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In a leaders' debate that was supposed to be all about Pierre Poilievre and Mark Carney, Jagmeet Singh ended up stealing the spotlight. While logic would have dictated that Singh set his sights on Carney and win back some of the voters who had fled to the Liberals, he instead took his biggest swipes at Pierre Poilievre — often at Carney’s direct advantage. Whether he was fact-checking Poilievre’s attacks on the Liberal leader or shouting over his remarks (presumably so he couldn’t get a clean clip to share on social media), Singh seemed determined to ruin the Conservative leader’s evening.
Poilievre may yet pull an increasingly unlikely rabbit out of his hat next Monday. But if he doesn’t, his campaign’s political epitaph — and maybe his own — was being previewed in Thursday’s debate performance. Poilievre has long been defined by his willingness to attack, and it’s what brought him to the brink of the biggest political victory of his life. It’s also what might keep him from actually achieving it.
That’s because Singh’s willingness to focus more on hurting Poilievre than helping himself is just the latest example of how the Conservative leader’s successes have ultimately led to failure. Whether it was his attacks on the carbon tax, his relentless pursuit of Justin Trudeau, or his attempts to demean and diminish Singh, Poilievre has succeeded in destroying his chosen targets. In each case, their destruction has actually ended up hurting him the most.
Take the carbon tax, which has long been his political punching bag of choice. As Abacus Data pollster David Coletto noted, Poilievre’s promise to axe that tax was “the clearest, most consistent message in Canadian politics. And it was working. It was one of the promises that people connected with Poilievre.”
Maybe he assumed the Liberals would never call his bluff and actually axe it themselves. Or maybe he just liked attacking it so much he didn’t know how to pull his punches. Either way, new Liberal leader Mark Carney’s decision to zero out the consumer portion of the tax — his first official act as Prime Minister — deprived Poilievre of his favourite talking point.
Ironically, for all the time and effort Poilievre put into degrading the carbon tax in the public imagination — efforts that included deliberately misrepresenting its cost to Canadians — it was actually Carney that got the biggest lift from eliminating it. As Coletto noted in his analysis, twice as many Canadians (55 per cent) gave Carney the credit as Poilievre (28 per cent) for the decision. Even among Poilievre’s own Conservative voters, 26 per cent attributed it to Carney.
In hindsight, Poilievre might wish he’d gone a little softer on the carbon tax. He definitely wishes he’d held back a bit when it comes to Justin Trudeau, whose resignation changed the political calculus of an election Poilievre clearly thought he had won. Instead, his relentless attacks on the former prime minister so thoroughly damaged Trudeau’s standing that it opened the door to the possibility of a leadership change — one Chrystia Freeland kicked down with her resignation from cabinet in December. Here, again, Poilievre was probably too effective for his own good.
And so it is with Singh, who Poilievre has depicted for years as a dangerous socialist rather than a potential political ally. Never mind the prospect of a Conservative minority government, one that might need to work with the NDP the way Stephen Harper did with Jack Layton for the better part of five years. The idea of deploying that kind of tactical decency never seemed to occur to Poilievre, who clearly thought it better to simply destroy his NDP opponent instead. Last Thursday, Singh showed him the obvious downside associated with that strategy.
If Poilievre’s Conservatives do end up blowing the biggest lead in Canadian political history next Monday, they’ll become a case study — maybe the case study — in how not to run a campaign. Some within the campaign will surely blame the media, just as Andrew Scheer did in 2019, while others will fault Poilievre’s campaign and its inability to shift gears and adapt to the evolving political environment.
But maybe the seeds of this failure were actually being sown by Poilievre and his team back when they were 20 points ahead in the polls. Maybe, if they’d showed more grace and decency and pulled back on the reins a bit, Trudeau and his carbon tax would still be around for the trashing. And if Poilievre hadn’t been so unrelenting in his attacks on Singh and the NDP, maybe he wouldn’t have been so determined to deliver payback last Thursday.
Maybe.
That’ll be a question that the next Conservative leader, whoever that ends up being, might want to ponder. There is, as it turns out, such a thing as too much winning — and it can lead to the most unlikely of defeats.
Comments
I don’t like Maybes’ much , but…
Maybe if PPoilievre was a kinder, more decent human being.
Maybe if PPoilievre spent less time bent on destroying his opponents, and more time showing Canadians any’ Prime Ministerial capabilities at all? It’s just not there.
Maybe if PPoilievre was less angry, spiteful, cruel?
Maybe if PPoilievre actually cared, at all , for anything.
IMO, PPoilievre is a wooden man, much like Stephen Harper. Cold, calculating and focused.
Canadians won’t know what hit them, if PPoilievre becomes Prime Minister.
Same scenario playing out South of us..
But here's the sad and crazy part: Maybe a lot of Canadians need to get hit....whether they figure it out or not......in order to have any sense of what fascism is.....how it operates....and why the blame game is not a road to prosperity, but on the contrary, a road to war.
Imagining that you've been cut out of your right to more than others.........by unscrupulous others......is a shell game. And I'm afraid, the nut being moved from hidey hole to hidey hole....is generally the person who thinks war games will make things better.
Generousity and sharing being the evil socialist plot it is!!
The best words in this article are in the second paragraph and I quote "pull an increasingly unlikely rabbit out of his hat". Those are the only words that count in this 'maybe' article. As of today an unprecedented 7.3 million voters have voted. I am going to suggest that these voters are sending the unhappy Mr. P back to the fringes from whence he came. When it's all over and the dust settles he should really leave politics because no one in Canada, save a few million, has an appetite for the mean spirited, destructive nature of a man that has absolutely no reason to be that way. His joy in harassing Trudeau, and axing the Carbon Tax, and destroying the WE charity and on and on is truly disgusting and vengeful beyond the pale.
Thankfully history will be kind to Trudeau because in the face of that unprecedented pandemic when we were wiping down our groceries, wearing gloves and masks and scared as hell he came out every day with assurances that they are working hard to protect us. He made our tax dollars available to help us all weather the storm, including the big corporations that took full advantage (including Harper's own company). He opened up farming again in the prisons to give the prisoners something worthwhile to do as well as many other things. None of what he gave us was 'bad' but somehow the sneering, vicious words of Poilievre recruited similar types to push him into his leadership role.
Well, in my opinion, the truth of the matter is the 'majority' of Canadians are just not interested in that kind of politics because they are just not honest and humane.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/levant-rebel-poilievre-1.7514216
If, however, the Cons should win then the people deserve the government they chose. It would be hard to believe that even Con supporters would want what is going on down south but if it is what they want what the heck are they doing in this country. Just move and be happy.
If Poilievre was all those slightly more decent things . . . he probably would not have been elected leader of the current Conservative party.
Not a word about Trump?
The analysis seems incomplete without even a footnote for the pumpkinhead in the White House madly torpedoing the economies of U.S. allies and sinking global stock markets with his on-again, off-again tariffs. Feverishly dismantling the government, destroying America's science capacity, defunding academic institutions, and deporting foreign students who take a stand against Zionist genocide.
Also missing is Mark Carney. If the Liberals replace Trudeau with Chrystia Freeland or any of the other leadership candidates, do the Libs surge in the polls? Unlikely.
What if the Liberals had fought back against Poilievre's false attacks on carbon pricing and staunchly defended their signature climate policy?
Which party leader is "in sync" with Trump?
Who echoes Trump's angry rhetoric against "woke" Canadians and diversity initiatives?
Who threatens to defund the CBC?
Who vows to gut environmental protections? Slash climate policy?
Who associates with anti-vaxxers and 51st-staters who vow to overthrow governments not to their liking and separate from Canada if Poilievre loses the election?
"Six Policy Areas Where Poilievre Mirrors Trump" (The Tyee, 22-Apr-2025)
"Taken together they would radically change Canada to reflect what’s being imposed in the US."
Trump tramples democracy. Destabilizes world order. Panders to authoritarians.
The White House reeks of corruption.
Who opens the door to Trump's dystopian agenda in Canada?
As even the Conservative Party seems to realize, Poilievre is a liability, especially to older voters.
"New Conservative ads aimed at older men show golfers, Harper but no Poilievre" (CBC, Apr 22, 2025)
Hopelessly unqualified to be PM.
That's why Poilievre is going to lose.
Becoming the victim of his own successes is yet another thing Poilievre has in common with Trump, along with a truly obsessive and dogged personality devoid of perspective to the extent that it brings autism to mind, specifically the singular male focus.
Since Elon Musk embodies it so blatantly, especially the utter tone-deafness, he's also been the perfect scapegoat.
Because this UFC focus has been given such full sway by the virtual world, the real world political phenomenon we've been experiencing has been unprecedented not only in its success, but also how vacuous it is.
It's been rightly called the "manosphere," and can be defined as "Men, Unmitigated."
By women that is, leaving only cheerleader Barbie women and doting grandmothers as flattering background for the strutting likes of proud pussy-grabber Trump and J.D. Vance, a guy who's changed his mind AND his name, apparently something Poilievre also did at one point.
Aligning with patriarchal, misogynistic religion was a no-brainer, and if we want to imagine we've evolved as a society, we only have to look at the persistence of the ultimate "manosphere," the Catholic Church currently occupying ALL mainstream media.
Quote: "If Poilievre’s Conservatives do end up blowing the biggest lead in Canadian political history next Monday, they’ll become a case study — maybe the case study — in how not to run a campaign. Some within the campaign will surely blame the media, just as Andrew Scheer did in 2019, while others will fault Poilievre’s campaign and its inability to shift gears and adapt to the evolving political environment."
The campaign would find it hard to blame the media, first off, Post Media which is right-wing in all the publications they own, favours the conservatives, while harsh on the Liberals. Second, the campaign chose to alienate the media during the campaign, opting for staged rallies and questions. The media followed, but wasted their time as the campaign did not take the journalists' questions.
You'd think the ONE thing a media oligopoly would be good for is, the major players can shake hands and agree to tell Poilievre "You start taking questions and followups properly or we all stop covering you and you can have fun trying to get elected."
But no. The Canadian media badly, badly needs to be broken up into little chunks and repatriated.