John Ivison: Liberals ponder an early election as Poilievre confronts his Macbeth moment

The Conservative party is a “fractured mess,” according to one caucus member who volunteered the opinion to a CTV reporter Wednesday.

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Few people (with the possible exception of leader Pierre Poilievre) will have been more distressed by the sense of incipient rebellion than Mark Carney’s political advisers.

I remain unconvinced that the prime minister plans to establish a political dynasty. He has repeatedly refused to confirm that he plans to lead the Liberal party into the next election. He is ambitious to get big things done. He knows he has to be in a position to enact his plans, which requires having a majority government. As I noted on Monday, the government is planning to introduce legislation to rein in labour disputes this fall. The consultative process began shortly after the Liberals acquired, by hook and by crook, their majority.

But Carney seems supremely uninterested in Parliament and likely views an election campaign as a distraction.

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The same could not be said for the political people around him. They are the kind of folks whose idea of a good night in is a box of Timbits and a copy of Hansard, and they are apparently convinced that an election in the next six months would be a terrific idea.

The most recent polling aggregated by 338 Canada estimates Liberal support at 46 per cent, compared to 33 per cent for the Conservatives. The seat projection on those numbers suggests the Liberals would have a 99 per cent chance at a majority and could win around 228 seats, compared to 78 for the Conservatives.

That projection would see Poilievre’s party lose 60 MPs. For caucus members contemplating the thought of him leading them into another campaign, the chance of an MP surviving is around 56 per cent — similar to that of a frontline infantry soldier at the Battle of the Somme.

On CTV, Regan Watts, a former adviser to Conservative finance minister Jim Flaherty, said we are seeing the final scene in this Shakespearean tragedy. To extend that metaphor, defeat in the coming Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations byelection, as safe a Conservative seat as it gets in Ontario, would be like Birnam Wood arriving in Dunsinane — namely, the end of the play.

Larry Brock, the sitting MP will step down this Friday, and the prime minister must call a byelection within the next six months.

Poilievre has to turn things around by then.

Yet there are few signs that the Conservative leader is making inroads with voters.
Poilievre is a politician so well versed in the art of denial he appears incapable of saying yes. His agenda is so inflexible, he is like a tombstone salesman trying to flog a memorial already engraved with the name McDonald.

He came out against Carney’s investment event on Tuesday, saying that “the speeches, summits and symbolic signing ceremonies” would not pay the grocery bills of Canadians.

He pointed to six quarters marked by a decline in business investment and said the world would like to invest in Canada’s resources were it not for high federal taxes and red tape.

The social media post landed just hours before Carney unveiled nearly $500 billion in new investment commitments and a tax write-off that will cut the marginal effective tax rate on new business investment to the lowest level of any major economy in the world.

This is not the first time that Poilievre has been guilty of premature transmission. Last month, he posted that Carney had recorded the worst first-year growth of any prime minister on record on the same day that new GDP figures showed annualized 3.3 per cent growth.

All the signs are that the investment summit was a huge success, at least according to the feedback offered by giant asset-management firms such as Blackstone Inc. Its president, Jonathan Gray, indicated that major investors are taking another look at Canada. Speaking on a panel in Toronto, he said this country has been a “sleeping giant” that is being unleashed by changes to taxation and permitting processes. “The potential growth rates here are much higher than people would expect,” he said.

If true, that suggests economic growth that will indeed help pay the grocery bills of Canadians.

Poilievre has also come out strongly against Carney’s plan to secure closer ties with the European Union. He said that such ambitions are “out of touch” with Canadians, even though the polling suggests that four out of five voters support closer integration.

Poilievre is onto something when he said Canada should not become the 28th EU state. But it’s not clear that anyone is proposing it should be.

I am skeptical about the whole EU pivot. The union may not be quite as united once right-wing parties gain more power in Paris and Berlin. We already have a free trade deal with Europe that Carney should insist the 10 remaining holdout states sign. But I think it is more about leveraging a better deal with the Trump White House; a symbolic shift more aimed at supporting democracy and the ancien regime than hard-wiring the Canadian economy into the EU’s architecture.

The prime minister’s advisers might be inclined to test Poilievre’s hypothesis and call an election to see if Canadians do endorse the government’s moves in Europe.

But if they do plan to provoke an election, they’d best be careful. As noted last February when rumours of an opportunistic election were doing the rounds, voters are not motivated to give a politician something just because he or she wants it. Lester B. Pearson was 20 points ahead in the polls in 1965 when he called an election with no clear purpose. He ended up leading a minority government for three years.

In this case, Carney could conceivably argue that he needs a mandate to reach a deal with President Donald Trump or, if a deal is on offer, to see it through.

The prime minister may be agnostic about the idea, but he will be reminded that Poilievre enjoyed a 20-point lead in the polls in his halcyon summer of 2024.

Politicians are obliged to capitalize on their opportunities or, in Macbeth’s words, it’s “out, out, brief candle.”

National Post

jivison@criffel.ca

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