The American Right has capitalized on a viral video captured in 2023. Filmed during a press briefing in an orchard, it captures the unbalanced face-off between the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Poilievre, and a journalist who accuses him of taking inspiration from Donald Trump. "What are you talking about?" said Poilievre as he nonchalantly continued to bite into an apple. The journalist, clearly unsettled, struggled to reply. Poilievre took the opportunity to reiterate his core message: a call to return to a policy of "common sense," which he claims is currently lacking in the current government.
On X, Elon Musk graced the footage with a "fire" emoji. American pro-Trump commentator Megyn Kelly (ex-NBC and Fox News) applauded on the same network: "Can we get him in our country?" With his endorsement, Poilievre was put "sur la map" of the conservative world, as we say in Quebec.
Poilievre, 45, shares Trump's taste for shocking phrases that we remember by dint of repetition. In his mouth, inflation becomes "justinflation," aimed specifically at Canada's prime minister, the Liberal Justin Trudeau. In front of the cameras and on his campaign T-shirts, he displays his mantra "Axe the tax," determined to put the carbon tax, the pollution tax introduced by the Trudeau government, through the mill.
Like Trump, Poilievre doesn't hesitate to insult his political opponents. Jagmeet Singh, leader of the New Democratic Party (left)? "A sellout." The prime minister, Trudeau? "Wacko." This last invective caused his (temporary) expulsion from the House of Commons on April 30. While the progressive-leaning American news site Vox called Poilievre's version of conservatism "polite Trumpism" this spring, the adjective doesn't suit everyone.
In his office in Drummondville, Centre-du-Québec, Alain Rayes, the former face of the Conservative Party of Canada, congratulated himself on leaving the party when Poilievre took office in September 2022, after campaigning for his rival, Jean Charest. "From now on, the party uses the same recipes as Trump: The anger, the rage that people have against the system, it feeds it and uses intellectual shortcuts that, in my eyes, do no honor to the [political] profession. The attacks on social media, the half-truths... We're looking at all costs for the 30-second extract that will go viral, to feed the base."
Like the US president-elect, Poilievre rejects traditional media. For him, it would be more useful to convert the headquarters of CBC, Canada's English-language public media, into housing. Poilievre, whose first job was as a delivery boy for the Calgary Sun, an Alberta daily, also has no qualms about temporarily boycotting the country's largest private broadcaster, CTV, which he deems guilty of distorting his words. The network has acknowledged an error, but the Conservative Party leader feels that the network is attacking him because he is "standing up for the people against the crony capitalists," he said on September 24.
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