now, fewer than one in three Canadians approves its handling of the China electoral interference file, a topic that has monopolized the federal political conversation throughout the first half of the year.
To listen to the furor in the House of Commons, one gets the impression of an embattled government on the verge of free fall. The voting intentions picture suggests otherwise.
A Léger poll reports that if an election were held this month, the prime minister would have a fighting chance of securing another minority government and a fourth consecutive term.
Based on the poll’s findings, the Liberals and Conservatives are virtually tied nationally (33 per cent to 31 per cent), with the former holding their own in Ontario, Québec and even British Columbia, a province where the NDP tends to be more competitive at their expense than in other regions of the country.
Looking at the regional breakdowns, Trudeau’s biggest concern could be the Conservative weakness in Quebec rather than the strength of Pierre Poilievre’s party elsewhere.
That’s because the numbers there suggest the Conservatives — in fourth place at 13 per cent — are leaking support to the Bloc Québécois. That could imperil the many francophone ridings the Liberals have been winning on opposition splits over the past three elections.
The fact is that since becoming leader, Poilievre has lost more ground in Quebec than he has gained in most other provinces.
At a time in the federal cycle when a critical mass of Canadians normally craves change, Poilievre is so far failing to convince swing voters that he amounts to an acceptable alternative.
If that’s the case, it is mostly a result of his own doing.
With little or no help from the Liberals, the Conservative leader has been hard at work branding himself — and, by association, his party — as a destructive force in federal politics rather than a constructive force for a better good.
He has done so by using the first defining months of his tenure to burnish his image as a polarizing figure for whom all in politics is fair game, including the assassination of the characters of his opponents and critics.
Opportunities to showcase himself as prime ministerial have come and gone, every one of them sacrificed on the altar of virulent partisanship.
If the numbers in voting intentions are not decisively moving the way of the Conservatives, it may well be because Poilievre is giving Liberal sympathizers a rationale to stick with Trudeau for yet another election.
One of the biggest risks for the prime minister as he contemplates his fourth run is the apathy that usually sets in party ranks and beyond as a leader’s tenure stretches into a decade. So far, the evidence is that Poilievre is acting as an effective antidote to that apathy.
A word in closing: For months now, Poilievre has been singlemindedly pursuing the China interference issue in the Commons. And yet, over all that time, he has not really lifted his narrative above the partisan level.
That task finally fell to his predecessor, Erin O’Toole, who will be retiring at the end of the spring sitting. In what may have been his last address to the House of Commons, O’Toole made a truly compelling case for a public inquiry.
Ironically, his speech was grounded in the very kind of security briefing Poilievre has steadfastly declined to take.
By artfully weaving his parliamentary privilege with the national security restrictions that attend information shared by CSIS, O’Toole ended up highlighting both the weakness of the Liberal case against a public inquiry and the unbearable lightness of his successor’s refusal to take stock of all the facts available to him to sustain his critique of the government.
In hindsight, Trudeau’s Liberals should be thankful that the Conservative caucus decided to dump an adult politician like O’Toole for a petulant one like Poilievre.