The chants erupt as Canada’s Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre takes the podium.
“Common sense! Common sense!” yells the audience gathered at a union headquarters north of Toronto, one of the final campaign events before Canada’s April 28 federal elections.
That’s exactly how the Conservatives hope to position themselves: as the obvious choice to lead a country buffeted by domestic problems like a cost-of-living crisis, and by international ones like the global trade war and battle of sovereignty that it’s locked in with Donald Trump’s America.
Why We Wrote This
Once seen as a lock to be Canada’s next prime minister, Pierre Poilievre is now trailing in Canada’s federal elections. His challenge in the last days of the race: to convince Canadians that conservatism has the solution to deal with Donald Trump.
But Mr. Trump’s actions have put in a tricky spot Mr. Poilievre, a lifelong politician who boasts that his ideas have not wavered since he was a teen, when he became a young conservative. His divisive political performance, which has made him wildly popular among his base, has become unpalatable to the broader Canadian public.
Once nearly 25 percentage points ahead and expected to win in a landslide, the Conservatives are now seen as long shots, as they trail the ruling Liberal Party in electoral districts across the country. They are now in a race to show that Canadian conservatism is the solution to the Trump problem, rather than part of it.
“Part of why we’re so susceptible to Trump aggressions, and why we feel so weak and disempowered in that context, is that our country is weak. We’re not entirely self-sufficient; we can’t even defend ourselves,” says Ginny Roth, communications director for Mr. Poilievre’s 2022 Conservative leadership bid. “This is not to justify Trump’s aggressions … but the correct response to that is to strengthen our country from within.”
A conservative “constituency guy”
That’s what Mr. Poilievre has been promising all along.
The Conservative leader grew up in western Canada. Adopted, he was raised by two schoolteachers in Calgary, Alberta, and has said his first political ideas were shaped at age 14 after reading Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom.” He joined conservative clubs in high school and university, and began working in politics right after he graduated, first in Alberta and then in Ottawa, Ontario.
Lisa MacLeod, a former Conservative lawmaker in Ontario, worked with Mr. Poilievre when he was a young political aspirant in Ottawa – so young his hair sported frosted tips, she remembers. He was elected in 2004 to the House of Commons at age 25, the youngest to serve in Parliament, and he quickly gained a reputation for his confrontational partisanship.
But Ms. MacLeod says that belies his deep empathy for his voters. She calls him the consummate “constituency guy,” and she says it’s more than just politics. She sees it in him as a father with a child with special needs; she sees it in him as a friend who has called her often since she went public with health challenges.
That’s not the way he has sounded on the Parliament floor, however. He once called Canada’s prior Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau, a “wacko prime minister.”
Mr. Poilievre rose to national prominence during the waning of the pandemic, as Canadian personal finances were decimated. He gained influence by supporting the “Freedom Convoy,” a trucker protest in Canada that occupied Ottawa for weeks in early 2022, opposing vaccine mandates.
Today as he promises lower taxes, smaller government, stronger borders, and tougher punishment for crime – an end to “woke nonsense,” per one of his most popular one-liners criticizing the Liberals – he says his ideas have never bent to fit the political moment. That’s whether Mr. Trump is in office or not.
“When I look back at everything I’ve done for my entire political career to the time I was a teenager … I’ve been saying precisely the same thing the entire time,” he told right-wing personality Jordan Peterson in a January podcast.
CBC News Poll Tracker
|
Jacob Turcotte/Staff
Trumped by Trump?
But the political plates of Canada have shifted beneath him.
In January, when Mr. Trudeau, long Mr. Poilievre’s main target, announced he was stepping down after nine years in office, Mr. Trump was assuming his second term and threatening to annex Canada. Ever since, new Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney, a former central banker, has surged on an emotive message – “Elbows up,” a hockey reference – against the United States.
Like citizens across many Western countries, Canadians have rallied around their incumbents in the face of Mr. Trump. In Canada that means the Liberals now have a clear 4-point lead according to the latest polls, which would have been unthinkable three months ago.
It has forced Mr. Poilievre, whose populist slogans argue that Canada is “broken,” into an “offside position,” says Tim Powers, chair of Summa Strategies, a Canadian public affairs consulting firm. Suddenly Mr. Poilievre, the performative career politician, has a jittery Canada on edge.
While Liberals have dubbed Mr. Poilievre “Maple Syrup MAGA,” Canadian conservatism generally is far less populist and divisive than its American counterpart. Canadians are less religious and socially conservative. Government health care is supported by all parties. Canadian multiculturalism is a sacred cow – Mr. Poilievre’s wife, Anaida Poilievre, was born in Venezuela – and marks key electoral battlegrounds.
“There’s no way to be a white nativist conservative and win nationally in Canada,” says Jim Farney, a professor at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan.
Still, Mr. Poilievre has risen within his party because he’s moved it further right. His base is “not pro-annexation,” says Dr. Farney, referring to Mr. Trump’s repeated claim that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state. But Mr. Poilievre’s supporters would “probably think the DOGE efforts are OK, that universities are full of ‘woke’ people who need to be pulled back and restrained,” the professor adds.
The Conservatives have lost support among more moderate voters, particularly those who planned to vote for the leftist New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois.
As Mr. Powers puts it, “I think at heart, Canadians are more old-school conservatives. They are pragmatic and rule-based, a little averse to change. And at the moment, that kind of works for a guy who wears a blue suit and was a global banker.”
Christopher Katsarov/Reuters
Supporters with pocketbook issues
That doesn’t work for the crowd at Mr. Poilievre’s latest rally in Vaughan.
The setting at the Laborers’ International Union of North America reinforces one of Mr. Poilievre’s winning slogans: “Boots, not suits.”
The male, working-class vote in Canada is key for the Conservative leader, who has excelled at nostalgia that taps a deep frustration over the cost of living, especially for housing, here.
“We work so hard, and I still can’t buy my own home,” says Nate Ferguson, a construction worker and unionist on the sidelines of the rally. “It’s sad, man.”
“We’re in our 20s, but how can we have kids?” asks his girlfriend, Breana Coultis. “Not everyone’s getting free handouts from rich parents.”
They don’t believe Canada should be the 51st state, but it’s also not the issue that surfaces as their top concerns.
Ms. Roth, Mr. Poilievre’s former communications director, says she finds the “Trump effect” in Canada divided along age and class lines. Those who are wealthier and more settled “are almost obsessed with it,” she says. Those who are younger, who don’t own a home, or who don’t have job that pays enough to get into the market or start a family, see it as secondary to pocketbook issues. “They’re more concerned with the fact that they can’t afford to fill their car with gas or pay the rent.”
Mr. Poilievre’s strongest offensive move has been to paint Mr. Carney as a continuation of Mr. Trudeau’s government, a tenure that saw filling the car with gas and paying the rent get a lot harder for Canadians. It’s what Mr. Poilievre has dubbed, with his flair for alliteration, the “lost Liberal decade.”
