Andrew MacDougall: Pierre Poilievre needs to start pissing downwind
The anti-Liberal attacks that once worked so well are falling short in the age of Trump
By: Andrew MacDougall
It’s official. The Great Pierre Poilievre Tone Experiment of early 2026 is over.
After donning the mantle of the reasonable, Poilievre is back to his natural pugilistic self. And so is his team, with House Leader Andrew Scheer now accusing the (checks notes) National Post of being in the tank for the Liberals for the crime of (checks notes again) reporting the news. The Great Reset that saw the Conservative leader break bread with the Peter Mansbridges and Steven Bartletts of the world has now been rowed back to the waters Poilievre mined with great effectiveness as Justin Trudeau was sailing Canada into trouble.
Only Justin Trudeau is no longer the prime minister of Canada; he is shagging Katy Perry on a yacht after their visit to Coachella. Mark Carney is the prime minister of Canada. And Mark Carney is no Justin Trudeau (even if he might have views on Trudeau’s teenage dream).
And while politics is not governed by a series of immutable laws, it is bound by the realities of the day. Only the most gifted politicians can make the weather; most have to lean into whatever the world is giving them at the moment. Right now, Poilievre is soiling himself by whizzing into the hurricane that is Donald Trump, while Carney is putting that same wind into his sails.
Which brings us to the hard political reality of our day: As long as Donald J. Trump is maxing out the crazy, Mark Carney will play the role of God on high. Because Carney is the antithesis of Trump. This might not be fair, but it’s a fact, and the sooner that fact is swallowed by Conservatives, the better.
Right now, it does not matter that the Carney economic world view has produced outcomes that are great for university-educated urban professionals and less great for those who aren’t. It does not matter that the cheap money policy Carney pioneered as Bank of Canada governor helped to inflate assets while flooring savings. It does not matter that Carney has swallowed his previous self whole. As long as Trump is Trump, Carney being Carney pays off. And the polls bear that out.
And so, this is not the time to imply that Carney is under or badly educated. This is not the time to declare the media in the tank for Carney. This is not the time to claim Carney is enriching himself and his former colleagues at Brookfield via the actions of the Canadian state. These are the criticisms meant to flatter your base, not the ones that will find you new recruits.
Because Carney is not only smart, most Canadians perceive him as smart. You might as well point at the sky and declare it not blue. The media (present company excluded) might be on the collective teat and, at some level, craving the approval of the Carney class, but attacking them won’t pay off beyond the already converted. And when people hear Carney attacked over his Brookfield holdings, they don’t think less of Carney, they think of Trump and his coterie who are most definitely enriching themselves while in office.
Which isn’t to say there aren’t grains of truth in each of the Conservative criticisms. We rarely bite the hand that feeds and I, too, gagged at the recent Bloomberg tongue bath about Carney and his C-suite charm offensive. I also agree that Carney’s worldview is too often blind to those who aren’t Homo Economicus (which is to say, most of us irrational beings). And I think Carney has gotten too free a ride on his personal financial affairs.
But Canadians don’t want to hear it. Any of it. At least, not right now.
What’s more, Canadians won’t be in listening mode for quite some time now that Carney has secured his majority. Again, the Conservatives might not like how Carney got there, but he did, and (again) the sooner that fact is swallowed, the better.
Even the (justified) complaint that Carney and Steve MacKinnon, the Liberal house leader, are playing silly buggers by rejigging the parliamentary committees in the manner they are is going to be ignored. Because you know who’s anti-democratic in the minds of Canadians? Donald Trump. And Carney is not Trump. Don’t shoot the messenger.
So, how do you chip away at Carney’s stone if every criticism is going to fall on deaf ears? Well, you start by not digging the hole any deeper. You start by accepting that Donald Trump is the lens through which most Canadians are viewing their politics.
And this manifests itself in ways both big and small. It means you don’t do things like go to the ultimate fighting shortly after Donald Trump has gone to the ultimate fighting. Mark Carney would never go to ultimate fighting. Not going to the ultimate fighting doesn’t make Carney anti-ordinary people, it makes him not Trump. If Trump were to say he loves water, you need to stop drinking water.
The reality is Majority Carney will either succeed or he will fail, and nothing the Conservatives have to say about it along the way will matter more than Carney’s actual end product. If Canada is no better off in a couple of years, Poilievre will be the natural beneficiary.
Chipping away means you dial down the campaign-style rhetoric and stick to the day-in, day-out task of holding the government to account. It is time to build a body of work that you can present to Canadians at election time at some point in the distant future, not add to a daily collection of attacks and memes that feel Trumpy. The current information economy incentivizes angry daily shouting but that doesn’t mean it’s what a majority of Canadians want. What’s more, if you do it often enough, for long enough, and that’s all Canadians will remember, as Poilievre found out when the exam question was changed from Trudeau to Carney in the last election.
Which brings us to our concluding reality: Poilievre is running out of time to change his perception in the public’s mind. If he doubles down on his 2022-2025 vintage, he shouldn’t be surprised to find himself still on the shelf after the next election.
Andrew MacDougall is a director at Trafalgar Strategy and former head of communications to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
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Well, the reality is a leopard can't change its spots. Polievre excelled as an attack dog in question period, but there is not a statesman like bone in his body.
Canadians should be very, very concerned about how Carney got his majority floor crossers, and about everything to do with the spring quasi-budget* giving us record spending and debt and the laughable do-you-think-we-are-stupid "sovereign wealth fund", but no, the real issue is that Poilievre is criticizing these things and going to an MMA match.
I throw up my hands in hopelessness at our moron voters and the media who feed them. One day there will be a reckoning but I am not sure how many years must pass and how much damage we have to endure before that happens.
(*Note how we moved the actual budget to the fall so nobody would dare to bring down the government and have a Christmas election. Amazing. They covered all bases big and small.)