On September 8, 2022, Prince Charles became King Charles III and in an instant a flawed human being acquired all the gravitas and dignity of the heir to a millennium of royal history.
In the same way, when Pierre Poilievre accepted the Canadian Conservative Party’s overwhelming endorsement this past Saturday night, he moved immediately to shed his bad-boy persona and turn himself into something resembling a credible leader of his majesty’s loyal opposition.
In his first speech as new Conservative leader Poilievre did not utter a word about crypto currency.
He did not promise to fire the governor of the Bank of Canada.
He did not repeat his ritual call to defund the CBC.
He said not a word about his support for the so-called freedom convoy; nor did he denounce the evil World Economic Forum.
And if the new leader did not exactly embrace environmentalism, he did not indulge in an outright, full-throated denial of climate science.
Instead of his usual hobby horses, Poilievre chose to talk about single mothers who have to add water to their babies’ milk and young people forced to live in their parents’ basements because they cannot afford housing.
He told stories about his school teacher parents in Alberta, who taught him the value of hard work. And he prominently featured his attractive Venezuelan immigrant wife and her family.
He did it all comfortably in both English and French. Poilievre is the first Conservative leader since Brian Mulroney (who left politics nearly three decades ago) who can express himself in fluent French.
If media observers and commentators let him get away with it, Poilievre will have accomplished an identity quick-change more dramatic than that of Clark Kent to Superman.
In Poilivere’s case it is a quick change in reverse, from the nasty and ruthless Darth Vader of Canadian politics to your empathetic neighbour who feels your pain and understands how inflation is making your life intolerable.
Those of us who report on politics should not let Poilievre succeed. We have a duty to tell the whole truth about the new leader of the opposition.
For the record, here is some of Pierre Poilievre’s backstory, which he now seems to want Canadians to forget. This writer related much of it back in February of this year, right after the Conservative parliamentary caucus dumped former leader Erin O’Toole and triggered a leadership race.
Poilievre is a lifelong, professional politician
When he got himself elected for the first time, in 2004, Pierre Poilievre was only 25. He has been in Parliament ever since, which means he is a professional politician – an odd calling for one who appeals to populist distrust of politicians.
Poilievre has never held a job outside of politics. He was a small-c conservative activist at the University of Calgary, where he earned a bachelor’s degree, and right out of school he worked for a firm that did robo-calls for politicians.
From an early age Poilievre was an acolyte of the free-enterprising, small-government school of neo-conservatism.
Like others of a similar bent, he was inspired by the philosophy of Russian-born U.S. writer Ayn Rand, one of whose most famous dictums was: “There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.”
Poilievre has been the most vociferous Conservative party politician in support of the truckers’ convoy-cum-illegal-occupation in Ottawa. When he speaks to that issue, he channels another Ayn Rand quote, to wit:
“We are fast approaching the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.”
In the 2004 election, the young and inexperienced Poilievre was something of a giant killer. He defeated then prime minister Paul Martin’s defence minister David Pratt, who was something a Liberal star at the time.
When the Conservatives chose the unknown Poilievre to go up against Pratt, they likely thought he would be a sacrificial lamb. Then, as so often happens in politics, scandals nobody expected cropped up and sapped Liberal support.
Thus was a political career born.
From Harper attack-dog to author of (un)fair elections act
Poilievre did not sit on the opposition front benches during the Martin minority government, for 2004 to 2006. Nor did he get into cabinet immediately after the Conservatives took power in 2006.
But prime minister Harper liked the young MP’s hardcore ideological bent and sharp tongue, and made him a parliamentary secretary, a kind of understudy, to two of his most powerful ministers, John Baird and Jason Kenney, and to Harper himself.
Stephen Harper used his parliamentary secretaries as attack dogs.
Rather than answer most questions posed to him in the House, or, as had been customary, delegate senior ministers to do so, Harper would most often have his young, eager, and more-than-a-bit bloodthirsty parliamentary secretaries do the job.
Harper went through a series of parliamentary secretaries, some of whom, such as Jason Kenney, quickly ascended to the cabinet. Of them all, the most effective attacker in Question Period was Poilievre.
When he got his promotion to Minister of Democratic Reform, in 2013, Poilievre did not soften his style. As minister, Poilievre introduced and championed the one and only significant piece of legislation with which he is associated, the (so-called) Fair Elections Act.
Rarely has a piece of legislation borne a more Orwellian title.
There was nothing fair about Poilievre’s Act. It was a brazen Republican-style effort at voter suppression, which, among other things, sought to make it harder for young, poor and marginalised people to vote.
The Fair Elections Act tightened voter ID requirements, making it especially difficult for the millions of Canadians who have no driver’s license to qualify to vote. Prior to 2006, there had been no ID requirement whatsoever – and very little evidence of any kind of fraud.
Poilievre’s Act also made it easier for political parties to cheat. Poilievre muzzled chief electoral officers. He expressly forbade them from warning Canadians when shenanigans such as phony robo-calls happened during voting periods.
As well, Poilievre moved the office that investigates election crimes out of non-partisan Elections Canada into the federal bureaucracy, placing it under partisan political control.
Throughout the debate on his measure, Poilievre was aggressive and always on the attack.
He berated the integrity of Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand on a number of occasions – knowing that as a non-partisan official Mayrand was powerless to defend himself.
The Trudeau Liberals rolled back most of the noxious provisions of the Fair Elections Act in 2018.
If Poilievre ever did become prime minister there’s a good chance he would try to sneak them back into force.
Trump-style leadership?
More recently, Pierre Poilievre has focused mostly on a traditional libertarian message of small government, less regulation and lower taxes. He talks a lot these days about inflation. He ignores global post-pandemic conditions and the war in Ukraine and claims inflation is entirely fueled by government spending.
But Poilievre is not loath to play in the angry populist sandbox. Hence his enthusiastic and unqualified support for the mob that occupied the centre of Ottawa for several weeks this past winter.
Observers sometimes say Poilievre would provide Donald Trump style leadership in Canada. But there are big ways in which the Trump movement differs from rightward leaning Canadian conservatives such as Poilievre.
For one thing, Trump departed from post-World War II Republican orthodoxy on trade. The former president is an ardent protectionist, while Republicans have been free-traders for many decades.
And Trump is also an isolationist, which is, again, a rupture from seven decades of Republican policy. Unlike most other Republicans, Donald Trump is not interested in projecting U.S. power globally, and he has nothing but contempt for NATO, a U.S.-created military alliance.
However populist they might get, Canadian Conservatives are not going to quit being free traders or stop supporting multilateral military alliances such as NATO. They will never be Trumpian in those ways.
The ways in which Poilievre and the Canadian Conservative right are Trumpian is in their style as much as in their substance.
It is a style characterized by relentless, merciless attacks, which gives no quarter and recognizes no compromise.
Hence the penchant for enemies and scapegoats, such as the governor of the Bank of Canada and the CBC.
Like Donald Trump, Poilievre plays politics mostly in one emotional key – the key of anger.
Anger – and its close neighbour, resentment – is exactly what the Conservative base has wanted from a leader for a long time.
Now the party base has got what it wants. But, perhaps predictably, Poilievre would now have the rest of us forget how he got to where he is and swallow his pretence that he is nothing more than a kind, gentle and folksy guy-of-the people.
Shame on us all if we have such short memories that we fall for this quick-change trick.
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