AGAR: Canadians can be fooled by Liberals apparently

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“The Conservatives are panicking.”

“The Conservatives are done.”

That’s what people text me during my radio show after they hear that polling shows a “tightening” of the race between the federal Liberals and Conservatives.

As of Monday, the two aggregators of the polls I watch show a considerable difference still.

The CBC’s Poll Tracker has the Conservatives at 42.4% and the Liberals at 25.5%. That’s a slight improvement for the Liberals of about 3% over what was the difference for some 20 months.

Political website 338Canada.com shows the Conservatives at 42% and the Liberals at 26%. Also a bit of improvement for the Liberals, but neither shows a reason for panic or celebrations of certainty.

An election could be months from now and anything could change.

But with the Liberal leadership up for grabs, campaigning is underway. And apparently Canadians can be fooled.

With that in mind I was discussing what Lorrie Goldstein profiled in his column, “Trudeau Liberals say they were wrong about almost everything so re-elect them.”

His point was that the two front-runners for Liberal leadership have backed off a number of things the party stood for during the past 9 years in power.

Mark Carney and Chrystia Freeland have backed away from a carbon tax, a capital gains tax, the size of government, their policies at the border and – will wonders never cease – they now believe in pipelines East and West across Canada, even in Quebec.

Goldstein is right, I stated on my radio show, when he says, “But the Liberals will inevitably revert to their old ways if they happen to pull off this political miracle.”

A caller disagreed. I don’t know how many voters he echoes, but he believes both Carney and Freeland have a new perspective.

He said, “The Conservatives don’t hold a monopoly on good ideas. People are allowed to change their mind.”

“Do you believe, “ I asked, “that Carney and Freeland have changed their minds and there will be no carbon tax?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe they have changed their minds and there will be no capital gains tax?”

“Again, yes,” he said.

“Do you believe that the day one of them is installed as prime minster job one will be pipelines, pipelines, pipelines?”

“I hope not, but that is the direction they are talking, yes.”

“Okay,” I said, “Why do you think such dedicated, agenda-driven people suddenly change their minds and are telling the truth?”

He said that it is important to put a stop to the whole conservatism movement he thinks is happening in Canada. He feels we are twenty years behind the United States in our drift to the right and he is counting on the Liberal party to put a stop to it.

I said, “They are not putting a stop to it, they are adopting the Conservative agenda.”

“I have to believe, or there is no point in voting whatsoever, that the Liberal party of Canada is at least trying to keep things liberal.”

Liberals will keep things liberal by adopting conservative positions?

My listener was calm, articulate and seemingly intelligent. But his response seems slightly cult-like.

I told him that if the Liberals do get re-elected he will be disappointed.

I was wrong about that. If they revert to what they’ve been under Trudeau, he’ll be happy.

We just shouldn’t be surprised.