THOMSON: Looks like the unions are getting ready to fight Poilievre

All indicators suggest that an absolute rout is coming for the Liberals, at the hands of Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party of Canada. The next election is presently set for October 20th next year, although legislation (Bill C-65) has been introduced to delay it a week.But Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party aren’t Poilievre’s biggest threat to forming government — it could be the unions.Take Unifor, which represents more than 310,000 members and ran an open and unabashed anti-Conservative ad campaign during the 2019 and 2021 federal election. In a post made on the unions website dated 02 Aug 2021, the union boasted that “Conservatives were defeated in 72 per cent of the 69 ridings the union targeted.”Whether Unifor’s efforts to target specific ridings actually contributed to Conservative losses or were merely a coincidence of a poor showing by the CPC is debatable. But that doesn’t mean their claims of success should be outright discounted either. In fact, a union's potential for influence makes a recent email sent to all members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) suggests they intend to be busy whenever the next election is held.The email links to a voluntary survey, whose stated purpose was to “better understand members’ perspective on key issues and federal politics, which will in turn aid in enhancing support for members like yourself leading up to the next federal election.”Unlike Unifor, the majority of PSAC's 240,000 members are employees in various federal government departments and agencies, as well as Crown Corporations.... The very people whose job it is to aid the incumbent government in achieving their priorities and delivering the government services they want to advance..And here are some of the questions:“I would vote Liberal to keep Pierre Poilievre out of government.” Yes/No.“Pierre Poilievre represents the working class”“A vote for the NDP might be a wasted vote if my goal is to prevent Pierre Poilievre from becoming Prime Minister” .“Who do you hold the most responsible for the ongoing problems with the Phoenix pay system? The Conservative Government led by Stephen Harper, or The Liberal Government led by Justin Trudeau.”“If elected do you think Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party will do the following…make it harder to have an abortion....”And so on.Aside from one question which asked whether participants agreed or disagreed to varying degrees, if “anyone would be better as Prime Minister than Justin Trudeau”, the entire survey was almost entirely biased against Pierre Poilievre and the CPC.Not only that, but the way the questions were asked and the manner in which the list of potential responses was arranged, demonstrated an effort to establish a primacy bias and recency bias in the respondents answers.A primacy bias is a phenomenon that people remember the first items in a list better than the middle or later items. This was apparent in one of the questions which asked, “which of the following is your ideal outcome for the next federal election?” Then listed in order were:a minority/majority Liberal government,an NDP minority/majority government, and lastlya Conservative minority/majority government. To give PSAC some begrudging credit at least they put the option of an NDP-Liberal coalition government at the very bottom.In regard to recency bias, I can’t even believe they brought up Stephen Harper in the survey. What's he had to do with it for the last nearly nine years? While technically relevant to Phoenix pay system, they might as well have asked their members how they are feeling about Jean Chretien and Shawinigate. After all its theoretically relevant to the challenges many Canadians are currently facing with affordable housing.It should be of concern not only to PSAC union members but to all Canadians, that a public sector union is attempting to collect detailed and potentially prejudiced information about their members voting intentions and political ideology. The most likely reason for doing so isn’t to allegedly “enhance support” to their members in the lead up to the upcoming election, but rather to gauge support for potential labor actions based on the results of the survey.This should have alarm bells ringing. A federal government can only carry out the mandate it was elected to provide if the thousands of public service and crown corporation employees work to achieve it.Efforts by PSAC to gain an understanding of their members voting intentions is potentially the first step, towards weaponizing the public service to thwart a duly elected government and our democratic process.Like the foreign interference inquiry, this may warrant further scrutiny.

THOMSON: Looks like the unions are getting ready to fight Poilievre

Related Stories