Election 2025 was Poilievre's race to lose

Canada needs growth to strengthen its economy and its sovereignty; not cuts.

The first federal election I wrote about was in 2019. It was on Election Day that year that, upon checking my notifications on Facebook, I discovered that there were tens of thousands of Albertans who hadn’t seen the potential for another Liberal win. I received more than a few invites to a group called “WEXIT” that evening and, of course, accepted so I could keep up.

Over the next few days, I checked in with it fairly regularly; there was a lot of buzz around the fact that the CPC had won the popular vote and expectations that it should have translated into government. After official results were released, it was easy to see that the CPC had indeed increased their total vote count, but in regions where they already had strong leads — prairie provinces — rather than the 905 in Toronto, Quebec, or Atlantic Canada where they could potentially turn votes into seats.

Even though I wasn’t writing in 2015, I had closely followed the federal election. CPC leader Stephen Harper seemed to fall into a trap of his own making where his messaging spoke to fewer and fewer Canadians as the exceptionally long campaign droned on. In fact, that experience is likely what piqued my interest in the political narrative. I became fascinated with the story political figures were telling and the audience for them. As it turned out, the more I looked, listened, and delved into the background, I had a knack for, as my first editor put it in 2019, “parsing the politics out of, well, politics.” It’s a niche space.

From then on, I was able to see how a distinctly Alberta narrative still, as in the Reform era, failed to speak to a majority outside of the west. As communications staff for Andrew Scheer, and then Erin O’Toole returned to the recently recovered conservative safe space of the province, it only solidified my view that conservative angst simply didn’t exist outside of regional divisions that had been carved out, and preyed upon, for at least my lifetime here on the prairies.

With the exception of Quebec, obviously, but Quebeckers were content with regional representation that did not seek to form government federally; the west was not. It’s possible, however, that if the Liberals do form a majority government, that goal could change.

Pierre against the world

Have you heard from local conservative MPs this election? After reading Poilievre’s platform, I feel as if the CPC has effectively been reduced to a one-man band. I called it Poilievre’s platform because in an attempt to incorporate the myriad slogans and soundbites he’s used over the past month, it reads like he wrote it himself.

The CPC platform fairly oozes the Pierre Poilievre we have been treated to since his leadership began. It has that undercurrent of barely concealed contempt, the snide quips, and an air of bitterness. It reminds me of how Jason Kenney sounded in the lead up to the 2019 election in Alberta; conservatives had the right to government and they were only waiting out the clock until they were returned.

I didn’t hear Jagmeet Singh’s voice when I read the NDP “commitments”, nor Mark Carney’s when I read the Liberal platform. Yet, I could hardly get through a single bullet point in Poilievre’s without hearing his. Yes, it would speak to the base he’s built for himself, but in that, I see a glaring problem for the CPC if they lose this election — they’re Pierre Poilievre’s base.

In his determination to shore up the small percentage of Canadians who voted with the People’s Party of Canada in 2021, Poilievre has turned a modest fraction of support for the PPC into a much larger slice of the electorate than would have — perhaps even could have — existed without him.

In Alberta, Preston Manning arose again to fan the flames of western alienation in our province and Saskatchewan. Those 2019 WEXIT collaborators are gearing up to embrace what I can only assume will be another group of tens of thousands of Albertans who will be absolutely gob-smacked if the conservatives do not win, again. Others are suggesting the CPC should no longer have the support of Calgarians if they cannot form government.

The party is being cleaved apart before it even flatlines.

Harper’s party

Because I was otherwise engaged prior to early 2015, I hadn’t followed Stephen Harper’s government all that closely. I saw the merger of Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives as at least an attempted takeover by the more rigid right — mimicked with stunning ease by Jason Kenney in Alberta in 2017 — if not a completely successful one.

So, when I heard Stephen Harper’s interview with Ben Shapiro in 2018, and he claimed that the party he built on the back of a merger with PCs was no place for those with “centrist or centre-left” political leanings, I didn’t know for certain that he had ever claimed otherwise.

Now, I’m convinced the “big tent” narrative was built around him, rather than by him; a fictional creation that has consistently led swing voters — a few million people in the two most populous provinces of Ontario and Quebec who have traditionally refused to let a federal government get too comfortable — to flirt with, but ultimately turn away from the CPC on Election Day.

Yet, the safe space of conservative anger and righteous indignation in Alberta and Saskatchewan had remained fertile ground still, though perhaps not much longer.

Though Andrew Scheer was a reasonable successor to Stephen Harper, and Erin O’Toole to Andrew Scheer, neither candidate fit into the narrative of a “big tent”. When Pierre Poilievre engineered the takedown of Erin O’Toole, I have to think that the message they took from the loss in 2021 was that moderate conservatism could not compete for government, rather than Canadians didn’t have faith in Erin O’Toole’s ability to keep the squeakiest wheels from falling right off of the government.

Pierre Poilievre exudes Alberta Reform and he has managed to convince at least a few more disgruntled Canadians that they had it better under Stephen Harper. The revisionist history is something to behold. It doesn’t matter that pipelines didn’t get built under Harper. It doesn’t matter that he had to bail out the auto industry after lax banking regulations in the U.S. caused a global financial crisis, and the return of Alberta’s old nemesis, an oil price downturn.

In this old Reform-based narrative, it doesn’t matter that multiple conservative governments were more concerned with the illusion of balanced budgets by selling off Canadian assets rather than using them as a building block for Canada’s future. It’s almost as if they’ve sought to inflict the damage on the rest of the country their myopic and distorted projection of ill will that led to the unwavering belief the same was inflicted on them.

While I won’t fight the assertion that a country cannot tax its way to prosperity, after decades of cuts to appease people who were more concerned about their personal benefit than Canada’s as a whole, I think it’s obvious that neither can a country cut and dismantle its way to something better.

The X factor

Over the course of Pierre Poilievre’s leadership, I thought that he would surely win the next election simply because it had been three terms of a Liberal government and those swing voters had to be itching for change. I watched with some disappointment as Poilievre doubled and tripled down on the assumption that his popularity was growing because of his leadership rather than the rut that Justin Trudeau couldn’t seem to find his way out of.

Even as I made up my mind that it was necessary to call an election to deal with what appeared to be a growing threat from the president-elect down south, part of me thought that many Canadians would return to the Liberals even if they were led by Justin Trudeau because I wasn’t convinced Ontario and Quebec were really prepared to resign themselves to Reform 2.0, even if I didn’t feel like I had still had much fight left in me.

Luckily, within days of that, the Prime Minister finally took action and announced his intention to resign. I, however, was skeptical about the potential to revive any optimism for the Liberal party, even with a new leader.

As then-outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to then-President Donald Trump’s economic attacks while a leadership race was being planned, and then finally underway, Canadians had to be at least somewhat aware of how quiet Pierre Poilievre became. I’ve heard of the political advice not to draw attention away from your political opponent while they’re shooting themselves in the foot, but there’s also the adage to never let a good crisis go to waste.

In February, as Canadians became acutely aware of Donald Trump’s actions, it was almost as if Pierre Poilievre made himself scarce. He dropped out of public view and allowed Justin Trudeau to have the spotlight. Even when he did pop up, when asked what he thought of the situation, Poilievre ducked the questions by saying he was not the Prime Minister. It was not the moment it could have been.

Instead of using the opportunity to show Canadians the Prime Minister they could have, Pierre Poilievre showed us the opposition leader we did.

Somehow, Poilievre didn’t seem to realize that the campaign to replace Justin Trudeau hadn’t stopped when he resigned; unlike the two years prior that Poilievre had been sniping from the opposition benches, the race to replace Trudeau officially began that day.

And Pierre Poilievre was nowhere to be seen, or heard.

The future

In a way, I don’t disagree with Poilievre’s latest slogan “the lost liberal decade” but I will posit that it isn’t just a decade — it’s more like four of them.

The last time we built something to connect Canadians was 1977; Via Rail passenger network. Prior to that, it was 1962; the TransCanada Highway.

Since then, we’ve sold Canadian assets. Petro-Canada and Connaught Labs were sold off under Brian Mulroney. The Canadian Wheat Board and Atomic Energy Canada were sold under Stephen Harper. Mostly because of pressure to keep the government from owning, and potentially profiting, off its own investments.

Governments don’t “profit”, however. If the government makes money off its investments, they rely less on taxes and fees from Canadians. It’s win-win. And while I will die on the hill that government should not be run as a business, they should invest like one. If conservatives truly want lower taxes, they need to stop giving money — and money-making entities — away without seeing the returns any business would demand.

We might be on our way but we’re not there, yet.

The fracture within the Conservative Party of Canada is better described as a chasm. It’s made up of an angry mob and those still holding on to a traditional conservative vision that was deliberately extinguished with its creation.

When the future of Canada was threatened, Canadians had to take stock of what they had to lose. As they watch the U.S. administration use a wrecking ball to tear through the U.S. government and its institutions, the appeal of doing the same here is ebbing away but it’s not been vanquished; if anything, it’s grown, thanks to Poilievre.

I don’t see how shying away from Canadian assets strengthens our country or our economy. If anything, it’s been the foundation of weakening our productivity, and our growth.

There’s a reason the phrase “death by a thousand cuts” exists, and Canada can’t afford to hand Poilievre the scissors.

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