The Conservative leader is having trouble getting support, especially from women, partly because he is seen to be too much of an attack dog. If he is going to be successful, that approach must soften. 

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on July 21, 2025.

OTTAWA—Pierre Poilievre is riding the wrong horse.

The Conservative leader’s press conference last week attacking the prime minister for putting his holdings into a blind trust continued to personalize Poilievre’s political agenda.

He is now recommending that anyone who is elected to public office in Canada must sell off their holdings or they should not be allowed to remain in office.

Poilievre himself defended the notion of a blind trust when then-prime minister Stephen Harper hired Nigel Wright as his chief of staff.

Like Prime Minister Mark Carney, Wright had deep roots in the private sector. Other political notables like former prime minister Paul Martin faced a similar challenge while in office. Martin owned a major Canadian steamship company and, like Wright and Carney, placed his assets in a blind trust upon entering cabinet.

Poilievre knows full well that if divestiture were the only option for political office holders, many current and former politicians would never have sought the job.

He also knows that the screens being established for Carney’s trust, including oversight by the conflict of interest and ethics commissioner, and screening by the clerk of the privy council and his own chief of staff, make it impossible for the prime minister to influence decisions that would personally benefit him. The fact that Carney’s holdings are in a blind trust also means that the trustee could divest all his holdings without Carney’s consultation or approval. Given the nature of these assets that likely is not going to happen, but the notion that one should sell off everything they own to get into politics is unsustainable, and Poilievre knows it.

What is even more strange about the attacks is how personal they appear to be. There is no love lost between the two men but, if only for public consumption, Poilievre needs to appear more friendly.

The Conservative leader is having trouble getting support, especially from women, partly because he is seen to be too much of an attack dog. If he is going to be successful then that approach must soften.

There is only one way to do that. Poilievre should go hard on issues, but he must be softer on people. The personal nature of his animus doesn’t sit very well with the general public.

Most Canadians don’t know—or care—that much about the rules governing ministerial and prime ministerial financial holdings. They do know about the price of eggs, housing, and the cost of the American tariff war.

Those are the issues that Poilievre should be focusing on if he intends to become a reasoned and reasonable alternative to the current prime minister.

With the Liberals in a minority situation, it is quite possible that another election could be called within the next two years. In that time frame, Carney must prove that his leadership capacity extends beyond the private sector.

A key element in that proof is how Canada emerges from the tariff war imposed by American President Donald Trump.

Carney ran an aggressive election campaign, promising “elbows up” in any fight with the Americans.

Canadians are doing their part in this fight. Land crossings to the United States are down by almost a third, and American tourism destinations are pulling out all the stops in an attempt to lure them back. Yankee produce is rotting on store shelves in this country

Some U.S. destinations are aggressively wooing Canucks with advertising, while others have even renamed streets in honour of Canada. Governors have gone on Canadian airwaves to apologize for the president, and to ask for absolution and tourism.

But Trump continues to publicly threaten our nation at every step of the negotiation.

Carney will have to be very careful not to drop his elbows. He cannot afford to look as though he is playing second fiddle in these talks.

Carney has to come up with a win. Chances are any agreement will be tempered by some sacrifices that could be problematic.

That is where Poilievre should be focussing his attention.

If Carney is going to have to water down Canadian supply management, there will be a huge political opening for the Conservative leader in Quebec. A cogent, sustained support for dairy farmers would be a good place to start.

By continuing personal attacks, Poilievre appears unchastened by his party’s electoral loss and his riding defeat.

In an interview last week, Poilievre blamed his loss in Carleton, Ont., on his decision to publicly promise a public service cut.

In the circumstances, a little humility would serve him better than personal attacks.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

Most Canadians have tuned out, and things are still looking up for the Liberals in Quebec.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on August 19, 2019.

The gift that keeps on giving.

Opposition parties are salivating at the summer fallout from the damning ethic commissioner‘s report into the prime minister’s actions in support of SNC-Lavalin’s pursuit of a deferred prosecution agreement.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer both pounced on the findings, with Singh suggesting the prime minister was unfit to govern. Scheer was more circumspect, calling on voters to issue their verdict on election day. Both leaders are hoping a recent uptick in Liberal support will be blunted by Commissioner Mario Dion’s findings.

They are also calling for further parliamentary and police investigation with the hopes of making this the central issue in the upcoming campaign. Voters, tired of the issue, may well have something else in mind.

Liberals are banking on the fact that the dog days of summer will swallow the story whole, so it will not play a major role in voter decision-making in the upcoming election. They have a couple of elements operating in their favour.

Most Canadians are not following the minutiae of life on Parliament Hill. Although they understand the broad strokes of the story, the differing, complicated versions of it work in the Liberals’ favour.

For many, it has become a “she said, he said” narrative with people already rendering their own judgements months ago. The complexity of competing legal arguments is white noise to all but the most devoted of political junkies. Most Canadians have tuned out.

There is also a serious flaw in the Dion report that some legal scholars contested last week. Dion concluded the prime minister was not acting in the public interest when he encouraged the attorney general to review the case against SNC-Lavalin. Instead, he found that Trudeau’s interventions were intended to serve the private interest of SNC-Lavalin.

The commissioner claimed that contact would have been permissible to act in the public interest, and this is where he and the prime minister part company. Trudeau continued to defend his view that the government’s only intention was to protect the jobs and pensions of people who had no involvement in decade-old criminal activity in Libya. “I am not going to apologize for standing up for Canadian jobs,” Trudeau repeated multiple times.

However, the prime minister also said that he accepted the report coming from an officer of Parliament, and he took full responsibility for his actions.

Trudeau’s viewpoint was endorsed by at least two high-profile newspapers, The Toronto Star and Le Devoir. Both took the view that Liberals were acting in the public interest, not in violation of private interests. They also criticized the commissioner’s report for wrongly interpreting the law.

Obviously, when politicians make decisions in the public interest, they make those decisions in the context of politics.

At the end of the day, most Canadians will never even read the report. They may reflect briefly on its conclusions, but for the most part, their minds were already made up months ago. And they are tired of the repetitious story line, which has not changed.

Voters make political decisions based on how government policies affect them directly.

Last week, I was visiting Newfoundland. At a kitchen party, I bumped into an SNC-Lavalin engineer who was among the 5,000 Canadian employees outside the province of Quebec.

Along with 4,000 Quebec-based employees, they will likely be voting for the Liberals as the party best placed to protect their jobs.

Even as Conservatives attacked Trudeau, they were silent on the use of a deferred prosecution agreement. An attack on the company will not help their electoral interests, especially in Quebec.

The inflamed rhetoric of Singh is damaging his own party’s re-election prospects in Quebec. He keeps trying to drive a wedge between his party’s socialist purity and the ugly capitalism of his opponents. It is not working. Recent polls show the New Democrats with modest support in Quebec. Unless those numbers change drastically, they will lose all their 16 seats. The hill Singh must climb is steep.

The party best positioned to win NDP seats in Quebec is the Liberal Party.

And even though the commissioner’s report last week was a body blow, the Grits likely have enough positive things going for them to weather this continuing storm.

While the opposition wants to keep the story alive, most Canadians may have already tuned out.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.