The strategy behind Poilievre's press restrictions

There’s a funny thing that happens at the very end of Pierre Poilievre’s press conferences: the moment he gives his final answer, journalists start shouting questions they didn’t get to ask. At the same moment, Poilievre’s staffers crowd in and clap loudly, drowning out the questions with applause. 

Poilievre ignores the racket, delivers a parting smile to the cameras, then turns to shake hands with the human props lined up behind his podium while reporters holler at his back in vain.

This moment of tension is one of the more interesting parts of the campaign. It opens a fleeting window of drama; the crack through which uncertainty and conflict enter the chat. It’s the one moment in an otherwise intensely scripted routine when Poilievre’s team relinquishes its rigid control of events and anything could happen.

We get four questions at every press conference. Poilievre’s staffers choose the reporters, but they don’t vet the questions. So every day we wonder, who will get the question? Can someone provoke a human reaction from Poilievre — anger, reflection, humour, contempt — anything more revealing than the slogans and sound bites that comprise Poilievre’s usual public speech? 

It does happen. The morning after Poilievre’s Edmonton rally, his biggest of the whole campaign, the Globe and Mail’s Laura Stone was chosen. “I actually want to know about your rallies, and what your strategy is and who you’re talking to,” Stone said. “Because you bring up things like ‘woke mob,’ ‘Century Initiative,’ bulldozing the CBC … at what point are you just talking in an echo chamber to people who already feel that way, or do you feel like these are broadening the tent of support to Liberal or undecided voters, to get them on board with your campaign?”

“I think it’s pretty broad,” Poilievre replied, in a stating-the-obvious tone. “How many people do you think we had last night?”

“Thousands,” Stone said.

“Well that’s pretty obvious. You can be more precise than that.”

“I don’t know,” said Stone. “The party said ten thousand registered, there were reports of fifteen, I really can’t say.”

“Wow. One last question. When was the last time we had a rally that big in Canada?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never been to a rally that big I don’t think.”

“You know a lot about politics. You’re a very well-informed person. If there were a bigger rally than that, you would know about it. I think so. I think it was pretty incredible.” Grinning, he gestured to his staffers and supporters in the room and asked, “Were any of you there? It was magic, eh? Wow. Incredible. Listen, I think to have ten or fifteen thousand people in one political rally this is a movement like we’ve never seen.” 

It was an astonishing exchange. For one thing, Poilievre almost never goes back and forth with a journalist. For him to do so with Stone suggests she struck a nerve. The tone he adopted, patronizing and derisive, underscored that impression. So did the substance of his reply, a reflexive bragging about crowd size. Instead of a direct answer to her question – who was he aiming his rhetoric at? – Stone got something better. She got the veil to drop, for 45 instructive seconds.

That doesn’t happen at rallies. It doesn’t happen at photo ops. And it doesn’t happen at most of the press conferences, either, largely because Poilievre’s campaign has restricted questions to such an unusual extent. 

Is that a winning strategy? Impossible to know. It has triggered a palpable, rising frustration among the journalists who dutifully attend these press conferences, only to walk away empty-handed; they have in turn been forced to make the question-averse nature of Poilievre’s campaign a story in itself, and not a positive one.

But Poilievre’s campaign has clearly calculated that the base doesn’t care — and the base remains huge. Contrary to appearances, there’s been no precipitous drop in Conservative support over the past four months. It only looks that way because the Liberals have skyrocketed. Conservative polling has in fact held steady, dropping just two or three points from the heights of 2024, but still hovering around 38 per cent. That was enough to win Stephen Harper three straight elections. Poilievre and his war room are betting it’s enough to win him this one. 

The voters who want CBC defunded are unlikely to worry that “mainstream” journalists aren’t getting enough questions. They aren’t reading the Globe and Mail or Canada’s National Observer. Their attention has migrated to a new media ecosystem dominated by outlets such as Rebel Media (which openly spends money advertising for the Conservatives) and other Conservative-friendly outlets such as True North, now known as Juno, or Western Standard. There are also right-wing influencers like The Pleb Reporter, or Jordan Peterson, whose questions Poilievre is happy to engage with.

If Poilievre loses this election, history will look poorly on his decision to limit questions from journalists who work with editors and fact-checkers. But he could still squeak out a victory. If that happens, his media strategy will look a lot smarter than it seems from our perch in the press gallery.

We’ll find out soon enough. Until then, I’ll savour those bursts of dramatic tension at the end of Polievre’s pressers, when anything could happen. Who knows? Canada’s National Observer might even get a question.