Pierre Poilievre’s rage-baiting and empty slogans aren’t what Canada needs

Canada will soon be well on its way to establishing a full-fledged national, universal pharmacare program. While much remains to be ironed out, the legislation currently includes universal access to medication for contraception and diabetes, and the goal of expanding the number of covered medications in the future. 

This is pretty big news for Canadians without coverage, yet you wouldn’t know it by the national mood. While Canadian outlets reported it, the announcement flew mostly under the radar. In sharp contrast, a BBC news site lauded the Trudeau administration for making incremental gains for many of its citizens without drug plan coverage, who’ll now benefit from both free birth control and life-saving diabetes drugs. 

The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada hailed the bill as a “historic achievement.”

“Women across the country will be able to make choices about contraception based on what’s best for their lives, not their wallets,” it said.

Free contraception (including the morning-after pill), particularly for young women who may be restricted in their purchasing power by low wages, is no small thing. This is especially true in the current context of politicians in power in many countries (including our neighbour to the south) actively trying to minimize or in some cases completely eliminate women’s reproductive rights. 

The news comes a year after the Liberals announced that all federally regulated employers must provide free menstrual products in all employee washrooms, and a few months after a national dental care program was rolled out, allowing one quarter of Canadian residents who don’t have private dental plans to get coverage. While I’d like to see Canada go even further, mandating free menstrual products in all educational institutions and workplaces, it’s a solid start towards recognizing that birth control and menstrual products are not luxury items, but essential healthcare products for those who need them. As for a dental plan, I shouldn’t have to explain how necessary and how long overdue such coverage was for those without access to one, and I applaud the Liberal-NDP pact that made both pharmacare and dental care possible.

Voter fatigue often leads to questionable decisions

Yet the same week that foreign media was praising Canada’s Liberal government, all I could see in much of our local media were rumours of an impending coup attempt to oust Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and more polls showing the Conservatives are still surging ahead in national voting intentions. While a recent poll does show CPC leader Pierre Poilievre starting to slide in popularity, it continues to baffle me that he’s still ahead as the preferred choice for Prime Minister. Why? 

I understand voter fatigue. All politicians, no matter how appreciated or accomplished, will eventually hit the dreaded wall of popular discontent and the rejection of disenchanted voters who just want someone — anyone — new at the helm. 

Nine years in power and four years after a global pandemic changed the world and left us all a little wearier and far more battle-worn, Trudeau’s “sunny ways” shtick feels like a million years ago and for another less-jaded time. A lot has happened since, and many are clearly looking to place that generalized anxiety and sense of loss squarely on the shoulders of the current government, even though, in my assessment, the Trudeau administration did fairly well for Canadians during the pandemic. As the country faces the same post-pandemic economic scars and mental-health challenges most of the world is facing, many voters just want change, without actually thinking about what that might mean or look like. The misdirected anger may be a release valve of sorts, but I question the outcome.

Back in 2018, after Quebec’s Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government and Premier François Legault first swept into power after voters wanted to punish the Quebec Liberal Party for its austerity measures, I reminded Quebecers in a column I wrote for The National Observer that “change for the sake of change isn’t always a good thing.”

Paul Wells, Macleans‘ senior writer at the time, wrote that “the CAQ is what’s left over when you’re fed up to here with the other parties.” You might see where I’m going with this. 

“The CAQ benefitted from the fatigue and frustration of Quebec voters,” I wrote. “Legault just happened to be there, waiting in the wings, offering them enough populism and immigrant scapegoating with just the right soupçon of ‘Dad knows best’ business-suit, pro-entrepreneurship economics to fit the bill.”

Eight years later, I doubt many Quebecers would argue that we’re better off today. On the contrary, Legault’s populism and constant minority-bashing have led to an incredible amount of dangerous polarization, while Quebec is currently tackling a deficit that’s $1.2-billion higher than expected, a far cry from the Quebec Liberals’ back-to-back balanced budgets before the CAQ took power. Of course the pandemic impacted the province financially, but CAQ policies and constant rhetoric attacking immigrants, out-of-town students and Quebec academic institutions have negatively affected the province’s reputation as a progressive and welcoming place. We’ve taken some hits.

“While many Quebecers voted against austerity, against neo-liberalism and against sovereignty,” I wrote at the time, “I wonder, were they paying attention to what they voted for?”

Temper tantrums aren’t sufficient as a party platform

Fast forward to today and I see a lot of parallels with the Conservative Party, which, similar to the CAQ, is a populist party with authoritarian tendencies that’s been campaigning on a lot of negatives and relentless bashing of the status quo in its pursuit of power.

Reading the welcome news of a potential new pharmacare program, following in the steps of the recently unveiled dental care plan, legislation that Poilievre deliberately undermined when he recently introduced a “non-confidence” motion, I remain baffled as how so many Canadians seem to have been seduced by vapid vitriol.

How are the Conservatives — a party that won’t even commit to keeping important social programs such as childcare, dental care and pharmacare and could potentially even dismantle them once in power, a party led by a leader who refuses to get his top-secret security clearance on the grounds that he wouldn’t be able to speak freely, who can’t even release the names of an active investigation because he’s unable to read it, a leader who explicitly voted against the Canadian dental care plan, the Canada child benefit, and who helped raise the retirement age from 65 to 67 — continuing to lead in the polls? One word: populism. 

Two years of Pierre Poilievre’s rage-baiting and I still struggle to name one — just one — concrete policy reform or solution proposed by a man who keeps yelling that the country is “broken” yet has happily been part of this so-called “broken” system for the past 20 years and who had a vote in shaping it every step of the way. 

A man who campaigned for his party’s leadership on the rallying cry of “freedom” during the pandemic so he could gain a few anti-vaxxer votes from the angry crowds camped out in downtown Ottawa, yet who now says he’s all in for mandatory psychiatric treatment for kids and prisoners. If you haven’t figured it out yet, Poilievre will tell frustrated folks, who often blame the feds for what their own Conservative provincial governments have repeatedly failed to deliver, whatever he needs to tell them to get elected. 

Journalist Zi-Ann Lum wrote in an article for Politico that “Justin Trudeau could lose Canada’s next election because he’s just not as angry as the country he leads.” It’s a very astute line. Canadians have a right to be disappointed with the Liberals about a number of issues, but some need to stop buying into this rage-baiting that feeds off and amplifies generalized anger and anxiety and promises simplistic solutions for complex problems. While comparisons to Trump may be hyperbolic, Poilievre often uses similar tactics when he undermines credible media or makes untrue statements, what Masha Gessen, a staff writer for the New Yorker calls “the power lie, the bully lie” when they described Trump’s dishonest oratory style. 

It’s not all that surprising that a recent poll revealed that almost 50% of Conservatives would — given the chance — vote for Donald Trump. Knowing what the Republicans and Trump have done to undermine women’s reproductive rights, minority rights and U.S. democratic institutions, the poll’s results are both worrisome and revealing about the Conservatives’ belief system and indicative of policies they would in turn favour once in power. Some of you want to believe that Canada is protected from extreme viewpoints and fascist tendencies, and I would like you to consider the possibility that our country is not that exceptional and runs the risk of falling prey to the same non-democratic tendencies wreaking havoc south of the border and around the world right now.

Questionable alliances

I truly fail to understand how many moderate Canadians have suddenly become comfortable with Pierre Poilievre as our next Prime Minister, a politician who openly declared how “proud” he was of the Trucker Convoy, a movement fuelled by QAnon conspiracies, whose members attacked journalists, peed on national monuments, brandished Nazi imagery and posters with Trudeau in a noose, and whose organizers were affiliated with overtly racist, white supremacist groups.

Then again, the fact that convoy donors gave more than $460K to the CPC leadership race might have had a little to do with it. 

We are burdened by short memories, and it often costs us dearly.

In her latest book, At a Loss for Words: Conversation in an Age of Rage, Canadian journalist Caroll Off reminds readers of how “a Bangladeshi digital marketing firm ran two of the largest anti-vaccine, pro-trucker groups, feeding disinformation into the movement while appearing to be grassroots supporters.” We are being conned on a mass scale and it’s downright alarming how powerful social media platforms like X and Facebook are allowing Russian-made propaganda and other nefarious foreign interests to weaponize resentment, anger, and fear to influence public opinion in our democracies.

Is vapid vitriol what Canada really needs?

Despite the many challenges this country is facing, Canada is far from broken. It’s a country that many still look to as an example of progressive and free politics and that consistently ranks among the highest in international measurements of civil liberties, quality of life, education levels, gender equality and public services. Are we about to undermine all this because we’re angry and looking for someone to blame, and someone engaging in snarky temper tantrums suddenly seems like the best candidate to amplify our grievances?

If Canadians are going to vote for change, I’d at least want to see some proof of substance.

“Build the wall!” “Build the homes!” “Freedom, not fear!” “Axe the tax!” “Bring it home!” “Spike the hike!” 

These aren’t solutions; these are simplistic three-word slogans. 

Poilievre is only a slightly more refined version of Homer Simpson’s trainer yelling at him at the gym. “Go past the max! Reach over the top! Master your ass!”

Catchy slogans may allow the disenfranchised to shout, vent and feel heard, but they do not offer anything concrete in terms of policy. If, two years into his party’s leadership, Poilievre hasn’t managed to go beyond the silly sloganeering, maybe it’s time to admit that it’s perhaps because there really isn’t anything substantial waiting beyond those meaningless taglines. ■

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Read more weekly editorial columns by Toula Drimonis.