L. Ian MacDonald

September 13, 2022

In terms of surpassing the low expectations of swing voters and centrists for his victory speech as the new Conservative leader, all Pierre Poilievre had to do was leave out the crazy stuff, which he did.

He made no endorsement of cryptocurrencies, didn’t threaten to fire the governor of the central Bank of Canada, didn’t promise to quit the World Economic Forum, end COVID vaccine mandates, or praise the trucker convoy crowd he endorsed during the three-week shutdown of Ottawa — a G7 capital — last winter.

Instead, he did something really smart. He introduced himself to Canadians, and told them his own story. In excellent French, as well as English, using the teleprompter instinctively for cues rather than as a guide to his message.

And so did his vivacious wife, Anaida, who in introducing him introduced herself as the daughter of Venezuelan immigrants who learned her perfect French growing up in the East End of Montreal. Which makes her a major asset in Quebec.

Poilievre told his own story as the son of an unwed 16 year-old mother who gave him up at birth for adoption by a couple who were school teachers.

Both his birth mother and his adoptive parents, he said, were in the room in Ottawa joining in the victory celebration.

And Canada, he said, is “a country where the son of a teenage mother adopted by two teachers can dare to run for prime minister.”

That’s a very compelling story that many Canadians were hearing for the first time.

Moving right along, Poilievre then took dead aim at Justin Trudeau and the Liberals on the core question of competence.

He noted that many Canadians are struggling. “They don’t need a government to run their lives,” he said. “They need a government that can run a passport office.”

The competitive sound bite of the week.

Of his vanquished leadership rival, Poilievre was magnanimous to Jean Charest, and gracious to his wife Michèle. Having dismissed him during the campaign as a Conservative-turned-Liberal-hack as Quebec premier, Poilievre acknowledged Charest’s pivotal role in the 1995 referendum on independence, in which he saved the day, and possibly the country, with his famous Montreal speech three days before the vote carried by the ‘No’ side by only 54,000 votes.

Poilievre could afford to be generous, having won 68 percent of the vote to 16 percent for Charest in the weighted vote with 100 points for each of the 338 ridings.

As it turned out, Poilievre also won all but six of Quebec’s 78 ridings, depriving Charest of his standing as a favourite son.

For his part, Charest called for unity and announced he would be returning to private life in Montreal, where he has a major international law practice focusing on world trade.

Poilievre’s first caucus meeting Monday was predictably an uncontested victory lap for his team, and unusual in that he invited the media into the room for his speech. On the other side, Trudeau was meeting the Liberal caucus at the resort town of St. Andrew’s, NB. After a few perfunctory words of congratulations, Trudeau lapsed into reminders of Poilievre’s populist right wing campaign rhetoric.

Trudeau criticized politicians who thrived on “buzzwords, dog whistles and careless attacks.”

OMG, welcome to the majors, prime minister. In this league, you’re supposed to be able to take a punch.

Trudeau and Poilievre will have their first PM to Opposition Leader encounter in a non-partisan context when the House convenes Thursday for tributes by members to Queen Elizabeth and, by extension, congratulations to King Charles.

After which, the House will not sit until after the Queen’s funeral next week, and then the fun will begin.

The close encounters of the Question Period kind will feature an opposition leader who, though first elected in 2006, is still only 43, seven years younger than the PM.

In the middle of his third term, and with a “supply and confidence” peace pact with the NDP until the 2025 election, Trudeau must at some point consider his own future.

He told his cabinet last week he plans to run again, and why would he say otherwise? This opens the door to Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland considering her own future in the meantime.  If she could become head of NATO, as rumoured last week, that would give her the opportunity to help the alliance bolster her beloved Ukraine’s increasingly strong pushback against the Russians.

All of these questions and issues will be in the air when the House resumes next week. Let the games begin.

L. Ian MacDonald is Editor of Policy Magazine.