Meet Pierre Poilievre, the Front-Runner To Be Canada’s Next Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau announced his resignation as Canadian prime minister on Monday, ending his nine-year tenure amid cratering support from voters and his own Liberal Party. During a Monday speech, Trudeau said he plans to remain in office until the Liberal Party selects a new leader. Canada’s next federal election must take place by October.
Pierre Poilievre, the leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, is the current front-runner to replace Trudeau as prime minister. Throughout 2024, polls showed Poilievre and the Conservative Party routing Trudeau and the Liberal Party as economic discontent grew and political issues (including the deputy prime minister’s surprise resignation last year) rocked the incumbent government.
In a video posted to X after Trudeau’s resignation on Monday, Poilievre painted his Conservative Party as the “common sense” antidote to Canada’s recent woes. “We’ll cap spending, axe taxes, reward work, build homes, uphold family, stop crime, secure borders, rearm our forces, restore our freedom, and put Canada first,” he explained, “to bring home Canada’s promise.”
Beyond bite-sized slogans, what policies would Poilievre bring to the table as Canada’s prime minister?
First elected to Canada’s Parliament in 2004, Poilievre served as a senior cabinet minister under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He garnered attention in 2022 due to his support for the Canadian truck drivers who took to Ottawa to protest Trudeau-era COVID-19 vaccine mandates. In the years since, the firebrand Conservative has frequently railed against Trudeau and his government. He argued in a recent interview with psychologist Jordan Peterson that Canadians are “sick and tired” of the “horrendous, utopian wokeism” that benefits “egotistical personalities on top” rather than “common people.”
Variously described as “libertarian” and “populist,” Poilievre supports cutting government spending and lowering taxes. “We will cap government spending with a dollar-for-dollar law that requires we find one dollar of savings for every new dollar of spending,” he argued in a September speech in Canada’s House of Commons. Poilievre has said his government would remove the federal sales tax on homes under $1 million. Last June, he came out against a proposed capital gains tax increase and promised to form a “tax reform task force” soon after forming a government if elected. He owns and uses bitcoin and promotes cryptocurrencies as a hedge against inflation.
Inflation is immoral, Poilievre told Peterson, because “nobody votes on it.” Rather, “inflation is adopted secretly, and you blame the grocer because groceries are more expensive or your local gas station because gas is more [expensive]…when in fact it was actually the government that bid up all of those things with money printing, and you didn’t even know about it.”
“What we have to do is stop growing the money supply and start growing the stuff money buys,” he continued. “Produce
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