Ivison: Why Poilievre needs to pivot from stoking anger to harnessing hope

This week, John Ivison is joined by regular panelists Ian Brodie, politics professor at the University of Calgary and a former chief of staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Eugene Lang, an assistant professor at Queen’s University and an ex-chief of staff to two Liberal defence ministers.

With an election call pending this weekend, Ivison asked how the two view the upcoming campaign.

Brodie said the dominant emotion driving the electorate before Donald Trump’s inauguration in January was anger.

“You know, ‘I can’t find a place to live. I can’t find a place to rent. Why are these eggs so expensive? Why is gas so high in Western Canada? Why is the federal government trying to stop me from getting a job?’

“The Conservatives up until that point had sort of perfected a campaign based on harnessing and redirecting that anger,” he said. “I think since (Trump’s) 51st state comments have ramped up, the dominant emotional mood has shifted from anger to fear. That change has left the two parties scrambling for a different type of campaign effort.”

The difficulty for the Conservatives is to pivot to a campaign based on hope. “The issue is going to be about Trump. And if you don’t have an answer to the Trump question, the campaign starts behind,” he said.

Lang said he is shocked that the Liberal Party brand is still relatively healthy, despite the plunge in the polls under Justin Trudeau.

“That’s surprising to me. I thought (Trudeau’s) 10 years in office had done some irreparable damage to it, but it looks like the brand is still pretty strong,” he said. “Interestingly to me, what we’re seeing in the polling and anecdotally is a rise in what I’m going to call Canadian nationalism in response to the fear that Ian articulated. And it seems (people) think the Liberal Party is more attuned with Canadian nationalism than the other parties.”

Brodie said the Conservatives are still testing what is going to work to increase negative perceptions of the new Liberal leader.

“The probing of what’s going to work, and what’s not going to work, is still going on. So, there’s been a bit of ‘Carbon-Tax Carney’ and ‘Sneaky Carney’ on his ethics disclosures and potential conflicts of interest. And certainly here in Western Canada, I would say the issue of the federal attack on the oil and gas industry is still a salient issue.”

The Liberals have accused the Conservative leader of focusing on slogans, not solutions, to the problems facing Canada.

Brodie said there has been a lack of follow up to Poilievre’s “Canada First” speech last month in Ottawa, which hinted at a broader agenda of growth and harnessing the energy of the economy and individual Canadians. But he noted that this week, Poilievre has focused on developing the Ring of Fire in Northern Ontario, after 25 years of talking about it.

“I think that’s the forward-leaning message to carry through the beginning of that campaign because that is the ‘hope’ piece to fight the ‘fear’ piece – a ‘can do’ cultural attitude rather than ‘Canada can’t’. I think that’s a promising development,” he said.

Lang pointed out that, while the daily stresses about affordability and housing are still there, they are unlikely to be the dominant concern at a time when people are awakening to the fact that the very existence of the country might be on the line.

“It could be an election that’s just about how much confidence do we have in these two parties, and in these two leaders to navigate through this situation, recognizing that there’s no immediate policy solutions for it,” he said. “One thing Mr. Carney has going for him is that he exudes substance. No one’s ever going to challenge him as not having substance and not having ideas. Actually, some of the ideas that they’ve trotted out so far are not that impressive to me. But it doesn’t really matter. He’s got the ‘substance’ market cornered. Mr. Poilievre has more of a challenge there, to get into the substance market in a big way. And he’s probably going to have to lean into policy more than I thought. I remember saying on your show back in December when we spoke, I didn’t think he even needed an election platform to run on. I’ve completely changed my mind on that now. I think policy is going to be very central to his campaign.”

Brodie said that Carney has been heavy on substance, but largely as a reaction to the last two and a half years of Poilievre’s leadership, attacking loose monetary policy as a cause of inflation; focusing on the housing crisis; and, campaigning on an end to the consumer carbon tax.

“Carney had in a sense to catch up with Poilievre. Look, left his own devices. I think we all know Mark. He would not on his own, absent Poilievre, have said: ‘You know what I should do? I should campaign on repealing the carbon tax’. He wrote a whole bloody book about why the carbon tax should be four times higher than it is. He did not say: ‘Hey, my life’s ambition is to repeal carbon pricing in Canada’,” he said. “As long as Poilievre keeps pushing him on these sorts of policy issues, I think Carney’s going to be having to respond and play catch up.”

Brodie and Lang agreed that both leaders are being judged on their perceived ability to respond to Trump’s aggression.

Lang said that the purpose of Carney’s trip to Europe this week was to make the new Liberal leader appear prime ministerial – and in his opinion, it worked.

“At a certain point in an election campaign, the leaders have to appear to be prime ministerial. Mark Carney looks and feels and smells prime ministerial, and that trip reinforced that, even if you don’t particularly like him or his policies,” he said. “I think the challenge for Mr. Poilievre in the next 40 days is to make this transition from looking like a very effective leader of the Opposition to looking like a plausible prime minister.”

Brodie agreed that Poilievre has been playing the role of Opposition leader. “The job of the Opposition leader is to oppose,” he said. “I think we all have to concede that he was extremely good at that and did a large part of destroying Mr. Trudeau’s political career and laying the groundwork for Ms. (Chrystia) Freeland’s exit from the cabinet (last December). The question is, can he take that skill, that fortitude and that discipline and switch to make a case for moving to the government side?”

Lang said at a press conference on Thursday, Poilievre seemed to change his tone and comportment. “He seemed a lot more relaxed, friendlier, smiling, respectful of the questions that he got, not dismissive. And I think if he continues that, that’s the right approach for him – to gradually look more, let’s just call it grown up and mature and prime ministerial, which I believe has been a weakness of his.”

He said, for Carney, the danger is being too aloof. “He can’t appear to be dismissive of people that are asking him questions that he might not like, to want to answer. When you’re in an election campaign, everything’s fair game. Your integrity will be challenged whether there’s any evidence to challenge it or not. That is politics in this day and age. And you can’t take it personally. If he takes these things personally, he’s going to get into trouble in my view. So he’s got to find an equilibrium of his own that remains, that keeps this prime ministerial aura around him, which I think he has, and man of substance, without appearing out of touch, distant, aloof, and dismissive.”

Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here.

1. 

   Canada
2. 

   Federal Election
3. 

   Canada
4. 

   NP Comment
5. 

   NP Comment