'Gutless executives': Canada's CEOs are jolted by Trudeau's surging rival

financialpost.com:

The crowd gathered on the 54th floor of TD Bank Tower, an imposing glass-and-steel edifice in Toronto’s financial district, was a who’s who of the Canadian business elite. There were CEOs and tech moguls and bankers who had paid as much as $1,725 each for a chance to hear from Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Poilievre isn’t your traditional Conservative leader or, for that matter, your typical Canadian. He’s brash and confrontational, even with his supporters in the C-suite. Weeks before this June fundraiser on Bay Street, he publicly ripped into CEOs in an opinion piece for failing to push back against the environmental policies of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the man he appears poised to defeat at the polls next year. “Gutless executives,” he’d written.

So when he asked the group for questions, it soon got tense.

Blake Hutcheson, the chief executive of a powerful Ontario pension fund, stepped forward, clutching the newspaper column, and launched into Poilievre for attacking the very people who were trying to help him get elected. It was wrong, Hutcheson suggested. “He told Pierre he wasn’t being polite,” said Jim Balsillie, the former co-CEO of BlackBerry Ltd., who witnessed the exchange.

Poilievre stood his ground and made it clear that he’s tired of Canadian politeness. If you agree with me, he said, go out and say publicly what you tell me in private — that you hate Trudeau’s policies.

The scene that evening, described to Bloomberg News by several people who attended the Conservative Party-hosted event, underscores the harder edge Poilievre is bringing to Canadian politics as he moves closer to gaining power.

The longtime politician has refashioned the Conservatives, who have