There is a constituency in the Conservative Party for Poilievre’s antics, which is really the problem

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The SNC-Lavalin affair was the worst corruption scandal in federal politics since the sponsorship scandal – maybe since the Pacific Scandal. If it did not involve material gain for any of the participants, it certainly involved flagrant abuse of power, by officials from the prime minister on down.

The facts, for those needing a refresher: Justin Trudeau and senior officials in his government pressured then-attorney-general, Jody Wilson-Raybould – strenuously, repeatedly, and for many months – to interfere in a criminal prosecution on behalf of a Liberal-connected engineering firm, SNC-Lavalin (now called AtkinsRéalis), for explicitly partisan reasons. When she refused, she was fired. When at length she went public, they spent months more stonewalling, covering up, deflecting and smearing her reputation.

That much was known before the ethics commissioner’s report found the prime minister had violated section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act (“No public office holder shall use his or her position … to seek to influence a decision of another person so as to further the public office holder’s private interests or … to improperly further another person’s private interests.”) What emerged in his report is how much more wide-ranging the campaign had been: how government officials had been in discussions with SNC-Lavalin – which, again, was the subject of a criminal prosecution – not just about how to overcome the attorney-general’s objections, but, in the commissioner’s words, to “circumvent, undermine and ultimately attempt to discredit” her authority.

It is legitimate to ask whether the behaviour described – public officeholders, not only pressuring the attorney-general, but conspiring to deceive her, and in the service of helping a private company evade prosecution – was more than a mere ethics violation, but rather a crime: an attempt to “obstruct, pervert or defeat the course of justice,” perhaps, as proscribed under s. 139 (2) of the Criminal Code, or breach of trust, under s. 122.

Poilievre backpedals on RCMP comments after days of pushback

And it is more than troubling that the RCMP, though it had opened an investigation into the matter, made so little headway, interviewing only a handful of witnesses and failing even to try to overturn an expansive cabinet confidence order that prevented others from talking, before ending their inquiries without telling anyone. It is legitimate to ask why the RCMP investigation was so inconclusive. It need not imply political interference, or a lack of independence, though it is not an entirely unreasonable suspicion in light of other events over the years that have led to reasonable doubts about how independent the RCMP is.

The investigation may simply have been mishandled. Or it may have been wound up for good and sound reasons, i.e. there may not have been enough evidence to warrant further inquiries. But it is fair to ask – as Conservative MPs on the Commons Ethics committee had hoped to do, when they invited RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme to appear before them. Alas he was prevented from testifying by a vote of the committee’s Liberal and NDP members – another in a series of thwarted investigations into the affair.

All of these, as I say, are legitimate questions. They remain legitimate questions, notwithstanding the passage of time – perhaps the more so because of it. And it is legitimate for an opposition leader to raise them: legitimate, even laudable.

That, however, is a long way from flatly asserting, in an appearance on a right-wing fringe podcast, that the former prime minister should have been charged with crimes (plural: not only for his actions in the SNC-Lavalin affair, according to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, but also for having accepted a free vacation from the Aga Khan) and, what is more, would have been, had not the “despicable” leadership of the RCMP “covered up” for him – all without offering a shred of evidence. That is the path Mr. Poilievre has chosen, and it is the reason so many are questioning his judgment today.

Opinion: Pierre Poilievre’s casual accusation of an RCMP cover-up is stunning

The point is not that an opposition leader should never accuse a prime minister of committing a crime, or the police of covering up for him. If he has evidence that they have – evidence sufficient to stake his reputation on – it is in the public interest that he should say so, and let the heavens fall. If he wants to be taken seriously, he should do so in a way that signals he is serious: by making a statement in Parliament, say, or holding a press conference, releasing the evidence, and answering reporters’ questions.

That Mr. Poilievre did not do so – that he made such a serious charge, in such a casual way – suggests a number of possibilities. One, that he does not really think it is such a serious matter, that prime ministers of Canada are routinely corrupt and police forces inevitably in cahoots, such that it barely merits more than a passing mention – or at any rate, that he believes his target audience thinks that way.

Two, that it is a serious matter, but that the charge is so obvious, so self-evident, something “everybody knows,” that he is not obliged to produce evidence, but is merely recalling a universally acknowledged fact. Or three, that he is entitled to make whatever incendiary accusations he likes, about whatever individual or institution he likes, without evidence and without regard for the consequences, because only Liberals and Laurentian elites care about these things.

The reaction, including from many within his own party, suggests the damage is largely self-inflicted. Whatever may be the case south of the border, there remains an expectation in this country that political leaders should observe basic norms of civilized conduct. Whatever may be the consequences for Mr. Trudeau’s reputation, or that of the RCMP – whatever consequences they deserve – the more immediate effect has been to call into question, yet again, Mr. Poilievre’s judgment. And, inevitably, his character.

Opinion: Is Pierre Poilievre okay?

This is not the first time, after all, that he has accused officials of independent agencies within the federal government of acting on behalf of, or at the behest of, their political masters. Recall his vow to fire the governor of the Bank of Canada, for having supposedly “printed money” to finance the Liberal government’s pandemic-relief programs, indeed of turning the bank into Mr. Trudeau’s “ATM.” More broadly, he has earned a reputation for wild overstatements, conspiracy thinking and personal attacks. Which may explain why, though the Conservatives are nearly level with the Liberals in the opinion polls, he trails the Liberal Leader, Mark Carney, by 20 points or more.

Voters are entitled to wonder, if he is so unguarded in the words he speaks in public, whether he is any more measured in private – and whether the thinking this sort of language reveals is the kind they want in a prime minister. It does not matter a great deal whether he sincerely believes what he is saying – whether he believes the World Economic Forum is controlling our futures, for example, or the lunatics who took the nation’s capital hostage for three weeks are “peaceful protesters” – or merely wishes to pander to those who do. Past a certain point, they amount to the same thing.

A common explanation for the increasingly strident statements Mr. Poilievre has been making of late – claiming foreign workers are taking jobs from Canadian youth, declaring the country’s cities are a “war zone,” insisting the Nazis were socialists – is that he is focused on ensuring he wins enough votes of party members to survive the leadership review at the party’s January convention. But what does it say about his grip on the leadership that he is so beholden to the party’s most extreme elements? And what does it say about the state of the party that the extremists appear to be in control?

That, more than Mr. Poilievre’s leadership, is what really ought to preoccupy party leaders. When, for example, 45 per cent of Conservative supporters tell pollsters that they approve of Donald Trump’s job performance – versus 1 per cent of Liberals and New Democrats – something has gone very wrong. This has little to do with ideology, or even party, and very much to do with personality type. Whatever your philosophy of government, if you cannot see through such an obvious fraud, never mind threat to democracy, as Mr. Trump, then something more fundamental is at work.

The Decibel: What’s going on with Pierre Poilievre?

Likewise, if your chief desire of your own party leader is that he behave in much the same buffoonish way, then we are no longer talking about ideology so much as psychology. Conservatism has always been something of a contrarian philosophy, opposed by its nature to current trends and fashionable nostrums. It has also tended to attract outsiders, given the dominance of liberal opinion in the commanding heights of the establishment: the universities, the courts, the bureaucracy, the media.

But it has lately congealed into a hostility, not only to conventional wisdom, but to established facts; not only to the “fatal conceit” of intellectuals, but to intellect itself; not only to experts, but to expertise. In the fever swamp of the online right, where conspiracy theories and worse mingle and breed, a great many conservative Americans have become alienated, not merely from the liberals they despise, but from America itself, its institutions, values and traditions, which they view as no more than an emanation of liberaldom.

That strain of conservatism – more accurately, anti-liberalism – has almost entirely taken over the Republican Party. It has not yet done so to the Conservative Party in this country, which is why so many Conservatives have such difficulty with Mr. Poilievre’s leadership. But it has established a substantial foothold, and threatens to grow. The Republicans have been able to work their way, barely, into power, taking advantage of the distortions in their political system. Conservatives are far less likely to do so – the distortions here tend to work against them – particularly so long as they are suspected of Trumpian tendencies.

Mr. Poilievre, then, is as much the consequence as the cause of the party’s dysfunction. Denounce his more intemperate statements, by all means, but think more on why there is such an audience for it.