By New York Post (World News) | Created at 2025-01-07 21:35:05 | Updated at 2025-01-08 17:24:18
19 hours ago
Pierre Poilievre, the man widely tipped to become Canada’s next leader following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s shock exit, is a firebrand conservative who has long vowed to save the country from “horrendous, utopian wokeism.”
The leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, who has drawn comparisons to President-elect Donald Trump, was thrown into the global spotlight on Monday when Trudeau — his lefty rival — announced he was quitting after mounting calls to step down.
As Trudeau’s party now scrambles to find a replacement to take on a widely popular Poilievre in an election year, this is what to know about the conservative party’s renowned attack dog.
Poilievre, 45, is a Calgary-born, no-nonsense career politician who has led the country’s Conservative Party since 2022.
The adopted son of school teachers, Poilievre was the president of the University of Calgary’s conservative club and took his first job out of school in a conservative politician’s office.
He was first elected to Canada’s Parliament back in 2004 when former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government was in power and quickly earned a reputation for going against the political norms.
His popularity really started to skyrocket, though, in early 2022 after he was elected party leader.
Poilievre rose to prominence when he chose to back the truck drivers who had taken over the center of Ottawa as part of a protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
Since then, he has ridden off the back of growing public discontent against Trudeau and the left-leaning government — repeatedly blaming the soon-to-be former PM for the ongoing cost of living crisis that is plaguing Canadians.
In an interview with podcaster Jordan Peterson last Friday, Poilievre — a married father-of-two — also railed against the Trudeau government for being “radical.”
He put his polling success, too, down to Canadians being fed up with “horrendous, utopian wokeism.”
In the lead-up to Trudeau’s announcement, recent polling showed Poilievre’s party was already leading Canada’s ruling Liberal Party by as much as 29 percentage points, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The right-leaning pol has picked up his fair share of global recognition, too, with one particular apple-eating clip spreading like wildfire on social media.
The video, which went viral at the time and was shared again by Elon Musk on Monday, showed Poilievre casually chomping on an apple in late 2023 as he got into a testy exchange with a reporter who questioned if he was taking a page out of Trump’s book with his “populist pathway.”
Meanwhile, if elected, Poilievre has already vowed to carry out “the biggest crackdown on crime in Canadian history” and “take back control of our border, take back control of immigration, take back control of spending, deficits and inflation.”
“We’re going to cut bureaucracy, cut the consultants, cut foreign aid, cut back on corporate welfare to large corporations,” he said in last week’s podcast interview.
In his rise to prominence, Poilievre has repeatedly drawn comparisons to Trump — with Trudeau saying he wants to “make Canada great again.”
Poilievre, however, has pushed back against Trump’s recent call to make Canada the 51st state of America.
“I have the strength and the smarts to stand up for this country and my message to incoming President Trump is that first and foremost, Canada will never be the 51st state of the US,” Poilievre told CTV News last month.
Poilievre, during his Peterson podcast interview, acknowledged that Trump — who has threatened 25% US tariffs on all Canadian products — “negotiates very aggressively, and he likes to win.”
He added, though, that he would aim for “a great deal that will make both countries safer, richer and stronger” under a Poilievre-led government.
