L. Ian MacDonald

May 4, 2023

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in high form Thursday evening as he gave the keynote address at the Liberal Party policy convention in Ottawa.

And Trudeau had plenty of help for the occasion.

Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne reminded the crowd that Volkswagen had just unveiled plans to build a gigafactory in St. Thomas, Ontario, to make batteries for the green generation of EVs. For her part, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland reminded Liberals that $10 a day child care happened on their watch.

Trudeau’s stemwinding, base-riling 40-minute speech contrasted Liberal values with the tactical populism of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.

“Pierre Poilievre’s populism, his slogans and buzzwords, are not serious solutions to the serious challenges we’re facing,” he said, adding that the Conservatives “either say investing in Canadians is a waste of money or that our policies are too woke.”

“Too woke!? Hey, Pierre Poilievre, it’s time for you to wake up,” he admonished…the biggest applause line of the night.

He also went after Poilievre’s mantra that “Canada is broken,” which belies the reality of Canada as a land of hope, a nation of immigrants. Half a million immigrants a year, helping to transform the Canadian economy to the coming green energy era.

There’s nothing broken about that.

Trudeau is only too happy to tell that story. And there can no doubt that he is a happy warrior, made for the the campaign trail.

Where does the NDP fit in all this?

To be sure, since Liberals and the New Democrats struck their confidence and supply agreement, assuring the survival of the Minority House until the writ is dropped for the next election in October 2025, the courtship goes on between the two mainstream progressive parties.

Jagmeet Singh is in something of a predicament. He has bought time, but at what cost? He also hastens to take credit for the emergence of new social programs. And why not?

He points out that $10 a day child care has happened since the Liberal-NDP on-aggression pact. Singh is also happy to take credit for the $6 billion transfer to the provinces for dental care. The NDP supports Budget 2023, but not without emphasizing its own standards of fiscal policy and management.

But Progressive Conservative Leader Brian Mulroney had it dead right in the historic 1984 campaign, which saw the of end of a Liberal dynasty. “Every vote for the NDP is one vote less vote for the Liberals,” he often said. In the event, the Mulroney Conservatives would win the biggest landslide in Canadian history, with 211 seats out 265 in the House of Commons. Meanwhile, the NDP under Ed Broadbent’s leadership fell to an historic third-place finish.

As for the Conservatives, Canadians are learning a lot about what they’re against, not so much about what they’re for.

They have a way of seeing the dark side, and giving expression to it. They also have a way of going negative on everything, well beyond the role of Official Opposition. In the present context of a minority House, and the Liberal-NDP non-aggression pact, the question becomes, what about the Conservatives? What have they got on offer?

In other words, what is the Conservative agenda for Canada?

For a few minutes last September, Pierre Poilievre emerged from the negative shadow he had created for himself.

He said in his leadership acceptance speech that he was adopted as a child. His birth mother was only 16. Both his adoptive and biological parents were present on the occasion of the leadership convention. It was an authentic and revealing moment. He was telling Canadian voters something about himself. And his wife, Anaida, in presenting him, spoke of her life as the daughter of Venezuelan immigrants, who grew up in the predominantly francophone East End of Montreal, and learned to speak perfect French.

What’s missing in Poilievre’s narrative is a strong sense of country. The kind of Canada defined by Gordon Lightfoot in The Canadian Railroad Trilogy.

There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run,

When the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun.

Long before the white man, and long before the wheel.

When the green, dark forest was too silent to be real.

L. Ian MacDonald is Editor and Publisher of Policy Magazine.