A young Pierre Poilievre sits in front of a room of conservative faithful and explains his party’s strategy to win a majority mandate.
That hasn’t happened yet. It is 2009 and although the Tories have won two federal elections, they have remained in minority territory for three years.
“We will win a majority if we appeal to naturally conservative-leaning voters and get them to vote, and turn small-C conservative immigrants into big-C conservative voters,” the MP says in a video posted on the parliament’s website. Cable Public Affairs Channel.
“That’s the formula.”
More than a decade after former Prime Minister Stephen Harper won that majority in 2011, Poilievre is the party’s leader.
Since Harper’s four-year term, the Conservatives have lost three straight elections to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, with losses cumulative in suburban Toronto and Vancouver area seats, home to many visible minorities and new Canadians.
If there is one thing many in the party agree on, it is the need for conservatives to win support in such communities. But can Poilievre do it?
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Enter Arpan Khanna. This week, Poilievre turned to the Greater Toronto area attorney, who served as one of the co-chairs of his Ontario leadership campaign, to coordinate outreach efforts.
Khanna was on the political staff of the man most credited by federal conservatives with making inroads into immigrant communities that helped Harper reach the majority: Jason Kenney.
Colleagues had dubbed the former federal cabinet minister and Alberta premier the “rush curry minister” for spending his weekends attending dozens of cultural events in Toronto and Vancouver.
@PierrePoilievre thinks he can win over the new Canadians. This is how he plans to do it. #CDNPoli #CPC
Khanna said he sees the same momentum in Poilievre, who has visited the Toronto area several times as well as Vancouver in his first three months as leader, sometimes attending as many as 15 events a day. She is planning visits with Chinese community groups in Markham, Scarborough, Vancouver and Burnaby to mark the Lunar New Year.
The new leader has taken to heart the idea of ”building a Jason Kenney style of outreach,” Khanna said. “He’s completely into this. He understands the importance of this.”
The first step is to introduce yourself, he said.
“Recently we were in someone’s backyard for a barbecue with about 100 people from the Tamil community, just chatting about their problems.”
Poilievre has been hitting the road almost every weekend.
His two deputy leaders often travel with him. Melissa Lantsman, who is Jewish and the party’s first openly lesbian member of parliament, hails from Thornhill, north of Toronto. Former Edmonton MP Tim Uppal, who is Sikh, became the first Canadian minister to wear a turban when Harper appointed him to the cabinet in 2011.
For the role of high-profile financial critic, Poilievre cast former small-business owner Jasraj Singh Hallan, who had been considered an at-risk youth after immigrating to Canada as a child.
It is stories like Hallan’s that Poilievre promotes, trumpeting the promise of the Canadian dream.
“It doesn’t matter if your name is Poilievre or Patel… Martin or Mohamed,” a video posted online shows Poilievre saying at a Diwali event in October. “If you are prepared to work hard, contribute, follow the rules, raise your family, you can achieve your dreams in this country.”
Poilievre often notes that he married a Canadian immigrant. His wife Ana and her family were refugees from Venezuela.
Tenzin Khangsar, who worked in Kenney’s office when he was immigration minister and helped with the Tory outreach strategy, said Poilievre is setting an example for his group and the entire party. “And frankly, it shows all Canadians watching, ‘This is a priority for me. This is not just something I’m going to do during an election campaign.'”
Khangsar said that if the first step is presented, the second is to stick with the policy.
Poilievre has vowed to get provinces to speed up the recognition of foreign credentials, one of his first political announcements as a leadership candidate. He also criticized the “gatekeepers” in the federal immigration department.
During a roundtable with ethnic community media held during the race, Poilievre said the values of immigrants and conservatives are the same: “hard work, family, freedom, tradition.”
“Values on which we need to build a future Conservative party.”
A roughly 50-minute video of the event shared on Facebook shows Poilievre offering more details about his immigration policy ideas: expanding express entry, making it easier for temporary foreign workers to become permanent residents, improving immigrants’ ability to bring their parents to Canada to help with childcare and expand private sponsorship of refugees.
He was emphatic in an interview with a Punjabi radio show last month: “The Conservative party is in favor of immigration.”
But NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan shot down the idea, saying in a statement that Harper’s government cut settlement services for new arrivals and made it more difficult for family reunification.
Liberal Immigration Minister Sean Fraser did not delve into the Conservatives’ past, but said in a statement that talking to newcomers is the job of any political leader.
“The newcomers are not a voting bloc to please. They are Canadians and future Canadians.”
But many Conservatives believe the party’s approach to immigration issues lost them the 2015 election, as the Conservatives pushed through policies like banning niqabs at citizenship ceremonies and setting up a so-called tip line. barbaric cultural practices.
Lantsman and Uppal publicly apologized for supporting what became known as the “niqab ban”. But Poilievre has defended the policy, saying it simply requires “a person’s face to be visible while taking oaths at citizenship ceremonies.”
An internal review of the Conservatives’ 2021 electoral defeat found that the party’s image remained damaged among immigrant communities.
Poilievre’s immigration critic Tom Kmiec said Conservatives believe in an “employer-driven immigration system.”
Asked if they support the Liberal government’s plan to welcome a record number of permanent residents in the coming years, which includes a target of 500,000 by 2025, Kmiec said “the number is not as important as the experience of customer service”.
Kmiec, a Polish immigrant, said the federal immigration department is dealing with massive backlogs and out-of-control processing times. “It’s a total lack of compassion to overpromise what you can actually deliver.”
Andrew Griffith, former director of multicultural policy for the federal government, predicted that conservatives will avoid attacking targets for fear of being branded xenophobic.
Griffith said he doesn’t perceive the party to be skeptical about immigration, even though such views are historically present in his base.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on December 18, 2022.