Ivison: Trudeau won’t be able to demonize Conservatives this time, says Erin O’Toole

This week, John Ivison is joined by former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole to take a look at the return of Parliament on Monday.

O’Toole, who is now president of strategic intelligence firm ADIT North America, said he doesn’t see anything on the horizon that might change the nature of the political contest in Canada in the same way that Kamala Harris’ entry into the U.S. presidential race has turned it on its head.

“I made a prediction a year ago that (Justin) Trudeau would likely announce his intention to leave just before Parliament returned this fall. I’m running out of time for that prediction to come true. It seems like he’s going to stay, but the polls are locked. Clearly, people want change. The government is appearing tired. Shuffles haven’t worked and I think (NDP leader) Jagmeet Singh was recognizing that by ending his association with the Liberals, who were dragging the NDP down,” he said.

Few people are more aware about Trudeau’s abilities as an election campaigner than O’Toole, who lost the 2021 general election, despite winning the popular vote. Ivison asked if that strength might give the prime minister a semblance of hope or whether the demands for a change of government are too insistent.

O’Toole said he thinks “it’s too far gone.”

“This is why I still think he might announce in the coming months his decision to leave. I’ve never seen (the public) turn on someone to the degree that I have with this prime minister. I’m being respectful here. You may remember what the media dubbed Harper Derangement Syndrome in 2015, where I would encounter people that just wanted a change from Stephen Harper, couldn’t even explain it. They would just get upset…I’m meeting lifelong liberals, including from groups like the Ismaili community and others that Pierre Trudeau was seen as helping come to Canada, for whom the Trudeau family was almost mythic. Yet, they’ve said the entire family is tired of the prime minister and want him to move on. It’s really quite amazing how that has developed to the degree it has. And I don’t see him being able to change that by bringing doughnuts or getting into respectful conversations.

“He’s pivoting, he’s going back on tour, but I can’t see him pulling this out of the hat. And I can’t see him really finding an issue that he’s going to be able to demonize the Conservatives with. I think he’s gone to that bag of tricks too many times and I think people just want change,” he said.

The end of the confidence and supply agreement between the Liberals and NDP does not necessarily mean we are heading to an election this fall, he said.

“When I was still the Conservative leader, (the Liberals) voted on a case-by-case, bill-by-bill basis and relied on the NDP or relied on the Bloc. So, I don’t think that much has changed. The only real Hail Mary pass that Mr. Trudeau could have, if he doesn’t want to leave would be some formal agreement with the NDP, or some sort of forced merger. Or perhaps he could try to force an election on a very controversial or large policy move like a universal basic income or something that would be so dramatic that it would maybe distract from their unpopularity. But I think that’s unlikely. He seems to think that he can bounce back. I don’t think he will but he’s quite lucky his caucus doesn’t have the Reform Act like mine did because I forced the issue and that ended my leadership. I think there’s a lot of Liberal MPs that would really like Mr. Trudeau to move on but they’re probably saying that in private, not in public,” he said.

O’Toole said he found Trudeau’s recruitment of former bank governor, Mark Carney, as the chair of new Liberal economic advisory committee to be “a very strange move.”

“Mark Carney is a very accomplished individual. I have a lot of respect for him. Obviously, as Conservatives, we appointed him to head the Bank of Canada and then the Brits seized upon that (to become governor of the Bank of England). He is quite out of touch, though, with the needs of regular people. And I think sometimes that will happen when you’re in those sort of cocktail circuits around the world. He doesn’t realize the real impact of inflation (or) the cost of living… While he’s from Western Canada, I don’t think he realizes that the policies on energy and on pipelines that Mr. Trudeau has brought in, have not just been bad for our economy, they’ve been divisive for our country. And I think Mr. Carney has been a major advocate of many of those reforms. And whether it’s some of his global banking initiatives or ESG work, a lot of that stuff is tumbling down anyway because of global populism. So, I think he’s probably the least in touch with the average Canadian family in that room in Nanaimo. I’m not sure how he’s going to help the Liberals reconnect with Canadians who’ve lost faith in this government. But he’s certainly a name and they’re trying to bring in a flashy name to show they understand the economy, but the poll numbers indicate otherwise,” he said.

The Liberal Party’s problems mean that it is probably Pierre Poilievre’s election to lose. But O’Toole says there are no signs of complacency in Conservative ranks.

“Pierre is remarkably disciplined and he’s running on a couple of the key issues that he’s been talking about for many, many years. When I was leader, I loved his work on highlighting inflation and how this was going to really squeeze Canadians, both in the lower and middle classes. He talked about how the rise in asset prices was really creating to Canada’s, you know, an urban, wealthy Canada where things were great and a working-class, middle-class Canada, where people were having a hard time making their payments. So, he’s been on this issue for many, many years. He’s not going to deviate from it. Some of the policies were in our platform in 2021, but Pierre has been able to present them with videos and really connect with people. I think Pierre is probably the first Canadian politician to really understand how to harness social media, YouTube and other formats to engage people and to reach out. Sometimes it causes challenges, but I think when you’re really trying to hit balls out of the park, you’re going to have a few foul balls from time to time. He’s going to stick on those issues, crime, the economy and inflation, housing, and I don’t think they’re going to deviate much from that,” he said.

One topic that may not have been in Poilievre’s election playbook, but which has created opportunities for him due to unforced Liberal errors, is the immigration file. The consensus for mass immigration is under pressure because the Liberals opened the floodgates to non-permanent residents, depressing wages, contributing to youth unemployment and exacerbating the housing crisis. Poilievre has promised to lower temporary immigration and bring it into line with housing construction.

O’Toole said he has never seen a national consensus on any issue change so quickly.

“I think it’s for a number of reasons: rising populism, economic uncertainty, but also the Liberals have mismanaged a program that generally was run very well. We had record numbers of new Canadians come when I was part of the Harper government and it had bipartisan support. But when you start accelerating dramatically temporary foreign workers and students, when there was quite frankly, ridiculous rhetoric, like you saw with the Century Initiative, saying we needed to reach a hundred million people in Canada, a lot of that was coming from the liberal consulting class.

“I think they bought into it. The problem is the cities and the municipal levels of government were slowing down building. Things were not getting built. And so, our ambition was outstripping our ability to actually make sure people had success when they came here…

“In the past, if you ever said we needed to slow down immigration a little bit, people would accuse you of being anti-immigrant or nativist or xenophobic because we see that in some of the European far right parties. Everyone in Canada supports immigration, but they want people coming to have success and they’re not going to have success if they’re living six to a basement apartment in Brampton and going to a phoney community college just to get into the country. So, I think we really have to clean up the program, while we also talk about the benefits and the need for smart immigration. It’s always been a strength Canada has had and the Liberals by politicizing it have turned that strength into a bit of a weakness,” he said.

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