What does Pierre Poilievre want for Canada? Besides the personal prestige of being Prime Minister, he has offered no constructive ambition for the role he has fought so hard to obtain.
Following his by-election victory in the rural Alberta riding of Battle River-Crowfoot last month, he traveled to Surrey, British Columbia for his first press conference in his restored role as a Member of Parliament. One might have expected him to at least have the courtesy of doing that presser in the riding that just elected him after his last one turfed him.
His tenure as a former parliamentarian was so short that the six months of severance paid to defeated MPs has not even run out. He will also now be entitled to more significant per diems while in Ottawa now that he is in a riding more than 100 km from the Hill. He has made more money, personally, being defeated and re-elected than he would have had he simply won his Carleton seat back in the spring.
This may be incidental, but it speaks loudly to who he is and why he is there. He never moved out of Stornoway, the official residence of the leader of the opposition. Now that he has regained legitimate access to it, he continues to believe he is entitled to eventually be Prime Minister of this country.
Having won a seat in rural Alberta, in the heartland of Alberta’s separatist movement, Poilievre will need to walk a fine line if he’s to show any loyalty to the riding and province that returned him to office with some 80% of the vote.
Alberta premier Danielle Smith, one of his closest allies, has been fanning the flames of Alberta separatism — or ‘sovereignty’ as she calls it, copying Quebec’s separatist rhetoric — since taking office, while offering just enough vagary to provide plausible deniability.
When Jacques Parizeau was preparing for Quebec’s 1995 referendum, his government secretly put together a package estimated at $17 billion (about $32 billion in today’s dollars) to stabilise the economy following an expected referendum victory. Alberta’s separatists, being the non-serious MAGA wannabes that they are, are willing to sell out their province and country for a measly $500 million, and are openly talking of joining the United States, once separate from Canada. Some sovereignty.
Poilievre is not an Alberta separatist. I don’t believe he is even vaguely a closet separatist, even though he needs the support of those who are to maintain his base in Alberta. There is no victory possible for him in a broken Canada, in spite of his constant rhetoric about Canada being broken.
But after over 20 years in federal office, I cannot see anything positive that Poilievre has to offer. His embrace of Trump’s rhetoric and of the convoy, of anti-vax tinfoil hats, of opponents of science, social progress, social programs, all have one thing in common. He’s anti-people.
His government cut military spending to its lowest level since the second world war, cut support for veterans, raised the retirement age to 67, disproportionately decreased taxes on the rich, attacked our social safety net, and still managed to raise the deficit and leave the economy worse off than when they took it.
His only accomplishment in office was to undermine voter rights for anyone who wasn’t likely to support him.
What’s he there for? What’s his purpose in running, in still being in Ottawa?
There’s no evidence that it’s to improve Canada as a country nor the lives of its people.
At least, not all of them.
Good article as usual, David. But this made me stop and reflect:
"His government cut military spending to its lowest level since the second world war..."
Please explain to me why that's a bad thing?