A political scientist says Pierre Poilievre’s open resentment toward offshore tax havens and corporate jets likely isn’t enough to sever his Conservative Party’s relationship with business leaders.
That’s illustrated with endorsements by more than 30 prominent executives in newspaper advertisements that ran Saturday across the country, Lori Turnbull said.
While Poilievre has railed against the excesses of the corporate elite, “I think there’s a world where the business community is like, ‘Whatever — that rhetoric is just politics. He’s trying to get votes,'” said Turnbull, a political science professor at Dalhousie University.
“If Poilievre becomes prime minister, is he likely to embark on a whole bunch of things that are going to hurt the business community? Probably not.”
Current and former business executives, including Fairfax Financial CEO Prem Watsa, Canaccord Genuity CEO Dan Daviau and past Scotiabank president Brian Porter, signed the open letter, arguing the Conservatives are best positioned to shepherd Canada through the ongoing tariff chaos.
The leaders say the next government must drive entrepreneurship and innovation, lower taxes, develop natural resources and curb spending.
“It’s because of President Trump’s threats that Pierre’s plan makes so much sense,” the open letter reads.
The corporate endorsement comes three weeks into an election campaign in which Poilievre has decried “global elites” who stash their money in offshore locations to avoid paying taxes — a legal practice the party is targeting forcefully.
If elected, Poilievre has vowed to close loopholes that allow companies to “stash their money away in tax havens and avoid paying their fair share here in Canada.”
And he’d ask the Canada Revenue Agency to shift its focus from “harassing and auditing innocent small business owners” to cracking down on tax havens.
Even if Poilievre as prime minister clamps down on tax shelters, or ends the tax writeoff for corporate jets, Turnbull said some business leaders would consider that a worthy trade.
Hallmarks of his business policies include lower taxes, fewer regulations and fast-tracking major infrastructure projects.
Tax havens as a wedge issue
Turnbull suggested Poilievre is creating a wedge issue around tax havens, given that Liberal Leader Mark Carney previously managed three investment funds registered in offshore tax havens, all while continuing his wooing of the working-class voters that aren’t traditionally seen as part of the Conservative base.
“I think it’s indicative of the conservative movement moving toward this more populist thread,” she said.
Before and during the campaign, Poilievre has made several announcements in front of workers in hard hats and high-visibility vests.
And his promises to incentivize business development have curried favour with some labour groups, such as the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers.
Steven Tufts, a labour studies professor at York University, said the union support the Conservatives have garnered is from tradespeople banking on a Poilievre government to deliver big infrastructure projects.
Meanwhile, the Conservative leader hasn’t been afraid to go after “corporate Canada and Bay Street” to shore up his working-class credentials opposite Carney, a former central banker with many ties to the top ranks of business, Conservative strategist Kate Harrison said.
She said the Liberals claim to represent everyday people, but “it’s a little bit hypocritical to not look at some of these loopholes and tax havens that allow the wealthy to continue to thrive at the same time as you are penalizing working and average Canadians” with taxes like the just-eliminated consumer carbon tax, said Harrison, vice-chair of Summa Strategies.
Harrison said it’s telling the Conservatives are winning over both workers and the business class, two demographics whose interests can be at odds with each other.
“It is unusual, and I have not seen this be the case in recent political memory, where a party has been able to successfully get endorsements from both unionized labour and some of the biggest private-sector leaders in Canada,” Harrison said.
Helping business and labour
Amanda Galbraith, another Conservative strategist, considers it a testament to Poilievre’s appeal.
“He understands that eliminating or cutting individual taxes is as important as it is to cut corporate taxes,” said Galbraith, co-founder and partner of the communications firm Oyster Group.
“It’s not one or the other — it’s both.”
The open letter from business leaders was signed by some executives who are usually apolitical in public, Galbraith added.
“It’s not with undue risk to their own businesses to take a political position no matter what,” she said. “I think they felt that it was important.”
Turnbull said Poilievre’s courting of the working class has been helped by his tendency to use rhetoric that’s “always against someone.”
Directing workers’ anger to bureaucrats and big corporations may be helpful, the political scientist said, but it’s limiting. Recent polling suggests the Conservatives are trailing the Liberals in popular support.
“That ‘bad guy’ narrative only gets so far. People are looking for more positive messaging, especially now that we have these threats from Donald Trump and uncertainty about the economy,” she said.
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