‘People should be afraid’: Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives have been targeting experts. Is this just the beginning?

“I know that Pierre Poilievre and his party do not have the power to revoke my medical licence,” says Sereda. “My medical license is in the hands of the (College of Physicians and Surgeons), right?

“But I am scared about this escalation. It was actually quite frightening to me that they would lash out against a private citizen who presented expert evidence for them. They outright lied in their media release about me. And I’m scared if they form a government, what kind of reprisal or ways that they may find to harm me, what they might do.”

Sereda said that early last week. She didn’t know yet.

***

In February, during contentious testimony on opioids and safe supply at the House of Commons standing committee on health, Conservative MP Todd Doherty asked Sereda, “Do you agree that it’s possible that diverted opioids are ending up in the hands of people they aren’t prescribed to, or even children, yes or no?” Sereda answered, “​​We have no evidence that (safe supply hydromorphone pills) are ending up in the hands of children.”

That’s true. Elaine Hyshka, associate professor and Canada Research Chair in health systems innovation at the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health, says indicators such as hydromorphone presence in overdose deaths, or reported rates of youth initiation in drug use, do not currently show safe supply drugs — hydromorphone — are ending up in the hands of children.

“It’s not to say that diversion isn’t potentially causing harm, but the sentinel surveillance that we have is not indicating that at this time,” says Hyshka.

But in June, a National Post column wrote about Sereda speaking to Moms Stop The Harm, a network of Canadian families impacted by substance-use-related harms and deaths — a clearly public meeting, contrary to the column’s interpretation — where Sereda said, as part of a wider, nuanced conversation, “I’m not going to stand up here and say that some kids, some adolescents, are not accessing diverted safe supply and using diverted safe supply. Kids experiment with everything, and we need to be honest to ourselves that kids probably experiment with diverted safer supply as well.” Diversion is an acknowledged aspect of almost every drug, but the column treated the difference between the two statements as if they were a scandal.

But these are not contradictory statements. You can say, there is no evidence but it’s almost certainly happening. It’s not a lie; at worst, it’s slight evasion in the face of relatively hostile questioning on a complex topic.

So why did the Conservative party go after Sereda so strongly, and so personally? The answer may be, strategy. Or habit.

***

Andrew Leach is a University of Alberta economist with a significant public profile. He is also one of 11 economists whose names were put in a question on the order paper from Conservative MP Chris Warkentin, back in May, asking for a record of government contracts, grants received, any Order in Council appointments, or service on a government advisory body under the Trudeau government. Some of those experts replied.

Leach has a robust disclosure page on his personal website. There’s a searchable database of federal contracts. It’s not hidden. Warkentin presumably knows this.

So why those 11? They had all signed an open letter in late March that tried to gently explain the economic arguments for carbon pricing — not the Liberal version of the carbon tax, but carbon pricing, which the Conservatives oppose with sloganeering fervour. More than 400 economists have now signed the letter.

Within a month of Warkentin’s question, Blacklock’s, a conservative-leaning Ottawa publication, published a tissue-thin attack on Leach, saying he had been paid more than $68,000 in sole-sourced government contracts, and had also once tweeted critically about Alberta’s provincial government when it watered down the province’s immunization plan last fall. 

The story implies that he’s been bought.  The accusation was amplified by Sylvain Charlebois, the so-called Food Professor, a conservative-leaning critic of the carbon tax, and by the conservative Western Standard.

“There were, like (400) economists that signed that letter, but (the CPC) specifically singled out (11),” says economist Mike Moffatt, who was also on the list. “I mean, it’s clear that they’re trying to silence people. That is highly, highly problematic. I don’t think (the involvement of CPC-aligned academics, or media) is collusion, or anything like that. But I think there’s just this cultural understanding on parts of the right that this is part of the playbook.”

Academics and other experts expect arguments, debates and criticism. They all make this clear. This is different.

“I’m certainly worried about it, because the (implication) of malfeasance is really hard to shake, right?” says Leach. “I’m more worried about when it’s the machinery of Parliament being used in this way; much more worried about it than when it’s, you know, the Food Professor.”

“The machinery, like, we’re going to call Mark Carney before the committee to try to figure out where he stands on these issues. (It raises the idea) of, it’s just not worth me doing this, because I’m going to end up under attack — not under a lens of scrutiny, that part’s fine — but under attack. I think that works out poorly for everybody.”

***

It’s not like politicians have never criticized experts, and disagreement over ideas is a part of having a public-facing profile, or trying to influence policy. But this is more than a fight over ideas. The Harper government was notorious for its disdain of the civil service, academia, and more. The current Conservative party is becoming more personal, even vicious, and the Sereda example was a clear escalation. Messages to several Conservatives last week — whether in or adjacent to the party, asking for an explanation on the strategy at play — were not returned. 

It’s almost reflexive. Moffatt, for example, is one of the leading housing experts in the country.

Moffatt describes himself as having worked with politicians and policymakers of “all political stripes.’’  

That includes serving in a number of roles with the Liberal party, including as an economics adviser to Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau from 2013 to 2015 and as policy director for Kate Graham’s unsuccessful Ontario Liberal leadership run in 2020.

He has a lot of sympathy for contrarian experts, because five years ago — when he was raising concerns about all the international students being brought to Canada without commensurate housing — he was one.

“I’m actually quite critical of many of the sort of pathways and assumptions we’ve gone down,” says Moffatt.

In February, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau noted in Parliament that Moffatt had called proposed Conservative housing policies “incredibly weak.” Poilievre, who has spent his career as an attack-dog politician, shot back that Trudeau “quotes the same failed Liberal academics who gave him the advice that helped him double the price (of housing) in the first place.”

Moffatt did not deal with housing policy creation until recently. But Poilievre saw him as opposition.

“I fear that this transparent campaign is going to be effective, because people don’t want to subject themselves to this,” says University of British Columbia economist Kevin Milligan, who is another of the 11 economists, and who once advised Poilievre on a private member’s bill, and who advised the Privy Council Office in 2020-21 as part of giving the PMO advice on the economic recovery from COVID. “You get attacked in this way, in such a personal and negative way, that it just really discourages people from participating in their community.”

Look, Donald Trump and COVID were clearly twin radicalizing events, especially on the right. And yes, the internet coarsens everything. And yes, the conservative movement has tried to harness anger and anti-institutional feelings for a long time now.

But maybe it’s simple, too.

“I’ve been doing this for nine years, and this started when Poilievre started,” says NDP MP Gord Johns, who sits on the health committee. “This is just all in the last eight months. I would say it’s escalated to a point like I’ve never seen anything like it.

“It shouldn’t be about if you don’t get the answer you want, or you feel you know you’re being challenged, that now you’re going to go after the person personally. If that’s what this is going to become, who’s going to want to be involved in politics? And is this how the country is going to be governed? People should be afraid. This is really dangerous.”

It’s easy to dismiss that kind of talk. But as Leach said, the machinery of Parliament is the next step, because this is likely Canada’s next government. In June, Conservative MP Michael Barrett introduced a private member’s bill that would introduce a mandatory minimum jail sentence of six months for perjury in a parliamentary committee, and up to a $50,000 fine for contempt of Parliament.

What we are left with is a party that wants to jail people who lie to Parliament accusing a doctor who didn’t lie of lying to Parliament. Sereda didn’t know that last week. She does now.

“They made me an enemy,” says Sereda. “That media release is a threat.

“And I don’t know how to defend myself without them coming after me.”

Andrea Sereda hasn’t been sleeping, and she has decided to take a leave from her work — from the work to which she has devoted her adult life — through September. She will keep worrying about what might come next.

Clarification — July 3, 2024

This column has been updated to clarify that Moms Stop the Harm is a network of Canadian families impacted by substance-use-related harms and deaths. In addition this article should have included that economist Mike Moffatt worked as economics adviser to Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau from 2013 to 2015 and as policy director for Kate Graham’s unsuccessful Ontario Liberal leadership run in 2020.