Pierre Poilievre hasn’t won yet

If you listen to Canadian political commentary, a certain kind of fatalism has sunk in: a Pierre Poilievre and Conservative Party of Canada victory is inevitable in the next election, and nothing is going to matter over the next year-and-a-bit until the next federal election is scheduled. This is possibly the worst of all possible instincts to harbour, and a sign that our media spends way too much time huffing the horse-race poll numbers that they treat as gospel, which is also why Poilievre keeps pushing for an early election, so that he can come in on a sweeping victory. But this sense of inevitability should be fought, particularly among marginalized Canadians who know that a Poilievre-led government is going to be a very big problem for them, and for their rights. 

It’s more than just a trite truism that a year is a lifetime in politics, because events can radically reshape the political landscape over the course of mere days. This just happened for Democrats in the U.S., where their entire campaign was turned around over the course of a week after incumbent president Joe Biden withdrew from the race for re-election and made room for current vice-president Kamala Harris to become the nominee. Fundraising that had stalled was suddenly pouring in, and voters who had resigned themselves to not wanting to vote in an uninspiring Biden vs. Trump contest—no matter how vitally important to the very future of democracy in that country—were suddenly feeling energized and hopeful again. Campaigns themselves matter, and we’ve seen that here in Canada too, where Justin Trudeau went from third place in the polls in 2015, to a majority Parliament.

Nevertheless, looking toward events in the U.S. is also giving rise to the pundit class in this country openly musing about a change in leadership, and whether Justin Trudeau himself needs to bow out in order to rescue his party. This is coupled with citations of those poll numbers as though they were actually indicative of anything more than a lot of people parking their anger at the current state of affairs. That may be easier said than done—Trudeau is keen to stay on, whether out of a sense of a saviour complex, that he is the only one who can take on Poilievre’s particular brand of demagoguery or because he wants to ensure that he’s the one who takes the fall if his party doesn’t win the next election. In any case, the leadership rules that he helped usher in for his party when they rewrote their constitution in 2016 makes it incredibly difficult for that kind of a transition to happen while the party is in power. That’s because these rules essentially demand that his successor create a cult of personality in order to garner popular enough support among registered Liberals (because there is essentially no longer a grassroots organization) in order to first win the leadership. Then they have to replace Trudeau’s cult of personality with their own within the hollow shell that is the party brand in the current era. It may be an impossible feat.

Nevertheless, regardless of the outcome of this election, we are going to see a number of leadership changes in the aftermath—if he wins, Trudeau will almost certainly finish off a few legacy items such as cementing child care or moving ahead with an expanded pharmacare plan before announcing his intention to step down, and if he doesn’t win, the stage is set for the Liberals to choose a new leader. Jagmeet Singh’s career as federal NDP leader is almost certainly in its twilight, as his party has stalled in the polls, has lost ground in a number of blue-collar ridings to Conservatives and he’s spent most of his time trying to fight Doug Ford from the wrong legislature, litigating one provincial issue after another. And if Poilievre loses, well, the knives are very likely to come out for him as they did for his predecessors Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole.

This is one of the reasons why fatalism won’t help the progressive cause. Saying you like the Liberals’ plan but can’t vote for Trudeau won’t help you keep those Liberal plans alive. There was polling earlier this summer that found that people said they were willing to vote for Poilievre, but they also wanted all of the services that the Liberals (and, to a lesser extent, the NDP) have provided, like child care and dental care. You can’t have both. As much as he can claim to have a coherent ideology, Poilievre has internalized the so-called teachings of crypto bros on YouTube, and thinks that massive spending cuts in order to achieve a notional balanced budget is the way to a prosperous economy (mostly because from all appearances, he doesn’t understand monetary or fiscal policy). That’s going to mean a lot of painful cuts to services. A simple change in government also won’t fix most of the problems that we’re dealing with, such as the housing shortage or the affordability crunch, because many of those problems are structural in nature. No amount of empty slogans will fix those issues, and would in fact be made worse with an austerity agenda.

Stopping a Poilievre victory means not surrendering to this false sense of inevitability. He hasn’t won, and it is not predetermined that he will. But this also means not deluding yourselves that a strong NDP can hold a Conservative government in a minority Parliament to account, because history has shown repeatedly that they can’t (because their inability to fundraise effectively means they will roll over for two years while they pay off their campaign debts rather than risk another election). “Sure winners” in elections lose frequently enough, particularly if their opponents can take the lessons about organizing at the grassroots level and mobilize their voters rather than letting them stay at home as though there weren’t any point to voting. But it also means continuing to hold the Liberals’ feet to the fire when it comes to implementing their promises, owning up to their mistakes and ensuring that they are actually responsive to the issues Canadians are facing. A year is a long time in politics, and there is enough time for them to do the work and make progress on those issues.