The Liberal Honeymoon

The Liberal renaissance began in 2015. After a decade under Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, voters sought a center-left alternative, fueled by climate change protests and indigenous rights movements like Idle No More. Liberal leader Trudeau appealed to urban, socially liberal demographics with promises of decolonization, proportional representation, and drug reform. While most of these promises were broken, those that were fulfilled — such as marijuana legalization and support for refugees — boosted his popularity. His charming smile and a housing market in which the average Canadian home cost less than half a million dollars also played a role.

The golden years soon melted away. Before the 2019 election, Trudeau was faced with the SNC-Lavalin Scandal, in which he pressured the minister of justice and attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to halt the prosecution of a corrupt construction company. A few months later, a photo of him grinning in blackface surfaced, smudging his progressive image.

Two opposing social movements helped Trudeau survive the fallout. On the Right, Maxime Bernier, after losing the Conservative leadership election to Andrew Scheer, formed the People’s Party. Its climate denialism and xenophobic platform earned only 1.6 percent of the vote, but this small share split the Conservative base, costing the party seats. On the Left, over one million Canadians joined the global climate strike just weeks before the election. Despite the Liberals’ pro-pipeline policy, they leveraged the moment’s momentum to emphasize their carbon tax plan. While carbon taxes are flat consumption taxes and therefore not inherently progressive, the Conservatives’ attacks on the policy alienated many suburban voters.

The Liberals narrowly won reelection but were reduced to a minority government. Months later, COVID-19 swept the world. In the face of mass fatalities and economic devastation, the Liberal’s decisive response stood in sharp contrast to President Donald Trump’s downplaying of the COVID threat and the scandals surrounding UK government officials partying during lockdown. Voters rallied behind their government and the Liberals skyrocketed in the polls. Hoping to regain a majority, Trudeau called a snap election in 2021. However, many voters thought it was unnecessary, and his popularity again declined.

Once again, Trudeau benefited from division on the Right. Conservative leader Erin O’Toole opposed mandatory vaccination, but refrained from outright denial of COVID’s severity or vaccine efficacy. In contrast, the People’s Party embraced COVID denialism and anti-vaccine rhetoric. Although they won no seats, their vote share tripled, again splitting the right-wing vote. The Liberals’ share of the vote declined, but they gained seats, thanks to the fractured opposition. Without the People’s Party, Trudeau’s tenure could have ended in 2021.

Poilievre’s Rise

After winning three elections in a row, it seemed nothing could stop “Teflon” Trudeau. But trouble was brewing. House prices had been rapidly rising for decades, culminating in one of the worst affordability crises in the world by the early 2020s. Home prices had already spiraled out of control, but COVID-19 exacerbated the problem further as rents outstripped wages and supply chain disruptions stalled new construction. Inflation further strained household budgets, and corporations took advantage of the situation to raise prices on essentials like groceries. The pandemic claimed nearly 60,000 Canadian lives.

Against this backdrop, Trudeau’s progressive image was losing its shine. In addition to his inability to do anything about the housing market and extortionate grocery costs, he failed to meet his government’s own climate targets, pushed pipelines through sovereign indigenous land, and maintained staunch support for Israel.

Poilievre was quick to turn the situation to his advantage, rhetorically sympathizing with the working class, while maintaining pressure on Trudeau. First, he had to unite the Right. He publicly supported the Trucker Convoy, shaking hands with protesters that shut down Ottawa. Promising to help Canadians “gain control of their lives,” he won back right-wing voters while appealing broadly to those suffering from high unemployment and inflation. His message resonated so strongly that he secured two-thirds of the votes in the Conservative leadership race, the best result in over two decades.

Poilievre built up a mass following through viral, clickbait-style videos. In one, titled “Two homes. 20 minutes apart,” he contrasts a small house that costs $570,000 with a much larger one that costs $210,000. The difference? Standing at the border in Niagara Falls, the former is in Canada and the latter is in the United States. The video has nearly a million views.

Of course, viral videos alone do not guarantee success. But they do underscore the resonance of Poilievre’s populist rhetoric. At times, his language sounds less like his neoliberal idol Friedrich Hayek and more like Bernie Sanders. Trudeau is “taking from the have-nots to give to the have-yachts” he claims, railing against “a government of elites and self-serving snobs who look down on ordinary working-class Canadians.” He has also asked, “Shouldn’t our working class be better off today than it was forty years ago?”

Neither Trudeau nor the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh have effectively countered this messaging. While Trudeau has acknowledged that the economy could be doing better, he has defended his record, touting the government’s low deficit. Singh has condemned the housing crisis, but the NDP’s support for the Liberals has tied the two parties together in voter’s eyes, resulting in low support.

Working-Class Vote

Poilievre exemplifies a wider trend of political dealignment in the West, with working-class voters moving away from left and center-left parties and toward the Right. In Canada, dealignment began as early as 2004, when Harper united the Right and became prime minister.

A recent poll found Poilievre’s Conservative Party leading across all income classes, with only an 8-point difference between the lower- and upper-income support. The same pattern holds for the Liberals. Only the NDP’s support drops significantly as income increases. Notably, Poilievre also leads among union members.

Critics might point to Poilievre’s anti-worker and anti-union record as evidence that working-class voters are acting against their own interests. But this raises a key question: Why now? Why have things changed? Why is the working class withdrawing its historical support of center-left and left-wing parties?

The answer lies in the failure of those parties. Over the past two decades, the Liberals have consistently failed the working class, while the NDP has drifted to the center, abandoning its socialist roots. From 2022 to the fall of this year, the NDP supported the Liberals through a supply and confidence agreement, achieving only modest victories, like the gradual rollout of national dental care for Canadian households earning less than $90,000 per year.

It’s not that voters are enthusiastic about Poilievre; like all party leaders, Poilievre has a negative net approval rating. Many working-class Canadians are so disillusioned that they’ve stopped voting altogether, contributing to declining turnout. But those who do vote hear Poilievre’s message clearly: reject the status quo and stand up for the working class. They may not like him or fully trust him, but lacking better options, they are willing to give him a chance.

Stopping Poilievre

Liberals and leftists have tried to counter Poilievre’s rise by fact-checking his statements. Others note that Poilievre is not a populist outsider, but a career politician. But as with Trump, fact-checking and denunciation will likely have little effect. As long as Poilievre rails against a status quo from which working people have seen no benefit — and as the Liberals and the NDP continue to fail the working class — frustrated voters will turn to Poilievre.

A better strategy is to expose Poilievre’s faux populism. Poilievre is right about how bad the housing crisis is. But his solution — cutting taxes — will benefit investors while leaving everyone else behind. His plan to tackle unemployment is to spur economic growth through tax cuts so everyone gets more of the growing pie. In other words, he is offering warmed-over trickle-down economics disguised as populism, blaming the Bank of Canada for inflation while letting corporations off the hook.

But exposing Poilievre is only half the battle. To defeat him, a socialist alternative is needed. This means advancing economic policies that directly address working-class interests, promoting working-class candidates to reshape party policy and platforms, and revitalizing the labor movement to build a mass working-class politics.

These solutions won’t come easily or quickly. The first step is to clear the deck for meaningful action by acknowledging that, while Poilievre may be a liar, his message resonates because liberal social progressivism has done very little to improve the lives of most working people. With an actual alternative in place, Poilievre’s message will no longer seem radical but rather a farcical attempt to protect the rich.