Pierre Poilievre Needs to Win Over More Voters. What’s His Plan?

When Pierre Poilievre went on stage to deliver his keynote address at the Conservative Party’s convention on Friday night, he hadn’t yet faced the leadership review vote. The odds were high that he’d win it handily, which he later did, securing 87.4 percent support. But in the lead-up to the convention, experts widely agreed that his real tests—winning over more Canadians, setting himself apart from both Prime Minister Mark Carney and United States president Donald Trump—were yet to come. And the keynote would help signal how he planned to tackle them.

So, what does his speech say about his strategy? Reporter Claire Porter Robbins reached out to Sam Routley, a doctoral candidate at Western University, whose research focuses on centre-right and conservative politics, to break it all down. This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What were you looking for in Poilievre’s speech?

Nothing really came as a surprise. It was more of a campaign speech. He needed to come across as more serious, have a stance on Canada’s place in the world: how it will secure prosperity and get into a good economic position if we’re going into an era where we can’t rely on the US. He spent a little bit of time criticizing Carney, but also offering solutions, like pipelines and home building as an engine for economic growth. But other than that, it was pretty conventional.

How would you characterize his tone?

The narrative coming out of the campaign was that he had to be more prime ministerial, because he comes from an opposition role and he excels in an opposition role.

The concern was that he comes off as a little negative, as an attack dog, as hyper political. I think it produced what was at times a pretty bad contrast to Carney, who comes off as very serious and very established and competent.

There’s been an effort to strike a more prime ministerial tone, to say, Let’s get to know Pierre as more than an opposition politician, and understand his family, what he genuinely believes in, and what his vision for the country is, his values, and so on. There’s been much more emphasis on the more positive vision rather than just being the anti–Liberal Party.

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Do you think this speech indicates he’s changing his approach on anything? Or digging in?

More of the latter. Two things: the first is that I don’t think anyone went into the convention expecting that there was any serious threat to his leadership. What people in leadership positions in the party took away from the election is that they didn’t complete the job but they managed to grow their base. They had a message that worked and resonated. They just couldn’t get that extra 2 to 4 to 5 percent. I think that mindset has kept Poilievre in a secure position.

It seems like staying the course with a slightly adjusted tone is what they think they ought to do. They’re pretty convinced that they have the loose structure that they need to win. It’s just tweaking the tone, tweaking policies here and there.

Conservative Party insiders have blamed Poilievre’s loss in the federal election on Trump coming to power. Do you think he’s changed the way he talks about the US and Trump since the election?

I don’t think he said “Trump” once during the speech.

I think the idea is to align himself with some of the politics Trump represents and frame it as “this is where Conservatives are going” but draw the line at Canadian sovereignty. I think he would argue we can’t be pro-Trump or anti-Trump; there can’t be a binary response. And that’s Carney’s approach too.

Anything catch your eye on how he might have addressed divides between social conservatives and more socially progressive conservatives?

Conservative coalitions are traditionally structured around this alliance between social traditionalists and economic liberals, and that’s fraying because social traditionalists are increasingly working class and support more interventionist economic policies. And then the economic liberals are becoming more socially progressive, and so it’s leading to these disagreements.

In Canada, everyone is facing the economic pinch, with inflation, housing, and so forth, regardless of their social positions. I think Poilievre has been successful in embracing this very conventional set of conservative policy solutions toward driving economic growth, like reducing the size of government, emphasizing individual responsibility.

I think that message resonates with Canadians but doesn’t unite people as much in the US. And Poilievre can avoid the social stuff, because people are willing to go with the Conservatives on the economic message, regardless of their social positions.

I think there’s a common enough experience with cost-of-living issues: to unite the coalition and also appeal to people from the outside and, increasingly, people who have historically not been sympathetic to the conservatives—young people being the big example.

What’s Poilievre’s plan to attract more voters beyond his base?

If you assume that the party maintains all the support it got in the last election, then the party needs only a few more percentage points.

There’s an idea that, at some point, the Liberals will have been in power long enough and not delivered on these cost-of-living issues, which might weaken Carney’s appeal.

I think the Conservatives feel like they have the right message but they need to adjust the delivery. The way to deliver that message when the opponent is Trudeau is vastly different than when the opponent is Carney. You need to come across as more sincere and confident. Less of a campus-conservative type, less partisan, and more of a government in waiting.