From handguns to 'warrior spirit': Poilievre’s platform echoes Trump-era politics

There’s really only one plausible explanation for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s refusal to disclose whether he would eliminate the federal government’s handgun ban. Spelling out his intention would be too strong a signal of his intention to model Canada after the US where handgun ownership is considered a constitutional right and firearm-related murder rates are stratospheric.

As recently as Jan. 13, Poilievre called Bill C-21 — which was supported by the NDP and Bloc and includes a handgun freeze, with only a few exceptions — “stupid” and promised to repeal it if elected. 

Failing any evidence to the contrary, we must take him at his word.

Gun control is one of those political hot-button issues that pits rural voters, who are more likely to own firearms and resist control measures, against their urban counterparts, who are more exposed to gang shootings and tend to favour firearms legislation. Railing against gun control plays well among large swaths of Polievre’s rural and small-town base. 

But Poilievre almost certainly understands that standing up for handguns at this point in an election campaign where he’s been criticized for being too aligned with the United States, would unleash more inconvenient Trump comparisons. Trump campaigned on dialing back gun regulation and is expected to ban background checks on private gun sales and repeal a ban on devices that convert handguns into “rifle-like weapons.”

Any defence of handgun ownership also risks setting off a news cycle about the incontrovertible link between handguns and violent crime. While no doubt a few people buy handguns for (inanimate) target practice, we all know they are the go-to for criminals; in 2023, half of all firearm-related violent crimes involved handguns, many of them smuggled into Canada from the US.

Given that we live beside a much more populous nation where the rights of gun owners are sacrosanct and gun-related murder rates are by far the highest of any high-income country, it's a miracle handgun ownership in Canada has been kept to minimum and our murder rates are relatively low.

The handgun question is an unusual case where by refusing to answer, Poilievre somehow still comes off sounding Trumpy. At the risk of beating that drum to death, in the past week alone there were other disturbing Trump-like echoes from Poilievre.

Take his reference during the English-language leaders’ debate for the need to instill a new “warrior spirit” within Canada’s military. Poilievre was blatantly channeling US defense secretary Pete Hegseth who said in his opening address to the military, “We will revive the warrior ethos and restore trust in our military.” 

Make no mistake, this is code for no more Mr. Nice Guy. Hegseth has lobbied to pardon US soldiers from war crimes and proudly defends his own decision, while serving in Iraq, to disobey orders to open fire only if his opponents fired first. In his book, The War on Warriors, Hegseth wrote that the American military “should not fight by rules written by dignified men in mahogany rooms eighty years ago,” an allusion to the Geneva Conventions, one of the most important agreements preventing atrocities in international armed conflict.

Poilievre’s warrior reference is a far cry from Canada’s traditional role as an international peacekeeper and while our recent spat with the US may require us to beef up our military, I’d like to think most Canadians would not endorse Hegseth’s vision of the military’s role as “lethality, lethality, lethality.”

Far less consequential, but also telling, is Poilievre’s promise to bring back plastic straws, which were to be phased out in Canada by the end of this year. Without a whiff of irony, Poilievre announced last week he would bring back plastic straws, an issue so dear to Trump’s heart he signed an executive order in March to end the “irrational campaign” against them.

But perhaps the most disturbing of Poilievre’s recent dog-whistles were comments he made about pulling funding from universities that don’t do enough to fight antisemitism. This line of attack by the Trump administration has turned into a vendetta against some of the finest universities in the world including Harvard, Columbia and Yale. Adding it to Poilievre’s other recent musings about ending “woke” funding at Canadian post-secondary institutions portends a potential war against universities and intellectuals, particularly those on the left.

And while Poilievre hasn’t said as much himself, Neil Oberman, the Conservative candidate in Montreal’s Mount Royal riding, wants to ferret out and deport international students who “are not studying and who are participating actively in order to destroy minorities, communities.” Sounds an awful lot like life on liberal US campuses right now, where unmarked Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicles are scooping up foreign students suspected of harbouring views that run counter to the Trump administration.

All of this in tandem with Poilievre’s murky non-answer on handguns are clear signs a Conservative government would edge Canada toward a more Trump-adjacent governing style. I hope as we head to the polls, we look carefully at Poilievre’s agenda and ask ourselves if that’s really what we want. 

It’s been suggested that the policy differences between the Liberals and Conservatives are narrowing, thanks to the departure of Justin Trudeau on the Liberal side and the growing trade rift with the United States overshadowing all other issues. That might be true if you restrict the analysis to tax policy, resource development and trade expansion plans.

But look below the surface and it’s obvious that, given the chance, Pierre Polievre remains fully committed to his main election plank: importing Trump’s culture war to Canada. As some of the values we once shared with the US erode — respect for law, pride in an ethical military, concern for the environment and protection of free speech — we must push back against this spillover effect.