By Tom Parkin
December 22, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
OPINION
He presses the prime minister to fix what aren’t the real causes of the frustrations and worries facing working families. How is that useful?
Official opposition leader Pierre Poilievre may not be very consistent on whether accepting floor-crossing MPs is principled or opportunist. Or maybe his consistency lies in saying it’s bad if others do it, but good when he does.
Perhaps it is a question of perspective. But it’s arguable that Poilievre is a very consistent politician. He will consistently hit on the economic issues working families care about. He will consistently point at someone as the reason they are frustrated.
But he is also consistent in pointing at the wrong people, away from the real sources of their frustrations. And that makes him utterly useless to working families.
Consistently pointing away from the real causes of people’s problems
Poilievre pressed the government to cancel carbon pricing, saying it was the cause of inflation. So the Carney Liberals cancelled the carbon tax. And prices didn’t go down. Nothing got cheaper.
“Axe the tax” did not stop inflation, as Poilievre promised
Consumer Price Index, monthly, Nov 2021 to Nov 2025
Poilievre pressed the Liberals to cancel foreign worker permits, calling it the cause of youth unemployment. So the Carney Liberals pushed out 176,000 foreign workers since the start of 2025. And youth unemployment didn’t go down, it went up.
In fact, between June 30 and September 30, as 103,000 foreign workers left, youth unemployment rose from 14 to 15 per cent. Job vacancies fell by 8,000. And 54,000 more Canadians became unemployed. Once again, the solution Poilievre proposed was useless.
Not the jobs solution Poilievre said it would be.
Number of people in Canada on a work or work and study permit and the seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate, Jul 1, 2024 to Oct 1, 2025
And his theory on how to increase affordable housing was equally useless. Poilievre pointed at foreign workers and students as the cause.
But the big run-up in housing costs happened in 2020 and 2021. The increase in foreign workers and students didn’t even start until late 2022. Causes come before effects, but not in Poilievre’s story.
Poilievre: wrong about what caused of soaring house prices
Price of the CREA’s average benchmark house and number of in people in Canada on a work or study permit, Oct 1 2021 to Oct 1, 2025.
We can debate carbon pricing or policy for temporary work and student permits.
But there is no debate that Poilievre’s prescriptions on prices, jobs and housing didn’t work. Other factors and market movers far dominated, pushing opposite to where Poilievre said his changes would lead.
But Pierre Poilievre didn’t point at those factors. Or propose to tackle them. He pointed people away from them. Consistently.
Poilievre gets it wrong, and working families pay the price
We can’t say it’s intentional diversion. But his consistency in getting it wrong is remarkable. Whatever the motivation, working people can’t afford a useless advocate.
Pierre Poilievre had his moment to provide solutions for working families. Somewhat shamefully, the Carney Liberals adopted them. The results are in. They didn’t work.
But by implementing Poilievre’s policies the Carney Liberals have done one favour for working families: they’ve unmasked the uselessness of Pierre Poilievre.
And now that we know his ideas don’t work a space opens for someone whose approach will.
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Hey Michael,
Are people not allowed to disagree with Poilievre? No one is allowed to ask him a tough question like Barton? Everything is a hit piece, everything is an attack. Carney didn’t double the deficit, you clearly don’t know how inflation works and no one was talking about the industrial carbon tax at all until Poilievre needed something after Carney ‘Axed The Tax’. Also, why is it stealing ideas? Why can’t you just say you agree with something Carney is doing? lol you’re so worked on social media lines, it’s tribal warfare not trying to do best by Canadians. Do me a favour and read a god**mn book.
These conservative hit pieces are funnier and more ridiculous by the day.
Stop and think again for a moment who was running the government that generated these poor results?
All this illustrates are current Carney failures.
Take “some” conservative ideas, issue a press release, don’t implement them properly or at all, and tell the conservatives their policies don’t work.
Let’s take inflation and the carbon tax for example. Carney did not remove all the carbon taxes that Poilievre said he would. There still remains the industrial carbon tax, which Carney will increase and the Clean Fuel Standard Tax, which is a carbon tax by another name – so two taxes driving inflation up.
Government money printing and deficit budgets drive inflation, plain and simple. Poilievre campaigned on reigning in deficits and money printing.
What does Carney do, basically doubles the deficit and floods more dollars into the Canadian economy. A third liberal policy driving up inflation.
So, miss application of one Conservative policy and then doing the exact opposite of an another – what do expect the outcome to be?
As I called out just yesterday, the hit pieces will continue as the liberals are truly fearful of Poilievre, and as the liberals have no policies to promote or results to show.
I also expect these hit pieces to get funnier, more ridiculous, it will be a challenge though to out do Rosey Barton or Dawna Friesen in this regard.