Poilievre is losing ground thanks to the Trump effect
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre pauses as he speaks during a news conference in Vancouver on Monday, February 3, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ethan Cairns
“Everything Trump touches dies.” That’s the phrase coined by Rick Wilson, the former Republican strategist turned anti-Trump activist and Lincoln Project co-founder, who documented its many examples in a 2018 book by the same name. Now, it seems, we may have a Canadian case study to add to his list: Pierre Poilievre’s once-insurmountable polling lead.
After all, it’s not just the EKOS polls showing Poilievre’s lead is evaporating. A recent Pallas Data poll put the Liberals one point ahead of the Conservatives with Mark Carney as leader, while Mainstreet’s Ontario polling has the federal Liberals ahead by nine points in that province. Leger, the gold-standard pollster in Quebec, has a Carney-led Liberals at 38 per cent — a level the Liberals haven’t hit in a federal election there since 2000. Even Nanos Research, which had the Liberals trailing Poilievre’s Conservatives by 27 points in early January, now has them only trailing by eight points.
Some of this is surely a dead-cat, post-Trudeau bounce. Kim Campbell saw a similar surge after she took over from Brian Mulroney in 1993, only to squander it with one of the worst campaign ads in political history. Some of it is a reflection of Mark Carney’s strengths and their fit for a moment that’s defined by a mixture of economic anxiety and political uncertainty. But much of this bounce, and maybe most of it, is because of Trump and his repeated threats to Canada’s sovereignty and security.
That’s clearly bad news for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party, which has spent the last few years telling Canadians how broken their country is. Trump is essentially making the same argument, and laying the blame on the same government. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Poilievre is finding it difficult to pivot away from this message and towards something more positive and unifying.
As he said recently, "President Trump has been given an incredible gift by these radical, anti-development Liberals when they block the projects that would have made us more self-reliant.” Never mind, for the moment, that it’s Trudeau’s government that built the first oil pipeline to Pacific tidewater (and new markets) in Poilievre’s lifetime, or that LNG Canada — the biggest new export project in Canadian history — is about to start shipping cargoes. Poilievre’s reflexive response to Trump’s illegal and unjustified economic attacks on our country is to immediately blame his domestic opponents for it.
He has also found it conspicuously challenging to criticize the president who keeps threatening his country with economic ruin and existential oblivion. On the rare occasions where he summons the courage to actually invoke Trump’s name, as he did with the recent decision to impose tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, he’s always careful to only criticize his policies. It’s a striking contrast for someone who routinely refers to his domestic political opponents as liars, lunatics, and “extremist wackos.”
This isn’t an accident. While only two percent of Liberal supporters approve of Donald Trump, that spikes to 46 per cent — a plurality — among CPC supporters. His movement’s fondness and affection for Trumpism is not a secret, and it’s something they have — until now — proudly advertised and embraced. It’s why they endorse his nonsensical pretext around fentanyl, facts notwithstanding. It’s why they trade in conspiracy theories about government agencies and their supposedly scandalous spending. And it’s why they continue to blame Trudeau and the Liberal government for the growing volume of American insults to our sovereignty.
It’s because in their heart of hearts, they think Trump is right. They think he’s right about diversity, equity and inclusion programs, about the importance of growing oil and gas production, about the “scam” of climate change, about “wokeism,” and about the importance of revering our history rather than reviewing it. Indeed, it’s hard to find anything they don’t think he’s right about other than the tariffs directed at our economy, and even then they seem willing to grant him his various half-baked justifications and explanations.
Just listen to Poilievre talking about foreign aid at his recent press conference in decidedly Trumpian terms. “We can’t be sending billions of dollars to other places, often as much of it is wasted and stolen and swallowed up by bureaucracies that act against our interests,” he said. “I will be bringing our money home with massive cuts to these wasteful and corrupt foreign aid grants.” Sound familiar? It should.
The Liberal campaign ads here practically write themselves. That’s especially true when they have photos of high-profile Conservatives like Jenni Byrne, Poilievre’s senior adviser and close friend, proudly wearing their MAGA hats. The CPC’s affinity for Trump and those in his orbit is an anchor that Liberals will tie around their collective waist, one they know Poilievre and his team can’t actually cut. If they do, after all, they’ll invite the bleeding of far-right support to Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party that they’ve spent years trying to avoid.
Poilievre could always decide to find his spine here and make a real stand. As Conservative activist Spencer Fernando wrote in a recent piece for The Hub, “to support Trump as a Canadian means effectively siding against your own country. It means choosing to hate your political opponents more than you love Canada. It means in my judgement giving up a claim to patriotism.” He suggested that Conservatives should view Trump as “the ultimate test of whether they’re committed to conservative ideas and values or prepared to choose the politics of personality over principles.”
Poilievre seems destined, even determined, to fail that test. Canadian voters, on the other hand, might yet surprise us all.
February 12th 2025
Comments
Thank you Max. I'm going one step further and hoping for a complete collapse of the Reform/Cons putting them back where they belong on the periphery. Another gloating moment for me and many, many others will be the Harper thugs scrambling in the background seeing all of their dirty work go down the sewer. In a way the miserable fella down south is doing Canadians a huge favour in exposing who pp and his people are. They are not true Canadians and don't give a hoot about anyone but their angry, miserable, unhappy, vicious selves and they are proving it over and over and over so that you 't' for that at least.
Now if Albertans can show their patriotism and force their Premier to resign and maybe the Saskatchewan people can scare Moe maybe, just maybe Canada has a chance otherwise we will always be unsettled with people like that preferring to be another country.
It is not surprising Byrne would wear a MAGA hat. She was around during the 2011 industrial sized RoboCall Scam took place giving these Cons their only majority in 9 years. And did Harper work fast after that, just like Smith in Alberta is doing. Fast and in the shadows. pp even changed the Elections Act to smooth their win but alas off they were sent to wring their hands and scheme for 10 years and here they are again.
Now what has to happen is each polling station on election days has to be observed by certain unbias, non-partisans because these people are desperate to get back in power. Security around Carney and Trudeau better be strong.
I agree our Elections’ have to kept safe from interference.
Funny Poilievre wants Canadians to raise the flag. Many of his supporters with have to take it off their trucks and once again turn it right side up. Not that that will make them feel anymore Canadian…
I remember seeing photos of Trump and confederate flags sprinkled throughout the trucker's siege of Ottawa.
One day someone will display big F*ck Poilievre signs, giving him a taste of his own medicine.
There sure seems to be a lot of jail time mounting up now for what their organizers called the "freedom" convoy as the criminal cases work their way through the courts.
Meanwhile, Ottawa citizens and businesses impacted by the siege and barbaric behaviour are patiently waiting for their revenge with a gigantic class action suit to appear in court. A lot of those big rigs will be lost, not to mention the livlihoods and life savings of the trucking businesses and individuals that supported the convoy.
Great news. We have a chance to reduce the cons to a small parliamentary rump. That rump may be made up largely of MPs from Alberta because of the reflexive hatred for Liberals nursed by Albertans. But here in Calgary Confederation we're getting good response on the doorsteps when we campaign for our NDP candidate. There are many possible scenarios worse than another NDP/Liberal cooperation/coalition. About the worst would be a majority for P.P. and the cons.
Oh Boy. I thought my comment above had been lost in the great web, so put in the one below which is nearly a duplicate. I apologize.
All that can be fixed if the CNO joined the majority of other online comments sections out there and provided an Edit function, which would also allow you to Cancel duplicate comments. It's frustrating commenting remotely on my phone with a tiny keyboard and no ability to edit, let alone copy-paste links.
Good news. We have a chance to reduce the cons to a small parliamentary rump. Most members of that rump may be elected in Alberta because of the reflexive hatred for all things Liberal nursed by Albertans. But here in the riding of Calgary Confederation we're getting good response on the doorsteps when we campaign for our NDP candidate. If we can take this riding away from the cons we can take many more. Let's work together to defeat P.P. and the cons.
It is certainly true that right wing conservatives like to work fast in the shadows once elected. They do a lot of damage, especially to public programs and public employees who actually work for the money they make.........people like nurses, teachers, social workers have to take cuts in pay to keep a right wing business elite in the gravy?? Little programs like Alberta's Puff...helping 5 year olds already language delayed, have to be sacrificed on the altar of austerity for little people.........and tax cuts for rich corporations? The first thing the Kenney government did was drop corporate taxes from 12% to 8%...the promised jobs didn't materialize. What the Fossil Fuel companies did with the windfarl was pay dividends and automate...old news so let's forget it and just admit "Canada is Broken"?
I'm summarizing the good work of the Kenney government that came to power in Alberta in 2019. And no, I don't have the memory to repeat all of the good work they did to enhance the wealthy in our province. I'm currently reading an excellent book however, by an up and coming Alberta journalist., Jeremy Appel.
KENNEYISM is the title. It's well written, detailed, and takes the reader through the career of one man......to illustrate the price we all pay when an ideology that revers authority and has contempt for human needs in all their diversity, is allowed to run government.
Even progressives forget more than they remember....Jason Kenney wasn't bat sh*t crazy enough for the current government of Alberta....but he got the ball rolling.
Alberta's Reform, Alliance, Wild Rose, UCP crowd don't do democracy. They do MAGA fantasies. What's more, they've been bank rolled from south of the border......while wasting Alberta tax money on War Rooms fighting the conspiracy fictions that inhabit their minds.
PP is the next incarnation of an ideology that may believe in a sky god....but would have found the gospel of Jesus way too woke. They don't tell us peasants the whole story of course. They keep to themselves the more complex facts, such as "Canada isn't really broken", but the Canada so many of us depend on soon will be, once PP starts swinging that divinely blessed hammer at anything that gets in the way of the deserving few.
Sad that it takes an American mad man to wake us up to the half truths and outright lies the current conservative party has been spreading since before covid.
Poilievre really doesn't have much to offer, especially with his Axe the Tax disinformation nonsense. Pierre has been absent with what has been happening to the south and keeping his distance from the premiers and PM dealing with the threat of tariffs. If Pierre was really concerned about Canada and Canadians as a whole, he should be more involved and vocal.
I will not shed any tears if Pierre's bid for PM ends as a minority or loses out completely. Despite all his non-stop criticism of the Liberals, he hasn't offered up much of an alternative. Pierre spends a lot of time talking-the-talk, but that is it, most ideas are vague and without any real substance. In the house of commons, the conservative has been more of a disruption than anything else dealing with Canadian issue.
Given the call to resume parliament with the present tariff threat, we agree it would be a good idea, but it is clear the only reason Pierre and his band of misfit MPs are only interested in doing so is self interest for an election call and ZERO to do with dealing with Canada's best interests. Given that, it would be pointless in resuming parliament, and disrupt the good work being done already outside of the House of Commons.
The Cons literally talked and yelled the HofC to a standstill and now they want them all back to work when they didn't allow them to work or do anything but dodge their nonsensical, silly 3 word barbs. They only want them back so they can hammer the NDP and Bloc into helping them call an election because they think they will get in BUT that has changed and changed fast. Now they're trying to use 2 word slogans like 'Canada First'. What a joke. When did any of those Reform/Cons ever consider Canada or Canadians first? When: Never. Ask Harper. He actually went to the U.S. when he was merely Opposition and apologized because Jean Chretien, one of the best PM's, said NO Way JOSE are we helping in that made up war. Harper would have sent them and a lot of them would have come back either in coffins or severely damaged mentally and physically. It'd be ok but Harper would never send his own son there you can be sure.
Just saw the latest Leger poll that brought joy to my heart. Mark Carney, the non politician outsider, has flipped the country for the better.
Liberals: 178 seats (majority)
Conservatives: 138 seats
The few remaining were scattered among the Bloc, NDP and Greens.
I'm not happy with the utter whipping the NDP are in for, especially considering the great talent and principled policies espoused by some of their more exemplary MPs. But voters are lining up behind the strongest and most experienced figure during an existential crisis who can fight back against the bully, who says he wants to lead the country in a new direction that embraces the transition, and who is refreshingly NOT a career politician.
Never gone there, but I'm thinking of starting a substack to reach all nine people that would read it, because I'm so tickled by my new message, after my 50 years of peacenik anti-militarism: Justin Trudeau Must Go Nuclear.
By saying that Canada must start a nuclear weapons program. America would NOT be mentioned in this address. Just "rogue states" and the fate of Ukraine. That our non-nuclear status depended upon absolutely reliable protection from NATO, that NATO partners had to be willing to go to nuclear war if we were attacked, and Trudeau now has concerns that the Canadian government cannot assure Canadians of that protection.
This would be like Trudeau leapfrogging over the NDP to the more-left position of full cannabis legalization, the most-radical thing I've heard in my lifetime, countering some 70 years of anti-cannabis propaganda, and it worked.
Trudeau would leapfrog over the Conservatives to the most-conservative "toughness" position of them all. It would make him look "strong" in the Trumpian sense. But also in the literal sense, defying the conventions of liberalism 70 years staid. And it would look like the only meaningful response to the moment, where pundits talk casually of Canada's annexation, because, everybody imagines it would be entirely America's decision, our feelings irrelevant. Suddenly, we'd be relevant.
I can see not just the Liberals winning, but Trudeau coming back, because every contender would be forced to choose whether they were going to be as tough as Trudeau, or fold.
I managed a teeny poll of this on Mastodon, and it came in at 55% in favour...
Hehehe.....
They just can't help themselves! They so desperately want to "own the libs" with all their foolishly idealistic enthusiasm about making society better for everyone, driven by a genuine interest in "human flourishing." Reminds me of a lot of good women I have known. Is THAT possibly the emotional root of the problem; has this got anything to do with John Hiatt's lyric of "trying to break your mother's back?"
The word "democracy" has a nurturing, caring vibe about sharing and caring for the world, hence the phrase "liberal democracy," not "conservative democracy."
By way of extreme contrast, we have the occupants of the White House resembling a prison break led by a Mafia "Don," moving fast and breaking things like never before with the help of big tech billionaires like Zuckerberg (who actually SAID that apparently), and Musk who has the further destructiveness of "artificial intelligence" tucked in his pocket to enable men to finally challenge women's heretofore exclusive ability to actualize human life!
I heard Bob Geldof on CBC talking about how yeah, we can all see that some things really need to change for sure (the reason unelected Nazi lookalike MUSK gives for the whiplash-inducing executive orders rolling out every day), but do these guys REALLY have to be QUITE so vulgar and utterly GRACELESS about it?
The answer is yes, they can't help themselves, so that's fine, but that makes them entirely unsuited to govern ANY democracy then, including ours.
Mark Carney succinctly nailed conservatives when he said "They have NO respect."