It is believed that there will be many confrontations between Pierre Poilievre as leader of the opposition and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. But there was one mutual sentence between the two on Thursday afternoon – one word, really – that could define the next period of Canadian politics. Trudeau said, at the end of his fifth and final response to Poilievre: "On this side of the aisle, we will continue to focus on helping Canadians on the ground." It is too early to say whether this is the line Trudeau immediately came up with or a message the Liberals expect to repeat in the coming months, but the next three years may raise a significant debate about who has the "real" solutions for Canada. The attention given to the exchange of responses between the two parties on Thursday was not unjustified as it resembles previous confrontations, for example, between Stéphane Dion and Stephen Harper, or Andrew Scheer and Trudeau. Poilievre and Trudeau will see each other several times as many issues are expected to arise before the next election. However, there was much to chew on in the ten minutes shared by the Prime Minister and the new loyal opposition leader on Thursday.

Poilievre's opening maneuver was to mock the fact that Trudeau was out of the country on Tuesday and Wednesday, as disciplining the Prime Minister for attending the Queen’s funeral and the UN General Assembly might seem strange—unless such trips were banned under a Poilievre government, as is the case with World Economic Forum meetings—but it is a sign of the level of scrutiny Poilievre intends to apply to Trudeau. For his part, Trudeau managed to get through only two and a half answers before reminding the House of Commons how the new Conservative leader positioned cryptocurrencies as a way to "escape from inflation"—and how much Poilievre's listeners might lose after the crypto market collapse this spring. Poilievre had clearly stopped talking about Bitcoin and the like since the market turmoil, as his main focus last week was on other things, such as employment insurance, Canadian pension plan premiums, and the federal carbon tax. Poilievre already said he would eliminate the carbon price and is now calling on the government to cancel the planned increase in employment insurance payments and pension plan premiums.