Someone tell the Liberals – Canadians fear Trudeau’s ‘hidden agenda,’ too!
But that doesn’t mean the Conservatives can afford to be complacent heading into the next federal election
Political myths die hard in this country – and one of the oldest, fuelled by the federal Liberals for decades, is that voters only worry about the Conservatives having a “hidden agenda.”
Except that’s not true.
Canadians are also worried Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals have a “hidden agenda.”
Trudeau and company, with Liberal government House leader Karina Gould currently leading the charge in sounding particularly hysterical on this issue, are once again making this claim.
According to the Liberals, every Conservative leader going back to the days of Preston Manning and the Reform party has had a “hidden agenda,” including Stephen Harper, Andrew Scheer, Erin O’Toole, and now, Pierre Poilievre.
Typically, it’s to ban abortions, privatize medicare, abolish gun control or most infamously, since it was so over-the-top that it was widely ridiculed at the time, send in armed soldiers to take control of Canadian cities (Liberal campaign ad 2006).
What Harper had actually proposed, given that some major cities in Canada lacked any military presence, was to create battalions of 500 regular troops and reservists to help respond to domestic emergencies such as natural disasters, as well as being capable of being deployed to fight abroad.
This time the Liberal allegation is that Poilievre must have something to hide due to his refusal to undergo a security check so he can read confidential government documents on foreign interference by some Canadian parliamentarians, while Poilievre argues doing so would gag him from publicly discussing the issue.
While the Bloc, NDP and Green Party leaders have all accepted Trudeau’s offer to view the confidential documents, former NDP leader Tom Mulcair agrees with Poilievre, saying he would never have accepted the deal either.
