Earlier this year, the American news website Vox introduced its broad readership to Pierre Poilievre. They accounted for the popularity of the Canadian Conservative leader with recourse to an American phenomenon: the right-wing populism of Donald Trump. The piece painted Poilievre as an embodiment of “Canada’s polite Trumpism.”
Such a diagnosis may rattle many Canadians, who regard the grotesquerie of Trump and his “MAGA” ideology as uniquely symptomatic of life below the 49th parallel. Trumpism (we’d all like to believe) has about as much place in Canada as AR-15s or four-down football. But you needn’t worry: some basic overlap in rhetoric and ideology aside, the Poilievre/Trump comparison falls short. As anyone watching the two national campaigns may have gleaned of late, Pierre Poilievre isn’t Canada’s Donald Trump. He’s our JD Vance.
