Terry Glavin: Mélanie Joly pushes conspiracy theories about Pierre Poilievre

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While our American neighbours are transfixed with the high-drama prospect of Donald Trump’s return to the White House next year, up here in Canada our government is considering “scenarios.” And one aspect of these scenarios, according to Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, is the “radicalization” of Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives.

During an interview with a Montreal radio station Wednesday, Joly hinted at a “game plan” in the event that the Nov. 5, 2024 presidential election produces ominous results, about which Joly spoke ominously. One scenario might be a “difficult situation.” Whatever happens, there will be mayors involved, and premiers. People like that.

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Beyond that, Joly didn’t elaborate much. But how do Canada’s Conservatives come into this?

The exchange between Joly and La Presse columnist Patrick Lagacé on Montreal’s radio station 98.5 begins with Lagacé asking Joly whether she was kept up at night by the thought of the United States drifting away from democracy in the event of Trump’s re-election.

“Well, of course you have to be ready. I think that we must certainly prepare several scenarios, because our political (and) economic reality is closely linked to what is happening in the United States,” she said. Joly then alluded to the full court press her fellow cabinet minister Chrystia Freeland put in motion in trade talks with the Trump administration.

During a 2016 election debate with his Democratic Party opponent Hillary Clinton, Trump had declared that the North American Free Trade Agreement was “the single worst trade deal ever approved in this country.” The Trump White House went on to demand a new deal. Freeland brought in business, labour, and former prime ministers, including Brian Mulroney, and Mulroney’s original NAFTA negotiating team. And a new deal, much like the old one, was concluded in 2018.

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During Wednesday’s interview there was a brief back-and-forth about reviving that approach, with Joly referring to a “game plan,” no matter how next year’s presidential election turns out: “I will work with my colleagues and with the mayors, the provincial premiers, with the business community, with the unions, with everyone in the country, so that we are ready, regardless of the election outcome.”

Then there was this.

Lagacé: “Explain that to the people listening to us, if Americans moved away from democracy, if they leaned more and more towards the authoritarianism that Mr. Trump seems to advocate.”

Joly: “Well, I think that in general, there is our game plan, precisely to be able to manage what could be a rather difficult situation. And well, I won’t go into detail, because I think it’s. . . we are certainly working on scenarios. But also the other aspect of the question is more about knowing how we as a democracy are able to thwart the growth of the far right in our country, because it’s happening in the United States, it’s happening in Europe.

“So one can’t be naive here, Patrick; it’s happening right now with us, there is, we know that there is certainly a radicalization of the Conservative Party.”

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And there it is. This is how Team Trudeau hopes to survive the calamity of its descent in the public opinion polls owing to galloping inflation, a doubling of house prices and rent costs since the Liberals came to power in 2015, several nasty ethics scandals and a festering controversy over the electoral advantage they enjoyed in key ridings arising from Beijing’s efforts to secure the Liberals’ return to power in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.

It’s a simple, consistent theme: Poilievre’s Conservatives are the Canadian equivalent of Donald Trump’s Republicans. Poilievre’s Conservatives constitute the “far right” in Canada.

It’s a long shot, but the hope is that Canadians will buy the notion that Pierre Poilievre is comparable to a deranged celebrity real-estate magnate who is currently facing 91 felony counts involving subversion of democracy in his efforts to violently confound the results of the 2020 presidential election, which he lost, along with indictments alleging that he put national security at risk by monkeying around with classified documents he should never have removed from the White House, and further charges that he falsified records to hide hush money paid out to a pornstar.

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Say what you like about Poilievre, but his Conservatives are leading the Liberals by seven points in Angus Reid’s latest surveys, with 38 per cent of respondents over the Liberals’ 31 per cent, and it’s not because Canadians have lost their minds or that some “radicalization” has occurred among Conservatives.

Joly is quite right that “our political and economic reality is closely linked” with the United States, but no matter how closely the Trudeau Liberals follow American culture-war fashions and model themselves according to all the latest preoccupations of bourgeois American “progressives,” the United States and Canada are entirely different countries.

For starters, owing to the inscrutable American customs associated with presidential annointments, it’s still not even clear who among dozens of contenders for the Republican Party ticket will be permitted to participate in the Republicans’ first primary debate, and it’s less than a week away.

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Trump will certainly be among several better-known frontrunners who are expected to clear a series of arcane hurdles. One especially exotic ritual, borrowed from the Democrats, requires prospective Republican presidential candidates to show support from at least one per cent of at least 800 likely Republican voters in at least three national polls, or alternatively, two national polls along with two polls in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina, in order to be allowed on the debate stage in Milwaukee next Wednesday.

You also have to show that you’ve secured at least a dollar from at least 200 donors in at least 20 states or territories among at least 40,000 people donating to your campaign. That sounds hard, but if you want to buy donations, that’s allowed.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez offered each dollar donor a lottery ticket for front-row seats to watch soccer superstar Lionel Messi’s first game as an Inter-Miami Team member. North Dakota Governor Doug Burnham offered his first 50,000 donors $20 gift cards for each donation of at least a dollar. Burnham can afford it. He’s a billionaire.

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Trump faces some vaguely serious challengers, such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, tech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, former vice-president Mike Pence, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, South Carolina senator Tim Scott and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie. But with 63 per cent of Republicans in his corner and a hardcore base of do-or-die backers, Trump is the likeliest challenger to U.S. president Joe Biden, who is determined to stand for re-election.

National polling puts Trump neck-and-neck with Biden. The rolling series of crimes Trump has been charged with have not eroded his popularity and it’s not at all clear whether the deep legal quagmire Trump is thrashing around in will constitutionally bog him down in his bid for the presidency.

If Trump wins, it may indeed be “a difficult situation,” as Joly put it. For starters, it’s not even a certainty that the United States would remain the anchor of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

A serious government in Ottawa would take care to be mindful of these things, to consider various “scenarios” carefully, and to dissuade its ministers from going on radio stations in Montreal with conspiracy theories about Trumpist “radicalization” by stealth among Conservatives in Canada.

National Post

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