Poilievre is going all-in on his pro-worker message with appeals to ‘ordinary people’

The pro-worker turn from Poilievre has made some free-market conservatives chafe

Published Sep 02, 2024  •  Last updated 0 minutes ago  •  4 minute read

A new Conservative ad celebrates 'the people who rise when it is still dark.'

OTTAWA — Conservatives are doubling down on the party’s appeals to “ordinary people” this Labour Day Monday with a multi-pronged advertising campaign designed to woo workers.

A 60-second television ad celebrates “the people who rise when it is still dark” and describes a litany of problems that plague them, including crime, inflation and unaffordable housing. The ad ends on a hopeful note, with a voiceover from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre describing a “new dawn rising” where “everyone gets a fair shot at a good life.”

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That advertisement will be accompanied by a similar 30-second TV commercial and a 30-second radio ad calling NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh a “sellout” for continuing to prop up the Liberal government.

By now, it’s become common to see Canada’s conservative parties making overt appeals to unions and blue-collar workers, and Poilievre has been hammering home his message to the “common people” for two years.

“I think it is smart politics. The union movement is not that big in the private sector. What they’re signalling, though, is that they share the concerns of those who are working hard daily for their money, who don’t have it easy, who don’t have connections,” said Brian Dijkema, who is the president of the faith-based Cardus think tank and a former union organizer.

Although previous Conservative leaders have tried to court blue collar workers, Poilievre has backed it up recently with some difficult votes in the House of Commons that he has described as “pro-worker,” and which have annoyed some pro-business and free-market conservatives.

It surprised supporters earlier this year when Poilievre’s party voted in favour of a ban on the use of replacement workers at federally regulated workplaces — commonly referred to as “anti-scab” legislation. The Conservatives also took a low profile last week when a rail stoppage threatened to grind Canada’s economy to a halt, until the Liberal government sent the dispute to binding arbitration.

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A source in Poilievre’s office said the leader has met with more than 60 different local unions and toured more than 40 different unionized workplaces in the last two years.

And although Poilievre has been targeting blue-collar workers, the Conservatives are also keen to point out that the working class has changed in recent decades and is now just as likely to include women or recent immigrants in sales or service jobs. That’s partly why the party has made of point of lobbying for a private member’s bill that would require flight attendants to get paid for work they do before the plane takes off.

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The pro-worker turn from Poilievre has made some of his free-market friends in the conservative coalition chafe.

“It will certainly cost him some support among free-market conservatives, but he has evidently calculated this will be more than offset by the support he gets from other voters,” said Matthew Lau, an adjunct scholar at the Fraser Institute, a free market think tank, and regular columnist for the Financial Post.

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Poilievre’s strategy follows moves made by Ontario Premier Doug Ford to appeal to working class voters, which paid off in the last Ontario election when Ford poached some longtime NDP seats.

“This shift in policy to get votes is normal politics from a mainstream politician — similarly to Ford in Ontario, a conservative politician shifting away from conservative policies to get votes,” said Lau.

Monte McNaughton, Ford’s former labour minister, imagines a new kind of conservatism that cares more about clean washrooms for truckers than cutting corporate taxes.

“I would argue that everything I did from a policy perspective was conservative,” said McNaughton, who believes that a fundamental shift has happened among voters.

With downtown dwellers and corporate-class voters shifting to the centre-left, it leaves an opening for conservative parties with working people.

“The parties on the left abandoned working-class people a long time ago. They are more concerned about boutique social issues instead of what matters to workers — good jobs with pensions and benefits, like those in skilled trades,” said McNaughton.

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Federally, the Conservative strategy is designed to appeal to average Canadian workers on a grand scale. On a smaller scale, it’s targeted at poaching seats from the NDP, which has traditionally styled itself as the party of blue-collar workers.

Staffers in Poilievre’s office are particularly enticed by the prospect of winning the Elmwood—Transcona byelection in September, which would turn an NDP stronghold blue, and they’ve been eyeing up Timmins—James Bay, which is currently held by longtime NDP MP Charlie Angus, who is retiring.

A radio ad that accompanies the Conservative television advertisements takes direct aim at Singh, describing him as a champagne socialist who likes “BMWs, Rolex watches, Versace bags.”

The ad picks up on a line of attack that Poilievre debuted last week, urging Singh to stop supporting the Liberals in the House of Commons and provoke a “carbon tax election” in October. The Conservatives have accused Singh of keeping the Liberals in power just long enough that the NDP leader will qualify for a “taxpayer-funded pension.”

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