What The Hell America!

Martin Lukacs

It’s an effort to dress up hard-right market fundamentalism — which is really just a more extreme version of our governing ideology — as a maverick, antiestablishment rebuke to the system. That’s a hard thing to pull off. But for a while, Pierre Poilievre did that better than just about any right-wing pseudo-populist politician in the world — until Donald Trump’s tariff attacks upended politics in Canada and handed a reprieve to the Liberal Party. And I think it’s especially impressive considering his record as a lifelong politician, who during his time in the Conservative government of Stephen Harper was a battering ram against the labor movement, the least antiestablishment role imaginable.

He really stands out among Canadian Conservative politicians for his hard-line ideological commitments, incubated through his training in the Fraser Institute, the Calgary School, and the Reform Party. His intellectual guru is Milton Friedman. But while he likes to do the odd Friedman meme — Elon Musk–style — his belief in abolishing any role the government might play in progressive taxation or the public provision of health care, education, or housing is deeply studied and deeply held. During the Stephen Harper years, he actively organized on the right wing of the Conservative Party — in a group called Khmer Bleu, a nod to the ruthless Cambodian regime — to push Harper rightward and carry the torch for no-holds-barred neoliberal capitalism. Poilievre has never made his peace with the welfare state and all the progressive post-WWII social gains. His goal is to ultimately take a blowtorch to all of them.

Part of his project is the strategy he learned from Reform Party leader Preston Manning, who understood that a radical free market agenda could only succeed in Canada if it was disguised and tethered to popular discontent. Manning was always very clear — both with his inner circle and the broader party — that they would surf a wave of anger and disenchantment.

In his case, that anger stemmed from the disappointments of the Progressive Conservative Brian Mulroney era, who, in their view, had not pursued a neoliberal agenda anywhere near vigorously enough. Poilievre, for his part, has tapped into the wreckage left by the economic legacy of neoliberalism, including stagnating wages, unaffordable housing, and a tattered social safety net, the performative posturing of the [Justin] Trudeau Liberals, and the asphyxiating despair of the pandemic.

Until Trump came along and spoiled his lead in the polls, Poilievre had nailed down the elements of the pseudo-populist sales pitch. He had a powerful slogan — that “the system is broken” — which ended up, according to polls, resonating with two-thirds of Canadians. There was the evocative portrait of working-class misery that also resonated widely. There was an attack on the culprits — the elite “gatekeepers” who have rigged things and are holding people back.

In the book, I trace how detailed and prescient a lot of his critiques were of the corporate elite; he often outflanked the NDP [New Democratic Party] in critiquing them. He was the first out of the gates to blast the handouts to big business during the pandemic, the public-private-partnership schemes of the Liberals, and the endless intergenerational corporate welfare that government after government have shoveled at the corporate elite. I think his sensitivity to the mechanisms of corporate welfare was probably thanks to his Friedmanesque training.