Stop treating Poilievre (and Trump) as normal. They're so not

"I’m the normal guy. Trudeau and the NDP are the wackos. They are the extremists." - Pierre Poilievre, CPC leader, Leader of His Majesty's Official Opposition

Let’s get this out of the way stat: political violence is abhorrent. As much as I loathe Trump, trying to assassinate him is wrong. Beating him at the ballot box should always be the only option. But while we’re condemning the shooter, let’s save some scorn for Pierre Poilievre and his horrible tweets about the incident.

First, Trump and his rapacious thirst for power.

The man belongs in jail. He is the worst thing to happen to North American politics in my lifetime. Con man, rapist, insurrectionist, lousy president, friend to dictators - he’s a despicable human being.

But his worst crime is empowering the horrible underbelly of American political life. The Christo-fascists and Christian nationalists, who appear to have co-opted much of the US evangelical churches. Extreme hate groups that are de facto Nazis. Conspiracy theorists and hucksters, like Alex Jones of Infowars, who profit from stoking the anger of those holding a grudge, or worse. The list of deplorables (yes, I used that word deliberately) who slithered out from under society’s rocks to join the Trump cult would fill enough books to populate a library.

Inevitably, the populist storm he unleashed blew over the Canadian border. Just as inevitably, it found fertile soil in most provinces, though some more than others: Alberta, Saskatchewan, parts of British Columbia and Ontario. Having lived my entire 65 years in Western Canada, with significant time in all four provinces, I knew it would. Canada, unfortunately, has its own horrible underbelly.

Throughout the 1980s, I attended evangelical churches in Saskatoon, then Prince Albert. My peers, all in their 20s, all starting families or planning to soon, were being radicalized by American groups like the Moral Majority and Focus on the Family. While their parents disliked politics (render Caesar unto Caesar), the people I knew in those congregations embraced it, and the more angry and emotional the better. That cohort and their children are now leaders in evangelical communities. Many of those who were groomed by American leaders are now radicals, by which I mean not politically conservative as historians understand that philosophy.

When I arrived in Calgary in 2000, I met Christians who considered themselves “social conservative.” In polite society, they were right-wing, but not radically so. Get them alone over a drink (ah, the irony), however, and what retired Professor Trish Miller-Roberts calls “authoritarian libertarianism” would bob to the surface like a buoy. Their extremism was kept in check by the big-tent Progressive Conservative Party. They were tolerated, often used for political tasks like fund-raising and campaigning, but they were rarely leaders. Or, if they were, they kept their extremism to themselves. Lines were drawn in the sand and, occasionally, enforced, by the party.

The model worked. Alberta could be conservative, sometimes hardcore, but rarely crazy. Trump changed all that when he ran for the presidency in 2015 and won the next year. He gave the Canadian crazies permission to say the nasty stuff out loud, just as he did the American ones.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the floodgates burst wide open. No need to recite the details of recent history. We all remember the atrocities - death threats to public health officials, swarming of hospital entrances, harassment of healthcare workers, then the three-week occupation of the nation’s capital by the “freedom convoy” - or Klown Konvoy as some wags described it. Throughout all of it, Pierre Poilievre supported the radicals, even bringing the occupiers Tim Hortons coffee and doughnuts on a cold winter day.

Over the past two years, the 24-year MP, who has never held a private sector job in his entire career, became ever more inflammatory. Here’s a recent comment to illustrate my point, as quoted in a Rick Bell column:

“I’m the normal guy. Trudeau and the NDP are the wackos. They are the extremists. I’m the normal centrist mainstream leader, the only one running. The other guys are absolute raving wackos. They are ideological lunatics.”

What political party leader calls his opponents (one of them the Prime Minister of Canada) “raving wackos” and “ideological lunatics”?

Donald Trump.

So, when Poilievre tweeted “I condemn in the strongest of terms the attempted murder of former President Trump today” followed by “I am also happy that the suspected shooter is dead,” many Canadians were outraged.

Long-time columnist Andrew Coyne nicely summed it up: “In all the reactions from political leaders the world over, I can find no other expressing such lipsmacking satisfaction at the violent death of another human being. While others appeal for calm, Poilievre rejoices in retribution.”

That’s because while Poilievre is not just like Trump, they are cut from the same cloth. Both mine the dark depths of the human soul to fuel their political ambitions. Both are uncivilized, awful brutes. Coyne is correct when he concludes, “This is not normal.”

But how do Canada and the United States return to normal politics?

Poilievre and Trump are both leading in the polls, with Canada’s election coming next year and the American election this November. Even if we discovered the secret sauce to political normalcy there isn’t enough time to reverse the dreadful political path both countries are treading.

I’ll leave Trump to the American pundits, but here is the only thing I can think of for Canada: stop treating Poilievre’s radicalism as normal. No more false equivalencies. Trudeau and Singh are not wackos and Poilievre is as far from a “normal centrist mainstream leader” as Tofino is from Gander.

Andrew Coyne is a pillar of the Canadian corporate media establishment. If he can (finally) see that something is wrong with Poilievre, then the rest of us should take a good long look until we can see it, too.