Trudeau's dangerous nationalist attack on Poilievre has media assist

Trudeau plays a dangerous game in Quebec while the national media plays a supporting role for him.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre take part in the National Prayer Breakfast in Ottawa, May 30, 2023. Photo by Sean Kilpatrick /THE CANADIAN PRESS

The Trudeau Liberals are now playing with Quebec nationalist sentiment to try and gain votes. There is literally no low that the Trudeau Liberals won’t sink to in order to try and win votes, including on issues of national unity.

On Thursday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre took to social media to denounce the massive drop in housing starts across Quebec. It was a drop of 32% across the province but 37% in Montreal and 40% in Quebec City.

“Massive drop in construction in Quebec, while Trudeau pays billions to incompetent mayors, Marchand and Plante, who block construction sites. Federal money for cities will be tied to the number of houses and apartments built when I am PM,” Poilievre posted on X.

Bruno Marchand is the mayor of Quebec City and Valerie Plante is the mayor of Montreal. Neither of them have a great record on housing and both deserve to be called out. Yet, despite Poilievre having called out mayors in English Canada using similar language and despite him praising the mayors of Victoriaville, Trois-Rivieres and Saguenay for increasing housing supply, his comments were portrayed as anti-Quebec.

First up was The Canadian Press, the useless, overpriced and biased wire service I’ve been telling my editors, bosses and CEOs to dump for close to 25 years. CP should be a straight shooter in the news business. Unlike the Toronto Sun, they aren’t supposed to have a political slant but there they were within two hours of Poilievre’s post turning this into a national unity issue.

Right after CP’s slanted reporting that made this about Poilievre insulting Quebec came the Liberal Party of Canada with ready-made graphics denouncing his comments. After that came the national media quick to jump on Poilievre’s statements without looking at any context, just following the Liberal pied piper.

It’s really sad how biased our national media is on this and so many other fronts. Poilievre has blasted mayors across the country for failing to build housing, for standing in the way of new construction, for adding regulations that needlessly drive up costs and no one has said a thing.

As soon as he criticizes progressive mayors in Quebec, this becomes a national unity issue. We are treated to pundits who say the perfectly bilingual man who has lived on the Ontario-Quebec border for 25 years, who has sat in Parliament for 20 years, who is married to a Quebecer, doesn’t understand the province and likely hates it.

This is nothing more than the Liberals playing a dangerous game with national unity, inflaming Quebec nationalist tendencies needlessly to try and salvage some votes and a good part of the national media going along with it. They will reply that I am biased, that I am an opinion columnist, that I regularly back conservative politicians.

All of those things are true and I’m upfront about my politics and have been for years and years.

What excuse do the supposedly neutral newsrooms of this country have for playing the Liberal game of inflaming national unity? If you are a neutral observer, an arbiter of the truth, surely you would have seen the posts where Poilievre has called out mayors in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and elsewhere in his crusade to build more housing, to make it more affordable.

They ignore that though, because it doesn’t fit the narrative.

This coming election will be fascinating because it won’t just be CBC, whom Poilievre has promised to defund coming after him, it will be most of the gallery, most of the national media. The mask has been pulled back, people see these outlets for what they are, partisan and biased while not declaring it and pretending to be neutral.

With fewer people trusting the media each day, this isn’t a good position for my industry but it is the position my colleagues have chosen to take.