Pierre Poilievre is strikingly full of vim and vigour when it comes to taking on his political opponents. Yet he seems strangely lifeless and lacklustre when taking on Donald Trump.
So, despite enormous pressure on the Conservative leader to direct his pit bull tendencies towards the menacing U.S. president, Poilievre just can’t seem to do it with any conviction — probably because it goes against every bone in his body.
Let’s be clear: Poilievre is no fan of Trump’s tariffs or plans to annex Canada. But he is a devoted fan of the main Trump agenda — the one highlighted by tech-billionaire-lunatic Elon Musk wielding a chainsaw as he gleefully hacks government programs as part of Trump’s quest to deliver more tax cuts and power to the ultra-wealthy.
This is exactly the sort of anti-government mayhem that Poilievre has spent most of his life fantasizing about — and spent most of the last couple of years preparing to implement in Canada.
But this full-throttle, anti-government agenda is playing out disastrously south of the border; even elements of the MAGA base are angrily showing up at Republican town halls to protest Musk’s reckless evisceration of their health and social security benefits. They wanted cheaper eggs, not poverty in retirement.
Of course, Poilievre could ignore Musk’s reckless romp through America’s threadbare social safety net and just focus on Trump’s tariff wars. But he doesn’t seem particularly knowledgeable or interested in tariffs and trade policies.
What he does know about — having been a lifelong disciple of right-wing economists Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek — is how to dismantle government programs and disarm government regulatory powers, as Musk is doing.
And, although there’s been little media coverage, it’s significant that Poilievre has become closely aligned with Canada’s high-tech industry, which is more sharply anti-government than much of Canada’s business community.
This new alignment has striking similarities to developments in the U.S., where disruptive American tech giants, led by Musk, have embraced and boosted Trump. The similarity between the Canadian and U.S. situations is captured well in a new book, “The Poilievre Project,” by Martin Lukacs, managing editor of the online news outlet The Breach.
As Lukacs notes, the tech industry on both sides of the border is aggressively pushing a right-wing agenda, pressing for huge government spending cuts (along the lines of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE), deep tax cuts for investors and business, and a rollback in government powers to regulate business.
Leading figures in the Canadian tech community, including Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke and Bay Street tech financier John Ruffolo, have developed close ties to Poilievre, whose stark government-slashing agenda is in sync with theirs.
Their excitement about Poilievre intensified last spring after the Trudeau government decided to raise taxes on capital gains — a move that was widely attacked for allegedly hurting many middle-class taxpayers, but in fact was almost exclusively aimed at Canada’s wealthy.
Enraged by the capital gains tax hike, Ruffolo invited dozens of tech executives to a major Bay Street fundraiser for Poilievre last summer. Meanwhile Lutke, celebrated as a highly successful entrepreneur, is reportedly keeping a low political profile to avoid suggestions he aspires to become Canada’s Elon Musk.
All this has been kept under wraps by a Conservative campaign determined to present Poilievre in the far-fetched role as the workers’ friend and even as the adversary of Canada’s corporate leaders.
Lukacs notes that, while Poilievre has carefully cultivated the image of being tough on the business elite, he has quietly attended lavish fundraisers organized by some of Canada’s leading business and financial players.
So, while Poilievre will undoubtedly try to sound like he’s going after Trump in the debate tonight, he and key elements in Canada’s business elite would like nothing more than a Trump-style disembowelment of government — which would shred much of the social welfare system that millions of Canadians rely on.
This article was originally published in the Toronto Star.
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