The two-month TPS furlough announced Thursday by Justin Trudeau puts Pierre Poilievre in a delicate situation by playing directly on his party lines, according to the managing partner at NATIONAL Public Relations Firm, Julie-Anne Vien.
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According to her, the Prime Minister is thus playing on the political terrain of Pierre Poilievre, who has often, in recent months, used slogans like “Axe the tax» or “Trudeau is not worth the cost”.
“We really come to play in this niche,” she says, in an interview with Mario Dumont, Monday. It’s clear that this is holding them back, and Mr. Poilievre has not yet made his position known regarding what he is going to do and how he is going to position himself in relation to this measure.”
“It will still be difficult for him to oppose the fact that we want to give a little oxygen before the holidays to Canadian families,” she adds. At this level, we really came to play in his backyard and that puts him in a slightly more difficult position.”
Justin Trudeau also planned his announcement at the same time as that of the economic update in Quebec, which is far from being a coincidence, according to her.
“Strategically, no one is fooled and we see that he is trying to win back the electorate, to save time and to have an approach quite different from that of Quebec,” she says. It’s like we had the Santa Claus approach versus the Grinch approach.”
“We saw a real competition,” she continues. All day, we were treated to a split screen between two announcements, where Justin Trudeau really stole the show and had a lot of visibility.
The Prime Minister was thus able to make people talk about him, and perhaps even a little too much, judges the public relations expert.
“You have to give it to him, he occupied the field and he still does,” she maintains. People wonder if they will buy their tree later. But somewhere, when you are forced to continually explain the choices of your measures, it also perhaps means that we lose the essence of the message which was a breath of fresh air to Canadians before the holidays.”
The list of products concerned thus occupied more of the conversations than the announcement as such.
“This is perhaps one of the traps they fell into by wanting to give this gift and by being so granular in its formulation and in its application,” explains Mme Single
“We spent a lot more time explaining why there are cheese droppings and cotton candy rather than hygiene products or other products that might have seemed essential,” she adds.
Watch the full interview in the video above.
