(Ottawa) We started to hear it Monday in the press scrums, in the debates in the House and during question period: eight. Eight years since the Trudeau government failed to do this or that. The Conservative Party of Canada wants to send the message that the Liberals are a worn-out government. And the strategy worries some in the liberal ranks.
Forty-five.
This is the number of times that the Conservatives have launched the figure, in different versions, in the single day of Monday, according to a census of the newspaper of the debates.
After eight years under the leadership of Justin Trudeau, “Canadians are suffering”, “mortgage payments have doubled”, “demands have exploded in food banks” or even “violent crimes have increased by 32%”.
“I am very worried that this Prime Minister, after eight years of promising sunny days, has lost touch with reality,” said Conservative MP Luc Berthold on Monday.
The next day, in the first question he asked in French in the House of Commons, his leader Pierre Poilievre pronounced the figure eight no less than five times.
For clarification, the Justin Trudeau Liberals came to power on October 19, 2015. They therefore have a little more than seven years of reign behind the tie, but yes, they are entering their eighth year in power.
Change of tactics
This line of attack is part of a strategic realignment: the needle of several polls did not move in the months following the triumph of Pierre Poilievre at the head of the Conservative Party, on September 10th.
After shunning the “mainstream” media, the chef has come out of his lair, multiplying appearances on television sets, especially in Quebec, in recent weeks.
His deputy leader Melissa Lantsman, who was also fleeing journalists from the parliamentary press, also came out of the shadows.
PHOTO ADRIAN WYLD, THE CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES
Melissa Lantsman, Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party
“Listen, this is not a line of attack, this is reality”, pleaded the latter, crossed in a corridor of parliament, Tuesday.
Also intercepted in the West Block, Liberal MP Adam van Koeverden sought to minimize the impact that this campaign could have.
“My first concern is their weakness in mathematics: we have been here for seven years and a couple of months,” he quipped.
“Otherwise, I am convinced that Canadians see beyond the slogans. They want solutions,” he said.
Liberal concerns
Nevertheless, in the Liberal ranks, the new conservative strategy did not go unnoticed.
On the contrary, there are fears that it will hit the bull’s eye with voters, who could be tempted by the change in the next election.
Last fall, Pierre Poilievre’s troops bet on another slogan by accusing Justin Trudeau’s Liberals of wanting to “triple, triple, triple” the carbon tax. But this line of attack had limited effects.
“Conservatives are good at producing slogans and repeating them. They are trying to put it in people’s minds that we are an old party that is not being renewed. We will have to be very solid in our communications to respond to this,” agreed a Liberal source, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak freely about this new dynamic in the House of Commons.
This Liberal source pointed out that people tend to quickly forget the achievements of the Trudeau government.
In terms of the communications plan, we had better have something solid to counter what the Conservatives are doing.
A liberal source
Two recent polls show that the Conservative Party is in the lead in voting intentions across the country. According to a Nanos poll published on January 18, he would win 35.6% of the vote against 28.3% for the Liberal Party and 20.7% for the New Democratic Party (NDP). The firm did not release results by province.
Another poll, conducted by the firm Abacus Data and published the same day, gave 35% of support to the Conservative Party, 31% to the Liberal Party and 18% to the NDP. In Quebec, however, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals still came out on top with 37%, compared to 30% for the Bloc Québécois, 17% for the Conservative Party and 7% for the NDP.
On average, minority governments stay in power between 18 and 24 months. The Trudeau government is a minority in the House of Commons.
Last March, the government reached an agreement with the NDP that ensures its survival in the Commons possibly until 2025, in exchange for investments in social programs such as the creation of a national dental care program.
Federal elections are therefore not scheduled for 2023, unless there is a major reversal.