Canada's Tories Embrace Trumpism By Picking Poilievre as New Leader

As widely expected, Canada's Conservative Party has chosen Pierre Poilievre to be its new leader. Poilievre earned more than two thirds of the vote on the first ballot (68.15%) earning more than four times the vote of his closest rival former Tory leader and Quebec Premier Jean Charest who earned just over 16% of the vote. 

Poilievre came to national prominence earlier this year with his full embrace of the so-called trucker convoy which paralyzed the City of Ottawa and shutdown the Canada-U.S. border between Windsor and Detroit. While the trucker convoy wanted to force Justin Trudeau's Liberal government out of office, they would claim the scalp of Tory leader Erin O'Toole. Poilievre was heavily favored to win the race as soon as he entered it and the endorsement of former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper sealed the deal. 

In selecting Poilievre, the Tories have embraced Trumpism. Poilievre hasn't met a conspiracy theory he doesn't love whether it be concerning vaccines, globalism (he wants to fire the Governor of the Bank of Canada and forbid attendance by government ministers at the World Economic Forum and other international gatherings) and embracing cryptocurrencies wanting Canada to become the blockchain capital of the world. 

America has seen first hand how electing a man who embraces conspiracy theories to the White House work. Why would Canada wish to follow suit? Not that Poilievre believes what he actually says. Poilievre claims to be a populist when he has known no other line of work other than politics having been an MP since 2004 when he was elected at the age of 25. But like Trump, Poilievre has people eating poison out of his hand and wanting more so he will feed them more.

Canada will not likely go to the polls until 2025 so long as Jagmeet Singh's NDP props up Justin Trudeau's Liberals. But by that time, Trudeau will have resided at 24 Sussex Drive for a decade and Canadians might be in the mood to evict him and punish Singh while they are at it and give Poilievre a massive majority. 

While Trudeau's government has made more than its shares of blunders most recently in being slow in the cutting funding to an anti-racism group whose leader thinks Jews are "bags of feces" and why such a group received this funding in the first place. But let us not forget that Poilievre openly embraced a trucker convoy whose leader is a Holocaust denier. So long as Poilievre embraces Holocaust deniers with his party following suit whatever criticisms the Tories have for the Trudeau government's mistakes in funding an anti-Semite ring hollow. 

When Trudeau and Singh formalized their agreement in March, I argued they ran the risk of bringing about a majority Tory government. However, if Poilievre persists in his rhetoric then I suspect Canadians will likely give Trudeau a third consecutive minority government. 

In past elections, had I lived in Canada, I would have voted Tory. But if I were living in Canda now, depending on where I lived, I would vote Liberal or NDP. I'm not a big fan of either Trudeau or Singh but they are trying to govern and make Canada work for as many people as possible. Poilievre, taking a page from Trump's book, seeks perpetual grievance instead of progress by spreading conspiracies instead of good will.