"Axe the tax. Build the homes. Fix the budget. Stop the crime."
"Axe the tax. Build the homes. Fix the budget. Stop the crime."
A Poilievre advisor wants people to listen to his speeches. Here's one.
Sorry for the slow output. I’ve been finishing a writing project that must be done by Monday, and recording new podcasts that we’ll begin rolling out next week. Normal production will resume in a few days. Meanwhile…
Over at The Hub, Ginny Roth advises: “If You Want To Know How Pierre Poilievre Would Govern, Try Listening To Him.” And you know what? It’s so crazy, it just might work. As it happens, on Sunday in Ottawa Poilievre gave a big thematic speech to his caucus, and reporters were invited in. Which kind of means that he gave a big thematic speech to reporters, and his caucus was invited in. Here’s the bulk of the speech, with a little commentary from me.
First, why would reporters (and the broader public, because these days almost all of us have comparable access to the same material; here’s Poilievre’s speech in the CPAC archive if you don’t like my take) need to be told to listen to a politician’s speeches?
I have two theories. Poilievre has one of his own. His own theory is that reporters are scheming to hide the truth. A fundraising email from the Conservative Party this week listed Three Reasons for supporters to make an urgent donation. Here’s the first:
#1: We are facing an unprecedented amount of attacks by the mainstream media. Conservatives now need to fend off propaganda attacks from Trudeau and his media allies. As you read this, the legacy media is strategically launching attacks on Pierre and the common sense Canadians who support our movement. We cannot afford to let their partisan propaganda influence the upcoming election.
I’m, what, more than half-exempted from Legacy Media status by virtue of your support. Thanks! (I do take the CBC’s money for my Certified Teevee Punditry, but subscribers to this newsletter substantially outweigh that source of income.) Readers are free to weigh the notion of strategically launched media attacks (We ride at dawn! Who’s got the bar tab?) by their own lights.
My own sense is that there’s a substantial and longstanding reluctance on the part of reporters to cover what politicians intend to say. Cameras and notepads at the back of a room where a speech is being given are usually a vigil, in case there is “news” in the form of (a) a gaffe or (b) a surprising new policy announcement. Simply writing down politicians’ prepared remarks about the political landscape feels too much like carrying their water. Exceptions for a new leader’s first speech and for a campaigning leader’s platform launch are common.
The other non-strategic reason for taking a politician’s statements with a grain of salt is that he’s a politician. This one promised seven months ago to delay passage of the budget implementation act — after the government had moved time allocation, making delay impossible. He told the prime minister two months ago, “You will have no rest until the tax is gone.” The tax isn’t gone. The prime minister, rather notoriously, rested without undue delay.
Nor is Pierre Poilievre our first rodeo. The current prime minister promised electoral reform, cancelled F-35 procurement, more Canadian peacekeepers and an end to boil-water advisories in First Nations by 2021. (To Ginny Roth’s point, all of that was reported in 2015, sometimes skeptically, often not.)
But I very much agree that the best guide to what a politician will do is what he says he’ll do. I agree it’s an undervalued resource. (It was refreshing when Stephanie Levitz covered Poilievre’s year-end interviews, not for goof-ups or outrages, but for policy.) And I agree that Poilievre puts real thought into what he says.
Sunday’s speech to the CPC caucus was intended to set up debates in Parliament between now and June. The setting was widespread cost-of-living hardship. “Everything feels a long way from home right now, doesn't it?” Poilievre said. “You know, when people stop me on the streets, they tell me they don't recognize the country.”