OTTAWA — Veteran broadcaster and political commentator Charles Adler has been appointed to the Senate.
The newly-appointed representative for Manitoba was announced Saturday, along with Tracy Muggli, a registered social worker and former Liberal party candidate, who will represent Saskatchewan. Both will sit as independent senators, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office said in a statement.
Calling him an “influential voice in Canada for over 50 years,” Trudeau’s office cited Adler’s work on championing human rights and democracy throughout his career.
Adler says he plans to keep working on these issues in his new role. And it’s a role he says nobody is more surprised than him to be entering, especially when he reflects on a career spent in talk radio, almost 20 of which were at Winnipeg’s CJOB radio station delivering conservative commentary.
His critics, however, might be less surprised.
In recent years, Adler has made a public show of his spilt from the federal Conservatives. That “rupture,” as he put it during a phone interview Saturday, began during the 2015 federal election campaign where the party ran on a promise to create a so-called barbaric cultural practices hotline.
In a 2020 piece Adler penned about the fallout, he described it as a symptom of “conservatism (that) keeps moving further and further to the right.”
Two years later, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, whom Adler has openly criticized, took the stage.
All public opinion polls suggest Poilievre is on track to replace Trudeau after nearly a decade in power because Canadians are hungry for change.
So what does Adler think about working alongside a possible Poilievre-led government?
“Some current Conservatives, especially those on social media, might be surprised, but if there is a Conservative government, I will root for them to succeed,” he said Saturday.
“I root for every Canadian government to succeed, regardless of what my politics are. If they can improve the economy, if they can bring us more national unity, if they can give us less polarization, if they can strengthen our democracy, if they can make people feel safer and give people more opportunities. I’ll be a cheerleader.”
Still, he adds that had he thought the Conservatives “were actually motivated” to accomplish any of those things, “I wouldn’t have been as much of a critic.”
As for what the incoming independent senator thinks of Poilievre: “I don’t think much of him.”
He cites Poilievre’s attacks on the media, an institution of democracy which Adler said the Conservative leader is “abusing” and ought to be “very lucky that most media people don’t talk back.”
“I don’t want to get too partisan here, but I mean, I am who I am,” he said at one point, adding how he sees Poilievre’s embrace of populism as nothing more than a play for power.
“In his heart, I just don’t think he’s any more populist than any member of the various elites around the world who strive for power,” said Alder.
“If populism wasn’t, you know, the current fad for power, he’d be doing something else.”
Poilievre’s office has yet to respond to a request for comment.
Asked directly if he believes his split from the Conservatives had a role in his appointment, Adler said, “I really don’t know.”
“Don’t you find it amazing that a Liberal prime minister, someone who’s sometimes accused (of) being … very left-liberal and all of that would, would want to appoint someone who has spent their entire adult life being a small c-conservative,” said Adler.
“I personally wonder whether a Conservative prime minster would ever even think of appointing someone who had been a lifelong liberal, if it’s happened, I’m not aware of it.”
Adler said he continues to see himself as a small c-conservative and that should a possible future Poilievre-led government be the same, “bravo, mazel tov.”
He says anyone who has listened to him over the years knows he speaks from heart instead of offering what he calls “predictable” right- or left-wing commentary.
“They know how much I love the country,” Adler says. “They know how much I treasure public service.”
He believes the country is great because of its institutions.
“I’m not a populist,” he said.
“I’m not one of these people who says the reason you have a great country because, you know, average people are willing to work hard and they’re honest and decent. Of course they are, but that’s the smallest part of it. Unless we have institutions, it doesn’t work.”
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