The Ugly Canadian: Pierre Poilievre and the Politics of Aggrievement

In Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre, author Mark Bourrie calls Poilievre: “an angry teenager in the body of a grown man.” Bourrie’s biography is a must read on the man jockeying for the top job.

Author Mark Bourrie begins his story in Calgary, the hometown of Pierre Poilievre. It’s the 1970’s/early 80s and Calgary was Boomtown, Canada. The Alberta economy was calling out to Canadians across the country to come help them power the economic engine, fuelled by oil and gas development all over the province.

This is familiar territory. I was one of those young, bright-eyed young adults who left behind a dead-end job in a stagnating economy for a new future out west. It didn’t last long; within a year of my arrival, the boom busted, and I was facing even less prospects than I left behind in Ontario. It was a terrible time for so many people who lost jobs, homes, and investments. Including the Poilievre family.

Poilievre’s parents, both teachers, weathered the downturn better than many. They lost investment property when the bottom fell out of the housing market and had to downsize, but didn’t lose their jobs, like so many others, including me. Poilievre calls his upbringing “modest.” Like most westerners, he blames the Liberal Pierre Trudeau government for implementing the National Energy Program that some critics say caused the downturn. Poilievre was just a kid, not yet in school, but he remembers the stress his parents faced.

I remember it differently; I was older after all. I recall the sky-high interest rates that cost people their homes. And I also remember, as Bourrie points out, that the downturn in the Alberta economy was part and parcel of a global recession, the worst since the 1930s. Poilievre’s resentment toward the Liberal party has deep, yet questionable, roots.

After an injury sidelined any possible career as a wrestler and sports were no longer an option, Poilievre began hanging out with his mother as she attended Conservative meetings. His interest in politics sparked, he started reading books, leftist ones at first, but then he encountered Milton Friedman and the “inescapable”, “fundamental logic of the free market system.” Yet, as Bourrie notes, it was Friedman who was responsible for the monetary policy that contributed to the high interest rates that tanked the Alberta housing market. The first of many ideological inconsistencies.

Bourrie highlights the “holes in neo-conservative ideology” which comes with the joining of conservative libertarians and monied fundamentalist Christians. The result is a disjointed ideology where the primacy of individual autonomy doesn’t square away with gay rights, or drug use, or consistent property rights or environmental protections.

“[Poilievre’s] intellect crystallized in the Reaganite environment of Calgary, a city of both prosperity and grievance, where people believed their hard work and brains, not the oil in the ground, made their province richer than almost all the rest of Canada.”

I remember the grievance well. “Eastern bastards freeze in the dark” was chanted at Stampeder football games by a stadium full of mostly ex-pat easterners.

Western grievance continued under Brian Mulroney, but the breaking point came when the Mulroney government awarded Montreal’s Canadair with a $1.4 billion military maintenance contract over the stronger bid from Winnipeg’s Bristol Aerospace. The Reform Party was founded in 1987 by Preston Manning, Stan Roberts and Robert Muir, the “pioneers of modern right-wing populism” signalling the beginning of the end for the Progressive Conservative Party and its Red Tory roots.

“Poilievre was fourteen when the first contingent of Reform MPs left for Ottawa… Politics, he realized, was the way to blow off his inner rage… he discovered he liked the competitiveness of campaigning.”

Bourrie connects the dots between major Conservative characters. Jason Kenney, a first-term Reform MP started a Reform Party club at the University of Calgary. John Baird, an up-and-coming Ontario MPP Poilievre met when he moved to Ottawa as a staffer. Ezra Levant, publisher of the hard right online media site Rebel News, and Poilievre go back to their time at the University of Calgary.

Poilievre met Jenni Byrne, who was to have a major influence on his life, when he was a teenager, at a Reform youth conference. Byrne, who heads the consulting firm Jenni Byrne + Associates, was also a former advisor to Conservative PM Stephen Harper, key to Doug Ford winning in Ontario, and currently acts as advisor to Poilievre. Byrne’s “ruthlessness” Bourrie says, scared Conservatives even back in the early days.

Bourrie positions Poilievre within a globalist populist/fascist movement that includes US president Donald Trump, UK’s Nigel Farage, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Argentina’s Javier Milei and Victor Orbán in Hungary.

“Modern journalism is made for Pierre Poilievre.”

It was the system, said Bourrie, including the journalists that were part of it, that created Poilievre. He should know, having spent 20 years on Parliament Hill working as an award-winning journalist before pursuing a PhD in history, again, award-winning. He followed that up with a law degree. This is his fourth book.

The adult Poilievre, Bourrie contends, is the same person ideologically as the teenage Poilievre. There has been no movement, no growth or maturity in his ideology, which is more libertarian than conservative, more Reform Conservative than Progressive Conservative. There is no hint of the Red Tory about him.

Anyone with a passing memory of the events of the last two decades will be reminded of them as Bourrie mines the archives of Canadian news sources to flesh out the story. Bourrie covers the birth of Reform, their merger with what was left of the post-Mulroney Progressive Conservatives into the Canadian Alliance, the disastrous Stockwell Day, the rise of Stephen Harper and the renewed Conservative Party, the Liberal governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, the move of Poilievre into politics in the riding of Nepean-Carleton, his time in the Harper government, building a reputation as Harper’s attack dog.

“Poilievre was great at attack politics. He wasn’t intimidated by older, more experienced opponents Journalists were collecting his clever insults and keeping in touch. So were Stephen Harper and members of his inner circles, who were looking for caucus members who would be willing to take the low road while cabinet ministers tried to look like statesmen.”

…

“As an opposition back-bencher, Poilievre was everywhere. “His snappy quotes, his meanness, got clicks and generated dopamine, and local journalists understood this and were addicted to what he was dealing.”

Bourrie quotes Conservative pundit L. Ian MacDonald: “Poilievre is annoying because his insults are so juvenile, inappropriate in a schoolyard, let alone in the central forum of Canadian democracy.”

Not only that, but Poilievre, people said, “was a poor and unsympathetic manager of his staff, a difficult boss for anyone who couldn’t give the time, effort, and skill that Poilievre brought to his work.”

There’s no room to go into great detail, nor would I want to. Read the book. Bourrie’s style is accessible, the prose is clear and sparse, there’s so much story to tell, after all, and not a page is wasted in pulling the reader along. Bourrie’s dry wit brings a chuckle now and then. It’s a quick read because it’s an interesting read told by an experienced storyteller. No matter how familiar you may be with the story over the years, Bourrie’s exhaustive research is sure to turn up information you had forgotten about or perhaps didn’t even know. Mad respect for the amount of research and depth of analysis.

The last two chapters are the most insightful and helpful in thinking about Poilievre as the Prime Minister of Canada, especially during a time of growing fascism and threats to democracy.

Central to Poilievre rise and popularity is his manipulation of both the truth and the press that should be reporting it. In the chapter, The Media and the Message, Bourrie outlines Poilievre’s manipulation of the truth to suit his own ends, a trait common with right-wing populists. He has misrepresented statistics on crime, pharmacare, substance abuse policies, Canada’s economic status, and gun control. Poilievre has been gaslighting Canadians on the nature of his relationship with the mainstream media, identifying Canadian media as “Justin’s Journos.”

“Poilievre says Canada’s media is against him and his party, yet in the 2021 federal election, the Toronto Star was the only large newspaper in Canada that endorsed the Liberals”

Bourrie identifies three types of media from which people get their information. Social media, the professional media, and what he calls the pseudo-media, information entities setup for political purposes to promote partisan propaganda. He calls them out: The Post Millennial, Ontario Proud, and True North. True North published the work of Andrew Lawton, author of a biography of Poilievre and now a Conservative candidate; ex-Toronto Sun columnist and perennially unhappy person, Sue Ann Levy; and Lindsay Shepherd, famed Jordan Peterson supporter and “darling of Canada’s far right.”

Poilievre sits down with right-wing pundits and social influencers like Jordan Peterson, Toronto Sun columnist Brian Lilley and the National Post’s Rex Murphy, who slow pitch softball questions and never check the facts. Bourrie calls this a “mockery of journalism.” Meanwhile, Poilievre, for some time after his leadership win, refused questions from and mocked the media.

Bourrie references a 2024 EKOS survey showing “the vast gulf in political views of informed and disinformed people.” Bourrie quotes Frank Graves, EKOS president, speaking at Carleton in 2024:

“We live in a era which sees a crisis of both truth and trust. … The web of designed deceit is broadening and deepening and we are losing this contest for the future. Disinformation is polarizing our society in ways that we have never seen.”

On the international stage, Bourrie states that “Russia is a pro” at interference campaigns. Their Social Design Agency deploys a “bot army” “generating 33.9 million social media comments.” RT, the state media company, was ordered dropped by Canadian cable and satellite companies post-Ukraine invasion. No matter the country of origin, social media, Bourrie says, is the largest purveyor of disinformation coming into Canada and it’s coming through US-owned media companies.

Poilievre has tapped into social media, particularly YouTube, where he has over a half million followers watching upwards of three thousand videos that he shares on Twitter (X) with his three million followers. Poilievre games the algorithm of Twitter and Facebook, where he posts in a “blunt, harsh style that earns clicks and generates the anger.”

“One of the things I’ve wanted to show in this book is that Poilievre is consistent in his beliefs and will keep his promises unless they cause him serious harm.”

In the final chapter, On Shifting Ground, Bourrie reviews the issues before us. On man-made climate change which Poilievre disputes, Bourrie believes that Poilievre will follow Trump’s example and purge government websites of the issue. Poilievre will use the notwithstanding clause to pass tough-on-crime legislation. “If Poilievre has an effective drug-fighting campaign, the world is waiting for it” says Bourrie. The same can be said regarding the housing crisis and Conservative solutions to affordable housing. Bourrie succinctly identifies the challenge with bringing house prices down:

“Two-thirds of Canadians own houses, and almost all of them have seen their equity grow. If prices come down, a third of the population might have a better chance to buy a home, but two-thirds of Canadian will see themselves as poorer. And some of those people are counting on their homes to finance their retirements.”

How many vote Conservative?

Donald Trump’s election in November and his threats to make Canada the 51^st state shifted the political discourse in Canada. After the election of Mark Carney to the Liberal leadership and the role of Prime Minister, after his “axing the tax”, the focus is now on the threat of Donald Trump and the fight for Canadian sovereignty. The question driving the 2025 election has become: Who is the person best suited to defend Canadian interests and standup to Donald Trump?

While Bourrie recognizes the gift that Poilievre has in campaigning, calling him the most effective since Jean Chrétien, he notes that his campaigning is to tear down the other side, not present a coherent, cogent alternative.

Poilievre is like Trump, Bourrie says, channeling “his own anger to inflame the anger and anxiety of the people who go to his rallies. Both politicians are mean, and as is the case with Trump, there’s no boundary on what Poilievre will say or the crowd he’ll talk to.” Poilievre has the stated support of Alex Jones, of Sandy Hook defamation fame, and Elon Musk, who has been dismantling the US bureaucracy through his DOGE actions.

“There’s no blow to low, no overreach that Poilievre hasn’t been willing to make.”

Bourrie devotes an entire chapter to Poilievre’s role in the destruction of Canadian children’s charity WE Charity with no shame for the damage caused. Another to robocalls and voter suppression legislation in Election Skullduggery. And yet another detailing Poilievre’s role in supporting the 2022 Trucker Convoy. And he brings the receipts.

Many people in the US who voted for Donald Trump are on record saying they didn’t think his policies would affect them. They’re finding out different now. Voter regret is a real thing.

In conversation with David Moscrop at his Ottawa book launch, Bourrie assured his audience that Poilievre will keep his promises, except for that one he made to only serve two terms, a promise already broken. Poilievre has been telling us who he is for the past two decades. There will be no moderating his influence once in power. No check on his ruthlessness.

With a lifetime of grievance to stand on, what kind of retributory damage can be expected in return? To paraphrase Stephen Harper, we won’t recognize Canada when Pierre Poilievre is done with it.

Take a lesson from our neighbours to the south: Don’t vote for Pierre Poilievre without reading this book. You can’t say you didn’t know.

“Ripper” refers to a David Brooks column written during COVID that defined Rippers and Weavers. Rippers rip apart and weavers bring together.

Thanks for reading.