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In response to
"Any Toronto Star subscribers willing to cut and paste for me? -- (link)"
by
Name Withheld By Request
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Ici. And fwiw: Toronto has a Mayor Election tomorrow -- (edited)
Posted by
budice
Jun 25 '23, 08:16
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Pierre Poilievre is becoming a liability to Conservatives
Nine months into his tenure, there is no denying that Poilievre is having a measurable impact on Canada’s federal dynamics. But can he return his party to power? Chantal Hébert writes.
Chantal Hébert
By Chantal Hébert
Contributing Columnist
Sun., June 25, 2023
timer4 min. read
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MONTREAL—Pierre Poilievre’s leadership victory last September was the curtain raiser of a new political season on Parliament Hill.
Nine months into his tenure, there is no denying that the latest CPC leader is having a measurable impact on Canada’s federal dynamics.
But is it the kind of impact the Conservatives need to return to the government benches? The early evidence suggests otherwise.
More so than its federal rivals, the Conservative party has tended, over the course of its history, to be beset by infighting.
If the past is any indication, it is only when the party succeeds in setting aside its internal divisions that it achieves its goal of forming government.
Brian Mulroney in 1984 and Stephen Harper in 2006 both managed to tick the box of party unity before leading the party to government.
But despite a first-ballot leadership victory, Poilievre is struggling to unite the conservative movement behind him. If anything, fractures within the party have become deeper over the first months of his tenure.
Such divisions were on exhibit over the campaigns that led to Monday’s federal byelections.
The Manitoba riding of Portage-Lisgar was the scene of an ugly fratricidal war between Maxime Bernier’s breakaway party and the Poilievre forces. Meanwhile, in the Ontario riding of Oxford, part of the local CPC establishment campaigned for the Liberals.
While the Conservatives held both ridings, it did not make the kind of dent in Liberal support it will need if it is to win the next general election. Nor did its campaign project the image of a government-ready party. Settling scores, at just about any future cost to the party as exemplified by the battle against Bernier, seemed to be the only order of the day.
Increasingly these days, conservative insiders tend to be more critical of Poilievre’s approach than his Liberal, New Democrat and Bloc rivals.
Those critics include prospective star candidates who — only six months ago — were seriously thinking of running under the CPC banner.
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney spoke for many of them when he dismissed tactics to undermine the Liberal government and praised Trudeau’s leadership last week.
What does Doug Ford think of Poilievre?
In the same vein, it is impossible not to note the distance Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford has been keeping from his federal Conservative counterpart.
The signal coming from Queen’s Park is that when it comes to beating Trudeau in Canada’s largest province, Poilievre is essentially on his own.
Here again, it is worth noting that when Mulroney first came to government, then-Ontario premier William Davis had not only made a public show of support but also put his election machine at the service of the federal party.
Overall, nine months in, the level of friendly fire directed at Poilievre’s Conservatives is unusual as is the fact that it is so focused on the leader himself.
Unless he veers from his current course — and he still has enough time to do so — Poilievre is on the path to becoming a liability for his party.
To date, he has put a bit of a spring in the step of the Liberals.
This is a time in the federal cycle when the winds of change often make the Liberals restless about their leadership.
There was more relief than regret attendant to Pierre Trudeau’s resignation. By the time Jean Chrétien secured a third majority term, a large part of his caucus felt he had overstayed his welcome.
But if anything, Poilievre’s advent has shored up Trudeau’s electoral prospects. Indeed, based on Monday’s byelections results, one could draw a straight line between the CPC leader and the resilience of the Liberal vote.
The numbers suggest that even as he is alienating some Conservatives, Poilievre is giving progressive voters inside and outside Liberal ranks a stronger rationale to rally behind Justin Trudeau.
For the NDP, the prospect of a polarized battle between the Liberals and the Conservatives could hardly come at a worse time.
Like it or not, the party’s pact with the minority Liberals has made the latter a more palatable option for many New Democrat sympathizers.
Combined with Poilievre’s rhetoric, that pact makes it virtually impossible for the NDP to argue that the Liberal agenda is not more progressive than that of the current CPC leader.
Given a choice between a Liberal party they have little cause to fear or a CPC that threatens to roll back the clock on a progressive agenda, many New Democrat voters could be tempted to hold their nose and support Trudeau in the next campaign.
The Bloc, finally, has undoubtedly lost some of its parliamentary influence as a result of the Liberal-NDP agreement. But Poilievre’s arrival has still been a gift to the sovereigntist party.
In no province are the CPC leader’s negatives higher than in Quebec. And that basically leaves the Bloc as the main beneficiary of the opposition vote in Canada’s second largest province.
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