Canadians have spoken. They have rejected the Conservative party that looked set to sweep to victory just a few weeks ago. And they’ve rejected the leader of that Conservative party, Pierre Poilievre.
It’s a move that shows that if you want to play Trump, even Trump lite, as Poilievre did, then you may pay a heavy price.
In Poilievre’s case, it was losing the seat he has held since 2004. It was losing the opportunity to become the next Prime Minister of Canada, which was looking close to a certainty at the start of this year.
The defeat comes as Mark Carney’s Liberal Party won the election held on Monday. Carney’s rise has also just been months in the making, chosen as the successor to Justin Trudeau, who had led the party in government for more than ten years and was growing increasingly unpopular.
Carney has been firm on Trump’s tariffs and rhetoric about Canada becoming the “51st state” of the USA. Poilievre has been far less quiet in response and has been described as “very much in sync with the new direction in America,” according to the premier of Alberta. Another conservative strategist described Poilievre as looking and sounding too much like Trump, noting he even “uses the lexicon of Trump”.
Poilievre’s run with the slogan “Canada First”, similar to Trump’s talk of putting “America first”. He has used the word “woke” as a weapon in promoting his idea of “common sense”; he has attacked major media outlets. He once promised to withhold funding from universities that don’t support his ideas on freedom of speech and has suggested banning ministers from engaging in international institutions.
Poilievre have been hoping to mute ideas of being “in sync” as the Canadian population has angrily turned against Trump, but it hasn’t been enough nor anywhere close to strong enough.
Bruce Fanjoy won the seat from Poilievre, a man once considered a serious long shot for doing so, given Poilievre had won seven consecutive elections. He first won a seat at the age of just 25, becoming Canada’s youngest MP in history and has been the leader of the Conservatives since 2022.
Curiously, Poilievre wants to stay on as Conservative leader, although he cannot remain leader of the opposition without a seat.
While Canada’s Conservative party did pick up seats and the Liberal party has been unable to form a majority, the gains for the Conservatives were nothing like polling had indicated would occur before Trump took office. At one point, Poilievre held a massive 25-point lead in the polls over Trudeau.
Now, the world turns to Australia to see what, if any, kind of impact Trump’s chaotic first 100 days in office ill have on the electorate. As well as what type of impact this chaos will have on those who’ve been deploying Trump-lite tactics in their hopes of appealing to voters.
Poilievre’s Conservative Party also has a similar dynamic to Australia’s Liberal Party, characterised by a significant and growing gender gap in support. The gender gap has been growing steadily in Canada in terms of those voting for the Conservatives. Poilievre needed to close at least some of this gap, but there was little in his key messaging and male-dominated policy platform that indicated he would do so.
