Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Monday provided a perfect illustration of why the federal Liberals would face a historic defeat in a federal election if it was held today.
It came from Colbert himself, exuding the smug, Liberal arrogance that dismisses Conservative opponents as not merely wrong on the issues, but evil.
Commiserating with Trudeau on his current low standing in the polls, Colbert offered his view of why the Liberals are in such trouble in Canada.
The liberal U.S. talk show host lamented that “the far right and flirtations with fascism, at the very least, is rising across the globe. Even in Canada, your Conservative Party leader, your opponent there, has been called Canada’s Trump and I’m sorry about that. (Laughter from the audience). But I’m curious why at least some form of nativism or far-right xenophobia might grow in a country even as polite as Canada? Why do you think this is getting a foothold even in your country?”
This, of course, is the exact same boilerplate rhetoric being used by Trudeau and the Liberals in a bid to scare voters away from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and his party.
The reasons it hasn’t worked are two-fold.
First, the Trump comparison is absurd.
Poilievre and the Conservatives have never stormed Parliament in a bid to overthrow the Liberal government and have never challenged the legitimacy of elections that brought Trudeau to power, even in the midst of Canada’s ongoing foreign interference crisis.
To the contrary, they are attempting to defeat Trudeau and the Liberals (currently unsuccessfully) through the lawful means of passing a non-confidence motion in the House of Commons against the Liberals that would trigger a federal election under our system of government.
Second, Trudeau and the Liberals accusing Poilievre and the Conservatives of being far-right fascists does nothing to address the genuine concerns Canadians have about such issues as the cost of living, housing affordability, the impact of high immigration levels on our economy and the state of health care, a joint responsibility of the federal and provincial governments.
That’s why Liberal fear-mongering about the Conservatives — which is hardly a new tactic in Canadian politics — is falling on deaf ears.