Local Tories and Grits agree to disagree on Poilièvre’s and Carney’s merits
For sheer contrast, Laval’s Tories and Grits couldn’t be much further apart than in the way they see their respective leaders and prime ministerial candidates.
While a Laval Liberal candidate in a campaign speech last weekend alluded to Mark Carney as having “changed our party overnight,” the following day a prominent Conservative referred to the Liberal leader as somebody who just stepped in to replace Justin Trudeau, while retaining pretty much the same cabinet.
‘Same old Liberals,’ says senator
“They’re trying to convince people that Mr. Carney represents change – but it’s not at all the case – it’s the same Liberal party with the same ministers,” Conservative senator Leo Housakos said during a talk to Tory supporters at a campaign launch on Sunday for Konstantinos Merakos, the party’s Laval-Les Îles candidate.
Comparing the change in Liberal leadership to a maneuver replacing the driver in a rideshare taxi, he noted that former Trudeau ministers François-Philippe Champagne, Mélanie Joly and Steven Guilbeault found a new home in the Carney cabinet.
“They just changed the Uber’s driver and it’s the same government, the same people deciding the direction of the government, the same crowd who are going to keep Canada in the same place it’s been for the past 10 years,” said Housakos.
Housakos blames Liberal gov’t
“They’re trying to convince us that they’re not the government that gave us the soaring debt and deficits and capital gains and carbon tax and destroying the fiber of this country,” he continued. “And the reason Canada is vulnerable before Donald Trump is because of this government.”
While local Liberals are questioning whether Conservative leader Pierre Poilièvre has enough maturity to serve as Canada’s Prime Minister, Housakos maintained that the kind of tough talk Poilièvre has tended to engage in since becoming Tory leader is exactly what makes him fit to take on someone as mean-mouthed as Donald Trump.
“If we have a choice between two individuals to stand up against a bully like Donald Trump, you need somebody with political experience and somebody who has spent the last 20 years saying what he thinks and thinks what he says,” said Housakos.
Standing up to Trump
“You know, there’s a number of Canadians who say Pierre Poilièvre’s a little too aggressive, a little bit too tough, a little bit too rough around the edges. Does anybody see what we’re dealing with in Donald Trump? We need exactly a Canadian who can stand up against him. And that is Pierre Poilièvre.”
That said, Merakos insisted that the April 28 vote will not, in fact, be entirely about the belligerent U.S. president. “The next election is not about Trump,” he said, while noting that Trump went to the trouble several weeks ago of stating his preference for Carney as Prime Minister.
Merakos said the real issue in the coming weeks will be “are we better off today than we were 20 years ago? Is our political and economic situation worse than before? That’s the question. And don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. Because we cannot afford another four years of Liberal policies.”
Lawyer and legislative aid
Merakos is a lawyer and a graduate of McGill University and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He also obtained law degrees from the University of Montreal and the University of Ottawa.
As a lawyer and former legislative assistant to Canada’s Parliament, he has done work on issues involving human rights and freedoms, youth protection, veterans’ affairs and constitutional law.
In an interview with The Laval News, he said he feels certain the Conservatives can win Laval-Les Îles, which has long been a Liberal fortress, except for the 2011 election when it was won by the NDP during the short-lived “orange crush.”
Merakos said one of the reasons he’s running “is because we’ve lost a decade with the Liberal party.” He said a particular concern raised by many Laval residents he’s heard from is rising crime, including car thefts, household break-ins, extortions and fire bombings.
