As the federal Liberal caucus retreats to Nanaimo to grapple with its miserable poll numbers, the Conservatives and NDP battle it out for the votes of “common sense Canadians.” They’re the non-ideological, lower-middle-class and working-class people who feel the current government has given them a raw deal. Inflation is up, unemployment is up, crime is up, housing is unaffordable, and they are pissed off. They’re the voters the late NDP leader Ed Broadbent called “ordinary Canadians,” the people Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre rebrands as “extraordinary,” and they are the new Holy Grail of Canadian politics.
The NDP has traditionally appealed to these voters based on their union bona fides, but the Tories now want a piece of the action. Their challenge, of course, is that leader Pierre Poilievre’s record on workers’ rights isn’t exactly stellar. He supported Bill C-377, legislation the Conservatives advanced under Stephen Harper in 2012 that required unions to disclose how they spend their money. (The Liberals repealed the law in 2017.) Poilievre also campaigned in favour of right to work laws and sought to end the requirement that federally-regulated employees in unionized workplaces pay union dues, allegedly after the Public Service Alliance of Canada supported candidates of the separatist Parti Québécois.
But ever since the Freedom Convoy, the working class has become the Tories’ new best friend. Many blue-collar workers were negatively impacted by COVID, suffering financial losses as construction sites shut down, retail stores and restaurants closed, and physical distance mandates made in person work impossible. Meanwhile, white-collar workers retreated to their home offices with their laptop and kept working.
The Freedom Convoy became the symbol of this dichotomy, a “working class revolt” against vaccine mandates and government regulation writ large. And Poilievre has been riding it ever since. Earlier this year, the Tories voted in favour of anti-scab legislation, and during the recent CN rail dispute, they stayed silent, while the Liberals did the dirty work of imposing binding arbitration. The populist, anti-elite messaging is working: working class voters now prefer the Conservatives to the NDP.
But it’s not enough to rebrand themselves: the Tories also want to rebrand their opponents, in particular NDP leader Jagmeet Singh. In a nasty Tory radio spot, a narrator says, “Jagmeet Singh likes nice things. BMWs. Rolex watches. Versace bags.” The ad accuses Singh of selling out taxpayers by propping up Justin Trudeau’s Liberals so he can qualify for his $2.2 million Parliamentary pension, which vests after six years in office. Not exactly a man of the people.
In turn, the NDP’s new ad slams Poilievre as a “fraud.” “Pierre’s never been a worker. And he’s never stood with workers” Laura Walton, President of the Ontario Federation of Labour intones. The video features shots of Singh walking various picket lines, something the NDP says Poilievre would never do “because he won’t be welcome at a picket line.”
But there is a disconnect brewing between labour leaders and their rank and file. Union leadership has taken on all manner of causes unrelated to workers’ well-being, such as trans rights and Palestinian self-determination. CUPE’s Fred Hahn has become the poster child for this phenomenon, with the union’s executive recently calling for his resignation over an antisemitic video Hahn shared on social media.
Canadian Conservatives have also played the populist card before, in the era of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. It was particularly effective at the time, because Dief hailed from the same turf as the CCF, forerunner of the NDP. He was a Prairie boy, a western outsider to the Laurentian elite. Despite representing a riding in Ottawa, Poilievre also plays the Calgary card, where he grew up, and where the Conservative base is the strongest.
But the voters the Tories need to win over don’t live in the West. They are the suburban and ex-urban Ontarians who swept the Liberals to power in 2015 and kept them there for two subsequent elections. Those voters are not all working class, but many are struggling, and can identify with the anxiety of the workers Poilievre courts in his speeches and ads. And that shared experience appears enough to turn a lot more “common sense Canadians” into Conservatives.
Postmedia News
Tasha Kheiriddin is Postmedia’s national politics columnist.