Pierre Poilievre draws crowds like a rock star or a televangelist, depending. The candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) preaches the gospel of extreme freedom and sings the praises of a country where the state has no control over the individual. Where the unvaccinated are celebrated as fighters for a just cause. Where cryptocurrency protects you from the inflationary whims of central banks. And where carbon taxes no longer exist.
And it works. Last Tuesday, in Calgary, they were more than 5000 at the Spruce Meadows Equi-plex, who came to hear Mr. Poilievre in his hometown. “People need to take back control of their lives and restore freedom,” the Ontario MP insisted to the Alberta crowd. His promise to make Canada the freest country in the world has something to excite Canadians, often young, who are fed up with the health restrictions of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals. To see Ottawa mortgaging their future with huge public spending. And to see the Bank of Canada “printing money” and stoking inflation.
It is too early to know if the Pierre Poilievre phenomenon will last. If the enthusiastic young cryptomoners who attend its meetings will become members of the CCP and vote for it on September 10, the date of the election of the new Conservative leader. If the other candidates in the leadership race will be able to take advantage of the official debates on May 11 and 25 to bring their overexcited rival back to earth.
Mr. Poilievre’s lead over his main rivals — Jean Charest, Patrick Brown and Leslyn Lewis — seems to be growing day by day. About fifty Conservative MPs have already supported him, while Mr. Charest enjoys the support of almost all of the Quebec caucus of the CPC. According to polls, current CPC members would much prefer Mr. Poilievre to Mr. Charest. The latter remains particularly unpopular in Alberta, the province with proportionally the most CCP members.
However, the voting system, according to which each of the 338 districts of the country will have the same weight in the selection of the next leader, regardless of the proportion of CPC members who reside there, allows Mr. Poilievre’s rivals to keep hope. They have until June 3 to attract new members. Everything could be decided in the next six weeks.
As a result, the tone is rising between the two main candidates. Mr. Poilievre accuses Mr. Charest of being a flip-flop who changes sides as he changes his jacket. According to Mr. Poilievre, the “true” Conservatives will never be able to count on the former Liberal premier of Quebec, the very man who established the carbon exchange and pleaded for the maintenance of the federal firearms registry, to defend their interests in Ottawa.
Mr. Charest’s decision to advise, as a lawyer for McCarthy Tétrault, the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei on the extradition process facing its chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou has left a bitter taste in many conservatives. Mr. Charest now promises to ban Huawei, considered close to the Chinese government, from Canadian 5G networks if he becomes prime minister. But his explanations about his work for Huawei are far from satisfying the critics. He will have to provide a better answer during the debates.
Despite his rocky start, Charest is waging a campaign that avoids the mistakes of Erin O’Toole, who won the 2020 leadership race by courting the party’s right wing and then trying to refocus the CPC during the campaign. federal election in 2021. The promises that Mr. Charest is making in the leadership race could fit perfectly into an upcoming CPC election platform that would aim to attract the disappointed Liberals and the Red Tories, without scaring away the Alberta base. party.
“I built pipelines. I will build more,” he tweeted this week. It would leave the Liberals’ national child care program in place while improving tax credits for low-income parents who are unable to secure a place in subsidized child care. His campaign slogan—Built to Win—aims to focus party members on the ultimate goal, the election of a Conservative government in Ottawa.
Beyond his promises, Mr. Charest is trying to make this race a referendum on the character of Mr. Poilievre. The latter’s support for truckers who barricaded themselves in downtown Ottawa in February to protest sanitary measures makes him unworthy of the post of leader. “The rule of law and the Canadian legal system are not a buffet. Elected parliamentarians cannot choose when to follow our laws as they please,” Mr. Charest’s team pointed out.
During his appearance last Sunday on the show QQuestion Period of CTV, Mr. Charest described Mr. Poilievre’s promotion of cryptocurrency as “weird”. “You want to be Prime Minister of Canada and you tell Canadians that cryptocurrency will end inflation? Who believes that? he asked. There are people who will listen to it and put a lot of money into cryptocurrency and lose it all. »
Mr. Charest is gradually regaining his old reflexes as a political warrior. He needs it in a race that’s about to get pretty bloody.