Pickup trucks pack the parking lot of the Best Western Lamplighter Inn. On an August evening in London, Ont., the hotel’s ballroom is standing room only. The Conservative Party rally is attracting rugged folks, many from outlying hamlets: farmers,…
Pickup trucks pack the parking lot of the Best Western Lamplighter Inn. On an August evening in London, Ont., the hotel’s ballroom is standing room only. The Conservative Party rally is attracting rugged folks, many from outlying hamlets: farmers, health-care workers, bus drivers, pensioners, and a handful of students.
On Saturday, Poilievre took a major step by winning his party’s leadership in a landslide. He sees it as the start of a populist revolution in Canadian politics, something that would’ve seemed pure fantasy just a few years ago. Rich, calm, and distinctly liberal, Canada tut-tutted the rise of Donald Trump in the US and Boris Johnson in the UK.
Poilievre offers no centrist message. He cozied up to the violent truckers’ protests against vaccine mandates last February. He’s vowed to fire the governor of the Bank of Canada for stoking inflation. He labels the World Economic Forum at Davos a cabal of corporate titans and governing mandarins and says any minister of his who attends will do so on a one-way ticket. He’s also a deficit hawk in the mold of Republican Paul Ryan, former US Speaker of the House.
His targeted voter is someone like Adam Trojek, who was at the London event. A 37-year-old franchisee of Bimbo Bakeries, Trojek voted for Trudeau in 2015 and regrets it. Two years ago, when he was the Conservative Party's chief finance spokesperson, the so-called shadow minister or critic, Poilievre told Bloomberg News that Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem “should not be an ATM for Trudeau’s insatiable spending appetites.” He added: “If the Bank of Canada does want to start getting more and more political, then it will be held to the same level of political accountability as other political entities.
Marjory LeBreton, a former Conservative senator who was deputy chief of staff to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and later served in Harper's cabinet, witnessed the painstaking negotiations that led to the merger. She says the “great accommodation” of 2003 is now “fracturing beyond repair” with Poilievre's leadership, and moderate Conservatives like her are losing their home.
It would be hard to imagine a clearer contrast with the background of Canada’s current leader. Trudeau’s father, Pierre, was a larger-than-life prime minister, his mother, Margaret, a 1970s symbol of glitz and glamour. Trudeau came of age in sophisticated Montreal with a Kennedy-esque pedigree amid lavish comfort. Poilievre not only comes from the humblest of stock but also from the western province of Alberta, which has long resented the eastern establishments.