There were two sides to the speech Pierre Poilievre gave in front Conservative caucus on Sunday, one in each official language.
For the first 11 minutes, Mr. Poilievre spoke in French, and for almost all of that time he taunted the Bloc Québécois. Then he switched to English and spent 13 minutes needling the NDP. In each case, the subject was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
In French, the Conservative Leader accused the Bloc of voting with a tax-and-spend “centralizing” government that intrudes on Quebec’s jurisdiction. In English, he accused NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh of propping up the Liberals until he qualifies for an MP’s pension.
Such taunts will be a big part of the atmosphere as a newly unstable minority Parliament that resumes on Monday. There will be a new focus on the two smaller parties, the Bloc and the NDP, whose votes will determine whether the Liberal government is defeated, and an election is triggered. But the issue is Justin Trudeau.
The Liberals hope to change that. They fear that federal politics is becoming a referendum on an unpopular Prime Minister. That’s why the Liberal candidate in Monday’s by-election in the Liberal bastion of Lasalle-Emard-Verdun, Laura Palestini, insisted the contest isn’t about Mr. Trudeau.
“It’s about me. It’s not about the PM,” she told a reporter.
The Liberals would rather turn the focus onto Mr. Poilievre. They plan to sharpen negative attacks against the Conservative Leader. But Mr. Trudeau has taken up so much of the space at the top of Canadian politics over the past decade that it’s hard to turn attention way. And the dynamics of a shaky Parliament will often be about his survival.
Mr. Singh’s NDP withdrew two weeks ago from the supply-and-confidence agreement that for 2 1/2 years guaranteed the survival of Mr. Trudeau’s government. The reason for quitting the deal, in the end, was that Mr. Trudeau really was becoming the issue for the New Democrats. The tight link to the unpopular PM was dragging the New Democrats down in the polls.
But after a bit of bravado from the NDP Leader, who bragged that he “ripped up” the agreement with the Liberals, he will now face repeated questions – and taunts from Mr. Poilievre – about why he isn’t joining in to bring down Mr. Trudeau’s government.
That’s why Mr. Singh came up with a line to push back: Canadians are fed up with Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals, but Mr. Poilievre’s Conservatives are worse.
That’s more or less what Mr. Singh said last week after Mr. Poilievre announced that his Conservatives would table a non-confidence motion, and dared the NDP Leader to vote to defeat the government.
“I say directly to Pierre Poilievre, I am not going to listen to you,” Mr. Singh said at a news conference held during New Democrats’ caucus retreat in Montreal.
That’s one way to rebuff Mr. Poilievre’s dares, for now. But Mr. Singh’s tough-talking act of declaring people are “done” with the Liberals will be hard to keep up if his reason for continuing to vote confidence in Mr. Trudeau’s government amounts to sticking his fingers in his ears and saying, “I can’t hear you.”
Mr. Singh is trying to portray himself as the progressive option for change. But he hasn’t yet found a coherent way of explaining why he isn’t ready for change.
Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet has found it easier. He doesn’t claim to be vying to be prime minister, or focused on who is. He dismissed the politicking around election timing as a game for federalist politicians, insisting he’s weighing each vote on what’s good for Quebec.
Mr. Blanchet’s Bloc has made no secret of their desire to use Mr. Trudeau’s uncertain position as an opportunity to extract concessions, with a boost to Old Age Security for seniors the ages of 65 to 74 at the top of the party’s wish list.
Even so, the Bloc would not find it easy to give a long lease on life to a prime minister named Trudeau. Now that the Liberal-NDP deal is dead, Mr. Poilievre is redoubling efforts to label the Bloc as a party enabling Mr. Trudeau to stay in power – at least when he is speaking in French.