The dust has mostly settled from the latest battle between the Conservative Patty of Canada and the Ottawa media. Reader’s Digest version: On Aug. 13, several news outlets published a remarkably blasé little article from Canadian Press (CP) suggesting Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre was bringing dangerous conspiracy theories into the mainstream, including via “ramped-up rhetoric around debunked claims that the World Economic Forum is attempting to impose its agenda on sovereign governments.”
In addition to scoffing at the article itself, some Conservatives — including former leader Andrew Scheer — depicted this mass-publication as a matter of “collusion” between the mainstream media giants to impugn Poilievre. Many in my industry repaired to their fainting couches: Surely the man understands how a wire service works! Fascism on the march!
Then two days later, in Prince Edward Island, a reporter put it to Poilievre that “experts” were accusing him of trafficking in far-right rhetoric. When Poilievre asked her to name those experts, she couldn’t.
It wasn’t anyone’s finest moment, but no one is likely to remember it in a few months, never mind years.
One interesting tidbit, though: The fracas did get Poilievre some positive-ish mentions in the Quebec-nationalist press, at a time when his party seems to be gaining ground in the province: A recent Pallas Data poll found the Tories just three points behind the Liberals in federal voting intention.
Full disclosure: When I say “some positive-ish mentions,” “some” means “two,” and “positive-ish” might even be a stretch.
“To choose between (Poilievre) and Trudeau would be to choose between nausea and cramps,” sovereigntist commentator Joseph Facal wrote in the Journal de Montréal . But he was struck nevertheless by the “vast (media) operation (aimed) at making Poilievre look like a dangerous far-right crackpot. “It is simply true that the people who gather (at the World Economic Forum) are an elite group who want trade without borders and without protectionist measures,” Facal wrote, calling out “these young activist journalists for whom all that is not woke is the extreme right.”
Mathieu Bock-Côté, the most influential nationalist columnist in Quebec, echoed many of Facal’s points. “There are real things to criticize about Pierre Poilievre,” he wrote. “But when he criticizes the elites of Davos and the ideology that inspires them, I rather want to congratulate (him).”
There’s a long way between grudging compliments and a blue wave overtaking Quebec, obviously. This is basically a convergence of mutual interests and enemies. Quebec nationalists can’t stand (a) Justin Trudeau; (b) the wokes, both inside and outside of media; and (c) globalization. Poilievre can’t stand all of those things either, albeit for rather different reasons.
Bock-Côté’s team sees these forces as limiting the pure expression of Quebec society: francophone (not bilingual), and secular, with with restrictions on religious observance but also special “ patrimonial” allowances for Catholicism . Poilievre, meanwhile, opposes Bill 21 , the legislation barring teachers and some other civil servants from wearing religious symbols on the job — but he also says he respects Quebec’s right to implement such a law.
That’s about as good as Quebec is likely to get from a federalist party in Ottawa. And that’s about all any federalist party in Ottawa should be aiming to offer Quebec.
Some very enthusiastic members of the tribe seem to be eyeing something larger, though.
Two days after the CP piece landed, online conservative news outlet The Hub published a Q&A with Bock-Côté — his introduction, I suspect, to most readers in English Canada. To my mind, he made very plain the incompatibility of the arch-Quebec-nationalist viewpoint with Rest-of-Canada conservatism.
“Since the constitutional reform of 1982, Quebecers generally have been considered as a superfluous people in this country; at best, they were tolerated, like a vestigial nation bound to vanish over the course of history; at worst, active efforts were made for their disappearance, denying the legitimacy of their national existence and working to deconstruct it,” Bock-Côté told The Hub.
That’s bananas, obviously. Conservatives more than anyone know that what Quebec wants, within and somewhat beyond reason, Quebec generally gets. Even the New Democrats tiptoed around the issue of religious freedom until it became clear they were humiliating themselves for nothing.
Bock-Côté was also very clear about whom he considers a proper Québécois: The 1995 referendum loss was “heartbreaking,” he said, particularly “in that 61 per cent of francophone Quebecers voted Yes.” (If Ottawa journalists are looking for dog whistles, there’s a doozie!) And for good measure, Bock-Côté explicitly ruled out the notion of a “pan-Canadian conservatism.”
And yet Conservative strategist Anthony Koch, who was Poilievre’s press secretary during his leadership run, waxed enthusiastically: “Anglo-Canadian Conservatives can and should seek inspiration from Bock-Côté’s) words/perspective,” he wrote.
Good lord, no, they should not — certainly not ideologically, and not strategically either. The party of “freedom,” as Poilievre styles the modern Conservatives, cannot and will not find common cause with a movement that believes firmly in laws about what language you can speak and what religious symbols you can wear. Erin O’Toole and Scheer pandered as hard as they possibly could to the Quebec nationalist set and got nothing for it.
That’s not to say the Conservatives should write off Quebec — just that they should hold fast to the few bedrock principles they have left, “freedom from government” being perhaps the most distinctive and important. If Quebecers will vote for Jack Layton’s NDP, and for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, there’s no reason to believe they won’t for Poilievre’s Conservatives. If anything, debasing themselves in the effort might make that less likely.
Source: National Post
