Like a fly accepting a spider’s invitation to visit its living room, Pierre Poilievre foolishly ventured into liberal identity territory he could have avoided. Trudeau will emerge with the advantage.
Pierre Poilievre is a political phenomenon.
Let’s be clear, it would be difficult to be further from Poilievre’s ideas than I am. When I say he is a political phenomenon, I mean that the fact that he avoids, even despises, everything that is right and accepted in Canadian politics makes him a rare animal who is very difficult to deal with. to compose, both for his opponents and for the media.
Watching him devour Jean Charest from all sides during the debates of the Conservative leadership race, I remembered an old Japanese film where Godzilla chewed up a passerby… In short, Poilievre is a predator.
Is the entire political and media class slandering “the convoy of freedom”? Poilievre brings them donuts and coffee.
And when it becomes clear that the crackpots want to block access to Parliament in Ottawa until the government is replaced, he won’t denounce them, but he will distance himself… with lip service. As former Conservative leader Brian Mulroney used to say, you gotta dance with whoever brought you to the party…
Missed Opportunities
But with a million votes at once, Trudeau is about to wreck the Conservatives’ electoral chances, in a web that Liberals have been weaving for generations and that only they have mastered every corner of.
The saga surrounding Amira Elghawaby’s appointment as Canada’s special envoy in the fight against Islamophobia may be a thing of the past for most people. But for many of the nearly two million Canadians who make up the Muslim community, that memory is vivid. They believe that Trudeau defended them, but that Poilievre wasn’t there for them.
The same applies to the roughly 1.5 million Canadians with First Nations, Inuit or Métis backgrounds: Poilievre recently made the mistake of turning to a right-wing Winnipeg institute that denies the horrors of boarding schools.
Add that to the shameful remarks he’s made in the past about alleged aboriginal laziness — for which he has apologized — and the conservatives have no chance of breaking into the fellowship of these communities. Trudeau will make the best of it.
Chinese interference
Conservatives think it is wrong for the liberals to deal with Chinese interference in the federal elections. But they are wrong.
Watch out for Justin Trudeau as he flies in defense of the Chinese community. Members of this community say they are offended and regret the comments of those who confuse the Chinese people with the Chinese government. They are then potentially 1.8 million Canadians of Chinese descent who appreciate the liberal leader’s stance.
At the same time, CIJA, Canada’s highly regarded Jewish community lobby, sounded the alarm last week when three Poilievre MPs decided to sit down for lunch with a neo-Nazi MEP.
Hello judgment! And bye the support of an influential community with which the Conservative leader had worked very hard to forge connections…
Trudeau has mastered the art of aligning with cultural communities and receiving their voices. But Poilievre still hasn’t understood how important that is.
