Pierre Poilievre has long known what he would do if elected Canada’s Prime Minister.
As a 20-year-old in 1999, he won a $10,000 prize for an essay on the topic of “As Prime Minister I would . . . ” in which he warned that “Canadian political institutions have caused our democracy to wither”, and argued for personal freedoms and wholesale tax reform.
A quarter of a century later Poilievre is closer to putting that populist vision into action after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced plans to leave office after nearly a decade in power.
“We’ll cap spending, axe taxes, reward work, build homes, uphold family, stop crime, secure borders, rearm our forces, restore our freedom and put Canada First,” the Conservative party leader said after Trudeau’s resignation speech on Monday.
While there are still several months to go before an election will take place, the Conservative leader has a comfortable 27 per cent lead in the polls, leaving him in a strong position ahead of a spring campaign.
His views have also caught the attention of president-elect Donald Trump’s supporters south of the border in the US.
Bill Ackman, the Trump-backing billionaire hedge fund manager in December posted on X that Poilievre should be the next prime minister, “the sooner the better”.
Like Trump, Poilievre has embraced Conservative male podcasters, including Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, who amplify his “common sense” message to millions of listeners around the world.
X owner and billionaire Elon Musk, who repeatedly mocks Trudeau, regularly tweets his support for Poilievre, while Joe Rogan, the world’s most popular podcast host, said last year the opposition leader “makes so much more sense”.
In a recent podcast interview, Poilievre told Peterson that “the problem we’ve had in this country, and all the countries affected by this horrendous, utopian wokeism, is that it has been focused on the grandiosity of the leadership . . . and not the things that are grand and great about the common people”.
Poilievre won the Conservative leadership in 2022 after years as a minister in former prime minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, which was in power from 2006 to 2015.
He has united the party and moved it further to the right, promising to reverse the progressive liberal agenda of the Trudeau government. He is fond of pithy pledges to “axe the tax” — or ditch a controversial carbon levy — and “jail, not bail” — imposing tougher sentences for criminals. He wants to defund the CBC, the publicly funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Like Trump to the south, Poilievre believes energy — both renewable and fossil fuels — can create jobs and rescue the economy. But he also argues Canada’s abundance of oil is “underpriced’ and underulitilised in geopolitics because there is only one pipeline that does not head straight to the US.
Trump should approve the controversial Keystone XL, now mothballed, that could pump nearly 800,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta’s oil sands region, he said.
Canadians’ frustration with the Trudeau government over their stagnating economy has offered a rich seam to exploit. Inflation soared to 7 per cent in 2022 — although it has now returned to the bank of Canada’s 2 per cent range — and unemployment is about 7 per cent.
The country would be in recession if not for population growth through immigration policies that Trudeau was forced to reverse after a public backlash.
In March 2024, there were more than 2mn visits to food banks in Canada — the highest number in history — a 90 per cent increase compared with 2019, according to the NGO Food Banks Canada.
Dan Nowlan, a former senior aide in the Harper government, said Poilievre had excelled at connecting with Canadians who are feeling worse off.
“What Poilievre says resonates. He talks like he’s been in a hockey rink. He comes across as a normal person. Trudeau is from another universe that Canadians just don’t identify with,” he said.
This difference was seen in early 2022 when Trudeau and his government invoked unprecedented emergency powers to crack down on so-called “Freedom Convoys” protesting against mandatory pandemic measures such as vaccines.
Poilievre seized the opportunity to support the protesters and criticise the government as elitist and out of touch with ordinary Canadians.
His plain speaking image is bolstered by his background. Unlike Trudeau, who comes from a Canadian political dynasty (his father Pierre served two terms as prime minister from 1968 to 1979, and 1980-84), Poilievre was adopted by two schoolteachers from a French speaking minority in the western province of Alberta.
Ginny Roth, who ran Poilievre’s leadership campaign communications strategy, said he is “fearless” and uses “straight talk, cutting past the bullshit” that Canadians crave.
“He focused on inflation before anyone else, started fighting the Nimbys before anyone else, and realised the carbon tax wasn’t a settled debate, all big winner issues for him,” she said.
But comparisons with Trump’s Maga movement only go so far. Poilievre supports immigration and multiculturalism and claims to be against corporate interests. He argues his agenda is not extreme but a response to Trudeau’s “radical extreme socialist policies” that divided and broke the country.
He has also distanced himself from Trump since the president-elect said the US should annex Canada.
“Canada will never be the 51st state. Period,” Poilievre said on Tuesday.
And while Poilievre is ahead in the polls and is predicted to be the winner in the next election, he does not inspire the same enthusiasm as Trump.
“There is no Poilievre mania in Canada,” said David Coletto, chief executive of Abacus Data. “Young men are Poilievre’s number 1 fan base. Hence why the interview with Jordan Peterson,” he said.
“He’s the only federal leader which more people like than dislike.”