“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

Politicians are not like cats.

Cats have nine lives. Politicians normally get only one as we’re seeing now with Justin Trudeau. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve seen the stories. “Support for Trudeau plummets” blasts the media. Approval rating drops to 33 per cent. Conservative opposition rejoices.

It’s not a new story. Canadians have seen it many times before; both in the recent past and in the dusty days of history. Remember Brian Mulroney? How could you forget? He won three terms and the biggest majority in Canadian electoral history. How big? In 1984 he led the Progressive Conservatives to a 211-seat wipeout of the Liberal opposition at a time when parliament had only 282 seats unlike the 338 seats it holds today.

So, what happened when Mulroney won the biggest majority in Canadian history? Canadians became so tired of the loquacious Irishman from Baie-Comeau, Quebec that in 1993 they handed the conservatives the biggest loss in federal Canadian history falling from 282 seats to two. You read that right. Only two Tory seats!

Mulroney, ever the canny politician, saw the slaughter coming and retired before the 1993 blowout and handed the Conservative leadership to Kim Campbell, the only female Prime Minister in Canadian history. But it didn’t help with Campbell losing her own seat in a humungous Tory defeat and the Conservatives didn’t form a government again until 2006 when Stephen Harper won a minority electoral victory.

And we all know what happened to Harper. After building a coalition made up of far right-wing, rural westerners and shrewd, big business, urbanites from Eastern Canada, Harper won two minority governments and a majority government in 2011.  But the majority Harper fought so hard to win collapsed after Canadians became so disgusted with his hardline policies, they went out on the street and changed stop signs to “Stop Harper” signs.

This, in 2015, brought us to Justin Trudeau, the scion of arguably one of Canada’s greatest Prime Ministers – Pierre Elliot Trudeau – but did the greatness of the father transfer to the gene pool of his son? Most Canadians would likely say no.

Trudeau stumbled badly at the beginning of his reign firing Jody Willson-Raybould, the first female justice minister in Canadian history, and an aboriginal Canadian at that, which infuriated most Canadians regardless of party especially when it looked like Trudeau was acting on the behest of his friends in the Laurentian elite who have an outsized influence on Canadian politics. It was a huge scandal that tainted Trudeau’s reputation to this very day.

Trudeau won two more election victories but they were minority victories and Trudeau only survived with the support of the ever-accommodating NDP. Since then, he has looked tired at the switch – even bored – seldom refusing an opportunity to fly far from Canada on “government” business. Word on the street has it that he wasn’t going to run for an unprecedented fourth time but changed his mind when Pierre Poilievre became the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. Why did he make this decision? The answer is simple. Trudeau is totally confident he can defeat Poilievre even though the polls are currently saying he’s the equivalent of a dead politician walking.

Despite this, I wouldn’t count Trudeau out yet.

As former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker once said: “polls are made for dogs to pee on.” Dief the Chief had a point. We all know that the only pole that counts is the one on election day. Campaigns elect winners. Not polls.

And Trudeau is a far more experienced campaigner and seasoned politician than Pierre, the energizer bunny of Canadian conservative politics.

Poilievre certainly has energy. But it’s the energy of a political naif. When you look at his policies closely, the same old right-wing line emerges; cut taxes, cut social spending, cut the bureaucracy and the cuts will stimulate the economy and benefit everyone. Sounds good. But it also sounds too good to believe. If Trudeau is smart, he can tear Poilievre’s pipe dream to shreds and inject some political realism into his empty promises in the coming campaign.

It’s not what the polls are saying now that wins elections. It’s astute debating and ferocious campaigning that wins in the heat of battle and that battle is yet to come. Maybe Trudeau will be one of those rare politicians who gets another political life.

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist currently working on another life.

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