OTTAWA — Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre pledged Wednesday to replace the governor of the Bank of Canada as he sought to fend off attacks from rivals over his economic vision for Canada.
The promise came as the personal tastes and the political tactics of the six candidates in the race were under scrutiny over the course of the first official leadership debate of the race.
The two-hour event covered everything from what TV shows the candidates are binge-watching to their positions on a no-fly zone in Ukraine, reconciliation with Indigenous people, and how each believe their party can again form government and bump the Liberals out of office.
Poilievre, a seven-term Ottawa MP, is the front-runner in the contest, having launched his bid just days after former party leader Erin O’Toole was kicked out by his own MPs in February.
He’s styled his campaign around a promise to restore freedom, with a heavy focus on the current cost-of-living crisis.
He puts the blame for that crisis on inflation, and in turn has held the Bank of Canada, and the Liberal government, solely responsible for that, thanks to their pandemic-related economic programs, though most economists expand the range of issues causing inflation to include supply-chain pressures created by the pandemic and the ongoing war in Ukraine.
But even as he’s campaigned on slogans that call for the removal of the “gatekeepers” he holds responsible, he’s so far ducked a question about whether he’d go as far as to remove the Bank of Canada governor himself.
On Wednesday night, he finally answered, when pressed by moderator Tom Clark about how a Poilievre government would bring down inflation.
“The Bank of Canada governor has allowed himself to become the ATM machine of this government,” Poilievre said.
“And so, I would replace him with a new governor who would reinstate our low inflation mandate, protect the purchasing power of our dollar, and honor the working people who earn those dollars.”
The current governor, Tiff Macklem, was appointed in 2020 for a term of seven years.
While that particular pledge escaped mention by the other candidates until well into the debate Wednesday, most did seize on what opportunities they had to pick apart Poilievre’s campaign to date, with an emphasis Wednesday on his support for cryptocurrency, the formal term for a currency that is not backed or managed by a national government but instead a digital network of computers.
Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown called it “magical internet money,” while both Leslyn Lewis and Jean Charest pointed out that the value of it fluctuates so wildly that to suggest — as Poilievre once did — that people can opt-out of inflation by investing in cryptocurrencies is irresponsible.
So too, Charest said, was Poilievre’s assertion that he’d turf the Bank of Canada’s governor. The bank is supposed to operate independently from government, though cabinet does choose the board of directors, who in turn choose the government.
“If you’re an investor looking at coming to Canada and you hear that kind of a statement coming from a member of the House of Commons, you think you’re in a third world country,” he said.
“We cannot afford to have any leader who goes out there and deliberately undermines the confidence in institutions. Conservatives do not do that.”
In the last candidate’s debate, an unofficial event at a conservative conference in Ottawa last week, it was Charest’s own conservative credentials that came under attack by Poilievre, and they didn’t escape attack this time either.
Among other things, as the issue of candidates’ positions on abortion continued to surface throughout the race — driven in part by efforts from Lewis and Charest to get Poilievre to clearly define his own — Poilievre pointed out that once upon a time Charest had supported efforts to legislate restrictions on abortion during a legal debate on the question in the late 1980s.
But Poilievre pivoted away from a question on whether he’d support free votes on life issues — he would — to blasting Brown’s time as PC leader, bringing up his pivot on the carbon tax, abandonment of social conservatives and now efforts to discredit the years of the former federal Conservative government, of which he was once a part.
Poilievre and Brown have been at loggerheads since the start of the race; While Poilievre has focused his campaign theme on economic freedom, Brown’s has been on religious freedom and restoring the relationship between the party and cultural communities that was damaged by the previous Conservative government.
Brown used his opening statement to return to that theme, though without mentioning Poilievre by name — one of the many rules that shaped the debate format Wednesday was no use of specific names during certain sections of the debate.
“We’ll never win with a divisive leader who repels voters and doubles down on discriminatory policies that trample over the religious freedoms of Canadians,” Brown said.
“The choice before the party is clear: do we want an unelectable party leader who drives voters away? He walks straight into Liberal traps to give me an unclear answers on divisive issues like abortion and wedges Conservatives against each other? Are we ready to win?”
By contrast, argued candidate Roman Baber, the party will win if it sticks to its principles and doesn’t try to twist itself into a political pretzel to appeal to voters.
First the team onstage must pull their act together, said candidate Scott Aitchison.
“We must welcome more people to our party if we are to succeed, but we cannot do it with angry rhetoric and attacks on each other,” he said.
“Leaders always engage in power and inspire the team around them.”
Candidates will meet again for a French-language debate on May 25. Party members will choose a new leader via a mail-in ballot, with a winner expected to be announced on Sept. 10.
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