Andrew MacDougall: Poilievre finally counterattacks on the Trump front

The Alberta separation front, though, remains a problem.

By: Andrew MacDougall

What happens when Canada needs bold action but the global figure most closely associated with political radicalism is the man Canadians hate the most in the entire world?

Welcome to the conundrum facing Pierre Poilievre and Canada’s Conservatives. Lots of lights on Canada’s national dashboard are blinking red, but the country is fearful of the kind of radical disruption represented by Donald Trump and so are choosing — in increasing numbers, according to polling — the relative safety-ism of Mark Carney and his Liberal party.

Now, if that were it, the Conservatives would still have a decent chance of overtaking the Liberals. The answers to Canada’s blinking-lights problems aren’t evident, and it’s not clear Carney is the kind of man who is up for a load of domestic disruption, even if he is happy to stick his name on the concept of ruptures abroad. Carney has been in power for nearly a year and he hasn’t made Canadians better off. There is a chance Carney never makes them better off. What’s saving Carney’s bacon (for now) is his attitude and rhetoric around Trump.

Compounding Tory misery is the fact that the overall slim percentage of Canadians who like a bit of Trump-tinted argy bargy now sit almost wholly in their camp, what with Maxime Bernier and his merry band of weirdos now being reduced to a small rump on X. That’s how you get a problem like Jamil Javani and his useful idiotism of telling Canadians that Trump “loves Canadians” and that we should all stop having a “hissy fit” about it. Memo to Jivani: That way majority government does not lie.

Well, unless you’re Mark Carney, I suppose.

And so, it’s a good thing that Pierre Poilievre has finally stepped up to place a marker down on the U.S. relationship under Trump. This week’s speech to the Economic Club of Canada was a clear distillation of the Poilievre worldview, one that was patriotic, clear, and focused on the issues Canada can control. Had Poilievre been able to come up with a similar message in the heat of last year’s campaign he would probably be in the kitchen calling the shots on Trump and the Canadian economy today.

Even if Poilievre’s words came, as they did, a little too late, they still needed to be said.

Because right now, Canadians are telling their politicians one thing: they are feeling patriotic and want their leaders to be patriotic, too. Anything that sounds like the bad man down south, or sympathy for his aims or tribe, will go down as well as a high-fibre fart in a lift. This is the miasma Poilievre must now navigate without picking up any stench.

Helpfully, both conservatism and federalism were pointing toward some possible paths for Poilievre to follow. We’d just had Stephen Harper back on the federal scene demonstrating how a Conservative can be serious, sanguine and patriotic about the challenges facing Canada. And all without ever sounding like a rage-baity partisan dickhead.

And then there was Doug Ford in Ontario running his mouth on television, openly cheering for Trump losses in this year’s midterm elections. You might think Ford an over-excited knob, but his approach to Trump is a surefire vote-winner in Ontario which, last I checked, was still the prerequisite for attaining and exercising power.

In his speech, Poilievre chose to follow the Harperian path, not the Fordian, which is both the sensible and responsible choice when you aspire to lead the level of government that actually has to get the result versus your American counterpart. As Poilievre rightly noted, Trump will go and Canada has to do what it can to keep the American people on its side as they think about selecting their next leader.

Not that Poilievre is out of the woods just yet. Just as he has slain one dragon, another has arisen within his voter pool.

At a time when an extreme majority of Canadians coast-to-coast are in pro-Canada, fuck-Trump mode, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her United Conservative Party are fanning the flames of Alberta separatism. And as with Trump, the separatists are almost exclusively in Poilievre’s camp at a national level.

The talk of separatism is forcing Poilievre to fight not one but two rearguard actions: one against Trump sympathizers and one against proponents of separatism (who are often the same group). And so, when someone like Smith tries to paint her oil-price inflicted budget deficit as the fault of immigrants, attempts by Polievre to talk tough about deporting immigrants convicted of crimes — while eminently sensible — get cast in Smith’s light. Likewise when raising the absolute insanity that was the Trudeau Liberals ignoring security protocols for 25,000 asylum seekers once the rolls became overwhelmed.

Put differently, the facts of life on these policies might be Conservative, but those facts still have to dwell in an environment that is largely (and increasingly) created by vibe thanks to the vagaries and incentives of algorithmic platform living. And right now the anti-Trump vibe in the Canadian bubble suits Carney better than it does Poilievre.

The best thing the Conservatives can do in this environment is to get in closer touch with the country’s expressed vibe. The spectre of both separatism and Jivanism is undoubtedly fuelled by non-representative algorithmic reinforcement. The less time the Conservatives spend online in the coming months, the better. A federal Conservative Party of Canada that spent a month offline would be able to pick up and hold the national vibe a lot better than one that is extremely online.

It’s time to unplug and reset.

Andrew MacDougall is a director at Trafalgar Strategy and former head of communications to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

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