So, what is wrong with being a populist?
Pierre Poilievre won the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada over the weekend in a landslide, first ballot trouncing of his competition.
When anyone wins leadership of any party the long knives come out. National and international headlines reacting to the win refer to the new leader as a populist.
Bob Hepburn of the Toronto Star wrote, “Canada should rightly be anxious about this populist anger simmering in many parts of our nation.”
The CBC’s Aaron Wherry wrote, “Canada has had populists before — from William Aberhart to John Diefenbaker to Rob Ford. But Poilievre’s ascent to the leadership of the Conservative Party marks the arrival of 21st century populism in Canada — the Internet-fuelled, resentment-driven wave that already has flooded American and British politics.”
What is a populist? Oxford Dictionary says it’s “a person, especially a politician, who strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.”
Aren’t ordinary people the ones all politicians are supposed to listen to?
All politicians claim they are fighting for the “little guy and gal,” the “hard working men and women who make this country work,” and some such phrasing. But not all of them do so.
What would be one of those “established elite groups?”
The CBC is one example — increasingly abandoned by those ordinary people forced to pay the CBC’s way, whether they like it or not, whether they consume the product or not.
Do ordinary people, en masse, want the CBC to continue taking their money? A politician should ask that question, and not of elites.
I am not arguing disaffected, angry ordinary people will find their saviour in Poilievre. They may not. Many politicians talk a much better game than they end up playing.
He might not be prime minister.
But Justin Trudeau reacted to Poilievre’s win by saying, “Buzzwords, dog whistles and careless attacks don’t add up to a plan for Canadians. Attacking the institutions that make our society fair, safe and free is not responsible leadership.”
As it has been used lately by politicians and commentators alarmed by Poilievre’s popularity, “populist” is a buzzword, a dog whistle that ordinary people might think they have the right to say that they have been let down by the very institutions that are supposed to make life better.
Making the statement that Canadians have a responsibility to take without complaint what they get from Canadian institutions, regardless of how they are run, is the opposite of populism. It is elitism.
Poilievre says he represents young people living in their parents’ basements because of incredibly high home prices, blue collar workers who can’t afford new boots for their jobs and single mothers who are sharpening the pencil and crossing things off the list to afford rising grocery prices.
“Canadians are hurting and it is our job to transform that hurt into hope. That is my mission,” Poilievre said.
He says he can do something about those issues.
First, he would have to win an election.
Then, should he be prime minister, he should be judged on his willingness and ability to follow up on that pledge, not because he noticed, as Trudeau seemingly has not, that ordinary people are hurting.
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