It was last January that an editorial in Canada\u2019s self-appointed National Newspaper declared that, given the 99 percent chance Pierre Poilievre\u2019s Conservatives would win the next federal election, \u201cthe big question for 2024 is how Mr. Poilievre plans to build the better home he is promising Canadians.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe odds he will become prime minister seem so high that his plans for governing are arguably more consequential than Mr. Trudeau\u2019s,\u201d quoth the Globe and Mail<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Globe<\/em> was right about the importance, but here we are a year later and it’s Trudeau\u2019s plans – will he stay or will he go – that dominated the headlines this past year. The big question for 2024 went unanswered, and with a Liberal leadership race now taking the media spotlight it could well remain so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While learning little about Conservative plans in 2024, Canadians were offered a recitation of the empty slogans (axe the tax, fix the budget, fight the crime, build the homes) and attacks on political foes, journalists, various experts and \u201cwokeism.\u201d Instead of policy, we were fed more distortions aimed at the \u201cwacko\u201d Trudeau government. In addition to the old standby misrepresentations about the impact of the carbon tax on households, there were lies about the status of\u00a0 dental<\/em><\/strong> care <\/em><\/strong><\/a>and the opioid epidemic, which the Conservatives tried to pin on<\/em><\/strong><\/a> Trudeau, even though it began when the Harper government was in power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of the stuff coming from Poilievre and his party even rivalled Trump\u2019s deranged ramblings about the consumption of dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio. There were Poilievre\u2019s ravings about how carbon pricing would cause a \u201cnuclear winter\u201d for the economy, producing \u201cmass hunger and malnutrition.\u201d And a Conservative fund-raising pitch claimed that federal support for an Ontario company growing crickets for pet food proved Trudeau wanted Canadians to eat bugs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n None of these antics hurt the Conservatives in the polls. According to the poll aggregator 338Canada<\/em> they entered 2024 with a 12-point advantage over the fading Liberals and ended it with a 25-point bulge. That commanding lead, combined with the anticipated media focus on the Liberal leadership, suggest that Poilievre will continue to get away with his tactic of blaming Trudeau for everything that\u2019s wrong in Canada without offering real solutions. However, in a recent podcast and an Ottawa news conference he elaborated some of his policy approaches, and the additional insights are not reassuring. There are other issues to be examined later – the response to Trump and the war on \u201cwoke\u201d for example – but for now it\u2019s time to consider what more we have learned about the shop-worn slogans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Axe the tax<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Poilievre has left no doubt of his commitment to get rid of consumer carbon pricing but has not yet ruled out industrial output-based carbon pricing – something that could reduce emissions more effectively than consumer carbon pricing. However, given the way he has been touting oil and gas, any possibility of measures to mitigate climate change appears remote. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In a widely-viewed podcast interview with right-wing psychologist and windbag Jordan Peterson, Poilievre was all in for fossil fuels while calling those concerned about climate change \u201cenvironmental loons that hate our energy.\u201d In a \u201cmore Catholic than the Pope\u201d moment he also chided \u201cidiot\u201d oil company lobbyists for \u201ctrying to suck up\u201d to the Liberal government after failing to support \u201cthe right policies in prior years\u201d – presumably a reference to the Harper government\u2019s failed efforts to turn Canada into an \u201cenergy superpower.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Poilievre may not be a climate change denier, but he is certainly denying the need to do anything about it. Indeed, it\u2019s impossible to imagine the energy future promised by Poilievre without thinking of increased emissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And it\u2019s not just oil and gas he loves – it\u2019s all extractive industries. Poilievre wants to roll back the Liberal reform of regulation for megaprojects “to cause a massive resource boom in our country.\u201d He also wants to produce more electricity from new gas and nuclear power plants to fuel data centres catering to big tech\u2019s Artificial Intelligence ambitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fixing the Budget<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Conservatives never tire of complaining about the Liberal government\u2019s \u201cout-of-control spending, debt, and taxation.\u201d The Peterson interview, released last week and endorsed and propagated by Elon Musk, also provided insight into how Poilievre plans to “fix the budget.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n “We’re going to cut bureaucracy, cut the consultants, cut foreign aid, cut back on corporate welfare to large corporations. We’re going to use the savings to bring down the deficit and taxes and unleash the free-enterprise system,” Poilievre pledged. On another day, answering one of the few questions permitted at his Ottawa news conference, Poilievre expanded on the tax cut, promising that it would be \u201cmassive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s something to be very worried about. Poilievre\u2019s stated targets for cuts – bureaucrats, consultants, foreign aid and business subsidies – account for only a small part of federal spending. Almost 70 percent of what Ottawa spends consists of transfers (pensions, child benefits, employment insurance) to individuals, other levels of government (health and social transfers and equalization) and interest on the national debt. Bringing down the deficit while providing a massive tax cut almost certainly would require spending cuts well beyond the areas so far identified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Poilievre also told Peterson that \u201cwe\u2019re going to bring back a monetary discipline to bring down inflation (and) stop the money printing,” arguing that because Parliament does not vote on whether to print money, “the inflation is adopted secretly\u201d (by the Bank of Canada). Peterson did not ask whether that means Poilievre will follow through on an earlier pledge to fire the head of the Bank of Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Build the homes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Conservatives\u2019 \u201cBuild the homes\u201d slogan has lost some of its fizz because the Liberals are already bringing in policies similar to those espoused by the Conservatives. Liberal initiatives include cutting sales tax on housing and pressing municipalities to increase density and speed up approvals – albeit using rewards rather than Poilievre\u2019s preferred penalties to get municipalities to play ball. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With the Liberals stealing the thrust of his more practical ideas on housing, Poilievre has turned to the bizarre. Housing, he told Peterson, \u201cshould be dirt cheap because we have the most dirt. We just need to get the government out of the way. There is no physical, geographic reason why Canada should struggle to supply people with great opportunities of home ownership and family formation.\u201d That sounds like a ringing endorsement of suburban sprawl – or perhaps a trial balloon for a national plan to create \u201cnew towns\u201d somewhere in the wilderness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Fight the crime<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n He told Jordan Peterson that a Poilievre government would bring about \u201cthe biggest crackdown on crime in Canadian history.\u201d He did not go into detail – saying only that \u201chabitual offenders will not get out of jail anymore.\u201d Poilievre didn\u2019t reiterate an earlier pledge to use the notwithstanding clause of the Charter – a first for a federal government – to protect any crime-related bills from being ruled unconstitutional. However, given past efforts to blame the Liberals for the opioid crisis, and sloganeering about banning drugs and treating addiction, it would be reasonable to expect a Poilievre government would do what that previous Conservative government tried unsuccessfully to do and that is to attack safer supply policies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n No retreat<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Non-conservatives anxious to be rid of the Liberals who will vote for Poilievre thinking he won\u2019t follow through on his more controversial policies should listen up. None other than Poilievre says he is not just putting those ideas forward to please the conservative base, he intends to stick with them. He told Peterson he has no intention of following other conservative parties that he claims, embraced \u201csocialist\u201d policies after gaining power. As he put it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is the mistake that conservative parties around the world have made countless times. They think, \u2018Well, anybody who\u2019s got a conservative mindset is already voting for me so I can go off and chase the ideas of my political opponents and then everyone will love me because I\u2019ll have the conservatives due to the fact I have the name \u2018Conservative\u2019 and these other people because I\u2019ve embraced their contrary direction.’ Does the temptation exist to try and take on the political policies of the socialists in the short term? Sure\u00a0but it’s one that I will fiercely resist\u00a0because I know that by the fourth year of my mandate, people would be enraged\u00a0because their lives would be even worse.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n So Canadians won\u2019t be able to say they weren\u2019t warned. But as The Tyee\u2019s<\/em> Steve Burgess writes: \u201c\u2026as we have just seen south of the border, when the electorate is in a mood, they won\u2019t care if the opposition\u2019s political platform stinks as though excreted from a possum\u2019s anal gland. They\u2019ll vote for it anyway.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was last January that an editorial in Canada\u2019s self-appointed National Newspaper declared that, given the 99 percent chance Pierre Poilievre\u2019s Conservatives would win the next federal election, \u201cthe big question for 2024 is how Mr. Poilievre plans to build the better home he is promising Canadians.\u201d \u201cThe odds he will become prime minister […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[104,201],"class_list":["post-3519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-federal-politics","tag-conservatives","tag-poilievre","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3519"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3525,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519\/revisions\/3525"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.formac.ca\/starrspoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}