He is back to his old tricks again: simplistic slogans, hyperpartisan attacks and misinformation. Just days after winning the slam dunk byelection in Alberta, (conveniently handed to him by one of his MPs), Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre quickly demonstrated that he has no intention of becoming a kinder, gentler, more prime ministerial politician. Instead, the spate of negative pronouncements since then makes it perfectly clear that Poilievre, like the leopard, cannot change his spots.[i] His default position is attack mode. When faced with any complex public policy problem his automatic response is (1) to blame the Liberals and (2) to offer simplistic slogans in lieu of solutions. Even in the new political universe unfolding in the second Trump era, when Canada is facing what everyone else perceives to be an existential threat to its economy and national sovereignty, Poilievre simply cannot bring himself to play nice.
It is obvious, for example, that the Conservative leader has no intention of cooperating with the Carney government on a united approach to the ongoing Trump threat. Just days after his election night victory speech, he seemed to recognize cooperation was called for when he declared “We will work with anybody” to achieve a positive resolution to the Trump crisis. But then he promptly began to criticize the Liberals’ every move, in what even one right-of-centre columnist referred to as “a cynical blame game.”[ii] The Conservative leader’s strident language returned as well. In one interview he described the prime minister as a “walking talking broken promise” who is actually “worse than Trudeau.” [iii] Can a new round of Conservative attack ads be far behind?
Reverting to his familiar attack dog stance, Poilievre has accused the government of incompetence, berating the prime minister for not having sealed a trade deal with the unpredictable dictator to the south and not moving faster on promises to launch major infrastructure projects, despite the government announcing several new incentive programs and support packages for affected industries within the space of four weeks. The Conservative leader has also derided the government for not immediately resolving the housing and cost of living crises, both of which he has blamed entirely on the federal Liberals. And this despite widespread expert consensus that these crises are the result of longstanding issues and will only be resolved slowly, with concerted efforts by all three levels of government.
Poilievre’s aggression may be surprising to those who thought the Conservative leader might have been somewhat humbled by his disastrous federal election campaign and the humiliating loss of his own seat. But resuming his deliberate strategy of ignoring inconvenient facts and expert opinion should have surprised no one. This is, after all, the man who has referred to “so-called experts” whenever one of them disagrees with him or points out the factual errors in his claims. [iv]
Take his recent announcement that the government should scrap the federal Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP) in its entirety. His “rationale”? That shutting down this program will open up jobs for young Canadians and low-income earners. This in itself is simply wrong, as he must surely know, since the causes of youth unemployment are multilayered and complex. Certainly several academics went out of their way to immediately point this out to him, including one whose article was titled “What Poilievre Gets Completely Wrong About the TFWP.”[v] Poilievre also used incorrect figures to support his claim that the number of people in the program continues to increase dramatically, something federal bureaucrats immediately corrected. (In fact, the number has fallen fairly dramatically, to 105,195 in 2025 from 191,000 in 2024.[vi])
This is not to say that there are no problems with the program. There definitely are several issues that need attention, and the government has already announced plans to correct them. But Poilievre’s criticism is wildly off the mark, at the same time that he ignores several legitimate critiques of the program, (for example those raised by human rights groups about the abuse of such workers), that are also serious problems. And although Poiievre has at least acknowledged the crucial importance of temporary workers in the agricultural sector, his proposal to create a separate program for them suggests he is unaware that there is already an agricultural worker stream in the present program.
In addition, Poilievre has carefully failed to mention that the TFWP, (originally introduced by a Liberal government in 1973 to fill gaps in the high end skilled labour force), was dramatically altered by the Harper government in 2006, a government in which Mr Poilievre was a cabinet minister. Although a low-skill stream had been gradually added to the program over time, it was Harper’s changes that resulted in a sudden and dramatic influx of those low-skilled workers, hired by large chains at low wages, especially in Alberta and much of western Canada. This is the very program stream that Poilievre is now criticizing. It was also under the Harper government’s watch that public outcry over the widespread abuse of temporary foreign workers forced an embarrassing 2013 review of the program.
It is also noteworthy that Poilievre has limited himself to criticism of the Carney government’s handling of the Trump trade issue, while refraining from making any substantive suggestions, presumably because he has no solutions – however simplistic – to offer. But recently he apparently saw a safe way to indirectly enter the debate via the housing crisis, thereby demonstrating his tenuous grasp on both the tariff and housing issues. His claim, for example, that the housing industry is unaffected by the Trump tariffs, has been deemed “so economically illiterate” that even right-wing columnists have been embarrassed.[vii]
But nowhere is the Conservative leader’s tendency to employ criticism and misinformation more obvious, and more dangerous, than in his current crusade to demand reform of the Criminal Code to address the “issue” of self-defence during home invasions by removing the “reasonable response” phrase. Virtually everyone connected with the legal system, from prosecutors and defence lawyers to bar associations and chiefs of police, have stressed that (1) there is no need to alter the current legislation which is perfectly adequate and (2) in almost all cases, any charges laid against an occupant, (which are already few and far between), are almost always dropped before prosecution.[viii] (As, indeed, has happened with the case of the Lindsay, Ontario man originally charged with aggravated assault after seriously injuring an intruder with a knife, the case which sparked Poilievre’s campaign.) Moreover, as columnist Andrew Coyne has pointed out in a scathing attack on the Conservative leader, Poilievre has also implied yet again that the Liberals are “soft on crime”, even though the Criminal Code language around a reasonable response was first introduced in 1892 and “the popular notion that this is some newfangled Liberal invention is simply untrue.”[ix] Yet Poilievre has managed to launch a concerted campaign and stir up public opinion and angst, to such a degree that the facts of the matters are rapidly becoming unimportant or irrelevant.
Many Canadians may remember that since being elected leader of the Conservative Party in 2023, Poilievre devoted himself to a highly focused campaign attacking the Trudeau Liberal government’s carbon pricing plan, a plan which he insisted on labelling a tax on consumers despite a Supreme court ruling that found this was not the case. In the end, despite the initial strong support for the plan among environmental groups, economists and the general public, his relentless and misleading attacks on it were ultimately successful. By January 2025, facing near-certain defeat in the upcoming federal election and rapidly declining public support for the plan, prime minister Mark Carney threw in the towel. As one critic put it, bad politics destroyed good public policy.
Are we going to see repeats of this process in the months to come on these and other manufactured issues? It is as if Poilievre is stuck in his own personal Groundhog Day, unable to leave behind the attacks and simplistic phrases even when the country is in serious trouble and, with the Liberals in minority territory, the Conservatives have not been as close to power as they are now for more than a decade. This scenario leads to some inevitable questions. Does Poilievre even want to be the leader of a country, or is he most comfortable attacking those who are?
[i] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pexPCJg48xI
[ii] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/opinion/article-what-will-really-help-with-canadas-housing-crisis-and-what-wont/
[iii] https://globalnews.ca/video/11342727/carney-even-worse-than-trudeau-poilievre-speaks-out-after-securing-seat-in-house-of-commons
[iv] https://brookejeffrey.ca/so-called-experts-is-pierre-poilievre-heading-for-another-cultural-revolution/
[v] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-pierre-poilievre-temporary-foreign-worker-program/
[vi] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-pierre-poilievre-temporary-foreign-worker-program/
[vii] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/opinion/article-what-will-really-help-with-canadas-housing-crisis-and-what-wont/
[viii] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-right-to-self-defence-legal-limits-reasonable-response/
[ix] Andrew Coyne. “Political Outrage over Ontario Home Invasion Shows Lack of Reasonable Thought.” Globe and Mail. August 27, 2025.
