Pierre Poilievre prepares to deliver a message at Cascadia Metals in Delta, B.C., on Aug. 14. Poilievre’s efforts to win the daily headline war, and his instinct to swing at every pitch, is not serving him or the country, writes Urback.ETHAN CAIRNS/The Canadian Press
On Monday afternoon, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced what has been billed the single largest private capital investment in Canadian history: $52-billion to expand Bell’s AI Data Centre project in Saskatchewan. If completed, the project will mean hundreds of good, permanent data-operations jobs, plus thousands more in associated opportunities. It promises to attract further investment in the province and to help establish Canada as a global AI leader.
The news was just one of many major announcements streaming out of Mr. Carney’s two-day investment summit: Several big banks committed billions of dollars to boost economic growth in critical sectors; Manitoba said it will waive provincial sales tax on capital spending on the Port of Churchill expansion; Ottawa announced it will allow private investment in major airports, move the capital cost allowance (CCA) to 100 per cent on a majority of asset categories, and drop the federal marginal corporate tax rate on new business investment to 6.4 per cent.
All of it is positive, promising news for Canada, and many of the initiatives being announced are precisely the sort of projects and regulatory changes that many Canadians – Conservatives in particular – have spent 10 years calling for.
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Which creates a distinct political problem for the Leader of the Official Opposition: How is he supposed to “oppose” all of this?
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has been grumbling from the sidelines for the past two days while predecessor Stephen Harper speaks audibly alongside Mr. Carney at his investment summit. On X, Mr. Poilievre posted that “Speeches, summits, and symbolic signing ceremonies do not grow the economy and do not pay mortgages or grocery bills,” which is another way of saying that Mr. Carney’s party looks boring and he wouldn’t have gone if he was invited anyway.
Mr. Poilievre also posted a nearly five-minute video calling “B.S.” on Mr. Carney’s claim that foreign direct investment in Canada is at a two-decade high, quipping that under this Prime Minister, FDI stands for “foreign direct illusions.” It’s the same brand of sophomoric attack that Mr. Poilievre has trying to sell, unsuccessfully, for more than a year.
To be fair to Mr. Poilievre, he is in a rather impossible spot. It’s not simply that a crisis favours the incumbent, but that this incumbent is perfect for this particular crisis, where Canadians are clearly desperate for a steady hand to counter U.S. President Donald Trump’s flailing one. According to a recent Angus Reid poll, the gap between support for the Liberals and the Conservatives has grown to 14 percentage points, up from a four-point gap in July, and Mr. Carney’s growing support appears to be coming almost entirely from Conservative voters. That is no surprise when Mr. Carney is quite literally governing from the Conservative playbook.
So how is Mr. Poilievre supposed to oppose this?
The short answer: He shouldn’t.
The Conservative Leader has been at his best recently when he’s appeared on U.S. news networks, selling Canada to an American audience. He was serious. He cut the crap. He championed Canada. He stuck to the facts. He looked like a leader.
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Mr. Poilievre can and should be a leader before a Canadian audience, too. That doesn’t mean he should abdicate his responsibility to hold the government to account, but he could approach that – for now at least, while the mood in Canada clearly favours collaboration – as a partner in making a better Canada, not a heckler chirping from the sidelines. He could demand Parliament resume early not because Mr. Carney has something to hide, but because Conservatives have good ideas on how to tackle this trade war, too, and they ought to share them in the House of Commons. Instead of framing enduring interprovincial trade barriers as just another broken promise, he could try to sell the Conservative case for their elimination, in detail. The Liberals are taking many of the Conservatives’ ideas anyway; Mr. Poilievre might as well get credit for being a team player while it happens.
Many devoted Conservatives will scoff at this concept of a Pollyanna Poilievre. That’s fine; they may scoff by their lonesome, as the gap between the parties continues to widen. The fact is that Mr. Poilievre’s efforts to win the daily headline war, and his instinct to swing at every pitch, is not serving him or the country. No one’s listening, even when he has something genuinely important to say.
But they might notice if they first see him applauding a $52-billion investment in Canada, or a change to the federal marginal corporate tax rate he would have announced himself. Instead of the daily headline war, he should play the long game. Both Mr. Poilievre and the country would be better for it.