
Canada’s Pierre Poilievre Makes Bid for Power as Canadian Version of Trump
Just two months after the election of Donald Trump, Canada is on track to receive a Trumpian leader of its own—Pierre Poilievre of the Conservative Party.
Poilievre, a 45-year-old from the province of Alberta who has served in Canada’s Parliament for most of his adult life, is poised to become prime minister in the wake of Justin Trudeau’s resignation announcement.
Trump may have been the straw that broke the back of Trudeau’s Liberal Party government. Since Trump’s election, Canadians have been up in arms over his tariff threats if Canada does not better control its border with the U.S., as well as his deliberate taunts of Canada becoming America’s “51st state.”
Trump has only added fuel to the fire shortly after Trudeau’s announcement of his plans to resign, calling Trudeau the “governor” of the “Great State of Canada” on his social media site, Truth Social.
With Trudeau’s government rapidly losing support amid Trump’s recent heavy-handed negotiations and the resignation of some of Trudeau’s top advisers, opposition leader Poilievre seized the moment to present himself as the Canadian antidote to Trump, mirroring the president-elect’s policy proposals with his own threats of aggressive trade policy.
Economics were key to the downfall of Trudeau’s government, with the December resignation of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland serving as the final nail in the coffin.
Kelly Torrance, a Canadian member of the New York Post’s editorial board who has written on politics on both sides of the border for years, told The Daily Signal that Freeland departed amid disagreements over how to deal with Trump.
“She did want to be more combative,” said Torrance. “She dealt with a Trump administration before and actually came through it quite well. But this time, she was more reticent. But there’s also the fact that she was about to present to Parliament documents showing Canada’s terrible fiscal position. And she really believed that change needed to be made to cut spending and deal with deficits.”