As of Wednesday January 8, 2025, all signals seem to be converging towards this forecast: Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party, should become the future Canadian Prime Minister by the end of 2025. While Justin Trudeau announced this Monday his resignation after nine years in power and a low popularity rating, the general elections which must be held next October at the latest should prove extremely difficult for the Canadian Liberal Party. And if politics is never short on surprises, the twenty point lead that Pierre Poilievre has in the polls should allow him to access the position he has coveted so much for several years.
Born in 1979 in Calgary, the now 45-year-old first went into consulting, then communications in public relations. He becomes the youngest elected official in the Canadian House of Commons, at only 25 years old. He quickly earned the nickname “pitbull”, due to his particularly aggressive style towards his political opponents.
If he was a minister in the Canadian federal government between 2013 and 2015, under the mandate of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, it is especially from 2022 that Pierre Poilievre begins to take on national importance. Candidate to lead the Conservative Party, he stands out for his sharp style. And in particular by a controversial communication stunt: showing assertive support for the Freedom Convoy, this protest movement in early 2022 against the Covid-19 vaccination obligation and the health measures which blocked the capital Ottawa for more than a year. month. Enough to cause him certain tensions in his own camp, faced with the assumed resumption of conspiracy theories.
His entire campaign is made up of little sentences and shocking proposals to lift Canada up. To fight against “Justinflation”, caused by Justin Trudeau, he notably wants to fire the governor of the Bank of Canada, whom he accuses of being responsible for the rise in prices in the country. Conversely, proposing to invest fully in cryptocurrencies. A style that worked, since he was largely elected leader of the party with more than 68% of the votes.
“A horrible utopian wokism”
This new leading role did not prevent Pierre Poilievre from maintaining his bulldozer style, which had even earned him to be excluded from the Canadian Parliament for one day in the spring of 2024 after calling Prime Minister Trudeau “crazy” and a “extremist”. But is that enough to consider him a Canadian-style Donald Trump? The leader of the Canadian Conservative Party shares some populist rhetoric with the future American president. And in particular that of us against themdenouncing the influence of a “horrible utopian wokism” serving “selfish personalities at the top” instead of “ordinary people”. He also shares his aversion to traditional media, proposing to end funding for Canadian public broadcasting.
It is above all at the economic level that Pierre Poilievre devotes most of his political project. Known to be close to libertarian movements, guaranteeing to “make Canada the freest country in the world”, he promises a massive disengagement of the State from the economy and to restore public accounts to balance by launching major programs of budget cuts. “We’re going to cut bureaucracy, cut the number of consultants, cut foreign aid, cut government aid to big business. We’re going to use the savings to reduce the deficit and reduce taxes and to free up the free enterprise system.” he summarized a few days ago in a podcast with influencer Jordan Peterson – a mode of communication which is reminiscent of that of Donald Trump during his presidential campaign.
One of his major fights also happens to be against environmental regulations, and particularly against the carbon tax, which he has made his main battlehorse in view of the legislative elections in 2025, which he calls for to be implemented. subject of a “referendum”. It also calls for the development of fossil fuels and the construction of new oil pipelines.
“A tamed populist”
But for all that, it is surely simplistic to qualify Pierre Poilievre as simply “Maga [NDLR : Make America Great Again, le slogan historique de Donald Trump] with maple syrup”, as Chrystia Freeland, Justin Trudeau’s former Minister of Finance, called him – whose departure with a bang last December definitively marked the fall of the Prime Minister. Differences today set him apart from the future American president, but also other far-right leaders around the world And mainly on the subject of immigration, which he is far from making the heart of his political proposal. He himself is married to a Venezuelan immigrant. , with who he has two children If Pierre Poilievre “believes that the thresholds for permanent immigration should be lowered”, recalls. Radio Canadahe remains a defender of the Canadian multicultural model, on condition of “reminding people, when they arrive here, that they are Canadian first. Canada first.”
Above all, Pierre Poilievre still cultivates great ambiguity on several important subjects, making it more difficult to classify. The right to abortion? He affirms that under his mandate there will be no law “that restricts abortion”, while affirming that he will not prevent the most conservative elected officials in his camp from submitting bills on this subject. Canada’s climate objectives, governed by the Paris agreement? No clear statement if these will remain the same. And including on one of his flagship subjects, budget cuts, he has not yet clearly explained whether he plans to put an end to certain social programs put in place by Justin Trudeau, such as the dental insurance system. or medications, or the national day care program.
The American journalist Zack Beauchamp, a specialist on the right, would sum up Pierre Poilièvre with a formula: he would be “the kind of politician that some Republicans would like Donald Trump to be: a tamed populist”, he explains in the columns of media Vox.
Faced with Donald Trump, an uncertain relationship
The fact remains that in the event of victory in the Canadian general elections this year, a burning issue will be on his table: relations with the cumbersome American neighbor. A subject which should largely occupy the country this year, while Donald Trump has promised to significantly increase customs tariffs with Canada, and continues his provocations regarding the fact of wanting to make his Canadian neighbor the 51st American state.
Pierre Poilievre was careful not to support one of the two candidates during the American presidential election, contenting himself with congratulating Donald Trump while worrying about the consequences of his victory. The leader of the Conservative Party has so far adopted a fairly simple strategy: shift the blame. So, even when Donald Trump is so provocative against Canada about possible annexation, Pierre Poilievre prefers to blame Justin Trudeau, saying that it is “an example of how he is a total joke, and totally lost control.”
In his podcast with influencer Jordan Peterson, however, he further developed how he wanted to develop his relationship with the American president. “If you look at the history of President Trump, he negotiates very aggressively and he likes to win, but in the end he doesn’t seem to have a problem if the other side wins too […] So I think we can obtain an excellent agreement which will make both countries safer, richer and stronger,” he said, particularly wishing to develop new oil and energy projects between the two countries. A method which he wishes to apply on customs tariffs, while affirming that he is ready to put in place “countermeasures which will affect the American economy”.
But facing Donald Trump, Pierre Poilievre has a significant asset in his entourage: the former radio host Jamil Jivani, a former classmate at Yale and a great friend of the future American vice-president JD Vance. Elon Musk, again and again, also continues to praise the interventions of Pierre Poilievre on his social network X. Enough to envisage an American-Canadian relationship very different from that with Justin Trudeau.