Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre speaks in the House of Commons in Ottawa, on May 1.Blair Gable/Reuters
I’m not sure why Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre wrote an entire op-ed in the National Post urging Canadian businesses to fire their “useless and overpaid lobbyists.”
“Often,” he wrote, “the lobbyist doesn’t share the interests of the company, its workers, consumers or shareholders. A good solution would be to fire these lobbyists, stop talking with politicians and start trying to win the support of the population.”
Indeed, the op-ed seems like a waste of space and energy to me, since Mr. Poilievre met with a lobbyist just days later, when he could have delivered that message in person. Yes, I trust he told Anastasios Housakos of the Frontier Duty Free Association, with whom he met on May 7 (Mr. Poilievre’s polemic was published on the Post’s website on May 3), that he was not worth his salary, and that he should instead learn to code or something else more useful. No doubt he said the same thing to the Grain Growers of Canada on Apr. 9, and to Janet Krayden, who was lobbying for the Canadian Mushroom Growers Association on Mar. 23, and to Gurcharan Garry Bhaura for the Canadian Real Estate Association on Mar. 1.
Yes, the dozens of lobbyists who have met with Mr. Poilievre over the last 12 months must have been told exactly that: there’s no point in lobbying Mr. Poilievre. And I guess he will continue meeting with lobbyists to, uh, remind them of their worthlessness, and maybe to offer them signed copies of his op-ed.
But hold on, Mr. Poilievre’s pedantic servants will cry. The Opposition Leader’s tirade against lobbyists was about their prospective wasted efforts when and if he becomes prime minister. Lobbying is perhaps necessary and useful when it’s directed toward the opposition – the guys who aren’t actually writing the budgets, drafting the laws and running the show – but not when it targets those in the governing party. Everyone following this iron-clad logic? Good. Any questions will be ridiculed, so you might as well keep them to yourself.
Mr. Poilievre wrote that “at the most, the Chamber of Commerce, Business Council, and Canadian Federation of Independent Business hold pointless luncheons and meetings and write op-eds or record interviews that almost no one sees. As leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, I refuse to meet the aforementioned groups. They tell me what I already know.”
Mr. Poilievre is telling the truth. He will not meet with these groups as leader of the Conservative Party – only as the shadow minister for jobs and industry (Mar. 16, 2021), or as the shadow finance minister (Nov. 26, 2020), or as the actual Minister of Employment and Social Development in Stephen Harper’s government (May 26, 2015). Maybe, in those positions, the groups were able to tell Mr. Poilievre some things he didn’t “already know.” But when he became Conservative Leader, he became omniscient, with his first and more important acquired skill being how to write op-eds that sound convincing and anti-establishment when he was practically born on Parliament Hill and has spent his entire adult life there.
Mr. Poilievre’s message that change in his government will come through support from the people – not from lobbyists – is an adorable suggestion that naive poli-sci majors who have never actually seen the inner workings of government might say. (As Jen Gerson and Matt Gurney recently noted in their podcast for The Line, if Mr. Poilievre is serious about working for the people, not powerful lobbies, surely his first act as prime minister will be to take on the dairy cartel.) He wrote that businesses “will get nothing from me unless they convince the people first,” which is another way of saying that he will only draft legislation that is popular. That is both exceedingly brave and exactly what you want from a leader: someone who will only make decisions that pose zero political risk to himself or his party.
Only good things will come from corporations dropping their lobbyists and all trying to compete for the public’s attention; I know I would love getting unsolicited emails, texts or door-knocks from corporations that want me to hound my local MP about regulations in the Online Streaming Act. And surely as a country we can’t go wrong by using popularity as a litmus test for important political decisions; I suppose in that sense, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition aren’t so different.
Mr. Poilievre, who has worked at the sausage factory all his life, is now professing to be shocked and aghast that snouts and spleens are being ground up and stuffed into casings. When he is prime minister, there will be no more of this disgusting nonsense; he’ll just twist up these last dozen or so links until then.