Election 2025

Pierre Poilievre rejects criticism that his campaign isn’t focused on Donald Trump

OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is rejecting criticism that he is running a misguided federal election campaign that isn’t responding to Canadians’ anxieties about U.S. President Donald Trump.

At a campaign stop in Saint John, N.B. on Monday, Poilievre defended his focus on the alleged damage of a “lost Liberal decade” — from the increased cost of housing and groceries to thousands of drug overdose deaths in recent years — and said he has been talking for the past decade about what needs to be done to fortify Canada against American economic aggression.

It’s hard to get major projects built in a country that requires evaluations of systemic racism, local psychosocial conditions and confidential Indigenous spiritual knowledge to be considered at length before any approval is issued. But that’s the current scheme for building big projects that fall under federal jurisdiction and are thus subject to the Impact Assessment Act — and that’s exactly why any plan for turning around the country’s lost decade requires its repeal.

Donald Trump’s latest round of threats—a 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods and repeated jabs that Canada “only works” as America’s 51st state—landed like grenades here at home. But they also revealed an uncomfortable truth: it’s hard for Canada to project strength internationally when we haven’t built the foundations of a strong, modern country domestically. We need homes our children can afford, infrastructure that connects a vast nation, a resource sector that gets to “yes”—and yes, a military capable of defending our sovereignty.

Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are starting to cut into Mark Carney’s Liberals’ lead, polls suggest.

The Star’s election predictor, the Signal, says the Liberals’ advantage has narrowed but the governing party could still win a majority in the April 28 federal election.

“You continue to see that volatility here, where the ebb and flow of the Liberal vote really varies more than the Conservative trend line,” said Clifton van der Linden, a McMaster University political science professor and the CEO of Vox Pop Labs, the independent research organization that developed the Signal.

Faced with President Donald Trump’s renewed tariff threats against Canada this week, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh shifted his campaign plans and headed to Windsor to stand with affected auto workers. Now Singh needs to shift again but this time to deal with the near existential threat his party is facing.

Public opinion surveys show support for the NDP has fallen into Green party territory. The Star’s polling aggregator, The Signal, has the NDP at 7.3 per cent. Recent Mainstreet and Léger polls have the NDP at six per cent nationally, while Abacus has the party at 11 per cent.

But Abacus’ numbers also hold more terrible news for the party.

After Doug Ford’s significant majority victory in Ontario, one might think Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre would be racing to cosy up to the premier for help in winning the crucial battleground province in the federal election.

Poilievre, however, said he hasn’t approached the Ontario Progressive Conservative leader for assistance. Ford, meanwhile, indicated he won’t be publicly supporting any of the candidates, insisting he will stay out of the campaign to focus on his province.

OTTAWA — Pierre Poilievre would not contest Quebec’s controversial French-language law in a Supreme Court challenge if the Conservatives form government, he said Saturday, as he declared “provinces have the right to make their own laws.”

Poilievre’s announcement came the same day his path to power narrowed as NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh ruled out propping up a Conservative government in a minority Parliament, but left open the prospect of supporting Mark Carney’s Liberals.

Singh’s position means Poilievre would now likely have to seek an alliance with the separatist Bloc Québécois should the Conservatives win the most seats in the election but fail to form a majority government.