The Canadian Left is Losing the Working Class

In September, Poilievre embarked on a grand tour of the NDP stronghold of Vancouver Island, holding a boisterous 1,500-person rally in the hamlet of Black Creek near Courtenay and Campbell River. On November 13th, Poilievre held a rally in Duncan’s Cowichan Exhibition Grounds, drawing an enthusiastic crowd of 2,000.

Six of Vancouver Island’s seven federal electoral ridings are held by the NDP, with the only outlier being our own riding of Saanich-Gulf, held by Green Party leader and beloved local celebrity Elizabeth May.

The Conservatives appear to believe that they can take the five rural working-class ridings of North Island-Powell River, Courtenay-Alberni, Nanaimo-Ladysmith, Cowichan-Malahat-Langford, and Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke. Outside of the Victoria and Saanich-Gulf ridings, they want to paint the whole island blue.

In fact, the Conservative Party under Poilievre has made winning over the Canadian working class a central focus. In a significant departure from Harper’s country club conservatism, they are systematically targeting rural, working-class seats in regions which typically vote NDP or Liberal.

One of these regions is northern Ontario, which has a higher rate of poverty and unemployment than the rest of the province. Of its ten ridings, six are Liberal, two NDP, and two Conservative. The Conservatives aim to turn this around, with Poilievre holding “Axe the Tax” rallies in North Bay, Sudbury, Timmins, and Sault Ste. Marie this past summer.

According to polling aggregator 338Canada, if an election were held today, the Conservatives would pick up five additional seats in northern Ontario, while the Liberals would be lucky to retain even one.

This strategy of winning over the working class is evident in Poilievre’s rallies. He routinely describes inflation as a transfer of wealth “from the have-nots to the have-yachts”, proclaims that Canada needs “more boots, not just more suits”, and promises to file lawsuits against the “corrupt pharmaceutical companies” who caused the opioid crisis, and use the money to build drug treatment centres.

At the end of his speeches, he describes how “ordinary” Canadians are in fact “extraordinary”, lauding the “farmer that masters the science of soil and storm” and the “single mom that works on her feet all day, comes home and teaches her kids math, and balances her family budget on a minimum wage salary”.

I am not a Poilievre shill. I have never voted Conservative, and likely won’t next election either (unless they promise to lower immigration). My point is this: the inroads that the Conservatives are making among the constituency of the Liberals and NDP are only possible because the Left has abandoned it.

By and large, the working class tends to be deeply patriotic, even nationalist, and to hold fairly traditional family values. The modern Left promotes a woke school curriculum and an open-doors immigration policy, sanctions statue toppling, and has the gall to lecture Canadians on how their historical heroes are racists. It is completely out of touch.

If all the Canadian Left has to offer the working class is contempt and disdain, it will lose big, and it will deserve it.

Editor’s note: My bi-monthly Counter Current column is originally published in the Salt Spring Islands Marketplace paper (islandsmarketplace.com/issue.pdf). This piece was published on December 1st, 2023.