After years of suffering through endless “Axe the Tax” ads from Mr. Poilievre and the Conservative Reform Alliance Party, I couldn’t resist one little partisan poke from my side of the table. Consider it a safety warning to all who want to keep Canada Strong and Free, “Beware The Pierre” is our rallying cry!

WARNING: this is a long report. But if we are going to vote wisely on April 28, we should know who we are getting into bed with for the next four years.

One week from now, Canadians will have either elected a government that will be led by a Prime Minister of a free and sovereign nation, or a government that will be led by the man who would be Governor of the 51st State. It’s that serious.

We need to Beware The Pierre simply because he is such a successful politician. Mr. Poilievre lives and breathes the Reform Alliance ideology hidden under the banner of the latest reincarnation of the Conservative Party of Canada. This ideology is hardwired into his reptilian brain stem, beats in his heart, and sings in his soul. He believes.

Mr. Poilievre describes himself as a “True Conservative” but political journalists describe him as a “libertarian, populist, social Conservative.” For Canadians who may have forgotten, we used to have Progressive Conservatives. Then came the alienated gang from the west pushing their Reform Alliance agenda to Unite the Right. David Orchard of the federal PC swore never to give the Conservative name to that ideology, but was betrayed by an ambitious Peter MacKay. Thus was born the new Conservative Party of Canada.

Let’s go back to that alienated gang from the west, because that is the root of Mr. Poilievre’s idolatry of ideology. Since the age of 14, Pierre Poilievre has been a political animal, attending Conservative, Reform and Alliance Party meetings. He was selling memberships for the Reform Party at 16, and at 17 was a delegate to the Reform Party National Convention. At 19, he was leading protests against a student organization that had tried to prevent a Reform Party rally on campus.

This is no casual hobby. This is a full time job. When people say Mr. Poilievre has no work life experience, they are wrong. He was working full time and perfecting his skills as a political agitator for the Reform Party of Canada. As a Reform Party member on campus at the University of Calgary, he was in direct conflict with the Progressive Conservative student organization, calling them “unprincipled.”

As President of Calgary’s “Young Club” of Reformers, he clashed with none other than a young Patrick Brown, President of the Progressive Conservative Youth Federation. By 2002, Pierre aka Jeff aka Skippy and his colleagues were calling themselves “The Fight Club” and were now canvassing for Stockwell Day and the new Canadian Alliance. This is where his true  political skill begins to emerge.

Mr. Poilievre becomes an adviser to Stockwell Day while he works online to complete his BA. in 2002, he begins to work as Ezra Levant ‘s campaign spokesperson (yes, that Ezra Levant, the far right journalist now broadcasting Rebel News) in a bid to merge the Alliance and Progressive Conservative Parties. He then becomes Levant’s campaign spokesperson in an attempt to replace Preston Manning, However, Mr. Manning withdraws from the race to allow Stephen Harper to step in and become leader of the new Conservative Party of Canada.

Every step of the way, Mr. Poilievre was able to move along the leadership chain, very cleverly shifting allegiance from one rising political star to the next, continually honing his political skills. Finally, in 2004, he became an MP and, along with Andrew Scheer, the distinction of being the youngest members of the Conservative caucus. After the 2006 election, Harper appointed Mr. Poilievre to become Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury Board. In this game of Snakes and Ladders, Skippy just kept climbing.

From there, through leaders Harper, Ambrose, Scheer, and O’Toole, Pierre Poilievre continued to survive and prosper. When O’Toole was ousted in 2021 (did he fall or was he pushed?) Mr. Poilievre campaigned for leadership of the Party promising that he would make Canada “the freest country in the world.”

Jean Charest and Patrick Brown were also running in that leadership race. Charest was attacked for being too “Liberal”, and a whistleblower claimed that Mr. Brown had violated campaign finance  laws. That accusation led to his disqualification. Former PM Harper stepped in to endorse Mr. Poilievre, and he became the next leader of the Conservative Reform Alliance Party of Canada on the first ballot. Little PP had finally made it to the top of his political pile.

To get to the next prize he would need to incite the madding crowd in the only way a populist politician knows: attack and dumb down. Columnist Karl Nerenberg noted in September of 2023, “Poilievre has decided to push emotional buttons rather than focus on anything so complex as the details of policy.” Mr. Poilievre began a litany of campaign slogans bearing an eerie resemblance to the Trumpian rhetoric south of our border. His “Canada is Broken” and “Canada First” mirrored Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” and “America First” rhetoric.

The danger with “create a crisis” and nationalistic slogans like these is that they conveniently take up the airspace that should be devoted to positive action plans. “Nationalism is a great deflection from having actual policy discussions,” says economist Erica Ifill. She sees nationalism as a gateway to fascism and white supremacy. This is classic far right Republican electioneering.

At the same time, Poilievre continued with his relentless assault on anything Liberal and blamed all of the nation’s perceived woes on PM Justin Trudeau. “Axe the Tax”, “Build the Homes”, “Fix the Budget”, “Stop the Crime” were the solution to decades of Liberal mismanagement, according to Mr. Poilievre, who has yet to release his Party’s platform.. That is why we need to Beware The Pierre, the man who wants to stop the crime but keep the handguns.

More troubling than this was his close parroting of some of President Trump’s more controversial positions, Mr. Poilievre issued a rejection of “wokeness” and stated,, among other things, “We will restore the promise of Canada and our founding leader {John A. Macdonald}.”  He commented that he sees DEI programs as “garbage.” He feels that “Canada is broken.” Back In February of 2022, Prime Minister Trudeau warned that “Mr. Poilievre wants to “Make Canada Great Again”

The final straw, and unintended proof that Mr. Poilievre had fallen prey to Trumpian rhetoric, was when he began to brag about the sizes of his rally crowds in Edmonton, posting on social media that over 15,000 people attended the event. He later told reporters “When was the last time we had a rally that big in Canada? I think to have 10,000 or 15,000 people at one political rally. this is a movement like we’ve never seen.” Candidate Trump also inflated his crowd sizes, Boys will be boys.

Mr. Poilievre later challenged that Mark Carney’s large crowds had been inflated by AI. That was rich, considering a Conservative commercial once aired featuring Poilievre with current campaign manager Jenni Byrne holding Stockwell Day’s grandchild and posing as an average Alberta family. CBC fact-checked Mr. Poilievre’s claim and found no AI manipulation. Mr. Poilievre wasn’t lying, he was simply suffering from rally crowd size envy.

Finally, on January 30, 2025 , columnist Dan Newman wrote about “Poilievre’s Trumpian Aversion to Intelligence” regarding his refusal to go through a Top Secret Security Clearance.  No one who is afraid of being checked out for a Top Secret Security Clearance should be anywhere close to the leadership of this country in this day and age. Full Stop.

I don’t think we’ll get any of this blarney from Carney. The way I see it

Skid Crease, CAJ