Canadians might wonder what Poilievre said at the border about the purpose of his trip

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This article was published 23/03/2026 (222 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In pursuit of a new and improved political brand, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has been working overtime.

Just look at his itinerary over the past few weeks: he undertook an unsolicited diplomatic mission to the United States in an effort to get President Donald Trump to abandon tariffs affecting Canadians, hobnobbed with Texas oilmen, appeared as a guest one of the world’s most popular — and perhaps most morally ambiguous — podcasts and offered a glowing, if not deeply flawed, tribute to 18th-century Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, considered to be the father of capitalism.

Poilievre is certainly putting in the work of trying to forge a new brand. But is all his sound and fury accomplishing anything? Poll results would suggest Canadians may not be paying much attention.

The Liberals under Prime Minister Mark Carney are approaching 50 per cent support among committed voters in most public opinion polls. On a leader-to-leader comparison, Carney enjoys a 30-point advantage in terms of net approval (approve minus disapprove) scores.

You want to know how to tell if a party or leader is concerned about poll results? It’s when someone from the party, or the leader, starts to utter a corollary of the infamous saying “the only poll that matters is the one on election day.”

That’s precisely what Conservative campaign manager Steve Outhouse did last weekend when he told CBC News: “Polls are polls, and they do what polls do. What you need to do, if you’re talking about the long game, is to not worry about them on a day-to-day basis.”

Translation: we’re incredibly worried and don’t know what to do.

It is in this context — panicky but unsure about where to find the off-ramp to recovery — that Poilievre launched a recent charm offensive in the U.S. with stops in Detroit (to talk about his ideas for a revival of the Canada-U.S. Auto Pact), Texas (where he talked with oil companies, Gov. Greg Abbott and appeared on an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast) and, finally, to New York to deliver a speech to the Foreign Policy Association, a non-governmental think tank.

How did the trip go? Right-of-centre opinion writers in Canada celebrated Poilievre’s efforts to, as he repeatedly said during the trip, “fight for Canadian workers.” Centrist or left-0f-centre commentators found very little value in the trip, particularly his appearance on the Rogan podcast, particularly since it has much less traction in Canada than in the U.S., and Poilievre is running for office here.

The whole podcast appearance was odd, to say the least. Poilievre successfully joshed around with Rogan, who has a habit of turning on guests he finds to be noxious. He didn’t turn on Poilievre and seemed to genuinely enjoy the Tory leader’s company. Of course, that might have had to do with the fact Poilievre gifted Rogan a 70-pound kettlebell festooned with a red maple leaf.

Rogan is big into weightlifting and so, apparently, is Poilievre. However, the kettlebell seemed to steal the show during the podcast. Consider that in the 150-minute episode, the two men collectively uttered the word “tariff” a total of 10 times, said “kettlebell” nine times and “martial arts” or “artist” 17 times. That tells you all you need to know about the substance of the interview.

Being seen to be fighting for Canadian workers is not a bad thing. However, socializing with American politicians, industrialists and a world-famous podcaster known for his own brand of political and social toxicity is not the most effective way of either swaying the opinion of Trump — the only person whose opinion matters on tariffs — or rebuilding the trust of Canadians voters.

The U.S. trip confirmed a longstanding concern about the Tory leader: no matter what Poilievre tries, he leaves just as many people scratching their heads as the number applauding.

In the March 9 edition of the National Post, for example, Poilievre celebrates the 250th anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, a study of the economics of the Industrial revolution many acknowledge as the foundation for free-market capitalism.

It’s hard to understand how lionizing Smith and capitalism right now is going to broaden Poilievre’s appeal. Particularly given his tortured theories on how capitalism has been betrayed, and by whom.

According to Poilievre, people are poor because government “took from the hard-working many to enrich the privileged few.” He argued that crime was triggered by government intervention in free markets, which has corrupted our economy.

It’s a rambling, mathematically challenged and ideologically confused argument that would seem to have very little appeal with a broad swath of Canadian voters, many of whom know that while government has perhaps not done enough to stop the rich from getting richer, it did not create that phenomenon.

I’ve said it before: democracies are best served when governments are held accountable by competent and competitive opposition, giving voters more than one legitimate option when it comes time to vote.

Unfortunately, a barnstorming mission across the U.S., a bromance with the world’s biggest podcaster and an homage to free-market capitalism isn’t providing Canadians with another legitimate option.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca