Federal party leaders are entering the home stretch of the election campaign, but for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, the path to victory is a tightrope.
Experts tell Canada’s National Observer that beyond US President Donald Trump’s trade war reshaping voter priorities, the traditional coalition that Conservatives have relied on is shifting, making it difficult for Poilievre to maintain the enthusiasm of his base while appealing to other Canadians.
With French and English election debates scheduled Wednesday and Thursday, as Conservatives trail Mark Carney’s Liberal Party in the polls, pressure is on Poilievre to connect with a broader base of voters.
“Right now, priority number one for Poilievre is to distance himself from conservatives south of the border to be able to magnetize potential Liberal voters,” said James Rowe, an associate professor at the University of Victoria. “But their strategy of keeping the base super-animated requires they don't go too hard on that front.”
Polling shows Canadian supporters of Poilievre’s Conservatives also support Trump in far greater numbers than members of any other major federal party. A poll from Leger published in March found 42 per cent of Conservative voters preferred Trump over Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Less than five per cent of Liberal, Bloc and NDP voters preferred Trump.
Political observers have noted Poilievre’s attempts to combat his falling poll numbers in recent months have involved stronger rhetoric against Trump — clearly signalling his effort to boost support with Canadians — but polling has consistently found that Carney has the edge with voters when it comes to Canada-US relations.
On Tuesday, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Trump maintains his view that Canadians would benefit from becoming the 51st state.
Shane Gunster, assistant professor at Simon Fraser University, said because so many Conservative voters like Trump, it’s a challenge for the party to credibly pivot.
“They have been very effective at playing to the fringier elements of their party and that has been a very effective rhetorical means of whipping up the base,” he said. “But it is also a form of rhetoric that isn't going to play particularly well outside of their base.”
This tension will likely define the rest of the campaign for Poilievre.
It’s worth taking stock of how much the political terrain has changed. In an interview with right-wing influencer Jordan Peterson filmed in December, Poilievre said a temptation exists to embrace political viewpoints from other ideologies to expand the Conservative tent, but it’s a temptation he’d “fiercely resist.”
“This is the mistake conservative parties around the world have made countless times,” he said. “They think, ‘Well, anybody who has got a conservative mindset is already voting for me, so I can go off and chase the ideas of my political opponents and then, everyone will love me.”
“And in the short term, it works because you manage to have all these people and all of the political, different ideologies captured in one tent, but the problem happens when the policies are a disaster.”
Managing a shifting coalition
Typically, the Conservative coalition involves pulling support from the Western populist faction of the party and the Bay Street business community. Like most modern conservative parties, it has embraced free markets, deregulation, and in Canada specifically, a full-throated support for the oil and gas industry.
But just as Trump reshaped the Republican Party, the MAGA effect is changing the conservative coalition in Canada, experts say.
Last week, at the right-wing Canada Strong and Free Network conference in Ottawa, attendees heard from leading conservative voices about the need to take a page from Elon Musk’s DOGE by significantly cutting government spending in the name of efficiency, reforming education and school boards to protect parental rights, rights for vapers, and dramatically boosting oil and gas production.
High profile speakers included Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who demanded the next federal government abandon emission reduction policies; former acting secretary for the Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf, who defended the US government’s deportation of students critical of Israel; former Stephen Harper-era cabinet minister John Baird, who called Iran “an evil” that must be confronted; and American right-wing writer Bari Weiss, who said to applause that MAGA is here to stay even after Trump leaves office.
“These aren’t popular issues, so it feels desperate,” Rowe said. “Within the base, people still love what's happening with DOGE and would love to bring it to Canada, but outside of the base I just don't see this resonating — same with sabre-rattling with Iran.”
“If these are efforts to widen the tent, I see all of that as for the base and part of their strategy is around feeding the base, making sure the base is super-activated, super-animated, and turns out to vote,” he said. “That theory is going to be put to the test at the end of this month.”
Sponsors of the conference include major oil and gas companies, like Imperial Oil, Suncor Energy, TC Energy, the Pathways Alliance, as well as companies, like right-wing social media platform Rumble, crypto company Coinbase, and others, including Uber, Airbnb, Microsoft, Meta, Mastercard and the Climate Discussion Nexus — a climate denial group that handed out buttons to attendees declaring the climate crisis isn’t real.
Free trade fight
Given the ongoing trade war, the most notable speaker was Trump’s former trade representative Robert Lighthizer. Conference organizers said the media could not cover Lighthizer’s keynote. Canada’s National Observer obtained an audio recording.
In his address, Lighthizer vigorously defended Trump’s global trade war by describing trade as water that will come in unless you put barriers up everywhere. In his view, the global tariffs will lead to an “industrial renaissance,” which “in the final analysis,” Canada would benefit from. But Lighthizer also put the concept of free trade, a hallmark of conservatives for decades, in his crosshairs.
“I have this view — we're all conservatives here — that conservatism is not necessarily consistent with free trade,” he said. “Clearly, as conservatives, we're against government intervention, and we have a view that the less government intervention in the market the better the result is going to be for everyone, but … the essence of being a conservative, for me, is not optimizing prices and consumption.”
Instead, the essence of conservatism to Lighthizer is conserving values, like traditional families with children that aren’t doing drugs, he said.
Gunster said it's a significant comment because it’s revealing that the right-wing is rejecting the dominant neoliberal orthodoxy in a change that’s bound to change the political coalitions parties work to build. Pro-free market policies have produced great outcomes for capital, but not workers — insights the left has had for a long time, he said. But if the right wing is now rejecting the economic status quo, it produces a different type of conservative coalition.
This is a major part of the shifting political coalition Poilievre is trying to manage. A major theme of Poilievre’s messaging for years has been the affordability crisis and workers falling behind. Gunster said he is skeptical Poilievre’s rhetoric would translate into real gains for workers and unions, but nonetheless, the conservative coalition is fragmenting, he said.
“That creates openings for us, more broadly speaking, to have conversations about what kinds of things we do want to drive our policy-making priorities,” he said.
Voters head to the polls April 28.
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