KINSELLA: Could end of Trudeau regime be hastened by price of bread?

Elections, of course.

Uprisings and revolutions, too. Resignations and assassinations. All of that.

But when regimes fall — when the uber-powerful lose power — it sometimes happens for the most mundane of reasons. Bread, for example.

In March of 1917, it was the price of bread — and other food basics — that doomed the once-unassailable Czar of Russia, Nicholas II, and ushered in the Soviet Union. That’s mainly what it took: the price of a loaf of bread.

Throughout February and March of 1917, strikes and protests paralyzed Petrograd.

“Bread, peace, freedom!” the peasants chanted, fed up with years of hunger and conflict and repression.

On March 11, the Czar ordered troops to fire on protestors, and dozens were killed — including children. The next day, however, the legendary Volinsky regiment was ordered to do likewise — and instead fired up into the air.

Within days, the Czar and his family would be detained, later to be executed.

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This writer remembers what one professor told us Carleton students, years ago.

“The Cossacks put down the Bolsheviks once. They put the Bolsheviks down twice. But when the Czar neglected to feed the Cossacks, the revolution succeeded on the third attempt!”

Canada isn’t Russia, and 2023 isn’t 1917, of course. But can you recall a time when Canadians have been discussing the price of food more than now? All over social media, from coast to coast, people are sharing worrying tales about the cost of ground beef, or some chicken breasts, or a head of lettuce. And shaking their heads.

So, a few days ago, Toronto CTV reporter Siobhan Morris famously tweeted a photo of a few chicken breasts being sold at Loblaw’s for $37.05. Thirty-seven dollars.

All that Morris tweeted, alongside her photo, were these words: “I beg your pardon.” And her tweet would go to be seen, or shared, 4.4 million times.

Could a single tweet about some chicken breasts start a revolution? Probably not. If Toronto can put up with the Maple Leafs, it can put up with a lot. It’ll take more than that.

But Justin Trudeau should take careful note, and heed the warning signs. Because big political graves, as I like to say, are dug with tiny shovels. The price of basic foodstuffs, for example.

People are getting fed up. Because they’re not getting fed like they expect to.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is no Tolstoy or Lenin, but — like those two Russian revolutionaries — he’s smart enough to know an opportunity when he sees one. Poilievre has largely dropped the convoy kooks, and the WEF conspiracy lunacy, and the reckless cryptocurrency advocacy.

And he has zeroed in, laser-like, on the price of basics. Like bread.

For months, in fact, Poilievre has hammered away at the price of basics, even when he knows Justin Trudeau can’t fairly be blamed for all of it. Right around the time the chicken breast tweet went viral, Poilievre issued a media statement declaring that “prices for food rose at the fastest pace in 40 years — proving life is getting harder for Canadians trying to make ends meet.”

The cause? The Trudeau government, he says.

“They still don’t have a plan to fix inflation,” Poilievre wrote.

No single government can “fix” a global inflationary crisis, of course. If they could, they would’ve done so long before now.

But politics isn’t about logic, it’s about emotion. Important political choices are made with one’s gut, not with one’s intellect. Always.

As with crime and other gut level issues, Canadians are more preoccupied with the rising cost of living than any other issue. It cuts across regions, genders, ages, and education levels. It is the one thing that has put us all in a very bad mood, indeed.

Poilievre may not be particularly likable, but he is particularly astute about gut-level politics. He doesn’t know any other way to play the game, in fact. He’s good at taking complex issues — like inflation — and making them simple and understandable.

His catchphrase, these days, is “Justinflation.” It’s a bit of bumpersticker politics, yes, and it is as puerile as it is unfair. But it works. And it places all the blame solely at the feet of one Justin Trudeau — who we all know has never had to worry about a mortgage payment, or a heating bill, or a trip to the grocery store. Ever.

The Russians Czar Nicholas II did not deliberately cause bellies to go empty in Russia, about 100 years ago. He knew that hunger was not his ally. Of course.

But what ended his rule, and ended the monarchy in Russia, was indifference to the everyday struggles of everyday people. Indifference was what put a bullet in his skull late one July night in 1918. Indifference.

Justin Trudeau, who shrugs about balancing budgets and directs contracts to those who give contracts to his family, doesn’t look all that interested in the price of chicken or beef or bread these days. It looks like it bores him. And, in truth, he probably couldn’t find his way around a grocery store with a GPS and a good map.

So, could the end of the Trudeau regime be hastened by something as mundane as the price of bread?

Czar Nicholas II probably didn’t think it was a big deal, either.

Until it was too late.