The Free Press
For President Trump, making America great again in his second term includes tariff threats against Canada, along with talk of turning America’s northern neighbor into the 51st state. What that’s mainly achieved so far is to make Canada woke again.
Prior to January 20, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre had been cruising in the polls, and with elections coming this year in Canada, North America seemed headed for a right-leaning political bromance between a President Trump in Washington and a Trump-lite Prime Minister Poilievre in Ottawa.
That was before Trump got elected and began talking about 25 percent tariffs on Canadian goods (10 percent for energy), which would likely wreck Canada’s economy.
One poll showed that four in ten Canadians see Poilievre and Trump as alike and that is hurting him as “Canadians increasingly associate Poilievre to Trump’s negative rhetoric aimed at Canada,” said Mark Marissen, a Liberal party strategist.
For the first time since 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party is ahead of the Conservatives in the polls. If an election were held tomorrow, 38 percent of decided voters would choose the Liberals, while 36 percent would back the Conservatives. This is a massive shift—just six weeks ago, the Conservatives were leading by 26 points.
While Poilievre suffers from his association with Trump, the Liberals are benefiting from their recent disassociation from Trudeau, who announced his resignation earlier this year and who will not lead the party at the next election, which has to happen by October 20, 2025. Kate Harrison, vice chair of Summa Strategies and director of Abacus Data, a polling firm, calls the departure of Trudeau the “most dramatic change that could have happened in Canadian politics.”
The likely winner of the internal Liberal leadership contest, to be resolved March 9, is former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor Mark Carney.
“While America engages in a war on woke, Canadians will continue to value inclusiveness,” Carney said at a campaign stop on February 4.
It would be hard to imagine a less Trumpian figure than Carney, a former UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and co-chair of something called the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero.
In a recent podcast, Carney declared: “People will charge me as being elitist, a globalist—well, that’s exactly what we need.”
This is ironic since the Liberals are simultaneously exploiting a surge in patriotic sentiment, understandable in the face of perceived bullying by the U.S., but still striking in a country that Trudeau once called a “post-national state” with no “core identity.”
Trump’s tariff threats have caused Canadians to become more determined than ever to support domestic products and industries. They are booing the U.S. national anthem at hockey games, ditching trips to the States, and going all in on “buy Canadian.” Over 242,000 have signed a petition to revoke Elon Musk’s Canadian citizenship because of his ties to Trump. And, in a rare move, Canada’s Supreme Court is leaving Musk’s X, citing “strategic priorities and resource allocation.”
All of this has been a blow to Poilievre and a boost for the Liberals who, as the incumbent government, are leading Canada’s response to the U.S.
To compound Poilievre’s predicament, many in the Conservative base look across the border admiringly at Trump’s crackdowns on DEI, government waste, and illegal immigration—and fret that Poilievre isn’t Trumpian enough.
In truth, Poilievre’s positions often seem barely different from the Liberals—whether it’s backing Canada’s response to U.S. tariffs, defending an agricultural supply management system that keeps dairy prices high, or standing firm on support for Ukraine. With Trump setting the standard, Poilievre is starting to seem, to many Canadian conservatives, like a watered-down version of Trudeau.
Clyde Nichols, host of Clyde Do Something, a popular conservative podcast in Canada, believes that many conservative voters he interacts with are “frustrated” and “not particularly excited” about Poilievre.
He says they’re watching what Trump is doing in the U.S. and they want to see something similar in Canada, or at least “hear the same kind of talk.”
“Poilievre’s rhetoric is nothing like Trump’s. He only takes conservative positions when he’s pushed in that direction,” says Nichols. “A Poilievre government is going to be exhausting. He seems behind the curve on a lot of social issues, such as DEI and gender ideology.”
The reality is that the Canadian right generally doesn’t resemble the unruly U.S. version. This, in turn, reflects a more moderate political culture whose roots go back to Canada’s early years as a refuge for loyalists to the British crown fleeing the American revolution.
Eric Kaufmann, a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham, argues that Poilievre’s reluctance to mimic Trump reflects the fact that Canadian conservatism has always been “very wet,” with Conservative politicians reluctant to challenge the progressive consensus on culture and identity.
“Poilievre only takes a stand on social issues like DEI and immigration when there’s already overwhelming momentum in the press. He still plays within the safe sandbox of talking about economic issues which is permitted for Conservative politicians in Canada,” says Kaufmann.
“And if he were to become prime minister, I’m not expecting any kind of radical change on the woke front,” Kaufmann added.
Liberal strategist Mark Marissen sees the current situation as proof that progressive ideology is still the default setting for Canadian politics.
“People might say it’s on its way out, but as we can see, the polls are starting to do a lot better again for the Liberal Party,” he said.
