Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s invective against lobbyists earlier this month in Vancouver continues to reverberate loudly with Canada’s top business executives and the Ottawa consulting ecosystem that serves them.
For months, corporate Canada has been closely surveilling Poilievre’s messaging to piece together a semblance of what policy would look like under his government, which everyone is assuming is the likely outcome of the next election.
The anti-corporatist tendencies were already evident, but the harshness of Poilievre’s language in his March 8 speech to the Vancouver Board of Trade was a surprise.
As has been widely reported, the Conservative leader called lobbyists “utterly useless” and boasted about how he avoids talking to big business and prefers spending time with workers.
Poilievre believes there’s been too much cozying up to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s governing Liberals and his agenda, which he claims has been at the expense of workers.
Everyone’s trying to make sense of it, and wondering what it all means for them. If it means anything at all.
The comments are first and foremost political narrative. Which is not to suggest they shouldn’t be taken at face value or that they do not reflect something substantive or real.
It’s just to highlight that Poilievre’s intended audience is much wider than the small universe of consultants in Ottawa scrambling to figure out how to engage. Attacking lobbyists and “corporate welfare” is a fan favourite among Conservatives and dovetails nicely into Poilievre’s anti-elite, anti-gatekeeper messaging.
Yet, it would also be a mistake to brush it off as trivial or unimportant.
Poilievre’s attack reflects a lousy situation for the few hundred firms that can be deemed both economically and politically important in Canada, the lens through which Ottawa sees “corporate Canada.”
These are uncertain times for Canadian business.
Their customers are cutting back on spending under the weight of higher interest rates. The economy is eking out some growth, but just barely. We’re lagging behind the U.S. Business investment is falling and capital is fleeing. The policy environment is precarious.
Poilievre’s hockey glove face wash isn’t exactly what some investors would consider constructive criticism at a time like this.
Daniel Tisch, president of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, offered up his rebuttal in a Toronto Star oped this week. What Poilievre describes as sucking up to the government is business leaders needing to work with government—“no matter who is in government.”
To be sure, whether or not Poilievre’s thesis is fair can be a matter of debate. But that’s not really the point.
The point is that the Conservative leader wants corporate Canada to know that he won’t be attending any of their pity parties, especially if they continue to work with the governing Liberals.
It’s a power move that can come only with the air of inevitability that the current polls offer up to Poilievre. And the Conservative leader is asserting that power, for two reasons.
Politically, Poilievre wants to deny any successes to the Liberals on the economic front that come with the side benefit of validation from the business community.
Second, and perhaps more important, Poilievre doesn’t want to be saddled—any more than he has to—with a growing stockpile of Liberal policy initiatives he’ll want to reverse.
This is not just a hypothetical concern.
For example, Canada’s big oilsands producers are currently in negotiation with the federal government on a financial backstop for a major carbon capture project in Alberta that could cost billions to the Canadian taxpayer should Poilievre (or anyone else) decide to pause or reverse Trudeau’s carbon pricing regime.
This puts corporate Canada in a squeeze. Companies have a duty to work with the government in power but know full well that many of these policies may not last long after the next election. And Poilievre has let them know he’s keeping score.
For corporate Canada, the prospect of waiting another year for an election is a bleak one.
