March 13, 2024

Peter Black

Local Journalism Initiative reporter

peterblack@qctonline.com

If, as the pundits and pollsters predict, the Conservative Party of Canada romps to power some 16 months hence – figuring on or about June 2025 when the Liberal-NDP shack-up expires – it might be as good a time as any to take a look at what the government of future prime minister Pierre Poilievre might look like.

Before we go further, let’s accept that the Conservatives need to win 52 more seats than the 119 they now have (including the recent Toronto-area byelection win to replace ousted leader Erin O’Toole) to get past the magic mark of 170 seats for a majority. 

With some polls showing the Tories soaring into 1984 Mulroney territory (211 out of a 282-seat House), who knows what common sense lawmaking talent such an impending blue wave might wash up? 

We’ll soon get an inkling as the nomination process heats up and the rightward political stars come to light. The enticing prospect of serving in a Poilievre cabinet surely must be stirring in many an ambitious Conservative brain across the land.

So, what kind of timber might Poilievre have with which to cobble together a cabinet to axe the tax, give everyone powerful paycheques, abolish Justinflation and make Canadians forget about the woke Marxist-Liberal government?

Let’s start with his shadow cabinet, which, truth be told, casts a rather expansive pall, given that just about all members of the Tory caucus have been assigned some kind of critic task, no matter how insignificant. 

One of Poilievre’s two deputy leaders is Toronto-area MP Melissa Lantsman, who used to be a go-to Conservative talking head on CBC political panels; at least she was until the leader forbade members of his caucus to collude with the Liberal propaganda organ he has vowed to defund once he takes the keys to the kingdom.

Lantsman, a professional Conservative operative in the mould of Poilievre, is one of two out gay MPs in the Conservative caucus. She has been at pains lately to explain her leader’s recent declaration that trans women be forbidden to use women’s washrooms.

“I think the leader has made his common-sense Conservative position very clear, and our caucus stands by it, alongside most Canadians,” she said in a Hill Times report.
Who knows what portfolio the leader will assign Lantsman when the time comes – OK, if the time comes.
What about candidates for a future Conservative finance minister? The current shadow minister of finance is Edmonton MP Jasraj Singh Hallan. He has an accounting diploma from an Alberta college and a master builder certification with which he established his house-building business. Not a Michael Wilson or Jim Flaherty, perhaps, but who’s to say what it takes to manage a multi-trillion-dollar economy?
What about the prickly portfolio of Canadian Heritage, which handles everything from minority languages to culture to policing the internet to funding the CBC?
The shadow minister is Lethbridge, Alberta MP Rachael Thomas (née Harder; she changed her last name when she got married in 2021) who made headlines in November when she asked the current minister of Canadian Heritage, Pascale St-Onge, to speak English at a committee hearing.
Thomas also got attention for claiming the CBC is “on the side of terrorists” and that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets the criteria of “dictator.” She is also known to be among the more hard-core anti-abortion MPs in Poilievre’s caucus.
A recent survey by the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada identified only 15 Conservative MPs in favour of the right to abortion. According to that survey, incidentally, four of the nine Quebec Tory MPs are known to be pro-choice; three have unknown opinions and one is declared anti-abortion.
While we’re talking Quebec, what might be the cabinet reward for Charlesbourg–Haute-Saint-Charles MP Pierre Paul-Hus? He was the only Tory member from the province to endorse Poilievre’s leadership bid in 2022, for the perfectly understandable reason that Poilievre “needed to have someone from Quebec supporting him,” for the sake of party unity.
Paul-Hus’s current caucus duty is serving as Poilievre’s Quebec lieutenant, which seems appropriate considering he reached the rank of lieutenant colonel in his 22-year military career. Pencil in Paul-Hus for Conservative defence minister.
We could go on and on, of course, but the above are just a sampling of names to note for future Conservative cabinet fame – or notoriety.

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