Pierre Poilievre’s call to fire the gatekeepers is a Trump-style travesty

In 2016, Donald Trump showed the world just how powerful a simple catchphrase can be. It’s safe to assume Pierre Poilievre and his political advisers were paying close attention to the rhetorical power of the former U.S. president’s call to “Make America Great Again.” After all, Poilievre has developed a catchphrase of his own with his now-familiar call to “Fire the Gatekeepers.” Whether he’s talking about global energy policy or the pileup at Pearson International Airport, Poilievre always turns to that simple political prescription. And so far, at least, it seems to be working.

Poilievre’s campaign website defines these “Gatekeepers” as “the consulting class, politicians, bureaucrats, or agencies,” all of whom apparently “create roadblocks for progress and charge a hefty fee for anyone who would want to build anything.” In Poilievre’s world, they’re responsible for everything from blocked pipeline projects to soaring house prices in major markets like Toronto and Vancouver.

There’s a big problem with this formulation: gatekeepers actually serve an important function in our society. They routinely (and often quietly) protect citizens from all manner of danger, whether that’s corporate malfeasance or government corruption. The Walkerton E. coli outbreak, which killed seven people and made roughly half the town’s 5,000 residents sick, is the most obvious example of what can happen when gatekeepers get sidelined.

Ironically, nowhere is the importance of that gatekeeping function more obvious right now than the wild world of cryptocurrency, one that Poilievre enthusiastically endorsed (and encouraged people to “opt into”) just a few months ago. Just ask the Ontario couple who lost more than $370,000 in a recent cryptocurrency scam, one where they placed their trust in “an alleged reputable investment company” that was anything but.

They’re hardly alone in getting swindled by cryptocurrency entrepreneurs. Celsius Network, a major U.S.-based crypto lender, owed more than $4.7 billion to its 1.7 million customers when it went belly-up earlier this month, and those people will be lucky if they see pennies on their dollars when all is said and done. Michael Saylor, a so-called Bitcoin “whale,” urged governments to step in and regulate the industry before more people lose their metaphorical shirts. “The general public shouldn’t be buying unregistered securities from wildcat bankers that may or may not be there next Thursday,” he said.

Michael Chong, a long-standing Conservative MP and former cabinet colleague of Poilievre, seems to agree. “House prices have doubled in 6 years — and are now crashing,” he tweeted. “And now some stable coins and crypto schemes are collapsing — and others are frauds and Ponzi schemes. Where are the regulators? Where is the government in protecting the finances of Canadians?” Where, in other words, are the gatekeepers?

Outgoing Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, whose own gatekeeper-phobic government passed a “Red Tape Reduction Act” aimed at reducing regulations that interfere with business and investment, seems to appreciate the value of a gatekeeper or two. Back in March, the Alberta government suspended its 13-cent-per-litre gasoline tax and promised the savings would flow directly to consumers. Instead, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, motorists now pay the same price at the pump in the rest of the country as they are in Alberta — and Kenney is asking the federal government’s Competition Bureau to investigate.

Even Poilievre is willing to protect certain gatekeepers, provided they serve his own political interests. You might think the supply management system, which was created by Pierre Trudeau and controls the supply of milk, eggs and poultry in Canada, would be an easy target for his anti-gatekeeper message. After all, it artificially raises prices for Canadian consumers and protects an entrenched group of interests that hold the quota for these products. But in the May leadership debate, Poilievre backed down from the opportunity to remove a key gatekeeper. “I do support supply management,” he said. “The alternative would be to buy out the quota.”

That’s the funny thing about gatekeepers: you don’t think you need them until you find out you do. But all the irony in the world won’t stop Poilievre or other populist politicians from blaming them for our problems, and it won’t slow the spread of their anti-elite, anti-government rhetoric. This is the new conservative playbook, after all: find the biggest and most distant windmills to tilt at and constantly point supporters in their direction.

That playbook has consequences for us all. Like Trump’s MAGA-themed populism, Poilievre’s politics are inherently corrosive to the broader project we call society. It erodes trust in our institutions, sows resentment among the population and creates enemies instead of empathy. It tempts people to believe there are easy solutions to complex problems, making it more difficult for policymakers to actually solve them.

For Poilievre, these are problems for another day. Right now, he’s willing to do whatever it takes to beat Justin Trudeau and become prime minister — even if it means setting Canadians against the government agencies and institutions that are there to help them. Just watch him.