Many voters may be glad to see him treat journalists with disdain — that is for them to decide — but our job is to test him and study his character before he takes over the country, and we should not shrink from the task even if it means taking some browbeatings. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre speaks during a press conference at the Shaarei Shomayim Congregation in Toronto on Thursday Nov. 23, 2023.
(Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press) last month about Pierre Poilievre’s apple-chomping debate with an overmatched reporter. Poilievre used me as a rhetorical device, asking Proudfoot if I could be blamed for death threats he received a decade ago while I was covering his controversial changes to the Elections Act, back when he was Stephen Harper’s minister of democratic reform. Proudfoot had asked him if he was worried about a sorcerer’s apprentice effect — the risk that the intensity of his rhetoric might incite supporters to go too far. He is not worried about that. He used me as an example of how we shouldn’t blame people in the public square for the hateful reaction of others