A CTV camera was rolling when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. recently. One of the workers he greeted at the gates refused to shake his hand, then lingered to give him a piece of his mind instead.Kenneth Armstrong/The Canadian Press
If you wanted to see a blue-collar guy conversationally cold-cock a prime minister during shift change at the plant, the internet had you covered this week.
A CTV camera was rolling when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. recently. One of the workers he greeted at the gates refused to shake his hand, then lingered to give him a piece of his mind instead. Video of the interaction went so viral that Fox News even grabbed it.
As the Prime Minister greeted other steelworkers, he offered doughnuts “to thank you for your hard work.” The man who refused the handshake asked disdainfully, “I could bring some to my kids?”
Mr. Trudeau began lining up his offerings like a used-car salesman: a 25-per-cent tariff on Chinese steel and the $420-million his government pledged to the steel plant in 2021 to aid its transition to electric-powered manufacturing.
“What about the 40-per-cent taxes I’m paying, and I don’t have a doctor?” the man said. A few beats later, he remarked archly to Mr. Trudeau, “I think you’re only gonna be here for another year.”
This is where the horror of retail politics becomes a nearly physical sensation, as you watch one person go on pluckily listing all the helpful things he’s done for another person who openly loathes him. The mind boggles at the confidence or brazenness (or unholy tapenade of both) it would take to forge ahead as Mr. Trudeau did, returning to his government’s investment in people and jobs.
“I don’t believe you for a second,” the steelworker said in a clipped voice.
So Mr. Trudeau tried dental care.
“We’ve got four people in my family, every time we go for a dental visit, it costs me $50 out of my pocket per person. Why? I have a good job,” the steelworker said. “You’re not really doing anything for us, Justin.”
Mr. Trudeau replied that half-a-million people had been able to get their teeth looked after.
“Probably like my neighbour that doesn’t go to work because she’s lazy,” the man said. “She just doesn’t go to work, she lives the same life I do.”
Mr. Trudeau tried to close with a handshake, but the man walked away with a curt, “Have a good day.”
I asked the employee for an interview, but he didn’t reply – though he is a real steelworker and not a Conservative plant, as some internet Sherlocks claimed. That instant conspiracy theory is only one of the reasons why this conversation is a perfect miniature of the political moment.
An incumbent listing off his government’s good deeds to a citizen who either isn’t impressed or doesn’t believe him; that shades-drawn-on-the-windows sense that nothing is getting through because the words are issuing from a famous face someone is very, very tired of seeing; the cheerfully defensive prattling response that only digs the hole deeper; even the fine mist of misinformation – it’s all there in one 90-second scene.
Many of the things the man is upset about don’t really land at Mr. Trudeau’s feet. His lack of a family doctor – an acute problem in the Sault since the spring, when the city’s major group practice de-rostered 10,000 patients because of lack of staffing – is mostly a provincial responsibility. The man said he has a “good job” but resents paying $50 a pop for his family’s dental visits, which is both a relatively advantageous circumstance and something to take up with his union.
He also said he flatly doesn’t believe the Prime Minister about the measures that are supposed to protect his job. The promised $420-million for a greener Algoma Steel would be a whopper if it were a lie, but construction is well under way and the first of the electric arc furnaces should be firing by the end of the year.
And even if the man racked up overtime, had a second job or lumped in sales tax and taxes on gas, alcohol, cigarettes and so on, it’s highly unlikely he’d be paying 40 per cent in taxes, said Fred O’Riordan, national leader for tax policy for Ernst & Young. He calculated the man would need to make $321,000 in Ontario to hit that average tax rate.
But none of this matters in the slightest when it comes to an ordinary guy with serious customer service complaints and a handy prime minister to unload them on. He is where things are right now.
The country is filled with people nursing similar stresses, frustrations and grievances, fed up with the leader and government they blame for it all. If some of those complaints are impressionistic rather than factual, well, politics is a game of impressions. And it all became more urgent this week, with the end of the supply-and-confidence motion flipping this bedraggled government into sudden-death mode.
People in Canada and beyond feel the economy is much worse than it is. But if you think there’s a good way for an incumbent politician to explain that to an angry voter, you might also think saying “Calm down” to a furious spouse is a helpful idea.
Inflation is death by a thousand paper cuts. Every run to the grocery store, visit to the gas pumps or glance at your bank account is one more drop of panic, rage and resentment in the bloodstream. It’s what leads you to feel like you’re losing your grip on everything, even when the statistics say otherwise.
Mr. Trudeau and the Liberal government spent much too long failing to perceive that or respond to it effectively. Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives, on the other hand, have spent the past two years wrapping that sentiment in a bear hug and then whispering in its ear that Canada is in ruins.
There’s plenty of room to debate which of those approaches is worse for the public life of the country. But only one of them makes voters feel seen and heard, and it’s not offering them doughnuts with a smile.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify that an estimated income of $321,000 would be required to hit an average tax rate of 40 per cent in Ontario.