Canada's Conservatives are the latest losers from the return of Donald Trump
Until now. According to EKOS, the Conservative lead was down to just three points (35.7-32.7 per cent) on Jan 29, rising to five points on Feb 15. Pallas Data had them leading by only 37 to 31 on Feb 6. Nanos suggested that the gap was 38 to 30 per cent on Feb 7.
To be fair, the polls are all over the place. Innovative Research pointed to a 13-point Conservative lead (40-27 per cent) on Feb 7, while Abacus Data put them ahead by 19 points (46-27 per cent) on Feb 13.
But something has clearly shifted. Canadians could be reconsidering their options with a new election looming. Trudeau will soon be political history, and voters may be taking another look at the Liberals as they choose a new leader. But the biggest factor is surely Donald Trump.
Canadians are furious about the president's threat of imposing 25 per cent tariffs on their products. Although he granted a 30-day reprieve on Feb 3, the people of Canada have vented their frustrations ever since. Trudeau's retaliatory plan of a tariff-for-tariff approach with the US is supported by most of the provincial premiers. Canadians have threatened to stop travelling to the US, have said they will remove the likes of Amazon and Netflix from their lives, and have jeered the US national anthem at sports matches.
This terse political environment has given Liberal MPs an opportunity: they are outrageously suggesting that Trump and Poilievre are two sides of the same political coin.
It's not a new strategy. Poilievre was accused of using 'Trump-type tactics' by Liberal MP Jennifer O'Connell in 2023. Trudeau, when asked by reporters that same year about Poilievre's accusations of Canada being broken under his leadership, responded, 'They tried that down in the United States. Someone who said he was going to fix everything and fed into anger and disconnect, frustration by so many people in the United States. It didn't leave them any better off.'
But this comparison is as ridiculous now as it was then.
Poilievre and Trump may both use populist language and creative messaging techniques, but they have vastly different political ideologies, personalities and policies. The former is very much a mainstream conservative, advocating small government, low taxes, private enterprise and free markets. Trump may share those stances, but he is also an economic nationalist who has embraced tariffs as a tool of geopolitical and trade policy, while seeking to rip up old certainties as part of his plan to disrupt the US establishment.
There was never any question that the gap between the Conservatives and Liberals was going to narrow when Trudeau announced his resignation. I and others have long suggested that the polls were going to get closer when the Liberals finally removed their political albatross.
But Poilievre is now the unwitting victim of a smear campaign by a rudderless Liberal party, which is selling an imaginary connection between their main political rival and an unconventional US president. Voters are likely to be disappointed, however, if they end up deciding that their best choice for handling Trump is not a principled conservative like Poilievre, but the likes of Mark Carney. They can't say they weren't warned.
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