It was a bad day last Monday for federal conservative leader MP Pierre Poilievre. We were watching for his secret weapon in the Mississauga-Lakeshore bye-election It seems the secret weapon is still secret. After all, a schemer such as Poilievre would be careful not to let it be known too soon.
Not having been in that Mississauga electoral district in the past few years, I had no inside insight into how the campaign was going. I readily admitted that I hoped Charles Sousa would win but it was based on meeting him a few times over the years and coming away with the opinion that he was a bright guy and a good liberal.
And I guess I was influenced by the talking heads on TV and the pundits of print who looked on the bye-election as a test of Pierre Poilievre’s reach and strength. They were not giving Charles much credit for being a good campaigner. He is.
He did a good job for Kathleen Wynne and the Wynne government. I was never impressed with Kathleen Wynne. She might have been a liberal but her idea of progress was measured in the progress of a tortoise.
The good news for Justin Trudeau is that he now has a competent finance minister in the wings as a ready replacement for Chystia Freeland, when she moves on to more familiar ground. Finance is a full-time job in Ottawa and it takes constant care. No dilettantes allowed.
The bad news for Pierre Poilievre is that if he thought his use of social media to sell his concept of conservatism is going to work for him, he is whistling past the grave yard. Conservatives tend to be a bit old-fashioned and are hardly likely to be devotees of Tic Tok. Canadians are still transitioning in their media interests and you need to reflect their balance. And don’t forget that many of them were quite annoyed with the border blockages and Ottawa infestation last February. They are also unlikely question the governor of the Bank of Canada or agree with promoting cryptocurrencies. And a conservative leader who apes the falsehoods and pipe-dreams of Donald Trump in the United States is hardly going to win new conservative converts in Canada.
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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry
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