Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, visits The Globe and Mail for an editorial board interview.Melissa Tait/The Globe and Mail
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has a compelling critique of the Liberals’ approach to governing, a case that he made crisply in a wide-ranging discussion with The Globe and Mail editorial board.
That case is, in a word, freedom. Smaller government, less intrusive government, less nanny-ish government, less market-warping government. The contrast with the Liberals’ increasingly technocratic bent under Prime Minister Mark Carney could not be more obvious.
Mr. Poilievre’s problem is that the message has yet to intersect with the moment, and may not for some time to come. More than a year after the federal election, Canadians are still giving Mr. Carney the benefit of the doubt, a function of the perceived threat from Donald Trump, especially, and the hope that the Liberal Leader is the steady hand needed to steer a new course for Canada.
Canadians may grow weary of Liberal interventionism, of a government that thinks that the solution to an ossified bureaucracy is a new layer of bureaucracy. They have not, yet. Canadians may grow wary of the relentless rise in federal debt, and the increasing bite that interest payments take from revenue. They have not, yet. Canadians may develop a taste for the kind of disruption that Mr. Poilievre would offer rather than the calming presence of Mr. Carney. They have not, yet.
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So Mr. Poilievre and the Conservatives must wait on events, for the Liberal approach of interventionist government and higher spending to play out to a conclusion.
Mr. Poilievre acknowledged as much in his hour-long meeting with The Globe, saying Mr. Carney was given “a lot of grace” by voters but that he has yet to fulfill those expectations. “And two or three more years of failure to achieve and deliver will, I think, result in a very harsh judgment by the electorate that vested so much faith in his abilities,” he said.
A window of three years seems about right. The new, if narrow, Liberal majority means that an election would beckon in 2029 or 2030. Mr. Trump should be on his way out of the White House, inevitably altering the tone of U.S.-Canada relations, and the elbows-up effect on domestic politics. And, as the Conservative Leader noted, Mr. Carney will have had to make progress, not just promises, by that point.
How should the Conservatives spend that time? The best approach for them, and for the country, is to continue to offer up policies in the window, and dare the Liberals to steal them.
Mr. Poilievre’s position on child care is a case in point. The five-year-old system of subsidies is rapidly devolving into shambles, in part because of the overemphasis on non-profit daycares as the model for care. That insistence from Ottawa has suffocated for-profit daycares (many of which are run by women entrepreneurs, should the government care to peer through its gender-equity lens).
The Conservative Leader’s position that “private, community-based, even home-based daycare” should be eligible for funding is the right one. Flexibility is needed, particularly to distribute more equitably the benefits of the billions of dollars that Ottawa spends annually.
The Liberals can either agree, and poach the approach, or not. The Carney Liberals have already done plenty of poaching of Conservative ideas: Killing the federal fuel charge, scrapping the increase in capital-gains taxation, rolling back climate regulations and putting Ottawa’s shoulder into building a new oil pipeline.
Every good idea that gets poached should be seen as a good thing for Canada, and a victory for the Conservatives. But the Liberals can only go so far without endangering their left flank. Mr. Poilievre will be able to offer more aggressive change, when Canadians’ concerns shift from stability to shaking up the status quo.
Is Mr. Poilievre the right messenger for that moment, when it arrives? No, if the version of Mr. Poilievre that shows up is the apple-munching creator of nicknames and memes. But a Conservative Leader able to credit his opponent with good intentions, but misguided policies, one who is able to link his vision of freedom to the everyday concerns of Canadians – that would be a messenger ready to meet the moment.