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Ottawa
For the past fortnight, Canada’s parliament has been empty. When Justin Trudeau resigned as Liberal leader, he announced a prorogation so his party could focus on a two-month succession battle rather than the business of governing. Excited Tories see the empty assembly as symbolic of the void in national leadership. They are confident their party will soon fill it.
If they do soon manage to end a decade of Liberal rule, it will chiefly be thanks to Pierre Poilievre, who has been Conservative leader since 2022. There are few party leaders who excite British Conservatives more: both Tory leaders Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick have visited Canada to try to learn from his playbook. I’ve spent a week talking to his colleagues and allies to find out how he has led his party from isolation to the brink of power.
Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick have visited Canada to try to learn from his playbook
Poilievre is self-consciously an outsider. He was adopted by two schoolteachers and his family was forced to sell their home because of rocketing interest rates under the premiership of Trudeau’s father, Pierre. His adolescent views were shaped by “western alienation” — a term in Canadian politics for the sense that the country’s western provinces have been exploited or ignored by the political elite in Ottawa. The feeling found political expression in the right-wing insurgent Reform Party which challenged, destroyed and eventually merged with the Progressive Conservatives (PCs) in 2003 to become the Conservative Party of Canada. Margaret Thatcher once accused Brian Mulroney, the PC leader, of putting “too much emphasis on the adjective and not enough on the noun.” Poilievre shared her view and joined Reform as a teenager.
He soon began bonding with other conservative rising stars including Jenni Byrne, now his aide; Jason Kenney, who became Alberta premier from 2019 to 2022; Hamish Marshall, now a strategist; and Andrew Scheer, now a member of parliament. He began work in parliament aged twenty and he was elected a member in 2004 at just twenty-five. His ascent reflects the power shift in Canadian conservatism: just as western Canada’s influence has grown at the expense of the east, so too have Reformers eclipsed the old PCs.
Poilievre mulled a bid for the leadership in early 2020 but decided against it. It was a wise move: the pandemic split the Tories on Covid restrictions. Distance allowed him to become a grassroots hero, denouncing the excesses of the Trudeau government on vaccine mandates and state spending. By 2022 — after another Tory election defeat — he was perfectly placed to succeed Erin O’Toole as leader, pledging to defund the national broadcaster and fire the central bank’s governor. He signed up 300,000 members and won 70 percent of the vote.
“The base of the party is considerably more conservative than the base of the British Conservative Party so the internal pressures on him are very different,” says Marshall. “You could never do something like a David Cameron-style A-list in Canada because the membership would never stand for that.” In Poilievre’s first year as leader, the Tories raised a record $25 million from 200,000 small donors.
Poilievre’s mantra is “to talk about issues which matter to 90 percent of Canadians, 90 percent of the time.” This allows him to focus on the topics on which elections are decided, without disavowing his past positions. His stance against vaccine mandates during the pandemic has killed any threat from smaller right-wing parties. He speaks little about social issues or record migration, assured that voters know his thoughts on such matters. He used to talk about making Canada “the crypto capital of the world.” Now, he campaigns relentlessly on crime, homes and Trudeau’s carbon tax. His team have boiled countless hours of policy work into four slogans, based on a “verb the noun” formula: “Axe the tax.” “Build the homes.” “Fix the budget.” “Stop the crime.”
His messaging has brought new voters to the party. “The Liberals are highly dependent on the boomer class,” says Mitch Heimpel, an ex-Tory strategist. “The Tories are doing better among younger voters than they ever have.” Poilievre regularly praises younger voters’ work ethic, noting how many have multiple jobs yet still can’t buy a home. He blames bureaucratic “gatekeepers” and promises to withhold federal funds from the (mostly Liberal) cities not building enough houses.
Poilievre’s strategy is as much about the medium as it is the message. He mostly ignores the moribund Ottawa press, preferring to talk to his audience via his social channels. His “pugilistic” style works “very well with the algorithms,” notes O’Toole. One clip of Poilievre dismantling a journalist’s questions in an orchard while nonchalantly munching on an apple quickly went viral and became, in the words of biographer Andrew Lawton, the “crunch heard around the world.”
Jeff Ballingall — whose company Mobilize Media worked on Poilievre’s leadership campaign among others — says his ex-client is pushing at an open door. Political content, he says, has seen a threefold increase since Facebook’s algorithm change two weeks ago. Poilievre’s YouTube channel has grown from jokey clips about Trudeau to sophisticated mini-documentaries about the housing crisis. He loves coining phrases such as “Justinflation” and “vaccine vendetta.” Marshall admires his ability to “speak directly”: “You know who talks of ‘productivity’? Economists and friends of economists.” His campaign emails are often bombastic, mocking the latest edict of the Trudeau regime. “We will NOT eat bugs!” screamed the subject line of one, responding to a $9 million federal loan being given to an “edible bug factory.”
In Poilievre’s world, the online and offline mix seamlessly. Last year, he held more than 600 events. Meet-and-greets are filmed and then clipped to show the “cost of Trudeau” firsthand: an encounter with a baker produces a video about inflation’s impact on the price of flour. Hearing such stories allows Poilievre to refine his messaging. He sometimes enlivens policy meetings with proposals from the public: one idea (not adopted) was to abandon the prime minister’s official residence. Insiders report that he often feels affected by these encounters. “Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” one says.
His supporters say his style is backed by substance. Poilievre was one of the first to warn that Covid spending would trigger inflation. Liberals mocked him in the Commons, claiming that the real threat was deflation. “He was calling inflation long before even the private sector was concerned with it,” says Kenney. “Not by luck or happenstance, but because he had developed enough knowledge about monetary policy.”
Staff talk of his attention to detail. David Murray, his former head of policy, tells me that colleagues were willing to work “immeasurable hours” for a boss whose work ethic is “unmatched.” He prepares meticulously for Wednesday’s Question Period (Canada’s version of Britain’s PMQs) and loves jousting against his bitter rival Trudeau.
Canada needs to hold an election by October at the latest and the Liberals face an existential threat. The favorites for the next leader are Chrystia Freeland, Trudeau’s longtime finance minister, or Mark Carney, the former Bank of England governor. Neither Liberal appears able to overturn a twenty-point deficit in the polls. Tories claim that while Poilievre challenges orthodoxies, Carney only serves to reinforce them. In recent weeks, Carney’s Net-Zero Banking Alliance of financial institutions has collapsed unceremoniously. Kenney recalls Carney regaling him at length in Threadneedle Street about it: “I must confess to a certain degree of schadenfreude, watching all that fall down right around him.”
With victory looking likely, some Tories are turning their minds to office. Polls suggest they could win 226 of the 338 seats in the Commons, a record for the center-right. This would mean Poilievre wouldn’t have to follow the incrementalism of previous minority Conservative governments: much of his agenda would be voted on in his first 100 days, while his opponents are in disarray. Hostility may well come from the recalcitrant Senate and reinvigorated Quebec nationalists — especially if the latter beat the Liberals into second place. Others fear civil service obstinacy from deputy ministers.
His main challenge, though, could be external. Donald Trump — that other great star in the conservative firmament — is threatening 25 percent tariffs on Canada. The proposition has unnerved the entire political class. Liberals often lump the two right-wingers together. “I call him a ‘mini-Trump,’ a ‘wannabe-Trump,’” remarks veteran MP Judy Sgro. Yet there are key differences between the pair. One is a president; the other a parliamentarian. Trump enjoys celebrity and ceremony; Poilievre likes neither. The American acts from impulse; the Canadian prefers a cold, dispassionate approach. If Poilievre wins, how he navigates this relationship will be crucial.
In Ottawa, a mood of change is in the air. Four decades after Trudeau’s father remade the nation in his image, his son’s nemesis has the chance to remake it.
