As Poilievre’s Prospects Rise, His Smears Go Lower

The first week of Parliament was a wrecking ball for Justin Trudeau — and dramatic proof of the further Americanization of Canadian politics.

When was the last time you saw a mob of rowdies cursing Canadian MPs, staff and journalists on their way out of Parliament, even shouting “Hang the traitors”? Sound a little like “Hang Mike Pence”?

Jagmeet Singh confronted two hecklers on camera after they hurled obscenities at him outside of the House of Commons. The NDP leader faced them down, calling one of them a “coward” for not saying to his face what he shouted from afar. It was a plucky performance that earned Singh praise from fellow MPs, including some on the government side.

Meanwhile, two Liberal cabinet ministers, Marc Miller and Randy Boissonnault, accused the Conservative leader of playing “footsies” with the hecklers. They have been verbally assaulting MPs and others ever since Parliament resumed. The ministers called on Poilievre to “repudiate” the harassment by “people who support him.”

Citing a story from PressProgress, the two cabinet ministers also condemned Conservative MP Michael Cooper for fraternizing with the same group of bullying protesters. Cooper was seen in photographs and videos with the protesters, including Chris Dacey, who participated in the Freedom Convoy debacle.

For his part, the Alberta MP denied “meeting” with the protesters. He claimed: “I went to a restaurant in Ottawa to have dinner. At the restaurant, I was recognized by a group of people who approached me and took photos. I am in no way associated with these individuals and was not meeting with them.” Here’s how one of the social media postings from the protesters described the encounter:

“Thank you to Conservative MP for St. Albert-Edmonton, Alberta, [Michael] Cooper, for taking time to speak to concerned Canadians this evening.”

Just how much, if anything, Pierre Poilievre knows about team harassment is unclear. But the Conservative leader has decidedly picked up Donald Trump’s habit of assigning pejorative nicknames (Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe, Little Marco) to his political rivals. According to Poilievre, the leader of the NDP is now “Sellout Singh.”

Poilievre went considerably further. After Singh refused to be bullied into supporting the Conservative Party of Canada’s planned non-confidence vote in the government, the Conservative leader said Singh was a fake, a fraud, a phoney and a liar — epithets of abuse he used both inside and outside the House of Commons.

Poilievre also accused Singh of supporting the government in order to get his MP pension, which he will qualify for next February.

That is a dicey criticism coming from Pierre Poilievre. As reported by CBC, after 20 years as an MP, he already is entitled to $230,000 annually from his pension when he retires. If he becomes PM, that number will go up.

How far did the Conservatives go in their personal attacks on their opponents? Well, it would have put a smile on the face of Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller, the master of low-road politics.

At one point, the Conservatives referred to Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault as an orange-jumpsuit-wearing minister in handcuffs.

Even though props are forbidden in the House of Commons, Calgary Nose Hill MP Michelle Rempel Garner held up a photo showing a handcuffed Guilbeault shortly after his arrest in 2001 for scaling the CN Tower in Toronto and unfolding a banner. His Spider-Man protest earned him a sentence of probation for a year.

A key Liberal MP departs

MAGA mimicry to one side, what was supposed to be a new beginning for the embattled Liberals turned into deeper chaos. And a more sanguine attack from the Conservatives aimed at bringing down the government as quickly as possible.

In a highly unusual move, even Quebec Premier François Legault entered the fray. He urged the leader of the Parti Québécois to ask Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet not to support the Trudeau government. His reason? To “defend the interests of the Quebec nation.”

There was plenty of fuel for that partisan fire. The departure of Pablo Rodriguez from cabinet was much more than a resignation. It was the clearest sign yet that there is trouble in the highest ranks of the Trudeau government. The popular Quebec MP not only resigned but left the Liberal caucus to sit as an Independent.

Rodriguez is leaving federal politics to seek the leadership of the Quebec provincial Liberals. He claimed that he decided to sit as an Independent MP until the Quebec leadership process begins in earnest early in the new year. Rodriguez explained that he didn’t want to trigger a costly byelection.

Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair told CTV News that he wondered if the real reason Rodriguez didn’t resign his seat was so that he could continue collecting his MP’s salary of $200,000 a year.

Whatever the machinations behind the scenes, for any cabinet minister to leave cabinet and caucus would be big news. But when the person who does it is also the prime minister’s Quebec lieutenant, a post he has held since 2019, the optics are terrible.

It can be argued that it signals a lack of faith in the PM’s vision for the province that is the backbone of the Liberal party. A kind of up-close-and-personal non-confidence in Trudeau.

Though Rodriguez stickhandled around that issue at the Gatineau news conference where he announced his resignation, his words resonated with aggrievement.

He told the press that he occasionally had to go against his convictions as a Quebecer to perform as a federal cabinet minister.

One of those issues was a controversial letter sent by Canada’s special representative on combatting Islamophobia to colleges and universities across the country, including in Quebec.

In that letter, Amira Elghawaby recommended that colleges and universities hire more Muslim, Arab and Palestinian professors.

The premier of Quebec was enraged and demanded Elghawaby’s resignation. Several Quebec MPs and two Liberal cabinet ministers were also furious. Rodriguez stated at the time of Elghawaby’s January 2023 appointment that he was “wounded and shocked as a Quebecer” by the special representative’s earlier comments when she was a journalist and activist.

In a previous writing, Elghawaby had criticized Quebec’s secular law, declaring that most of the people who supported it were anti-Muslim. Despite the furor, Justin Trudeau stood behind his special representative.

In announcing his resignation, Rodriguez stressed that he wanted to advance his own vision for Quebec, perhaps suggesting he no longer shared Trudeau’s. And he said this: “My priorities can no longer be those of a government that I have always served as a good team player.”

Taking on water

The departure of Rodriguez couldn’t have come at a worse moment for the Trudeau government. It is yet another in a long list of telltale signs that this government and the PM are well past their best-before date.

When former transport minister Seamus O’Regan resigned in July, commentators wondered if he was a canary in the mine. Was he really leaving to spend more time with his family? Or had he concluded that it was better to leave office before being thrown out at the polls?

Suddenly, there was a flock of canaries in the mine. There were devastating byelection losses in Liberal strongholds. First, the party lost Toronto-St. Paul’s, and then, in the very week Parliament returned, Trudeau’s party lost LaSalle-Émard-Verdun on the Island of Montreal.

As a result, the Liberals and the Bloc now have an identical number of MPs in Quebec, 33 apiece. But the Bloc is leading in the polls.

Reinforcing the impression of a sinking Liberal ship, five chiefs of staff across the most senior levels of the government have called it quits so far. That includes top advisers at global affairs, heritage, environment, mental health and addictions, and national revenue.

What has been reported as an “exodus” of senior Liberal advisers was preceded by the departure of national campaign director Jeremy Broadhurst. This 20-year veteran of the party left just days before the recent Liberal caucus retreat in Nanaimo, B.C.

And underlying all the jitters and jumping ship are polls that continue to say the Liberals would be in for a thumping if an election were held today.

The latest tracking from Nanos Research, largely mirrored by other polls, shows the Conservatives with a 17-point lead over the Liberals. Nanos also found that Poilievre leads Trudeau by 15 points as preferred prime minister.

A rising NDP

And the PM faces another threat. At the same time that it looks like the Bloc Québécois may win the most seats in Quebec, the NDP is closing the gap with the Liberals nationally.

According to Nanos Research, the NDP has been trending up since Jagmeet Singh ended the supply and confidence agreement with the Liberals. The party is now just three points behind the Trudeau Liberals.

Given that distancing himself from the Liberals has already paid the NDP political dividends, supporting the government is not a long-term option for Jagmeet Singh. Sooner rather than later, “rip it up” must turn into “throw them out.” The stronger the NDP become in the polls, the sooner they will decide that voting non-confidence is a viable option.

And that means that the future of the Trudeau government, if it has one, is in the hands of the Bloc Québécois.

The good news for the PM is that the Bloc won’t be supporting this week’s Conservative non-confidence vote in the House. It has made clear that bringing down the government would only mean exchanging Justin Trudeau for Pierre Poilievre. As Yves-François Blanchet says, that would not be a good thing, because Conservative values are not Quebec values.

But here’s the bad news. The Bloc will do its utmost to “get something” for Quebec from what it sees as a weak and vulnerable minority government.

The moment Trudeau gives in, the moment he is seen as bribing the Bloc in return for support in Parliament, they won’t be talking anymore about the NDP-Liberal coalition that lasted for two years. They will be talking about the separatist-Liberal coalition keeping a desperate Justin Trudeau in power.

With the Bloc now holding the balance of power in Parliament, this government has reached a political dead end.