Alberta is putting a question on the October 19 ballot about whether to start the legal process of leaving Canada. The Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition went out there this week and the strongest thing he could bring himself to say was that the people who want to break up the country “are not our enemies.” Carney called the referendum what it is — a dangerous bluff. Poilievre called it a feeling we should sit with. “We do not need a different country, Alberta. We need different government policies in Ottawa.” Read that again. The man who wants to run the place just told a secession movement their demand is basically fair, he’d only like to handle the paperwork himself.
This is the entire Poilievre move compressed into one speech: never be the guy who says no. Pipelines, repealing Bills C-69 and C-48, “different policies in Ottawa” — he took a question about whether Canada stays a country and turned it into leverage for his own wish list. Give me what I want, or who’s to say what these perfectly reasonable folks might decide to do. Call it patriotism if you want. It reads more like a ransom note with a maple leaf stamped on it. And while he workshops his “we’re all one family” lines, Danielle Smith is out promising to enforce the law against First Nations communities if they protest a separation vote being held on their treaty land — the people who were here before the province had a name, told to sit down and be quiet while somebody else holds a vote on walking off with the country.
Here’s what the job actually is. Sometimes the answer is no. No, you don’t get to put national breakup on a ballot as a negotiating tactic. No, one bad quarter and a grudge about pipelines does not add up to a reason to take the country apart. Carney managed it in three words. Poilievre, who has spent years auditioning for the top chair, couldn’t find them — because the separatist vote is still a vote, and he wants it more than he wants to be the one who tells those voters the truth. You don’t get to campaign to lead a country while treating whether it holds together as somebody else’s call.