Keep an eye on Harper’s rabid partisans
OTTAWA— Push back the mountain of cynicism scaled by Justin Trudeau and Eve Adams this week and there is another startling political ascension to the summit that bears watching.
Pierre Poilievre, the Canadian Sniper of federal politics, is now in charge of Stephen Harper’s employment file heading into an election.
He’s also in charge of democratic reform — or voter suppression, as his opponents call it — and the national capital region, key in an election year when local rapid transit and downtown redevelopment requests hang over waning Conservative hopes in this region.
Jason Kenney, as the country’s first ever minister of defence and multiculturalism, will be the government spokesman on terror, security and our military role in Iraq, while staying in touch with ethnic communities crucial to both the Conservative electoral hopes and Kenney’s personal ambitions.
The unilingual Rob Nicholson in foreign affairs has never fumbled a Conservative talking point, as long as it’s delivered in English.
Kenney will take care of the first pillar of Harper’s re-election strategy, but the second pillar, the economy, is looking wobbly.
With Joe Oliver in finance and Poilievre now the employment minister, Harper has left the economy to two of his most rabidly partisan ministers.
It shows how Harper values loyalty, but it carries a distinct risk. And it shows how the prime minister’s bench strength has diminished over this mandate.
Oliver, 74, has toned down the rhetoric since his star-crossed days as natural resources minister, but his public statements often appear destined to head off the verbal cliff before finally clinging to safe terrain. Tuesday, he quoted Groucho Marx. A funny line, thought anyone over 50. What?, thought anyone younger.
Poilievre, 35, believes if you keep repeating the same, pithy, bumper sticker message, it will eventually come true. He will beat us into submission with repetition.
He tried that in his first big test as a minister with his Fair Elections Act and finally backed down, accepting amendments he tried to spin as something akin to a little scrubbing.
A Calgary-born former hockey player and a one time Reform Party worker elected at 25, Poilievre is the political equivalent of the hockey pest, the guy who yaps at you in the faceoff circle and gives you a glove in the face in the corner.
If he’s on your team, you love him. If he’s wearing opposition colours, he’ll get under your skin.
As employment minister, he will immediately be under fire over a temporary foreign worker program, left to him in disrepair by Kenney who, uncharacteristically, could never find its proper balance.
He will also be made to answer for job losses, particularly in Ontario, the new apple of the Harper government’s eye as it grapples with weak oil prices.
New Democrats had already been tormenting Kenney and Harper over an estimated 400,000 lost jobs under Conservative watch, highlighting the 17,000 eliminated at Target, nearly 400 at Wrigley in Toronto and retail jobs that have perished at Jacob (1,500), Mexx (1,800) and Sears (2,200).
Poilievre will have to show some empathy for the unemployed in tossing barbs back across the aisle next week.
But his bigger problem might lie in the temporary foreign worker program that embarrassed Kenney and could still be a liability for this government.
Kenney’s departure may indicate Harper feels the program has turned a corner, but there is ample evidence that Kenney’s sweeping overhaul of the program last spring was an overreaction.
Figures used to justify the move later proved to be wildly inflated or just plain wrong and the restaurant industry says it is facing an unprecedented labour shortage while the demographic it depends on for employment has peaked and will decline by 300,000 over the next decade.
The industry and Kenney’s former department are in a statistical war over what the minister said was a flat line in wages for restaurant and accommodation workers, something the industry vehemently denies.
The new regulations imposed by Kenney gave his department the power to inspect work sites without a warrant to check on temporary foreign workers, but it has never been used.
The opposition says this was all bluster and no action by the former minister who counters that all employers have co-operated on “thousands” of inspections, so the program is working.
Poilievre will have no mandate to change the program.
But the manner in which he defends it could go a long way to determining whether Harper’s economic pillar remains strong, or wobbles under a young partisan in whom the prime minister has shown too much confidence. Tim Harper is a national affairs writer. His column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. tharper@thestar.ca Twitter: @nutgraf1