There was a note on Pierre Poilievre’s desk when he reported in after his summer holiday:
Sire: We have good news and bad news. It seems that the generation Zee or Zed voters prefer that you be elected Canada’s prime minister. The bad news is that this is the most difficult bunch of voters to get out to vote.
It is hard to really rate the Ottawa cowboy’s summer. Yes, more Canadians got to know him a little bit. He laid all the blame for inflation, grocery and home prices on Justin Trudeau. He has been hoping that this weekend’s policy conference for the conservatives will give him something glib to say about climate change. He has been struggling to come up with a workable way to blame climate change and destructive wildfires on the liberal leader.
It has been difficult enough with walking into the odd wall and squinting all the time without his glasses. One benefit of the clothing change is that his wife has been freed from her duties washing and starching all those shirts. She has been out seeing the countryside—albeit from the perspective of conservative donors’ backyards.
It is a bit disappointing to hear that his message has been getting a better play among the younger voters. They are the impressionable youth, though not necessarily trend setters. Plus, we understand that these interview subjects are people who opted in to Internet panels and are not randomly selected respondents.
But good or bad news for the liberals can change over the next few years to an election. It seems unlikely that the conservative leader’s message that Canada is broken will carry for too long. When in all the criteria of what makes a liveable country is added up, Canada always comes in among the top ten countries in the world. It is hard to convince us older folks that Canada is broken. We are the ones who have lived here for a while and know that Canada is a pretty darn good country.
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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry
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