Pierre Poilievre has been repeating like a mantra for a month that it is because of the spending of the Trudeau government that everything is more expensive, and that only the new Conservative leader can turn the tide by imposing a slimming diet on the state.
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“The main issue is liberal inflation,” he insists in an interview with the Logas he has been doing for weeks in Ottawa.
For him, the calculation is simple. The Trudeau government pumped too much money into the economy through social programs and citizen assistance, which boosted demand. But as the quantity of goods available did not increase, prices jumped.
Although he voted in favor of the first liberal train of pandemic aid, which made it possible in particular to set up the PCU, the conservative leader no longer has any good word for this strategy, however applied by many allies.
Neoliberal from adolescence
He has returned to the obsession that has been with him since he was 17: reducing the size of the state to restrict spending. It was at this age that he made the books of the American economist Milton Friedman, one of the champions of neoliberal and libertarian thought, his bedside reading.
According to Friedman, state intervention harms prosperity and must therefore be limited to the strict minimum: Defence, Justice and the Treasury. The rest should be left to the free market, including the minimum wage. With that in mind, Mr. Poilievre twice voted against raising the federal minimum wage.
Today, 18 years after being elected at 25, and now the father of two young children, he has not changed, says his longtime friend, Conservative MP Michael Cooper.
“The Pierre Poilievre that I met 20 years ago is the same Pierre Poilievre that I know today and that Canadians know,” he said, hailing the disciplined consistency of a man of principle.
Misogyny and the far right
Still, he’s “willing to do anything to gain power,” said New Democrat Alexandre Boulerice, outraged when the Global Network revealed last week that Poilievre’s YouTube videos contained a related hashtag. to misogynistic groups online for four years.
In an interview, the Conservative leader replied that he was unaware of the presence of these hashtags and that he demanded their removal. But for Minister Mélanie Joly, it was no accident.
Mr. Poilievre also positioned himself alongside participants in the Ottawa blockade and opponents of sanitary measures, and even displayed himself during his campaign with a figure from the far right, Jeremy MacKenzie, whom he then claimed to not know.
The former soldier who founded the neo-Nazi Diagolon militia was arrested at the end of September after he threatened to rape Mr. Poilievre’s wife, Anaïda.
IMMIGRATION
Pierre Poilievre, himself married to a Venezuelan refugee, has placed immigrants at the heart of his political strategy.
This is no coincidence: 41 ridings in the country, most located in the suburbs of large cities, have more than 50% visible minorities.
It was by winning their vote that Stephen Harper secured a majority government in 2011, thanks to the hard work of his then Secretary of State for Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, who trained Pierre Poilievre.
If he is in favor of closing Roxham Road, the Conservative leader is positioning himself as an ardent defender of legal immigration, which he sees as the key to the labor shortage.
To accelerate the rapid economic integration of immigrants, he promises agreements with the provinces and professional orders so that their skills are recognized in 60 days.
LODGING
Archival photo
Accommodations like these in Montreal are getting more and more expensive.
While campaigning for the leadership of his party, Pierre Poilievre repeated ad nauseam his example of a young 30-something graduate and professional who lives in his parents’ basement because he cannot afford housing at a within reason.
For him, there are two culprits. First, the governor of the Bank of Canada who raises interest rates. He promises to fire him, although the Canadian central bank is acting in a similar way to the other central banks of the G7 to control inflation.
Next, to tackle the anemic housing supply, Poilievre blames cities for pushing up prices by imposing exorbitant fees and delays on building permits.
Threats of cuts
In the campaign, he indicated that under his leadership, the big cities would lose a portion of their federal transfers if they did not increase residential construction by 15% and would not densify around public transport axes.
The Conservative government of Ontario is following similar methods. However, according to an analysis by the Smart Prosperity Institute, Ontario’s ambitions are hampered by the lack of construction workers.
LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY
The first truly bilingual Conservative leader since Brian Mulroney, Pierre Poilievre switches from one language to another with rare ease for a native of Calgary.
But this has not prevented the Conservatives from changing their position on the specificity of French-speaking Quebec since he became leader.
His caucus voted against a Bloc Québécois bill to require knowledge of French to obtain Canadian citizenship in Quebec. However, an old version of this bill received the support of the Conservatives.
As for the CAQ reform of the Charter of the French language (law 96), Pierre Poilievre showed himself fleeing from his place in the leadership campaign, while three of his opponents strongly decried it.
However, he clearly said he was against Law 21 on the secularism of the state, saying he was in agreement with the Liberal government’s decision to intervene against the law before the Supreme Court when the opportunity arises.
ENVIRONMENT
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A refinery in Fort McMurray.
While his predecessor Erin O’Toole promised a reengineering of the carbon tax, Pierre Poilievre wants to abolish it, because it contributes, he says, to rising prices.
To green the hydrocarbons industry, of which he is a fierce defender, he relies on technologies. The Trudeau government also encourages this avenue by funding carbon capture projects.
It remains to be proven
But these still marginal technologies are far from proven and remain extremely expensive.
“If we took that money and invested it in energy efficiency or renewable energy, we would have much greater greenhouse gas reductions per dollar invested,” said the director of Équiterre in 2016. , now Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault.
A role for Quebec
But Pierre Poilievre does not budge. He even believes that Quebec can contribute to greening the hydrocarbon industry by building more dams, and more quickly.
“Quebecers have a clean source of energy, hydroelectricity, which they can use to liquefy natural gas without emissions,” he told the Log, justifying its support for the LNG Quebec project, rejected by the Legault government.
If he assures that he would not impose anything on the province, the Conservative leader believes that the context today is more favorable to energy projects than ever.
“The war in Ukraine shows that if Canada does not produce natural gas, the market will be monopolized by polluting dictatorships like Putin’s,” he insisted.
At odds with the media
The new Conservative leader has been very suspicious of mainstream media, limiting interviews since his election on September 10.
It took until this week for him to open the door to mass media, including The newspaper.
For the conservative strategist Rodolphe Husny, it is that the leader “does not want to give the opportunity to the media to dissect his message”.
His relationship with the parliamentary press got off to a very bad start. Shortly after coming to power, he had a heated clash with a Global News reporter, David Akin, who was protesting his refusal to be interviewed.
“Canadians are discovering it right now and he wants them to associate it with a single issue, the economy,” explains Mr. Husny, a former adviser to the Harper government.
To achieve this while avoiding being doubted by journalists, Pierre Poilievre uses question period in the House of Commons to hound the government on the cost of living and taxes.
For the rest, the leader of the opposition relies on social networks, where he maintains a direct link with the electorate. This strategy, he says, allowed him to win his seat in suburban Ottawa seven consecutive times.
This rejection of the media, which crosses the global populist right, is linked to the general loss of confidence in the press, underlines Mr. Husny.
Propaganda organ
52% of Canadians believe that “the majority of media organizations are more concerned with promoting an ideology than informing the public,” according to Edelman’s annual trust survey.
If he is elected Prime Minister, Pierre Poilievre intends to stop funding the public channel CBC, and abolish the subsidies enjoyed by most press groups, including Quebecor.