{"id":414658,"date":"2022-03-10T19:34:16","date_gmt":"2022-03-10T16:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/why-is-pierre-poilievre-so-angry\/"},"modified":"2022-03-10T19:34:16","modified_gmt":"2022-03-10T16:34:16","slug":"why-is-pierre-poilievre-so-angry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/why-is-pierre-poilievre-so-angry\/","title":{"rendered":"#Why is Pierre Poilievre so angry?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_84 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a2ee78938cd8\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a2ee78938cd8\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/why-is-pierre-poilievre-so-angry\/#%E2%80%9CWhy_is_Pierre_Poilievre_so_angry%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;Why is Pierre Poilievre so angry?&#8221;<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h1><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9CWhy_is_Pierre_Poilievre_so_angry%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;Why is Pierre Poilievre so angry?&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n<div>\n                The bellowing honks of freedom nearly drowned out Pierre Poilievre\u2019s voice as he stood on a frigid overpass in late January, cheering the truck convoy on its way to lay siege to downtown Ottawa. Wearing a Canada Goose parka and aviator sunglasses, with his normally shellacked side-part blustered into an unrecognizable tuft by the wind, he grinned into a video camera. Poilievre rhymed off an expansive array of grievances he said the so-called \u201cFreedom Convoy\u201d protesters were battling, in addition to vaccine mandates: high grocery prices, small businesses in peril, depressed and isolated teenagers, a political and <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media<\/a> elite that ignores anyone they don\u2019t like. Poilievre, a long-time Conservative MP, wore a pair of puffy, red-and-white maple leaf mittens that gave him a soft cartoon quality weirdly at odds with his hard-edged talking points. It was like watching Mickey Mouse shout angry populist slogans.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly every one of the affronts to freedom that Poilievre listed came from pandemic restrictions enacted by the provinces and not Prime Minister Justin Trudeau\u2019s federal Liberal government, but that was very much beside the point. \u201cFreedom, not fear. Truckers, not Trudeau,\u201d he hollered over the horns that would soon torment Ottawa residents for days and sleepless nights.<\/p>\n<p>The line of trucks Poilievre was <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>lauding would, over the coming weeks, be joined by thousands of others. Some would come and go as weekend warriors, while others would shut down international border crossings across the country, hamstringing massive sectors of the economy. But the most zealous protesters would occupy a sprawling territory surrounding Parliament Hill for weeks before a massive police operation finally forced them out.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>MORE:\u00a0Stephen Poloz on economic dangers ahead, staying positive and lessons from Star Trek<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Still, Poilievre refused to condemn the protest as a whole, slicing and dicing his argument to maintain that he supported anyone fighting for their rights and freedoms peacefully, while anyone who engaged in violence, vandalism or obstruction should be punished. \u201cI\u2019m proud of the truckers and I stand with them,\u201d he said two weeks into the occupation.<\/p>\n<p>The convoy arrived in town with a ludicrous plan to remove Trudeau from office but it was Conservative Leader Erin O\u2019Toole who got ousted, after his tepid response to the protesters sharpened the knife that a large faction of the Tory caucus already had at the ready. And so, in the midst of the protest mayhem, Poilievre released a video announcing \u201cI\u2019m running for prime minister,\u201d immediately becoming the candidate to beat in the sudden leadership race-\u2014the party\u2019s third in five years. \u201cTogether, we will make Canadians the freest people on earth,\u201d he said. \u201cWith freedom to build a business without red tape or heavy tax; freedom to keep the fruits of your labour and share them with loved ones and neighbours; freedom from the invisible thief of inflation; freedom to raise your kids with your values; freedom to make your own health and vaccine choices; freedom to speak without fear; and freedom to worship God in your own way.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"longform-fwimg-container\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-sizes=\"auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PIERRE-POILIEVRE-POLITICS-CANADA-PROUDFOOT-FEB23-04-1.jpg\" alt=\"Poilievre speaks during question period in the House of Commons in May 2018 (Chris Wattie\/Reuters)\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Poilievre speaks during question period in the House of Commons in May 2018 (Chris Wattie\/Reuters)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Poilievre\u2014\u201cSkippy\u201d to fans and foes alike, after he was assigned the nickname as a very young MP\u2014has been one of the main characters in the House of Commons since he was elected in 2004, largely thanks to his rhetorical skills and his gleeful compulsion to take up absolutely any partisan fight and go to the wall with it. He has been described in media stories over the years as \u201cprobably one of the more <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/general\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"3\" title=\"General\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">general<\/a>ly infuriating individuals on Parliament Hill\u201d and someone who \u201csavagely attack[s] opponents without regard to nuance, or even the basic facts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s also a confounding cipher. He is highly intelligent, insightful and reflective when not on display, but snide and reductive when he is. He is a workhorse who has stuffed his brain with knowledge that is almost old-fashioned in its intricacy; but he is also a corrosively of-the-moment politician dedicated to the meme-worthy partisan kick in the teeth. He didn\u2019t <i>have<\/i> to be the internet troll of Canadian politics, because he had ample other capabilities at his disposal, but here we are. Poilievre has been the spiritual leader of the Canadian conservative movement, if not the party\u2019s leader, for some time. Now he\u2019s looking to make it official.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>***<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Poilievre (he pronounces it \u201cpaul-ee-EV\u201d) was born in 1979 and grew up in Preston Manning\u2019s Calgary Southwest riding, later represented by Stephen Harper. As a kid, he was a competitive diver, wrestler and hockey player. Early in his life, he developed political beliefs in personal responsibility and small government that remained almost eerily consistent for decades. \u201cI had a teenage unwed mother who had just lost her mother when I was born, and it was two schoolteachers from Saskatchewan who adopted me and raised me and basically gave me a life,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I have always believed that it is voluntary generosity among family and community that are the greatest social safety net that we can ever have. That\u2019s kind of my starting point.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1234537\" style=\"width: 2510px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-sizes=\"auto\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1234537 lazyload\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/PIERRE-POILIEVRE-CONSERVATIVES-PROUDFOOT-MAR9-02.jpg\" alt=\"(Photograph by Blair Gable)\" width=\"2500\" height=\"2786\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Photograph by Blair Gable)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>He grew up in an Alberta he saw as ravaged by Pierre Trudeau\u2019s National Energy Program. Created in the early 1980s in response to oil shocks that drove prices through the roof in the previous decade, the program aimed to regulate oil and gas prices and free Canada from dependence on foreign oil while increasing federal revenues. But it enraged oil-rich Alberta and Saskatchewan, seeding Western alienation and the political awakening of more than one generation of Canadian conservatives. Poilievre\u2019s parents didn\u2019t lose their teaching jobs, but he says his family had to move because they couldn\u2019t hold onto their house amid the sky-high interest rates of the era. \u201cI didn\u2019t understand politics or anything, I just remember it being a really stressful time for a lot of people,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd as I grew older and I\u2019ve learned more about how that happened and why, it left a mark on me.\u201d These experiences and the beliefs they instilled found political shape in the Reform Party values that reverberated through Alberta in his formative years, bringing Poilievre to partisan politics at a preternaturally young age.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>READ:\u00a0Kathleen Wynne on her political downfall and the private advice she gave Doug Ford<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>At 17, he attended the 1996 Reform convention, where he proved to be irresistible journalistic catnip: an eager partisan not yet old enough to vote. \u201cI\u2019m very concerned about the financial state of the country and think they\u2019re the only ones who can fix it,\u201d he told the local paper. While still in high school, he wrote a letter to the <i>Calgary Herald<\/i> eviscerating the Liberal government\u2019s hike of Canada Pension Plan premiums.<\/p>\n<p>It was a couple of years later that Rob Huebert, an associate professor of political <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/sciencee\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"5\" title=\"Science\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">science<\/a>, encountered Poilievre in a third-year strategic studies class he was teaching at the University of Calgary, where Poilievre was studying international relations. Poilievre finished fourth in a class of 60. \u201cHe\u2019s the type of student that stands out,\u201d Huebert says. \u201cThey have that essence about them: \u2018I don\u2019t quite know where you\u2019re going to end up, but you\u2019re gonna end up somewhere and people are gonna notice you.\u2019\u2009\u201d He recalls Poilievre as courteous, never showy or combative, generous with his time and short on ego. Huebert sees Poilievre\u2019s political career as a continuation of the undergrad he knew: not a partisan pit bull, but the kid who always knew how to ask the questions that got to the heart of the issue.<\/p>\n<p>While he was in university, Poilievre was one of 10 finalists to win $10,000 in an \u201cAs Prime Minister\u201d essay contest. He told the student <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">news<\/a>paper that he cranked out the 2,500-word essay, entitled \u201cBuilding Canada through freedom,\u201d in a single all-nighter and mailed it off right before the deadline. \u201cAlthough we Canadians seldom recognize it, the most important guardian of our living standards is freedom,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe freedom to earn a living and share the fruits of our labour with loved ones, the freedom to build personal prosperity through risk taking and a strong work ethic, the freedom of thought and speech, the freedom to make personal choices, and the collective freedom of citizens to govern their own affairs democratically.\u201d That argument is nearly identical to the pitch Poilievre would make more than 20 years later when he announced he was running for real-life prime minister.<\/p>\n<p>In his early 20s, Poilievre was one of the key young activists running Stockwell Day\u2019s campaign to lead the Reform Party\u2019s successor, the Canadian Alliance, and working the phones to drum up donations. They dubbed themselves \u201cFight Club,\u201d and Poilievre described their phone bank data as their \u201cammunition\u201d and the phones as \u201cour guns.\u201d A couple of years later, when Day offered him a job as an assistant in his Ottawa office, Poilievre asked his mother, Marlene, for advice. \u201cYou better go there and get this out of your system,\u201d she told him. \u201cAfter the next election, come back here.\u201d But Ottawa proved to be a one-way ticket out of Calgary. In the 2004 federal election, he ran in Nepean-Carleton (since renamed Carleton), a sprawling suburban and rural riding southwest of Ottawa, under the newly united Conservative banner that Stephen Harper knitted together out of the Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives. Poilievre was running against the Liberal defence minister, David Pratt, and he\u2019d figured he stood a chance, but told his parents he expected to lose so they wouldn\u2019t be disappointed. He ended up besting Pratt by 3,700 votes, thanks to the combined Alliance and PC vote.<\/p>\n<div class=\"longform-fwimg-container\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-sizes=\"auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PIERRE-POILIEVRE-POLITICS-CANADA-PROUDFOOT-FEB23-01-1.jpg\" alt=\"As the candidate for Carleton in Ottawa, Poilievre talks with residents ahead of the 2019 federal election (Justin Tang\/The Canadian Press)\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">As the candidate for Carleton in Ottawa, Poilievre talks with residents ahead of the 2019 federal election (Justin Tang\/The Canadian Press)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The day after the election, with Paul Martin\u2019s Liberal government reduced to a minority and Poilievre\u2019s newborn party holding the balance of power, CPAC convened a TV panel to unpack the still-cooling election results. It included Ed Broadbent, former leader of the federal NDP, just returned as an MP after 15 years of political retirement; David McGuinty, a new Liberal MP from what passes for a dynastic Ontario political family; and Poilievre, the youngest member of the House of Commons. He was 25 years old, still padded about the jaw with baby fat, wearing a slightly too-big suit jacket; if you ever wanted to see a politician Cabbage Patch Kid, there he was.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPierre Poilievre is being painted as a bit of a giant killer,\u201d the CPAC host said by way of introduction, owing to his defeat of a sitting cabinet minister. Poilievre sailed in, cheerfully chippy, but nervous too. He laid out the metrics by which his party was the true winner, if you really thought about it, and the many ways in which the Liberals were corrupt and ruinous. We\u2019ll play ball if the government behaves better, he allowed, \u201cbut you\u2019ll also see a vigorous defender of taxpayers in the Conservative party.\u201d He punctuated the statement with a gavel-on-a-table gesture that was touchingly hammy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, who\u2019s against that?\u201d Broadbent said with an incredulous grin, before vilifying the Tories\u2019 spendy campaign. Poilievre instantly pivoted to accusing the former NDP leader of propping up the Liberals. \u201cI wonder if some of the machinations are already working, because it looks as though Ed Broadbent, a great hero of the Parliamentary tradition, is already stepping up to the plate to defend the Prime Minister,\u201d he purred. Broadbent\u2019s eyes widened ever so slightly. Poilievre no longer looked nervous; he was smiling like someone having an absolutely fantastic time.<\/p>\n<p>This primordial version of Poilievre is as remarkable for the elements that haven\u2019t changed at all as for the things that have. There he was already fully formed as the Skippy everyone would come to know and love\/hate, stamping every square on his partisan talking-point bingo card, crediting his opponents with not one ounce of sense or decency, crafting every exchange as an invitation to sort it out behind the bike racks after class. But that chubby-cheeked Poilievre was different too, his goofy lack of polish sanding off some of the sharper edges. It was like he was wearing a Halloween mask of his own face, with his future self behind the eye holes.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>RELATED:\u00a0Autumn Peltier on youth activism, challenging Trudeau, and a future in politics<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In the House of Commons, Poilievre accumulated a string of controversies that hinged on youthful and partisan intemperance. A mic picked him up hissing \u201cf\u2013k you guys\u201d in a committee meeting; he blamed an \u201cextremist element in the Liberal party\u201d for opposition to extending post-9\/11 anti-terror measures; he accused the chief electoral office of being power-hungry. \u201cAre we really getting value for all of this money, and is more money really going to solve the problem?\u201d he asked of compensation for residential school survivors, just hours before Harper was set to deliver a formal apology for the schools.<\/p>\n<p>The impulse running through all of this was that anyone who attempted to thwart the Conservatives was an enemy who must be hacked off at the knees. And if Poilievre had simply toiled away earnestly as a young backbencher, it\u2019s unlikely he would have carved out a name for himself as early or enduringly as he did. Harper offered a tacit benediction of his attack-dog talents when he named him parliamentary secretary to the Treasury Board president and then to the Prime Minister, before appointing him to cabinet as minister of state for democratic reform and, eventually, minister of employment and social development.<\/p>\n<p>John Baird was Treasury Board president and Poilievre his parliamentary secretary when they worked together to shepherd through the Federal Accountability Act to protect civil servant whistleblowers. Baird was impressed by his younger colleague\u2019s ability to negotiate dozens of compromises to win NDP support and pass the legislation. \u201cHe showed a real willingness to work across the aisle and get things done,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<div class=\"longform-fwimg-container\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-sizes=\"auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PIERRE-POILIEVRE-POLITICS-CANADA-PROUDFOOT-FEB23-02-1.jpg\" alt=\"Poilievre arrives for a Conservative caucus meeting in Ottawa last November (Sean Kilpatrick\/The Canadian Press)\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Poilievre arrives for a Conservative caucus meeting in Ottawa last November (Sean Kilpatrick\/The Canadian Press)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Baird was also responsible for Poilievre acquiring the nickname \u201cSkippy.\u201d In 2006, the Harper government was being grilled about a homeless support program called the Supporting Communities Partnership Initiative, which was known by the acronym SCPI, pronounced \u201cSkippy.\u201d Baird stood up one day in question period and barked, \u201cMr. Speaker, I want to be very clear\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009this government has no intention of cutting SCPI.\u201d With Poilievre sitting directly behind him in the House, Baird says that somehow the quotable quote turned into an inside joke that landed Poilievre the nickname. The funny thing is that, if you watch the tape of the exchange, it\u2019s obvious that Baird, Poilievre and other colleagues nearby are killing themselves laughing before Baird even delivers the line. The origins remain mysterious, but Skippy abides.<\/p>\n<p>When the Trudeau Liberals swept to power and the Conservatives moved into opposition, Poilievre became a smaller presence in caucus, quieter and more isolated, deploying his carefully rehearsed blows in QP and then hustling out. He edged his Liberal challenger by just 1,800 votes in that 2015 election. \u201cOne could say he had a near-death experience,\u201d says one Conservative source who spoke on background. \u201cAnd he just dedicated himself to going door-to-door every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Poilievre is known as an active constituent MP and a willing guest at fundraising events for other MPs, which is key to cultivating the support that wins you the leadership. He also treats door-knocking\u2014usually the onerous, shoe-leather drudge work of politics\u2014as a free instant focus group where he can hone his messages to see what fires people up or makes eyes glaze over. Poilievre adores language. He is often at his most engaging and insightful when rifling through the great speeches of history for the bits he most admires: Churchill\u2019s choice of language you can see and feel; Lincoln\u2019s logical and orderly structure. In this mode, Poilievre can be astonishingly bookish and thoughtful\u2014or in his other gear, he can sneer \u201cJustinflation\u201d so many times across the aisle that everyone within earshot mourns the day they were born.<\/p>\n<p>There was a time when ordinary citizens would comb Hansard\u2014the complete oral record of the House of Commons\u2014or wade through a big political speech for their own education, Poilievre\u2019s caucus colleague Mark Strahl says. But that is not who we are now. \u201cWe\u2019re in an Instagram\u2014instant\u2014generation and moment in politics, where it doesn\u2019t matter what you say if no one\u2019s listening. And Pierre gets people to listen,\u201d he says. \u201cI know his critics will point out that sometimes when you do things that way, maybe the sound bite sacrifices some of the nuance of the conversation, but at least the conversation is being had with Pierre.\u201d Strahl depicts his colleague as a sort of Don Draper of conservative politics, preternaturally gifted at finding just the right catchy phrase to lob: carbon tax cover-up, vaccine vendetta, trust fund twins.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>***<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Now, Poilievre seeks to lead a party that is at war with itself. In order for the Conservatives to dethrone Trudeau and his Liberal government, they have to broaden their appeal to win over swing voters and suburbanites, and they cannot turn off Canada\u2019s big cities. All of that means edging toward the centre, or at least not constantly peacocking their right flank. But the most motivated faction of the Tory voting base and party membership\u2014and a large chunk of the caucus that turfed O\u2019Toole\u2014finds that unsatisfying. Poilievre, on the other hand, is the walking, talking partisan itch that feels so good to scratch. For every moment when O\u2019Toole equivocated on an issue or displayed centrist inclinations, enraging the \u201ctrue blue\u201d base that propelled him to the leadership, Poilievre was out there snarling exactly what they wanted to hear. But Poilievre is the dessert that is so delicious in the moment, not the vegetables that will help the party grow.<\/p>\n<p>He had a campaign ready to go for the 2020 Conservative leadership race that ultimately crowned O\u2019Toole, but backed out right before he was to make his official launch, citing family considerations. (In 2017, he married Anaida Galindo, a former Senate staffer; they now have a three-year-old daughter named Valentina, and their son, Cruz, was born in September.) Baird was set to chair that campaign, and Jenni Byrne, a stalwart Conservative operative\u2014and Poilievre\u2019s long-ago girlfriend\u2014would also hold a senior role. Both will now work on this campaign.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>READ:\u00a0Jagmeet Singh on relentless optimism and what\u2019s next for the NDP<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The Conservative base\u2014and its rightmost flank at that\u2014is clearly where Poilievre has decided his political bread is buttered now. \u201cI think he\u2019s become the voice of the base,\u201d says Strahl. But for a clever, strategic thinker like him, it\u2019s a significant shift in his assessment of the landscape. In 2006, talking to Paul Wells for his book <i>Right Side Up<\/i>, Poilievre argued that people misunderstood the strategy of Stephen Harper. \u201cEveryone thinks he seduced the centre,\u201d Poilievre said. \u201cIt\u2019s actually the way he tamed the right.\u201d Harper\u2019s true victory was moving the party to a centrist position that was \u201cacceptable to mainstream people\u201d without raising \u201ca peep\u201d of dissatisfaction from the right, he said.<\/p>\n<p>This is not the project Poilievre is working on. His belief in small government, fiscal restraint and personal responsibility is clearly bone-deep. But he\u2019s now fixated on an edgily populist approach that revolves around dismantling the \u201celites\u201d gobbling up the money and liberty of ordinary Canadians, the powerful who \u201cclamp down\u201d on anyone who disagrees with them, and governments using the permission slip of the pandemic to satisfy their lust to control citizens. Asked about the sorcerer\u2019s apprentice problem\u2014what if you conjure something dark that you can\u2019t control, like people who decide to take real-world action on the things that anger them?\u2014Poilievre bristles. \u201cYou seem to be suggesting that I shouldn\u2019t be criticizing the government because someone else might get angry about that and do something that I don\u2019t want them to do,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>Poilievre strenuously disputes being especially combative or partisan\u2014a case he buttresses by taking swipes at his opponents like someone struck his knee with a rubber hammer. He portrays himself in question period like a meticulous lawyer building up a case, slicing through the rhetorical posturing and partisan barbs in a relentless attempt to pry pure, simple facts out of a government that refuses to relinquish them. \u201cThe reason that some people find it so devastating is because the facts are devastating,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<div class=\"longform-fwimg-container\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-sizes=\"auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PIERRE-POILIEVRE-POLITICS-CANADA-PROUDFOOT-FEB23-03-1.jpg\" alt=\"Accompanied by his wife, Anaida, and daughter, Valentina, Poilievre attends the Parliamentarian of the Year awards in 2018 (Photograph by Blair Gable)\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Accompanied by his wife, Anaida, and daughter, Valentina, Poilievre attends the Parliamentarian of the Year awards in 2018 (Photograph by Blair Gable)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>He maintains that his best moments, and the ones that draw the most interest and eyeballs on his busy social media channels (Twitter: 314,000 followers; Facebook: 499,000 followers; YouTube: 205,000 subscribers), are his long, intricate treatises on, say, the history of money or whether we are still capable of the sprawling national ambition that built the Canadian Pacific Railway. Poilievre is skilled at deep musings\u2014he once single-handedly filibustered a budget debate for four days by expounding on the various clauses of the Magna Carta, the proud inheritance of the British judicial system and that time Lord Halifax almost became Britain\u2019s wartime prime minister. But if you mentioned his name to 100 people, chances are 99 of them would identify the hard partisan right hook as his calling card, rather than the learned dissertation.<\/p>\n<p>In the House, debate etiquette functions a bit like a hockey <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/game\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"7\" title=\"Game\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">game<\/a>, in that people volunteer if they\u2019re prepared to fight, and it\u2019s considered gauche to go after a rookie or anyone who keeps their head down and their nose clean. As much as Poilievre can drive people around the bend, heavy hitters from the other parties seem to genuinely enjoy watching the master s\u2013t disturber at work. \u201cFor as much as he is always putting the elbow in your face, he can be likable and charming,\u201d says the NDP\u2019s Charlie Angus. Everything Poilievre does comes with a self-aware wink and a nudge, and he can be genuinely funny. During that four-day filibuster, the purpose of which was to badger Trudeau into appearing before the justice committee to answer questions about the SNC-Lavalin scandal, Poilievre at one point smirked, \u201cI know there have been many times when the Prime Minister would have given a great fortune to make me stop speaking. I am offering him the chance right now to do that for free, in the sense that the truth will set him free.\u201d Liberal Kevin Lamoureux, another MP who loves partisan fisticuffs, coaches his colleagues to simply ignore Poilievre because heckling only winds him up.<\/p>\n<p>However, there is a strange void beneath Poilievre\u2019s gamesmanship. It\u2019s not about his sincerity of belief\u2014he could hardly be accused of not really meaning the things he\u2019s been hollering in letters to the editor since he was a teenager\u2014but rather the bigger picture. For someone who is so skilled and devoted to winning every single partisan battle, what is the war for? Angus finds this aspect of Poilievre confounding: he\u2019s so good at the game of politics, but to what end? \u201cPierre just never seems to want to go there,\u201d he says. \u201cHe prefers lighting a house on fire and seeing what happens.\u201d Poilievre, for his part, explains his role in politics in near-mythological terms. \u201cTo keep the commoners the masters and the crown the servant,\u201d he says. \u201cThat is the only purpose of Parliament.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Poilievre\u2019s partisan instincts are part of the problem: his reflexive defensiveness of anything that lines up with the home team or his own political advantage, and his equally knee-jerk denunciation of anything associated with the enemy creates an essential hollowness, if not outright hypocrisy.<\/p>\n<p>At the height of the Freedom Convoy, when Poilievre was steadfastly refusing to acknowledge that the whole project was inherently destructive or unlawful, a clip suddenly made the rounds that was almost too perfectly symmetrical to be believed. Two years earlier, when activists blocked railways and pipelines to protest a natural gas pipeline running across Indigenous territory in British Columbia, Poilievre appeared on CBC and applied his trademark rhetorical gifts to arguing that the blockaders were impeding other people\u2019s lives and needed to be dealt with by the law. \u201cYou have the right to swing your fist, but that freedom stops at the tip of someone else\u2019s nose,\u201d he said. That\u2019s an entirely reasonable proposition, and it somehow stopped being true when the blockaders were in downtown Ottawa blasting their horns against vaccine mandates and assorted other Liberal-related injuries, because that served the purposes of Poilievre and his party.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>MORE:\u00a0Jason Kenney is sinking. How it all went wrong for him.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Talking to this would-be prime minister at length instead of watching him on the political stage is compelling and disorienting at the same time. Poilievre\u2019s answers are slow and deliberative, and there\u2019s a depth of insight that\u2019s uncommon on Parliament Hill. You get the sense of a human being in there who really believes many of the ideas he advances. He\u2019s funny, occasionally self-deprecating. He is, in short, impressive and likable.<\/p>\n<p>But if you even brush up against the electrified buzzer of a partisan issue, a trapdoor opens in the floor, plunging you into Skippyland. Here, the intelligence becomes a switchblade, the complexity of thought a dust storm in which you can\u2019t find the point you were sure you had. The Pavlovian partisan thing is frustrating because nothing useful or new is going to come from that conversation. What really stings is the gap between the two, the what-might-have-been quality to it all.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s hard to imagine a facet of Canadian politics and public life that would not benefit from having Poilievre\u2019s straight-up smarts applied constructively to it, instead of wielded like a belt sander. He could be the leader of the Opposition forcing an increasingly insular and incoherent Liberal government to answer for itself, with all of the incisiveness he could bring to the task, but one-third of the amped-up \u201cNo, eff <i>you<\/i>\u201d partisan spite. Instead, the Poilievre who is available to us is the one who snarls ceaselessly about Justinflation, lobs bombs just to bask in the glow of the blast and throws in his lot with protesters terrorizing ordinary citizens because\u2014well, frankly, it\u2019s hard to fathom why.<\/p>\n<p>Poilievre is very, very bright, a clever strategic thinker, and at some point he decided to bury one of those versions of himself and make the other his ride-or-die, because that seemed like a more certain path to political success. Maybe he was right. And that is all of our loss.<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p><em>This profile appears in print in the April 2022 issue of<\/em> Maclean\u2019s <em>magazine with the headline, \u201cThe ringleader.\u201d Subscribe to the monthly print magazine <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/secure.macleans.ca\/loc\/MME\/head_subscribe\">here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async defer crossorigin=\"anonymous\" src=\"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more News articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/general\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">General category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/longforms\/why-is-pierre-poilievre-so-angry\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Why is Pierre Poilievre so angry?&#8221; The bellowing honks of freedom nearly drowned out Pierre Poilievre\u2019s voice as he stood on a frigid overpass in late January, cheering the truck convoy on its way to lay siege to downtown Ottawa. Wearing a Canada Goose parka and aviator sunglasses, with his normally shellacked side-part blustered into&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":414659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/PIERRE-POILIEVRE-CONSERVATIVES-PROUDFOOT-MAR9-01-766x431.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[102082,118571,67806,67805,81184,32681],"class_list":["post-414658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-conservative-party","tag-cpc","tag-editors-picks","tag-ottawa","tag-pierre-poilievre","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}