Don’t quote me on this but: It looks like the Canadian media is finally turning against Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.
If you haven’t been following Canadian politics, you might be thinking: What? I thought the media had a liberal bias!
That’s certainly what people say. But that hasn’t been the case for Justin Trudeau – at least not recently. The consensus among commentators at the CBC and CTV has been that the Liberals need to go – and this was true before Poilievre passed Trudeau in popularity polls earlier this year.
But that appears to be changing this week. Suddenly people like The Globe and Mail’s Robert Fife are on CPAC’s PrimeTime Politics acting all shocked and concerned that Poilievre would “blatantly lie” – as if that hasn’t been the guy’s modus operandi for the past eighteen years.
The blatant lie that has Canadian pundits in arms is Poilievre’s absurd claim that Trudeau’s trade deal with Ukraine would “impose a carbon tax on the people of Ukraine while they have a knife to their throat.”
What the deal would actually do is completely non-bindingly “promote carbon pricing” – which Ukraine already has, and which Ukraine is already doing as part of its bid to join the European Union.
So why would Poilievre make up such a ridiculous lie? The consensus seems to be that he was trying to take a page from the Trump playbook by courting anti-democratic voters who don’t support Ukraine (because they’re cheap, lack morals, and have a crush on Vladimir Putin).
But that doesn’t make very much sense… because MAGA politics don’t play very well in Canada. Yes, the far-right People’s Party of Canada would love to beg to differ – but they have no power, and their leader, Maxime Bernier, is basically a full-time social media troll at this point.
Plus Poilievre, for all his lack of character, has always been vocal and steadfast in his support for Ukraine. Trudeau admitted as much when he suggested that “right-wing American, MAGA-influenced thinking has made Canadian Conservatives – who used to be among the strongest defenders of Ukraine, I’ll admit – turn their backs on Ukraine.”
But that’s the thing: While Poilievre is certainly the Conservative leader, he isn’t really all that conservative. Nor is he a MAGA Republican for that matter, or the Donald Trump of the North, or anything like that.
If he’s anything at all, Poilievre is an anti-tax utopian: He believes – with what appears to be religious conviction – that there isn’t a problem in the world that couldn’t be solved by cutting some taxes.
Poilievre opposes taxes in principle too: He resents that governments force people to give to the greater good – especially because the greater good includes things he doesn’t give a fuck about, like the environment.
Yes, it’s ironic that a politician hates taxes. But that’s the other thing about Poilievre: he lacks self awareness. That’s why he’s able to claim that “the pathological obsession these Liberals have with carbon taxes has reached a level where it is sick” without recognizing that his own obsession with carbon taxes is pathological and, well, sick.
But that’s Poilievre. And he’s made no secret of it: He’s been Canada’s ever-contemptuous and relentlessly raging id on Parliament Hill for nearly two decades.
It’s not his fault that Canadians are only finally catching onto him now.