The Populist Vying to Lead Canada and End a Decade of Liberalism
Pierre Poilievre rode a wave of discontent with Covid-19 policies, putting him on the cusp of becoming prime minister.
In early 2022, much of Canada’s political establishment lined up to blast the Freedom Convoys—lines of truckers who blocked access to this country’s capital to protest Covid-19 vaccine mandates. But not Pierre Poilievre.
The opposition Conservative Party lawmaker embraced the truckers like no other mainstream Canadian politician. He used their objections to lockdowns, vaccines and mask mandates to create the narrative that an elitist and condescending prime minister, Justin Trudeau, had lost touch—a charge that stuck to the prime minister until he said Monday he would resign.
Poilievre, 45, rode a growing tide of public discontent with Trudeau to win the Conservative Party leadership later in 2022 and is poised to become Canada’s next prime minister in an eventual election. Under Poilievre, the Conservative Party leads Trudeau’s Liberal Party by 29 percentage points in a recent poll.
Under Canadian law, an election must be held no later than October.
With Trudeau stepping aside, Poilievre will have to prove that he is more than just an anti-Trudeau candidate and that his pugilistic brand of politics—relatively alien to Canada until now—can win over voters in a matchup with a different leader.
Nicknamed “Skippy,” a moniker he says he detests, Poilievre is known in Parliament for having sharp elbows, a pointed speaking style and a lack of respect for Ottawa’s political norms. He boasts an intense workout regimen that involves flipping a 500-pound tractor tire in a field and sprinting uphill while dragging a sled that carries a 75-pound weight.
In contrast to the sunny Trudeau, Poilievre can display a bristly personality. In a 2023 interview he challenged a newspaper reporter’s questions while munching on an apple, an exchange that went viral with supporters but that some political commenters say might backfire with moderate voters.
According to the Angus Reid polling firm, 55% of Canadians held an unfavorable view of Poilievre, compared with 34% who viewed him favorably. That was still better than Trudeau, whose unfavorable numbers hit 74% at the end of December, compared with 22% who held a favorable view of the departing prime minister.
“It is the fatigue factor of Justin Trudeau that outweighs concerns about Poilievre,” said Shachi Kurl, president of Angus Reid.
Poilievre is a career politician who grew up in the traditionally Conservative province of Alberta as the adopted son of schoolteachers. He attended antiabortion rallies with his mother, who was active in Conservative circles. In college, he was president of the campus Conservative club and took his first job in Ottawa as a political staffer for a Conservative politician.
He was first elected to Canada’s Parliament in 2004, unseating a former Liberal defense minister in an upset victory. He was an eager and aggressive young member of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, which led Canada from 2006 to 2015. It was then that lawmakers began calling him “Skippy.”
Poilievre “was willing to do what was needed to get things done,” said Garry Keller, a senior official in Harper’s government.
As opposition leader, Poilievre has skillfully played a foil to Trudeau. His main argument is that a decade of Trudeau’s policies has broken Canada. He has promised to cut taxes, reduce climate-change regulations, toughen law enforcement and boost Canada’s energy industry.
In an interview with Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist-turned-Conservative- media-commentator, Poilievre said his polling success comes down to voters rejecting “horrendous, utopian wokeism,” and a deteriorating economy that has left households paying about 20% more for goods and services than before the pandemic.
Canada’s per capita gross domestic product—which analysts argue is a good gauge of living standards—has fallen in eight of the past nine quarters. That leaves the economy at the same level as a decade ago.
“People are saying, ‘Finally, there’s someone who’s focused on letting me take back control of my own life and create a great future for my family,’” Poilievre told Peterson.
Trudeau, at his news conference Monday, warned that Poilievre proposed a limited, unambitious policy agenda.
“Stopping the fight against climate change doesn’t make sense. Backing off on the values and strength and diversity that Canada has always worked to pull itself together on is not the right path for the country,” Trudeau said. “We need an ambitious, optimistic view of the future, and Pierre Poilievre is not offering that.”
While Poilievre demolishes Trudeau in the polls, he holds a narrower lead over Chrystia Freeland, a former deputy prime minister and finance minister whose resignation ultimately spelled Trudeau’s end and who is widely expected to run to replace Trudeau in a coming Liberal Party leadership campaign.
Another potential challenger for the leadership, Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada, polls at almost the same low levels as Trudeau.
Poilievre has adopted moderate stances on social issues, labeling himself pro-choice, and angering some social conservatives by pledging to never regulate abortion. He has also backed same-sex marriage. His parents separated when Poilievre was 12 and soon after his adoptive father came out as gay.
He stands out more for an economic populism that blends free-market policies with disdain for big Canadian business, hewing to a path taken by many of the right-wing populists who have won power around the world. Poilievre said he would reduce regulation and support the oil-and-gas industry, a sector that the Liberal government often targeted with policies aimed at curbing carbon emissions.
For all that, he has warned Canada’s business lobby that he would end “corporate welfare.” He also said, in 2022 when vying for the Conservative Party leadership, that he would fire Tiff Macklem, the Bank of Canada’s governor, for letting inflation rise and helping finance Trudeau’s deficit spending through extraordinary bond purchases, also known as quantitative easing. Poilievre hasn’t repeated that pledge in over a year.
Since he has become leader of the Conservative Party, Poilievre has tried to shed his former image as a somewhat bookish policy nerd. He has replaced his glasses with contact lenses, and outside of Parliament has shed button-downs in favor of T-shirts.
He has kept his fighter’s style. In a video statement released after Trudeau’s resignation announcement, Poilievre said his opponent’s departure wouldn’t change anything because the government was still run by Liberal politicians who supported all of Trudeau’s policies. The Liberals shed their leader to protect themselves, he claimed.
“They want to protect their pensions and paycheck by sweeping their hated leader under the rug months before an election to trick you and do it all over again,” he said.
“Everything’s out of control, and now the government’s out of control. This cannot go on.”
Write to Vipal Monga at vipal.monga@wsj.com and Paul Vieira at Paul.Vieira@wsj.como
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