Conservatives are sticking to their greatest hits. That’s a good thing.

Despite the insistence of a small chattering class that things are otherwise so, affordability and crime are the major issues for tens of millions of Canadians.

Last week, usually erudite Globe and Mail columnist Shannon Proudfoot penned an uncharacteristically hyperbolic op-ed, hamfistedly ridiculing Pierre Poilievre’s decision to focus his party’s federal election campaign on the issues of affordability and crime. The content wasn’t exactly original. In the column, Proudfoot reinforced a dogma that’s been echoing through Ottawa’s lobbyist-journalist bubble for months: that talking about the cost of living and violent crime is this federal election campaign is passé - and that political strategists on talk news shows urging Poilievre to shift focus from those issues are right.

So, are they?

Among a certain elite few in Ottawa, the answer is yes. Proudfoot’s piece codified a campaign that’s been running in backrooms and on broadcast legacy political talk shows among that set since January. Their narrative goes like this: the Liberals, having freshly hot-swapped former leader Justin Trudeau for his senior advisor Mark Carney, are reframing the ballot question around Donald Trump, and Poilievre would be foolish not to follow their lead.

There’s a problem with that line of thought, though. Actually, several.

First, while this set of lobbyist-journalist-punditfluencers may dominate Ottawa's airwaves and executive suites, few have any recent day-to-day touch with the everyday Canadian who would be considered an accessible voter. Few have recently knocked on a door outside the National Capital Region. Fewer still understand what it means to bear the toil of a daily commute from the far reaches of the GTA, to live in rural Alberta, to try and find housing in Vancouver, or find a job in struggling towns across the Atlantic provinces. Second, many in this class have a vested interest in keeping the Liberals in power—whether it's through direct government subsidies to media outlets, a regulatory environment that protects corporate monopolies, or access to political appointments and contracts that they fear will disappear the moment Conservatives take office.

But here’s the real kicker: Canadians (and thus, Conservatives) are talking about affordability and crime because both issues continue to get worse.

For example, this morning news broke that housing starts are down again nationally, but particularly in the province of Ontario, a new report showed that the Liberal’s broken immigration system created the housing crisis, and it’s been found that Canada now has one of the highest food price inflation rates in the G7. GDP per capita is still falling. Crime is getting more brazen—most recently, a Vancouver police officer was set on fire. Said differently, rent and grocery bills haven’t eased let alone magically disappeared as front and centre issues in recent months. And Canadians, who are financially tapped out and increasingly anxious, are intimately acquainted with this fact.

So while Trump may dominate headlines on legacy media news loops, on the doorstep during this election campaign, many voters see unjustified U.S. tariffs not as a stand-alone threat, but as serious, additional destabilizing pressure on an already fragile economy—one made infirm by a decade of Liberal policy failure. So even if Carney and his fellow travellers on political talk shows try to reframe the election solely around Trump, they risk reminding Canadians that it was their Liberal government that hollowed out Canada’s economic defences in the first place.

Worse still for Carney, during the election campaign he doubled down on the same failed Liberal policies that delivered Canada to this place of extreme economic and social precarity to begin with. He’s refused to repeal the “no more pipelines” Bill C-69. He’s vowed to keep carbon taxing critical industries like steel. He’s standing by the Liberal soft-on-crime agenda. And he’s yet to offer any serious reversal on Liberal immigration mismanagement or housing.

Even if he did, he hasn’t addressed his credibility issues which have become more pronounced during the campaign. Carney has dodged scrutiny over his lies related to Brookfield’s relocation to New York under his watch, as well as the company’s use of offshore tax havens to avoid paying billions in Canadian taxes. He’s refused to disclose his current financial interests in the firm—interests that could benefit from recent Liberal announcements. And he’s kept a candidate who once suggested handing a Conservative rival over to the Chinese Communist regime.

So even in the context of a short five week election campaign, Carney is now running out of political runway. His media honeymoon—enabled by the Liberals’ proroguing of Parliament and bolstered by broadcasters with a financial interest in Liberal reelection—won’t last forever. 

And this is precisely why it would be campaign malpractice for Conservatives to abandon the issues that matter most to Canadians.

Pierre Poilievre is the only leader offering a full, coherent policy platform focused on affordability, job creation, crime, and fixing Canada’s broken immigration system. He’s never supported the failed Liberal status quo. Instead, he’s spent years fighting against it. For voters looking for real change, Poilievre offers it.

Additionally, his campaign has been disciplined, policy-rich, and free from the kind of blunders and sideshows that has plagued the Liberal’s campaign. He’s authentically neutralized old Liberal wedge issues. He’s earned the support of labour leaders and CEOs alike. He’s drawing crowds in regions that haven’t voted Conservative in generations.

In short, Poilievre and his team of Conservative candidates have been steadily building (and maintaining) a voting coalition that the Liberals didn’t anticipate. In response, the Liberals and their assorted campaign minions are desperate to knock them off course to retain power - going as far as to run a false flag operation to gin up fake news headlines about “American style” politics.

So back to Proudfoot’s assertion that the Poilievre and the Conservatives are somehow talking about the wrong things. I am part of that Conservative team, and I’ve also served in office long enough to see what happens when politicians take their cues from lobbyists and pundits instead of the people they serve - the results of such belligerence is the hallmark of the ruination that the Liberals have foisted upon our country for a decade now. The campaign Poilievre and the Conservatives are running in this election is the antithesis of that ethos - it utterly rejects it. It’s grounded in the lived reality of tens of millions of Canadians - it’s about food, shelter, safety, and restored opportunity. 

And that approach is landing with voters. Poilievre is presently enjoying the highest levels of political support that any Conservative leader has experienced in recent history. The party is also polling at levels at or higher than what delivered a majority for Stephen Harper in 2011. This means that there are millions of people who find hope and inspiration in our plan and our approach - I hear it on my doors, and so are my colleagues across Canada. And that’s not nothing.

So no, I won’t be taking political advice from the back tables at Ottawa’s Shore Club. It’s nice to be part of a campaign that’s betting all its chips to fight on true principle and offering something different that will improve the lives of millions, particularly after a decade of lost hope and Liberal government.

So come hell or high water, Conservatives will continue to take our cues from Canadians at the door—and not the same in-the-bubble crowd who’ve been wrong about virtually everything else for a decade.

To all my fellow Conservative candidates, campaign workers, volunteers, donors, and supporters from every corner of this country, giddyup. Dig in and keep fighting. We’re on the right path because we’re bringing voice to people who have had their concerns dismissed or mocked by Carney and his Liberals for a decade. We have a plan and the team of fighters needed to bring them the hope and the change they need on the issues that matter to them. They - and our country - deserve better than another four years of Liberal malaise, corruption, broken promises, and debt.

Let’s bring it home.