Photo: Sean Kilpatrick Archives The Canadian Press Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre during a meeting on May 30, 2023
Michel Saba – The Canadian Press in Ottawa
Published yesterday at 1:08 p.m. Updated yesterday at 3:11 p.m.
- Canada
Ready to “do anything to win”, Pierre Poilievre chooses to be “negative, divisive and toxic”, deplores Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in light of videos shared on social networks where the Conservative leader encourages conspiratorial demonstrators.
“Mr. Poilievre has chosen to be a politician who seeks division, fear and encourages right-wing extremists,” Mr. Trudeau said Wednesday at a press conference in Oakville, a suburb of Toronto.
In the videos in question, Mr. Poilievre goes to meet demonstrators who have notably planted a flag on which it is written “Fuck Trudeau” near the trailer he visits and on which the symbol of the Diagolon group is drawn. This group is described in a House of Commons report as a violent and ideologically motivated extremist organization. It shares members and affiliations with the “Freedom Convoy”, as well as those who opposed government health restrictions.
In a another video, the Conservative leader says about the Prime Minister that “everything he says is bullshit, from beginning to end “. He also announces a “great Canadian tax revolt”.
Called to react, the Conservative leader's office explained that Mr. Poilievre noticed a demonstration against carbon pricing during a trip between two events in the Maritimes.
According to the account of his spokesperson Marion Ringuette, he then decided to make a “brief stop impromptu”, being a “strong opponent of Justin Trudeau's punitive carbon tax, which has driven up the price of groceries, gasoline and heating.”
“If Justin Trudeau is worried about extremism, he should look at the parades in Canadian streets openly celebrating the massacre of Jews by Hamas on October 7,” she added of actions that the Prime Minister nevertheless criticized.
Endorsement of a notorious conspiracy theorist
In his comments on Wednesday, Mr. Trudeau also broadly underlined that Mr. Poilievre failed to denounce the support he received from notorious American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who was ordered to pay almost a billion dollars in restitution to families of victims of a school massacre of Connecticut after he denied it was real.
“I've been following this guy for years, and he's solid. Canada desperately needs many more leaders like him, and so does the rest of the world,” wrote Alex Jones on /p>
He is “the kind of man who says that Pierre Poilievre has the right ideas to take the country to the right, towards conspiracy theories, towards extremism, towards polarization,” declared the Liberal leader.
He said his conservative opponent's failure to disavow Mr. Jones “really shows that he will do anything to win, anything to stoke negativity and fear , and this only highlights that he has nothing to say to actually solve the problems he is amplifying.”
On this subject , Mr. Poilievre's office counters that they do not follow or listen to “the individual” Alex Jones. “It’s the support of hard-working Canadians every day that the Conservatives are working to earn. Unlike Justin Trudeau, we don’t pay attention to what an American says,” said his spokesperson Marion Ringuette.
Jumping into the fray, the leader of the New Democratic Party, Jagmeet Singh, also accused Mr. Poilievre of “repeatedly” adopting an “irresponsible […] speech that fuels division, that fuels hatred.” “He doesn’t care about people. He doesn't care about the workers. He only cares about power. And he will do whatever it takes to divide Canadians, to hurt people, to achieve that,” Singh told reporters in Edmonton.
With Émilie Bergeron