Pierre Poilievre is the Conservative leadership frontrunner. Does Liberal history tell us what happens next?

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This article was published 23/04/2022 (880 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It is easier to shoot fish in a barrel than in a lake. That’s no less true in politics than it is in the wild. And that’s why there is more to the standing room only crowds that Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre has been drawing than a strategy to project momentum.

In a campaign that will be won or lost on an all-members vote, victory rides on a team’s capacity to attract supporters in as many regions of the country as possible.

Unless one believes the Poilievre camp has a contract with central casting to provide his campaign with scores of extras to fill halls at every stop on his tour, his crowds are liable to bring in an unspecified number of fresh recruits. One of the few measures of the depth of a commitment to a candidate is a willingness to show up for his or her events.

Even Poilievre’s rivals concede he started off the campaign with a comfortable lead among the current members of the party, a fact consistently documented by polls.

Connecting the dots between that head start and his well-attended rallies can only lead one to conclude that his front-runner status is intact and, increasingly, locked in. Time is running out for others to catch up.

That’s particularly true of Jean Charest, whose campaign has yet to generate the kind of momentum he requires to succeed in his comeback bid.

Take the former Quebec premier’s visit to Oakville on Thursday night. It was billed as a great event on his social media feed, but all his Twitter account had to show for it were pictures of Charest flanked by his spouse and a couple of local supporters.

One must assume that had hundreds of people showed up to see Charest in the flesh, his campaign would have been eager to showcase the fact. By all indications — and not for the first time — his social media team had to make the most of a meagre offering.

Is Poilievre stealing — as Charest surmises — a page from Donald Trump’s populist playbook for his campaign? It is undeniable that there are Trumpian undertones to his anti-elite rhetoric and his dismissive treatment of the competition.

But it is not necessary to look south of the border for parallels between his campaign and a relatively recent leadership bid. In many non-Trumpian regards, the dynamics of Poilievre’s bid mirror Justin Trudeau’s own path to the leadership of the Liberal party a decade ago.

He too drew uncommonly large crowds, including in regions where voters have never elected a Liberal candidate. On a brief visit to Red Deer, deep in Tory blue territory, in the fall of 2012, I remember being told by my hosts of the lineups for selfies that had attended a Trudeau event just a few days before my arrival.

Like Poilievre, Trudeau enjoyed a social media presence that totally dwarfed those of his rivals. That presence, combined with the status of political rock star, went a long way to turn his leadership bid into a coronation in all but name.

Again, like Poilievre, Trudeau’s connection to voters was more grounded in emotion than in intellectual appeal. Those who flocked to his events were not inspired by his political or managerial track records. He did not have much of either.

Looking back, few would describe the 2013 Liberal leadership vote as an epic battle of ideas. On that score and even before next month’s debate round, the ongoing Conservative campaign already features more policy discussion than its most recent Liberal equivalent.

If Poilievre does go on to win in September, he will have defeated two formidable campaigners. Charest’s reputation as one of the best political talents of his generation is uncontested. Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown came from the relative obscurity of Stephen Harper’s backbench in the House of Commons to win the leadership of the Conservative party in Canada’s largest province.

By comparison, Trudeau’s path to victory was a cakewalk.

Finally, it is worth remembering that on the morning after his leadership victory, Trudeau had less than a substantial policy agenda. That came later, over the two years that elapsed between his victory and the 2015 general election.

By virtue of the Liberal/NDP deal, the next Conservative leader could have as many as three years to prepare for his or her first electoral combat. That’s more than a few political lifetimes.

In the lead-up to the 2015 campaign, both Harper and then-Official Opposition leader Thomas Mulcair dismissed Trudeau as a lightweight. They labelled him as not ready for prime time. As a result, neither bothered to engage their Liberal foe on substance until it was too late.

Rather than wallow in simplistic comparisons apparently designed to spook voters ahead of a possible Poilievre leadership victory, perhaps the lesson to remember is that every opposition leader who has led his party to federal victory over the past decades benefited from the low expectations set by his opponents.

Chantal Hébert is a Montreal-based freelance contributing columnist covering politics for the Star. Reach her via email: chantalh28@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter: @ChantalHbert