Instead of a smooth launch to get the campaign rolling, Conservatives found themselves hurtling backwards at pace
Instead of a smooth launch to get the campaign rolling, Conservatives found themselves hurtling backwards at pace
Instead of a smooth launch to get the campaign rolling, Conservatives found themselves hurtling backwards at pace
There are good reasons for any Liberal leader to visit the central Newfoundland riding of Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame.
It’s currently held by Conservative MP Clifford Small, who won by just 300 votes in 2021, defeating six-time former Liberal MP Scott Simms. Taking it back could well kick the Conservatives off the Rock.
But the logic behind sending Mark Carney on Monday to Gander, NL probably had more to do with symbolism than hard-scrabble electioneering.
The Liberal strategy for the campaign to elect the 45th Canadian Parliament is to try to minimize the variations with the Conservatives on policy and magnify the contrast in character between Carney and Pierre Poilievre.
Carney couldn’t have culturally appropriated Gander more if he had arrived at the campaign event in a plaid shirt on the back of a moose.
He spoke of the town’s role post-9/11, when its 10,000 residents opened their doors and graciously hosted 6,600 mainly American passengers after the closure of U.S. airspace, events immortalized in the hit musical: Come From Away.
“You showed friendship to people who were fearful, no questions asked, with no expectations. It was the Canadian thing to do,” he said.
The Liberal leader pointed out that Canadians have always shown up for Americans: during the Iranian hostage crisis, the California wildfires and in Afghanistan. “But that’s changed… President Trump wants to break us so America can own us. We will not let that happen,” he said.
Carney was asked about the tax cut Poilievre had just announced in Brampton — a reduction more than double the size of the one the Liberal leader promised on the first day of the campaign.
That could be explained by a different view of the world, Carney explained.
The Liberals represent “the spirit of Gander” while Poilievre speaks for “the spirit of Donald Trump: everyone in it for himself,” he said.
The Liberals have a “balanced approach” that also pays for social programs supporting the most vulnerable, while Poilievre will eliminate child care, dental care, pharmacare and foreign aid, he added (Poilievre has said he rejects a single-payer national pharmacare plan and will cut foreign aid that “often goes to dictators and terrorists” but he has made no commitments on dental or child care).
It was a long way for Carney to travel to deliver a good line but it may have been worth it.
The Liberal campaign so far has been of a thieving disposition, appropriating ideas that the Conservatives have long been pushing, like axing the consumer carbon tax, taking the GST off new houses and building a national energy and trade corridor.
While the Conservatives are “Canada First,” the Liberals are now campaigning as “Canada Strong.”
After calling the election, Carney said his government would reduce the marginal tax rate on the lowest bracket by one per cent, which would save a two-income family around $825 a year.
The only course open to the Conservatives was to make their tax cut even bigger, which Poilievre did on Tuesday: a significant 2.25-per-cent cut to the lowest bracket, saving the average couple $2,000.
The problem with this, of course, is that it will cost $14 billion in foregone revenue when fully implemented. Poilievre said earlier this month that “almost every penny of (retaliatory) tariffs collected should go to tax cuts” but his communications team said that this particular measure is not dependent on tariff revenue. When he was asked about the cost, Poilievre said it would be paid for by cuts to contractors, the bureaucracy and foreign aid.
He pointed out that the Harper government cut the GST and income taxes, while balancing the budget. It would be unwise to suggest that an incoming government can’t cut expenditure that was increasing at nine per cent a year, or generate more revenue than its predecessor by growing the economy.
But even to have to talk about how he planned to pay for the tax cut kept Poilievre on the back foot, where he has been since the campaign started.
You generally want a smooth launch to generate momentum and get the campaign rolling.
Instead, the Conservatives found themselves hurtling backwards at pace, with much of the focus on the opening day being on comments made weeks ago by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to Breitbart News that “on balance, the perspective that Pierre would bring would be very much in sync with the new direction in America.”
Poilievre tried to shrug off a question on Smith’s unwanted intervention and pointed out that Trump himself had said he would prefer to deal with a Liberal government.
“Donald Trump wants weak, out-of-touch Liberals in charge. Giving them a fourth mandate would make Canada a bigger target for him,” the Conservative leader said.
But there is the unmistakable feeling that in the early going, the Conservatives are being outfoxed.
The only subject that is likely causing the Liberals distress is the energy file, where Poilievre is going to places where Carney can’t follow.
Last week, the Conservative leader said he will scrap the industrial carbon tax, including the federal backstop that requires increases to the price on carbon under provincial programs. Removing the backstop allows provinces to reduce their level of ambition on emissions or even scrap their programs altogether.
Poilievre is now in alignment with the CEOs of the largest oil sands producers who signed a joint letter urging that the industrial price be repealed because it handicaps the sector’s competitiveness.
They also called for an overhaul of the Impact Assessment Act and the elimination of Ottawa’s planned oil and gas emissions cap.
In contrast, Carney wants to raise the industrial carbon tax and introduce a border-adjustment mechanism that would act as a tariff on imports from countries without carbon pricing.
The Liberal leader further upset Alberta when — by Smith’s account — he said he wasn’t in favour of hard caps on emissions. Carney later said, when pushed by reporters, that any government he led would keep the planned emissions cap.
This will give Conservatives hope that they can come up with more examples of “Sneaky Carney” being deliberately ambiguous on things like pipelines. In that instance, he was accused of saying one thing in the West (that he would use emergency powers to build energy infrastructure) and another in Quebec (that he would never impose a pipeline on the province).
Voters may yet decide that Carney is too slick and superior. But for the moment, many of them seem to be buying the Liberal leader’s line that Poilievre “doesn’t understand what’s needed in a crisis” — and that Carney does.
In this case, it involved coming from away and associating himself with “the spirit of Gander” as an example of the Canada we know, love and he says he’ll protect.
National Post
jivison@criffel.ca
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