Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre arrives to a caucus meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Feb. 7.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
For no good reason, but several bad ones, the Conservatives have once again opposed an updated free-trade agreement with Ukraine, handing the Liberals political ammunition, while possibly pandering to the worst elements of their coalition.
It’s a mess.
There is a litmus test that conservatives should use when considering any aspect of foreign policy. If Donald Trump supports it, and Ronald Reagan would have opposed it, it’s bad policy. By that metric, or any other based on reason and conscience, the Conservative stance on Ukraine is all wrong.
Pierre Poilievre’s unremitting hatred of the carbon tax caused the Conservative Leader and his caucus to vote last November against an updated free-trade agreement with Ukraine that included a clause in support of carbon pricing. (Both Ukraine and Canada have a carbon tax.)
Suddenly, the Conservatives found themselves on the same side of the Ukraine-Russia war as Russian President Vladimir Putin, the once and possibly future U.S. president Mr. Trump and the far-right raver Tucker Carlson. This is not a good place for anyone to be.
Tuesday’s third-reading vote on the trade agreement offered Mr. Poilievre an opportunity to backtrack. Instead, he doubled down in opposition.
“Canadians are against the carbon tax. I’m against the carbon tax. Trudeau never should have tried to divide Canadians on Ukraine by forcing the carbon tax into that agreement,” he told reporters Wednesday.
The Liberals, not surprisingly, leapt on this.
“The Leader of the Opposition is choosing to not stand with Ukraine, not stand with Ukrainians and not stand with Ukrainian Canadians,” Justin Trudeau told the House, Tuesday. “Why are the Conservatives abandoning Ukraine?”
For months now, Mr. Trudeau has sought to paint Mr. Poilievre as a MAGA Trump acolyte. By voting against the treaty, Mr. Poilievre handed the Prime Minister exactly the ammunition he needed.
This dust-up comes at the same time as a new survey by the Angus Reid Institute showing decreasing support for the war in Ukraine among Canadians generally and Conservatives especially.
Forty-three per cent of Conservative supporters say Canada is sending too much support to the Ukrainians. A year ago, the figure was 19 per cent. Among Liberal supporters, skepticism toward the war has grown to 10 per cent, compared with 5 per cent the year before.
“Certainly there is greater resistance, or less support, for Ukraine among Conservative supporters,” Shachi Kurl, Angus Reid president, told me.
(Online survey conducted Jan. 29 to Jan. 31 of 1,617 adults, with a comparable margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.)
There are people within the Conservative coalition who, Trump-like, consider standing up for Ukraine a waste of money and effort.
This attitude marks an alarming departure from a long legacy of principled Conservative support for small nations and peoples who are threatened by larger powers.
On R. B. Bennett’s watch, Canada was a leader in the effort to impose sanctions on Italy over its wanton aggression against Abyssinia. (Liberal Mackenzie King, upon returning to power, abandoned that support.)
John Diefenbaker and Brian Mulroney both led international opposition to apartheid in South Africa. Joe Clark’s government came to the rescue of Southeast Asian refugees, the so-called boat people.
And Stephen Harper led the push to expel Russia from what was then the G8. “I guess I’ll shake your hand but I have only one thing to say to you: You need to get out of Ukraine,” he told Mr. Putin in 2014.
So has Mr. Poilievre shifted the Conservative Party away from such a principled position, pandering instead to rising nativism within the Conservative coalition? At this point, there is reason for suspicion, though not certainty.
We can say that the Tory Leader is so obsessed with the carbon tax that he was willing to embarrass himself and his party by opposing the new trade agreement with Ukraine.
Quiet recognition that such opposition would placate people who watch too much Fox News might also have been part of the calculation.
Whatever the motivation, voting against support for Ukraine is simply wrong.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has acquired the valuable political skill of realizing when he has made a mistake, acknowledging that mistake and moving on. It’s a trait Mr. Poilievre would be wise to study.
John Ibbitson