Is Poilievre Really a Centrist?

Post 55 | Of the People, For the People, By the People

Changes are afoot on the Canadian political scene.

The Liberals went all in on the government as principle employer, personal banker, heavy-handed regulator and arbiter of social values and speech. Liberal centrism died some time ago.

The NDP have lost their way, blaming rather than leveraging the power of capitalism and devoid of fiscal sense. Their authentic representation of the working class is a distant memory and this week’s announcement of the formal end to their shameful Liberal enablement will not erase its stain.

The two parties have been battling to out-left each other and we’re living amidst the carnage.

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Against this backdrop was a provocative National Post article last week from Stuart Thomson about the Conservative Party, “Poilievre is going all-in on his pro-worker message with appeals to 'ordinary people' | The pro-worker turn from Poilievre has made some free-market conservatives chafe”.

This got me thinking about the unusual swath of support being carved out by a Conservative party that seems only modestly conservative…while mostly centrist.

As a primer for those not following the summer political circuit, Pierre Poilievre has been on a Canada-wide tour and avidly posting about it to social media. His visits have been predominantly to small and medium sized businesses, featuring discussions with Canadians who typically get a bit dirty each day in their work (see Post 53). His welcome reception in these casual exchanges has been interesting to witness, not least for seeing a Conservative leader courting this group. The Post article also notes that Poilievre, “has met with more than 60 different local unions and toured more than 40 different unionized workplaces in the last two years.”

To call this a shift from traditional Canadian party roles is an understatement. The Conservatives would normally be wooing the corporate community, NDP would be cozying up to unions and speaking for the wage earner constituency, while Liberals would play up the middle – shaking hands with the hard hat crowd in the morning and the suits at night.

Jagmeet Singh has been on a self-described listening tour this summer and perhaps this week’s announcement means he also visited an ear doctor, because if his hearing had been working we would have had an election long ago. But I witness neither instinct nor policy from the NDP that does anything but try to outdo Liberal spending and decry capitalism with their well-worn screed of corporate greed and make the rich pay. Insofar as his words have any remaining credibility, he favours an even heavier hand of government controlling the levers of capitalism while increasing handouts - not creating the environment for a healthy economy to flourish and in which workers can be enabled not coddled.

Trudeau has been going hard on the sleeves-rolled-up routine but so evidently out of touch it’s painful to watch. While glad handing with donuts at Algoma Steel last week he encountered an employee who politely refused to shake the PM’s hand after Trudeau’s breathless tumble of words trying to explain how he’s helping workers. Rather than listening to this man’s concerns about high taxation, worrisome job security and his lack of access to the new dental care program Trudeau just resorted to pitching. And as always he reverted to talking about how much taxpayer money he’s spent – in this case $400M into the steel mill*, and his late-to-the-game imposition of a 25% tariff on Chinese steel being dumped in Canada. This exchange caught by CTV is a crystallizing example of Trudeau’s tone deafness. He still doesn’t understand that flinging around taxpayer money often creates more problems than it fixes, as his government nurtures a generation of dependents rather than encourage a strong independent citizenry.

[*Per a recent Globe & Mail article, the money has been to convert Algoma to electrification as part of the Trudeau government’s “strategy for meeting international climate targets”, while noting it will likely shave the workforce from 3000 to 1600]

Pierre Poilievre seems more actively trying to at least hear, understand and represent the realities of many Canadians - call them ordinary, regular or working class. His instincts and policy ideas center on practical fundamentals in areas of affordable spending, sensible regulations in which businesses and individuals can prosper and more manageable immigration as we had for decades. Mostly these just strike me as responsible governance. I do worry about his carbon tax focus, though I support its elimination and understand it as a political rallying cry to mobilize people. Yet it will have more symbolic than practical effect and will disappoint those expecting big and immediate benefits.

My reading is that Poilievre’s foundational principles and policies are mostly middle-of-the-road, and rarely step beyond the centrism traditionally espoused by Liberals for much of Canada’s history. That may seem a surprising statement given the labels being flung at him. But it is only when juxtaposed with the heavy leftward lurch of our country that today’s Conservatives might be described as right-wing. And I look forward to a day when that term regains its positive appeal rather than considered scary.

Admittedly, Poilievre’s policy positions can be overshadowed by his sometimes tetchy demeanour. His hard nosed personality when speaking to media can distract from the validity of his proposals, particularly after we’ve been habituated to ten years of oozing, emotive leadership style. But in Post 19 Do We Need to Like a Prime Minister | Prioritizing Respect Over Like, we explored the distracting focus on likability and proposed that policies and not personality should always be our guiding light when it comes to choosing a PM. A new agey kinda guy might be more agreeable for you, but he may well lead us straight off a cliff, n’est-ce pas?

Still, Poilievre has a tough balancing act ahead - as he promotes working class issues, while also needing to fire up our productivity that must again be led by the business sector. Both must succeed and prosper for us to have a healthy economy.

Some of the corporate business community is likely a bit flummoxed by Poilievre given his May article in the Post, “Memo to corporate Canada - fire your lobbyist. Ignore politicians. Go to the people | Business leaders keep cosying up to high tax, anti-resource Liberals”.

It is an unflinching call for corporate Canada to change their approach – from lobbying the government for favorable policies, to ensuring those policies also benefit workers. Of note, this is very different from telling them how to run their business, enforcing regulations that monkey with the free market, or calling them greedy when they succeed. Rather, it proposes any changes in public policy promoted by corporations should have value on both sides of the coin.

Obviously, my future government will do exactly the opposite of Trudeau on almost every issue. But that does not mean that businesses will get their way. In fact, they will get nothing from me unless they convince the people first. So here is a how-to guide for dealing with a Poilievre government.

If you do have a policy proposal, don’t tell me about it. Convince Canadians that it’s good for them. Communicate your policy’s benefits directly to workers, consumers and retirees. When they start telling me about your ideas on the doorstep in Windsor, St. John’s, Trois-Rivières, and Port Alberni, then I’ll think about enacting it.

To be clear, that will not happen because you testify at a Parliamentary committee, host a “Hill Day” to meet MPs and Senators, hold a luncheon 15 minutes from downtown Toronto/Ottawa, or do media no one sees. Your communications must reach truckers, waitresses, nurses, carpenters — all the people who are too productive to tune into the above-mentioned platforms.

If I do pursue your policy, I expect that you will continue to advocate for it with those same Canadians in those same neighbourhoods until the policy is fully implemented.

I applaud the intent of the piece. If married with Poilievre’s stated intentions to severely reduce the regulations throttling businesses, halt Trudeau’s practice of subsidizing preferred industries while punishing others, and quell Singh’s business-as-evil tone of the last few years, it may give free market capitalism the head room to once again thrive in Canada. And we will all benefit.

Still, he will find himself in many tricky spots after landing in the PM chair and won’t be able to remain silent as he did during the recent rail strike. Many hard realities will involve one constituency walking away dissatisfied.

I doubt Pierre is unaware of the trip wires along this centrist, and dare I say, pragmatic path. But it will be challenging for everyone to make adjustments after years of our government coddling select groups, being our primary employer and promoting corporate welfare for sainted industries.

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Coming back to Thomson’s National Post article, a strong theme emerges after skimming through the large comments section - that many do not believe the Conservative’s current approach represents a clash between free-market capitalism and a working-class constituency. Rather, that their principles can align when properly supported, reinforcing my sense we may be seeing a new centrism unfold.

As summed up nicely by one commentor, “There's a lot of media hand-wringing about workers support for conservatives. This is nothing new. I worked over 30 years in a blue collar environment. Except for the union zealots, support for socialism was rare. Workers understand that socialism takes their money earned by hard work and gives it to those who do not contribute. Likewise, there is almost no support for liberal DIE and social justice policies. What IS different, is that Mr. Poilievre is actively courting workers innate inclinations to reject socialism and wokeism. The shrieking union leaders you see on tv don't accurately represent the views of the actual workers.”

Let’s see if the Conservatives can thread the needle and stitch together free-market capitalism that has brought us so many rewards over the past generations, with the desire of so many Canadians who are eager to prosper in that system.

Stay tuned and stay pragmatic.