ANALYSIS: As Liberals chase Carney, Conservatives boast of working-class candidate – National
Trudeau Liberals and former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney For several years now I have been engaged in the strangest dance possible.
Carney announced his support for the Liberal Party of Canada in 2021. His priorities — dealing with climate change The Liberals’ top priority is to appoint him to Parliament. Some Liberal MPs want him to. And on Sunday, according to the Globe and Mail, the prime minister himself and Carney “had discussions” — was it a negotiation? A summit? Were lawyers present? The Globe did not say whether Carney would “join the government” in an unspecified role.
Carney is not currently employed by the Government of Canada in any capacity. He is busy doing other thingsBut many Liberals want the opposite and believe that his arrival as a Liberal MP could in some way revive the faltering political fortunes of the Trudeau government.
But let’s put this unproven hypothesis aside for a moment and consider instead the recruitment priorities of the Liberal candidates and their primary opponents. Pierre PoilievreThe Conservatives, and what that might tell us about the two parties’ relative standing in the polls.
While the Liberals are looking for a former central banker like Carney who moves easily among global elites, the Conservatives bragged Friday about their candidate to represent a working-class neighbourhood in Winnipeg’s northeast. Colin Reynolds, a construction electrician and “proud” private-sector union member, is the Conservative nominee in the riding of Elmwood–Transcona, which has been without an MP since New Democrat Daniel Blaikie worked for Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew. For the coalition Poilievre is trying to build, Reynolds is exactly what the Conservatives want.
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Forget that Poilievre has been a career politician for most of his adult life, whose work uniform consisted of a dark suit, white shirt and dark tie. These days, he’s “Blue Collar Pierre” in short sleeves and a yellow safety vest, visiting workshops across the country and high-fiving those — as Conservatives call them — who shower at the end of the day. Journalists are never invited to these events, but Poilievre’s paid photographer — a former award-winning Globe and Mail photographer, no less — is there to capture every detail of Poilievre’s transformation for the hundreds of thousands of people who follow the Conservative leader and his party’s social feeds.
Encouraging those who “take a shower at the end of the day” to vote Conservative is a strategy that Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives used successfully in the last election in that province. Doug Ford The government sent Monte McNaughton in to build bridges and alliances with Ontario’s private sector unions, those representing construction workers, pipefitters, truck drivers, etc. And it paid off. Whereas private sector unions used to spend millions of dollars campaigning against Ontario’s progressive Conservatives, McNaughton’s hard work allowed those private sector unions to support Ford and the Conservatives.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre visits workers at Orion Construction in Richmond, B.C., on July 9, 2024. Poilievre doesn’t invite media photographers to his events, but posts dozens of photos like these taken by the photographer he pays.
Facebook/Pierre Poilievre
Poilievre’s team, whose brains come from the same stock as those who advised Ford, saw the brilliance of this strategy and have been pursuing working-class voters with determined zeal ever since.
Last Sunday, Poilievre was the guest of honour at the annual Family Day picnic in Toronto hosted by Labourers’ International Union of North America Local 183. The LIUNA local has 60,000 members, making it the largest construction local in North America.
The week before, he was in Richmond, B.C., talking to workers at Orion Construction on a job site. And at the Calgary Stampede earlier this month, Poilievre made pancakes for the United Brotherhood of Carpenters Local 2103, whose members, Poilievre said on social media, “will be building a lot more houses when I take the guards out.”
You can trace events like this back to the beginning of his leadership campaign. He’s been working in the labour sector for two years now. And the reward is a candidate like Reynolds in Elmwood-Transcona who, in a social media postsaid that “the expensive coalition of Jagmeet Singh and Justin Trudeau does not represent union workers like me.”
Now the question for Liberals wondering why their numbers are down: Would Mark Carney represent union workers like Reynolds? It’s hard to see how.
David Akin is Global News’ chief political correspondent.
© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
