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An analysis of Pierre Poilievre's recent political messaging argues that he has lost public attention despite economic concerns involving rising costs, investment outflows, tariffs and weak growth. Poilievre is emphasizing the erosion of opportunities for hard-working Canadians and seeking transparency on the costs of the government's trade and tariff decisions.
Pierre Poilievre has to feel robbed by the universe – and also like some cosmic gang of thugs keeps returning to make sure his pockets truly contain nothing but lint.
He was supposed to be the next Prime Minister, with the 20-point lead and command on the public mood to prove it. Then everything exploded, the banker stepped neatly into the breach, and Mr. Poilievre sounded like yesterday’s man before he ever got to be today’s. And in the 18 months since, the Prime Minister has somehow only gotten shinier, at home and abroad.
Mr. Poilievre has been relegated to “Oh, right, that guy” status, even as his MPs leave by the fistful, though the chicken-and-egg sequence there is up for debate. But an effective opposition matters – especially when a majority government is led by a guy who still wears an emergency-induced saviour halo.
So I took a close look at the last month or so of Mr. Poilievre’s speeches, press conferences and interviews to see what he’s focused on, even while the spotlight is elsewhere. On Labour Day, he gave a press conference in Regina, paying tribute to all the unseen workers who keep the world moving, and arguing that the bargain about hard work getting you a better life has been abandoned.
“After a decade of Liberal policies, that promise is broken,“ Mr. Poilievre said. ”We’ve seen Mr. Carney’s first year in power has been the worst for economic growth of any prime minister on record, and the worst in the G7, with rising costs, with a trillion dollars of investment having left our country, and now we have a tariff dispute.
" He said that Canadians were “united in denouncing the President’s unacceptable tweets, trolling, and tariffs,” but that wasn’t where Mr. Poilievre’s emphasis was. Instead, he argued repeatedly that Canadians deserved to see the details of the trade deal Mr. Carney had walked away from, and the cost of the retaliatory tariffs – which would kick in the following day – for Canadians who could least afford it.
It was a strange donut of an argument with a hole at its centre. The rather large, loud and orange reason for the Canadian economy faltering he either ignored or denounced in the most cordial terms. And Mr. Poilievre treated the countertariffs and kiboshed negotiations as something Mr. Carney and the Liberals dreamed up just to torment Canadians. A week or so later, Mr. Poilievre spoke to the Conservative caucus in Penticton, B.C.
, invoking an Elvis Presley lyric that has become his steady drumbeat this fall.
“I think our slogan will be, ‘A little less conversation, a little more action, please,’” he told his assembled MPs. The Conservative leader argues that Mr. Carney talks a big game, but there has been little to show for all the high hopes, with a lack of tangible progress on housing, inflation, interprovincial trade and getting large resource projects going. His frequent shorthand is that Canadians can’t feed their families or pay their mortgage with Mr. Carney’s speeches or summits.
Even – maybe especially – when projects Mr. Poilievre likes move forward, he’s unimpressed. Right after the federal government announced this week that it would accelerate the Pacific Link pipeline to the West Coast as a project of national interest, Mr. Poilievre dismissed it as “another publicity stunt” in a long video interview with the National Post.
“Wake me up when there’s a steel pipe going into dirt,” he said. Later on social media, Mr. Poilievre was somewhat more magnanimous, expressing stout support for the project and congratulating Alberta Premier Danielle Smith for making it happen. The partisan spite contained in that selective hooray could power an LNG plant. On affordability, the price of diesel is now one of Mr. Poilievre’s points of focus.
In a press conference at an Ottawa gas station near the end of September, he pointed out that rising diesel prices make everything more expensive, because pretty much everything is moved by truck at some point. While he acknowledged that the wars in Iran and Ukraine have affected fuel prices, Mr. Poilievre argued that Canadians pay more than anyone else. You’ll never guess who is at fault.
First, as a Liberal adviser, Mr. Carney directed the government to block resource development for more than a decade, Mr. Poilievre said, creating a weaker dollar and overreliance on American refineries. Then, there are Liberal taxes jacking up diesel prices, the Tory leader said – which seems odd, because federal excise taxes are suspended into early next year, and provincial and municipal taxes contribute more to the cost of every litre of diesel anyway.
A few days after the diesel announcement, Mr. Poilievre was in Edmonton to deliver a unity speech, as Alberta nears its referendum on holding a separatist referendum. He made the point that Canada does not amount to its federal government, but is rather a people, land, a flag and a promise. And, he argued, Alberta is better off within that framework than outside of it.
“Simply put, Alberta has had more independence in the past, and we’ll have more independence in the future as part of a united Canada,” he said. We’re a family, and families have disagreements, Mr. Poilievre said – but he finished the metaphor in an interesting way. One conclusion might have been that when one family member is unhappy, they don’t break up the household, but rather work through things from a starting position of being a committed unit.
But Mr. Poilievre approached it from a different angle, saying that families are allowed to fight, and we “must not accept the Orwellian idea that criticizing our government is unpatriotic, or that acknowledging the grievances of Albertans is disloyal. ” He was, on the surface, advocating for taking Alberta’s frustrations seriously, rather than scolding them for feeling that way.
But he was also echoing something he had said, over and over, to his caucus back on Labour Day – and that argument, very clearly, was about him. In Penticton, Mr. Poilievre kept offering rebuttals to criticism that he’s taking the oppositional part of leading His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition too far, in a moment when the next-door neighbour has expressed a desire to expropriate our house, or at least raze it to the ground.
“We are loyal to Canada,” he said. “But that means we have to be loyal to the Canadian people who are paying the cost of this government. ” Mr. Poilievre has always seemed tailor-made to be an opposition leader, with his political gifts and shortcomings all pouring neatly into the contours of that role.
But now here he is, not only denied the promotion that seemed certain, but somehow looking small and boorish every time he revs up his political belt sander, like he’s always done, simply because the moment has changed. Like I said: he must feel robbed.
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