Poilievre’s Hallucinatory Politics

I n mid-July, Pierre Poilievre was apparently feeling very glum. Sources close to the Conservative leader told the CBC that he was deliberately reducing his public appearances. He was doing some self-reflection. One confidant described him as “deflated.” The idea that Poilievre—a man whose tight T-shirt chest puffing had become a campaign trademark—was hiding out in a corner like an old party balloon was indeed quite the image to contemplate. “All of us, we’ve had to eat some humble pie,” the unnamed Conservative told the CBC.

It was apparently a short-lived introspection.

In August, as Poilievre took the stage for his victory speech after securing his new seat in the House (this time in Battle River—Crowfoot), the humble pies had presumably been left to cool on windowsills in gentle prairie breezes. “We believe that Canadians deserve low taxes and bigger paycheques so that food and homes are not luxuries but, once again, the things that people can take for granted. You work hard for your money. It’s time that your money started working hard for you,” Poilievre told the crowd in signature style. Canadians “haven’t given up, so I won’t give up,” he said. And that, “this fall, as Parliament returns, we will oppose out-of-control Liberal inflation, crime, immigration, cost of living, and housing prices.”

The next day, Statistics Canada announced that inflation had once again fallen. The day after that, Poilievre posted on X to defend a nurse who had been accused of making anti-trans comments, tagging Harry Potter author and Grand Anti-Trans Wizard J. K. Rowling in the process—a move reminiscent of Poilievre thirstily chasing Elon Musk in the halcyon days of the Tesla co-founder’s alleged ketamine-fuelled brushfire campaigning for Donald Trump.

No question, Poilievre is back, exactly as he left.

But the rhetorical landscape he is walking into has changed, as has the context in which his messaging style will once again, it seems, be deployed. For one thing, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s hold on the Canadian electorate has been relatively strong since his government’s election. In early August, approval of Carney’s Liberal government was at roughly 50 percent, according to an Abacus Data poll, up from 39 percent when he became prime minister. The same poll showed that roughly the same proportion of Canadians (49 percent) felt Carney was doing a good job representing Canada internationally, and 41 percent thought he was doing a good job of handling Trump.

Part of that success is certainly to do with Carney’s own tone. Whereas Poilievre is quick with an acerbic barb, a punchy clip, Carney is as deliberative and nuanced as you might expect a banker to be. His language is lawyerly, considered—his delivery that of a dad explaining the benefits of contributing to your RRSP. This has largely worked for him, as a contrast to Trump and as a figure of firm, albeit somewhat dull, solidity. While everything that’s going on is really weird, Carney is consistently anything but. He is a self-styled pragmatist, a man who deals with what is.

However, for all the differences of approach, it’s in their descriptions of reality that Poilievre and Carney differ most, and that may be the point of most friction in the coming months. For, whereas Carney likes to stick to facts, Poilievre has the tendency to stray from them.

With Poilievre returning to Parliament, Carney’s steady style will be tested in real time. The prime minister is almost assuredly in for a rough autumn. But it’s not Poilievre’s tone that will cause Carney problems; it’s his imagination.

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A t a stop in Vaughan, Ontario, during the spring campaign, Poilievre was supposed to highlight the deplorable state of housing affordability. It’s a subject that the polls also say is still high on the list of difficulties for Canadians, and it remains a soft, fleshy part of policy on which the Liberals are exposed.

But instead of simply and deftly twisting the knife, Poilievre spun a weird, nonsensical story about how affordable housing used to be. Noting that, nowadays, a house in the Greater Toronto Area might cost a million dollars—which was indeed true—Poilievre then seemed to slip into a waking dream. “You know, ten years ago, a million dollars would have got you a castle on a mountain overlooking a valley of gold,” Poilievre said for some reason. “It is almost hallucinogenic how badly the Liberals have destroyed our housing market.”

It’s difficult to classify this kind of thing. It’s fantastical, obviously. Yet, however much it seemed like a moment of genuine delusion, it wasn’t. This form of fanciful storytelling is a deliberate aspect of Poilievre’s rhetoric—not a characteristic of how he says things but of how he talks.

Another example: a campaign ad the Conservatives created featured Poilievre describing “our home.” It was a treacly, mythical tale of a Canadian town where a pickup-driving dad “rolls down that suburban street, driving slowly so he can hear that beautiful crackling sound of hammers pounding nails into Canadian lumber on newly built and affordable Canadian homes.”

Poilievre described the same fictitious dad heading to the countryside to “service a well” passing “the cattle grazing in the countryside.” And he “looks up and what does he see? He sees a brand-new fighter jet getting ready to defend our home and native land.” It goes on from there, but you get the picture.

Why Poilievre talks this way is certainly worth some exploration, especially because it echoes other post-COVID and post–Great Recession fabulist political language around the world, like that of the Make America Great Again movement or cross-party promise in the UK to “take back control.” Is this myth spinning a reaction to the issues or part of what creates them?

It seems like a little of both. On the one hand, it’s a kind of lullaby to soothe an increasingly anxious society watching the slow collapse of the post–Cold War neoliberal (and triumphalist) world view—a story to reassure everyone that there remains a “normal” world that we can return to. On the other, it is also the driving narrative of reactionary politics, the vernacular of a broken body politic, one that has dispensed with the familiar left wing / right wing gradient and has jankily reorganized itself around core issues, traditionalist world views, and conspiracies.

Poilievre channels this new political parlance in whichever form suits him at the time, effectively and shamelessly, likely because it’s so inherently challenging to the status quo, which Carney represents.

A s good a job as Carney may have done since the election, you can’t ignore that he’s done it without having Poilievre actively on his case. Now, not only has Poilievre returned but all his favoured domestic policy bugbears, like housing and the cost of living, are still high on the list of Canadians’ fears.

A full 40 percent of Canadians polled by Abacus Data in August said Carney is doing either a poor or very poor job of making housing more accessible and affordable. The same proportion said he’s also doing poorly at managing the cost of living.

It’s a similar story when it comes to handling Canada’s deficit and debt, an area where Carney should presumably be strong. There, again, 40 percent of respondents said his performance has been poor or very poor. Carney is struggling even on his strongest file to date—US relations—having been accused of reneging on his “elbows up” approach by eliminating Canada’s counter tariffs.

Against this, Poilievre is bound to roll out more fantastical imagery of what Canada should and could be. We haven’t heard the last of the valleys of gold; Poilievre just can’t help himself. It’s not something Carney has had to directly contend with very much, and it’s unclear whether he will know what to do with it or how to respond to it, especially when required to think on his feet in Poilievre’s preferred rhetorical arena, the House of Commons. While Carney’s performance against Poilievre in the spring election debates was adequate, his inexperience had lowered expectations. He’s been prime minister for months now; few will give him that grace anymore.

But Poilievre’s return to form hardly guarantees a return to his party’s former vaunted poll position. In fact, a period of deeper reflection was probably something he should have seriously considered. Yes, one poll out in late August showed his party pulling roughly even with the Liberals and suggests that he might once again be competitive in a few areas. But there are other underlying trends for Poilievre that are less impressive.

As the summer closes, Canadians now say they are less likely to believe Poilievre is sincere or likable than they were in late 2023. A full half of Canadians polled by Angus Reid said that he is someone they’d be “ashamed to call prime minister.” And while Poilievre can still brag his party garnered the largest vote share in the history of the modern Conservative Party, expanding that tent may now be even more challenging. Among people who said they considered voting Conservative in the spring but didn’t, 70 percent said Poilievre didn’t articulate a clear plan for Canada and 59 percent said his campaign was too negative.

Poilievre may be able to summon castles and fighter jets out of thin air, but it won’t be as easy to conjure up a Canada that wants him in charge.