One of the weirder aspects of the Justin Trudeau-Pierre Poilievre dynamic that dominated the previous Parliament is that a pair of adversaries who looked like opposites in every way were in fact mirror images.
Political lifers of a sort; charismatic; leaders of a movement version of their parties in a moment that sang out for it; susceptible to hubris and insularity that could feed bad political judgment; prone to dividing the world into people who agree with them and people who are wrong and bad.
There aren’t many parallels between Mr. Poilievre and his new political adversary, Prime Minister Mark Carney. But there is one big one: each of them, not so long ago, enjoyed a moment of perfect political alchemy in which they seemed like the answer to every question Canadians might have – and those moments are gone.
Now that the House of Commons is returning to full tilt for the first time since the election, trying to recapture that lightning in a bottle will be much more complicated for both of them.
Mr. Poilievre’s perfect moment came as public resentment toward Mr. Trudeau peaked alongside frustration over the high cost of living, and the two sentiments multiplied each other. The Conservative Leader painted Canada as a broken country screaming out for “common sense” to correct everything from housing and grocery prices to crime and drug addiction.
He was both responding to and feeding the public mood, while the Trudeau government seemed willfully oblivious. As a result, Mr. Poilievre led his party to an enduring 20-point lead in the polls.
Mr. Carney’s political sweet spot arrived when Donald Trump started licking his chops and leering across the border, leaving Canadians in a rage-panic about sovereignty and economic destruction. And here was the former central bank governor who’d steered two different countries through emergency times, offering both drop-the-gloves pugnacity and calm, soothing plans to make it all okay.
His party, overripe roadkill just a few months earlier, floated to the top of the polls solely on the strength of people’s confidence in Mr. Carney, with the U.S. President’s threats a constant air-raid siren in the background.
But moments, by definition, don’t last.
Mr. Poilievre was so effective in prosecutorial mode that the two sworn enemies he declared on behalf of Canada – Mr. Trudeau and the carbon tax – are both long gone, leaving him shadow-boxing with their memories.
And the U.S. tariffs no longer register as the only emergency that matters. Canadians have turned their attention back to the choking cost of living and will be expecting solutions from Mr. Carney that they can feel at their dinner tables.
Opinion: Parliament may be back, but it won’t be politics as usual
You can see each of these men now trying to recapture the glory days, like some low-rent Springsteen song.
Mr. Carney’s address to caucus this week borrowed heavily from his election stump speech: we’re over the shock of the U.S. betrayal but won’t forget the lessons; Canadians can be masters in our own house; and yet, “We are in a crisis.”
The slippery political challenge facing the Prime Minister lives in the twinned facts that the economic damage of that crisis is not even close to fully revealing itself, and yet to talk about it in those terms seemed exactly right in March and feels odd now.
For his part, Mr. Poilievre has taken to telling everyone that Mr. Carney is “even worse than Justin Trudeau,” which is ludicrous under the very terms of the political universe the Conservative Leader has so meticulously constructed for Canadians. You can’t spend two years telling people about the Antichrist and then announce that you dug some kind of super-Antichrist out from between the couch cushions.
Finding a new moment and a new gear in which to meet it gets harder for both of them now that summer’s suspended animation is over.
For the first time since he entered the Liberal leadership race, people are not simply thrilled to have Mr. Carney on the job.
Liberal MPs have formed a climate caucus to push that cause amid perceptions that the Prime Minister has abandoned it for economic expediency, and this week a staffer from the Trudeau PMO published a column accusing Mr. Carney of not being who he said he was.
Carney’s cabinet is 100 days into its term. Here’s how it’s changed Canada
Ontario Premier Doug Ford – until now one of the Prime Minister’s most enthusiastic boosters – is grumbling that his province didn’t get enough love from the initial list of major infrastructure projects.
Even what is on the list poses a communications challenge. This is the centrepiece of Mr. Carney’s economic plan, but it’s going to be difficult to explain to Canadians, worried about losing their job or how much next week’s groceries will cost, how a liquefied natural gas plant or copper mine helps them.
For about five minutes after the election, Mr. Poilievre seemed to be talking about learning lessons, but he’s since made it clear that he believes he got everything right and will continue to do it all the exact same way.
Many in Conservative circles, however, see the result in April as a massive lost opportunity, and the insular, combative way Mr. Poilievre and his campaign manager, Jenni Byrne, ran things doesn’t buy you the benefit of many doubts.
The Conservative Leader keeps saying with a grin that he’d be thrilled if the Liberals steal his good policy ideas. But Mr. Carney has proved so willing to do so that Mr. Poilievre is at risk of looking all hat no cattle in his ambition to be seen as prime minister-in-waiting.
And there is one last similarity that connects these two very different politicians. There was once electrifying political success for each of them in not being someone else – Mr. Poilievre the anti-Trudeau, Mr. Carney the anti-Trump (and maybe also the anti-Trudeau and the anti-Poilievre).
Now, all they have is themselves, facing each other in the House of Commons for the first time.