It’s time for Poilievre to offer policy options

Canadians can’t allow the Conservative leader to just continue playing his ‘blame Justin’ game

This article was written by Mark Bulgutch, former senior executive producer of CBC News, and was published in the Toronto Star on April 7, 2024.

Tory Leader Pierre Poilievre is so single-focused and personal in his comments about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, so unconstructive in his criticism, so scorched-earth in his approach to what’s wrong, he is contributing to a breakdown in overall faith in the system, writes Mark Bulgutch.

There’s been some criticism of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre because he hasn’t given Canadians much detail about what policies he would adopt to make things better in Canada if he were elected prime minister.

It appears those critics have missed the point. Things will obviously be better if he’s PM because Justin Trudeau won’t be. That is the entirety of Pierre Poilievre’s argument to the Canadian people.

Poilievre blames Trudeau personally for every twitch, every nuisance, every ache, every bother, on every centimetre of Canada’s 9.9 million square kilometres, including all its lakes and rivers, and another 200,000 square kilometres of territorial waters offshore.

Everything that’s wrong is the fault of one man.

Poilievre has blamed Trudeau for high food prices and inflation in general. The housing crisis. The state of health care. Bad relations with India. Weak national defence. Violent crime (probably non-violent crime as well). Drug addiction. Lax security at our infectious disease lab. Immigration chaos. The list is endless.

When the prime minister reimposed visa requirements on people coming from Mexico, Poilievre agreed. But he blamed Trudeau for lifting visa requirements in the first place.

There is nothing that is not the fault of Justin Trudeau. If it is cloudy in Canada on the day of the full solar eclipse, depriving us of a good view, that, too, will be his fault. This is not serious behaviour for the leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. But it seems to be working.

For about two years, the Conservatives have been ahead in national polling, and in the last few months, the lead has gone from narrow to eat-my-dust. In other words, the blame Justin game, as tiresome as it has become, is a winner.

Should we expect Poilievre to change his tactics? Not unless we demand it.

Yes, it’s shameful for a political leader to moan and whine all the time about the other guy, but he’s getting away with it because there’s no heat from voters to propose alternative policies.

With no policies, Poilievre is 17 or 18 points ahead in the polls. His argument, effectively, is that once we get rid of the one man who is wrecking Canada, everything will start coming up roses, as if by magic. He’ll keep selling that as long as there are enough people buying.

To be fair, or perhaps charitable, we’re not in an election campaign. We are probably still more than a year away from one. An opposition leader unveiling a suite of, “here’s what I’d do” just opens the door to scrutiny and inevitable accusations of imperfection.

But this opposition leader is so single-focused and personal in his comments, so unconstructive in his criticism, so scorched-earth in his approach to what’s wrong, he is contributing to a breakdown in overall faith in the system. That is not healthy.

A healthy political system thrives on a clash of ideas. We aren’t getting that because only one side has ideas. The other side has invective.

Author: Ray Nakano

Ray is a retired, third generation Japanese Canadian born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario. He resides in Toronto where he worked for the Ontario Government for 28 years. Ray was ordained by Thich Nhat Hanh in 2011 and practises in the Plum Village tradition, supporting sanghas in their mindfulness practice. Ray is very concerned about our climate crisis. He has been actively involved with the ClimateFast group (https://climatefast.ca) for the past 5 years. He works to bring awareness of our climate crisis to others and motivate them to take action. He has created the myclimatechange.home.blog website, for tracking climate-related news articles, reports, and organizations. He has created mobilizecanada.ca to focus on what you can do to address the climate crisis. He is always looking for opportunities to reach out to communities, politicians, and governments to communicate about our climate crisis and what we need to do. He says: “Our world is in dire straits. We have to bend the curve on our heat-trapping pollutants in the next few years if we hope to avoid the most serious impacts of human-caused global warming. Doing nothing is not an option. We must do everything we can to create a livable future for our children, our grandchildren, and all future generations.”