After Stephen Harper won a majority government in Canada’s 2011 federal election, a widely discussed book by the columnist John Ibbitson and pollster Darrell Bricker advanced a bold thesis about the future landscape of Canadian politics. As its title suggested, 2013’s The Big Shift predicted not only another Harper victory but the structural transformation of culture and governance in conservatism’s favour. They suggested that more liberal and left-leaning metropoles such as Toronto and Montreal, long established as the epicentres of politics and finance, would increasingly be overshadowed by the growing power and influence of western Canada and suburban Ontario – both more conservative, and each a pillar of Harper’s 2011 majority.
But in 2015, Justin Trudeau secured a huge election win, re-establishing the electoral dominance that the Liberal Party maintained through much of the 20th century in Canada. (That very same year, the province Alberta – birthplace of modern right-wing Canadian politics – also threw out its hegemonic conservative dynasty and elected the centre-left New Democratic Party to a majority government.) In the years since, however, the Conservatives have steadily eroded Liberal support, winning the national popular vote (though fewer seats) in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. Under the leadership of veteran Ottawa-area MP Pierre Poilievre, who was chosen by a whopping margin at the party’s 2022 convention, the Conservatives have seemed poised for a victory of generation-defining proportions.
Buoyed by Trudeau’s personal unpopularity, Canada’s ongoing cost-of-living crisis, and Poilievre’s decidedly belligerent political style, the Conservatives have for the past two years enjoyed a lead in the polls so stable and comfortable that the upcoming snap election – until very recently – looked like a foregone conclusion. Last summer, the Conservatives scored an unprecedented by-election win in downtown Toronto, spurring cabinet resignations and inspiring many long-time Trudeau loyalists to retire from parliament altogether.
Among other things, Poilievre’s leadership has allowed Canada’s Conservatives to glimpse the intoxicating prospect of electoral success without the vexations of political or ideological compromise. Unlike his party leader predecessors Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole, Poilievre cut a straightforwardly ideological path to the top job and has maintained this right-wing posture ever since. He successfully captured much of the energy generated by the so-called Freedom Convoy. He has refused to back down on highly controversial and unpopular positions such as defunding Canada’s public broadcaster, CBC, and has planted his flag firmly on the Trump-adjacent right. He is widely branded a “populist”, though in Canada the label is most applicable in an aesthetic sense.
Substantively speaking, very little of what Poilievre represents sits outside the long-standing orthodoxies of Canada’s conservative movement. At the level of style, however, he has traded the wishy-washy rhetoric of politicians like Scheer and O’Toole for an aggressive and confrontational tone that lambasts “elites”, and is much more about feeding Jordan Peterson fans red meat than securing broad political respectability. While leaving much about the specifics of his programme blank, Poilievre has gained ground by acknowledging the economic and social pain wrought by Canada’s ongoing cost-of-living crisis. In the House of Commons, he regularly raises issues such as the soaring price of housing, food and other essentials – adding to the Conservatives’ potential coalition a swathe of younger voters not traditionally in play, and putting the party on the precipice of only its second majority government.
In the last two months, however, everything has changed. With Trudeau’s January resignation – and replacement by the former central banker Mark Carney – Poilievre’s Conservatives have been deprived of both an unpopular opponent and the would-be chief antagonist of their campaign narrative. By the time he announced the April federal election on 23 March, Carney’s calmly managerial pitch had found wide appeal amid the country’s rapidly shifting political sands. And thanks to Donald Trump’s tariff threats and musings about Canada’s economic annexation, a cost-of-living election will instead be fought on the less friendly terrains of trade policy and national unity.
Through most of the 20th century, issues related to the latter overwhelmingly belonged to the Liberals: the traditional party of federalism, and the dominant electoral force in both the power centres of Quebec and urban Ontario. Even putting aside this history, rally-around-the-flag moments typically benefit incumbents and, thanks in significant part to the pronounced anti-Trump sentiment prevailing among older voters, the Conservative polling lead has all but evaporated. Sensing a change in the political air, Poilievre has abruptly pivoted to a more nationalist message – ironically conveyed by the Trump-derivative slogan “Canada first” – with mixed results thus far.
In effect, Poilievre now faces the same strategic dilemma that arguably doomed his predecessors. Notwithstanding the inroads that US-style right-wing politics have undeniably made, they remain less than appealing to much of the Canadian electorate, and on issues like gun control and LGBTQ rights, the Conservatives have often found themselves at a disadvantage. With the spectre of the US president looming over the political landscape, however, they must confront the challenge of managing his relative popularity with their own base while appealing to the anti-Trump sentiment gripping the whole country. Similarly, Poilievre’s own polarising style may prove more of a liability than an asset in the weeks ahead.
Born from the revolt of Republican-inspired Western conservatives against the so-called Red Tories of central and eastern Canada, the Conservative Party emerged from its founding 2003 convention a visibly more right wing and Americanised project than the defunct party it partly absorbed. In the seven elections since then, it secured its one and only majority government under the leadership of Stephen Harper. Thanks, ironically, to a Republican president, Pierre Poilievre’s path to a second suddenly looks a whole lot less assured.
[See also: Mark Carney can’t save Canada]
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