Pierre Poilievre

Early Years and Education

Pierre Poilievre was born in Calgary, Alberta. His mother was an unwed teenager who placed her newborn for adoption. He was adopted by two teachers, Donald and Marlene Poilievre. Pierre Poilievre later said that his adoption gave him the foundation for his conservative views, as it demonstrated to him that “voluntary generosity” is at the core of community, not government involvement in people’s lives.

Growing up in Southwest Calgary’s Shawnessy area, Poilievre enjoyed hockey, diving and wrestling. But as a young man his real love became politics. While attending Henry Wise Wood High School, Poilievre was a member of the Conservative Club and participated in a University of Calgary model United Nations. Poilievre sold Reform Party memberships for future federal Cabinet minister and Alberta premier Jason Kenney. In 1996, when Poilievre was 17 years old, he attended a Reform Party convention.

Early Political Involvement

In 2008, Pierre Poilievre earned a Bachelor of Arts in international relations at the University of Calgary. While there, he became the Reform Club’s vice-president. He was also among 10 finalists who won $10,000 in the As Prime Minister essay contest. His 2,500-word entry was titled “Building Canada through Freedom.” In an argument that would echo throughout his political career, Poilievre wrote that freedom is the foundation of Canadians’ personal prosperity and of Canada’s democracy. The essay’s ideas were consistent with his reading of Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom, which Poilievre later said was “seminal” to his political thinking.

Poilievre’s essay won him the chance to meet Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Showing an early proclivity for partisan jabs, he told the Calgary Herald, “I just hope that none of my views are offensive to the prime minister because many of them come into conflict with the outdated system he has run for the past few years.”

When the Reform Party evolved into the Canadian Alliance in January 2000, Poilievre volunteered as a fundraiser in Stockwell Day’s successful bid to lead the new party. He then accepted Day’s offer to be one of his legislative assistants in Ottawa.

Member of Parliament (2004–08)

In December 2003, the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance merged to form the Conservative Party of Canada, led by Stephen Harper. Shortly afterward, Poilievre won the party’s nomination in the Ottawa area riding of Nepean-Carleton. A few months later, Liberal prime minister Paul Martin called an election for 28 June 2004.

Poilievre ran against two-term incumbent and Liberal defence minister, David Pratt. Poilievre told his parents that he expected to lose, but he defeated Pratt by 3,700 votes. At the age of 25, Poilievre was the youngest MP in Parliament.

He quickly won national attention for his blistering partisan attacks on people and policies he opposed. He was caught on camera swearing at fellow committee members and later had to apologize for making a rude gesture in the House of Commons. He used the racist phrase “tar baby” in reference to a federal carbon pricing policy. Some called him Stephen Harper’s “attack dog.” Poilievre justified his combative style by saying, “I think the ideas I work toward are worth fighting for, and to do that, you frequently have to point out the flaws of the alternatives." Parliamentary staffers voted Poilievre the hardest working MP in 2006.

In the 2006 federal election, Poilievre was re-elected with 55 per cent of his riding’s votes. The Conservative Party formed a minority government. Prime Minister Harper appointed Poilievre the parliamentary secretary to the president of the Treasury Board. His most significant work was helping to draft and pass the Federal Accountability Act. Signed into law in December 2006, it sought to bring more transparency to campaign financing, lobbying, appointments, procurement and whistleblower protection.

In June 2008, on the day before Harper was to apologize to Indigenous peoples for the government’s role in residential schools, Poilievre disparaged the compensation money that would accompany the apology. He said, “My view is that we need to engender the values of hard work and independence and self-reliance. That's the solution in the long run — more money will not solve it.” The next day he apologized in the House for his remarks.

Member of Parliament (2008–13)

The October 2008 federal election saw Pierre Poilievre keep his seat with 55.8 per cent of the vote. In November 2008, Poilievre was appointed parliamentary secretary to the prime minister and to the minister of intergovernmental affairs.

In 2009, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and Prime Minister Stephen Harper agreed to form a working group to study employment insurance reform. But Poilievre’s reputation as a scrappy partisan was so strong that his appointment to the group was seen by many as a successful attempt by Harper to sabotage it.

In 2012, Poilievre advocated making union dues optional for members of the federal civil service. To critics who said he was trying to destroy unions he replied, “You can call it that. I consider it enhancement of workers’ rights and freedoms.” His work contributed to the passage of Bills C-377 and C-525. The two pieces of anti-union legislation were repealed with the passage of the Liberal’s Bill C-4 in 2017.

Cabinet Minister (2013–15)

In a July 2013 Cabinet shuffle, Pierre Poilievre was appointed minister of state (democratic reform). In February 2014, he tabled Bill C-23, the Fair Elections Act. The opposition, scholars and editorial writers claimed it would make voting more difficult. Parliamentary wrangling and the adoption of numerous amendments ended with C-23’s passage in May.

In a February 2015 Cabinet shuffle, Poilievre was promoted to minister of employment and social development. The Conservatives were already focusing on economic issues to win the upcoming election. So the appointment demonstrated confidence in Poilievre’s abilities.

In July 2015, Poilievre announced that monthly child benefit payments for children under the age of six would rise from $100 to $160 per child. Further, the increase would be retroactive for six months so that parents with children under 6 would receive $420 per child, while those with children aged 6 to 17 would receive $520 per child. Due to the looming election call, critics called the announcement crassly political. Poilievre was criticized for wearing a blue golf shirt with a Conservative Party logo when he made the announcement. Two years later, the election commissioner determined that the event broke campaign finance rules.

Opposition MP (2015–22)

On 19 October 2015, 184 Liberal candidates were elected. The party formed a majority government led by Justin Trudeau. Pierre Poilievre’s riding was among many that were redrawn prior to the election and was renamed Carleton. He won re-election with 47 per cent of the vote. Liberal candidate Chris Rodgers finished second with 44 per cent.

The years following the post-election resignation of Stephen Harper saw the Conservative Party struggle with interim leaders and two disappointing leaders. Meanwhile, Poilievre served as critic of the Treasury Board; of the department of employment and social development; and then of finance.

The federal election in October 2019 returned the Liberals to power with a minority government. Poilievre was again re-elected in Carleton. When Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer resigned, Poilievre initially prepared to run for leader. But he then withdrew, saying he needed time with his young family.

Poilievre won his riding again in the election held on 20 September 2021. Many Conservative Party supporters and caucus members believed that Conservative leader Erin O’Toole had misplayed the campaign, which saw the Liberals returned with another minority government. O’Toole resigned on 4 February 2022, two days after 73 of 118 caucus members voted to replace him.

The next day, Poilievre announced that he would run for the Conservative Party leadership. Consistent with his views since high school, he said that his goal was to make “Canadians the freest people on earth.”

Leadership Campaign (2022)

Throughout his leadership campaign, Pierre Poilievre said that he was running not for the leadership of the Conservative Party but to become prime minister, so that he could make Canadians freer. In early 2022, the so-called Freedom Convoy temporarily blocked a Canada-United States border crossing in Alberta and occupied downtown Ottawa from 29 January to 21 February. The activists called for COVID-19 vaccine mandates to end and for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to resign. Poilievre unreservedly supported the protest. On 28 January, he had himself filmed with protest leaders and said that they represent “the people who want to stand and speak for their freedoms.”

Polls indicated that Poilievre was the front-runner throughout the leadership campaign. Critics pointed to his more controversial statements. These included his pledge to fire the Bank of Canada governor and his suggestion that Canadians should escape inflation by investing in cryptocurrency. However, his crowds at over 80 campaign events were large and polls showed a growing lead over other leadership contenders, such as former Quebec premier Jean Charest and Brampton mayor Patrick Brown. The Poilievre campaign sold 311,958 party memberships. It was an astounding figure, given that Andrew Scheer had won the party leadership in 2017 after selling fewer than 10,000.

By the time Poilievre won the Conservative Party leadership on 10 September 2022 — on the first ballot with 68.2 per cent of the vote — his victory was seen as a foregone conclusion. In his victory speech, Poilievre committed himself to helping Canadians hurt by the volatile post-pandemic economy. He said that Canadians “need a prime minister who hears them and offers them hope that they can again afford to buy a home, a car, pay their bills, afford food, have a secure retirement and, god forbid, even achieve their dreams if they work hard.”

Conservative Party Leader (2022–Present)

On 13 September, Pierre Poilievre announced his nine-member team that would lead the Official Opposition. He said its primary job was to stop the government’s proposed tax hikes and end inflation. He dubbed it “Justinflation” in an effort to pin the blame on Justin Trudeau.

Prime Minister Trudeau missed the first two Question Periods of the new House session to attend Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral and a United Nations General Assembly meeting. Poilievre’s first chance to confront Trudeau as the new Opposition leader came on September 22. He served notice that his stinging partisanship would continue when he said, in French, “It is good to see the prime minister, who is visiting Canada to fuel up the gas in his private jet.” In subsequent questions, he attacked the government for failing to end inflation.

As leader of the Opposition, Poilievre pounded away relentlessly at Trudeau and the Liberal Party’s policies. Claims that “Canada is broken” and that Poilievre and the Conservatives were the only ones who could fix it became Conservative Party gospel. Hopes that Trudeau’s second minority government might crumble quickly were tempered by the supply-and-confidence agreement that the Liberals struck with the NDP in March 2022. The NDP agreed to support the Liberal government in all confidence motions until June 2025 in exchange for Liberal support of NDP policies such as dental care and pharmacare.

Although the agreement kept the Conservatives on the sidelines, Poilievre capitalized by tarring the Liberals and NDP with the same brush. With Canada in the grip of a post-pandemic malaise and worsening inflation, the Liberals and NDP sank in public opinion polls while the Conservatives steadily rose. The image makeover Poilievre embraced in July 2023, when he ditched his glasses and started wearing more physique-flattering outfits, also appeared to project strength. “Whether or not I wear glasses, I have the best vision for the country,” he said. By August 2023, Poilievre had climbed to a 10-point lead over Trudeau in the polls.

In early 2024, a scandal erupted around the Trudeau government’s ArriveCan app for border crossings, introduced in 2020. It was supposed to cost $80,000 but wound up costing a staggering $60 million. Poilievre pointed to it as proof that the Liberals were wasteful and incompetent. In June 2024, the Conservatives notched another win over the flailing Liberals when they won a by-election in Toronto–St. Paul’s, which the Liberals had held since 1993.

By September 2024, Poilievre’s conflation of the Liberals and the NDP proved so effective that NDP leader Jagmeet Singh terminated the supply-and-confidence agreement, rather than see the NDP slide even further in the polls. By the end of 2024, Poilievre and the Conservatives had a commanding national lead of more than 20 points. A large majority government in an impending election seemed almost certain.

However, on 6 January 2025, after months of speculation about his political future and several defections from his Cabinet, a beleaguered Trudeau announced that he would resign as Liberal leader and prime minister. Two weeks later, newly inaugurated US president Donald Trump began his second term by threatening a trade war with Canada with the stated goal of annexing it as the 51st state. Nationalism in Canada soared, and concerns over the country’s sovereignty suddenly became a key election issue. On 14 March 2025, former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney became the new Liberal leader and prime minister. His first move as prime minister was to scrap the consumer carbon tax.

With the ground shifting rapidly beneath him, Poilievre struggled to find his footing. His claim that “Canada is broken” and his repeated calls for a “carbon tax election” no longer fit the national narrative. Furthermore, his right-wing stance, his similarities to Trump in style and rhetoric, and his affinity for Trump’s “freedom”-minded MAGA movement suddenly appeared to strongly work against him.

2025 Election

On 23 March 2025, when Prime Minister Carney called a snap election for 28 April, the polls had the Liberals and Conservatives in a dead heat. But the momentum continued to favour the resuscitated Liberals. A poll issued by 338Canada on 28 March showed the Liberals with 41 per cent support nationally compared to 37 per cent for the Conservatives. Even more troubling, the Liberals held a 15-point lead in vote-rich Ontario. Adding insult to injury, an Abacus Data poll showed that 55 per cent of voters credited Carney with eliminating the unpopular consumer carbon tax, compared to 28 per cent for Poilievre, who had spent more than two years campaigning against it.

Throughout the campaign, Poilievre had to continually explain why he refused to get security clearance — and undergo the rigorous background check it entails. He said it was so he could speak freely about the issues and not be “muzzled” by being unable to discuss confidential matters. He also suggested that his previous security clearance, granted when he was a cabinet minister 12 years earlier, proved he had nothing to hide. But Ward Elcock, the former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), said “It doesn’t work that way. Clearances don’t last for that long.” National security and intelligence expert Wesley Wark said that Poilievre’s “stance makes no sense to anyone who understands the nature of security clearances.” Poilievre also had to contend with allegations from CSIS, made public on 25 March, that agents from India tried to interfere in the 2022 Conservative leadership campaign, which Poilievre won. He responded by insisting he had “won the leadership fair and square.”

Poilievre also came under fire from other conservatives. Conservative strategist Kory Teneycke, the campaign manager for Ontario premier Doug Ford, accused Poilievre’s team of “campaign malpractice” for blowing a 25-point lead and falling 10 points behind. Teneycke told the Toronto Star on 10 April that unless Poilievre and the Conservatives “get on it quick, they are going to get obliterated.” Teneycke also expressed concern over “all the Trumpy stuff” in Poilievre’s campaign. “He’s looking and sounding a lot like Trump,” Teneycke said. “So I think there’s a disconnect there.” Ford, meanwhile, backed up Teneycke, saying “Sometimes the truth hurts.” When Poilievre reached out to Ford on 17 March for the first time since becoming federal Conservative leader two and a half years earlier, Ford had advised him to focus his campaign on Trump and tariffs. Writing in the Hamilton Spectator, political commentator Craig Wallace also said that Poilievre “needs to turn his ‘attack dog’ personality on Donald Trump.”

But Poilievre and his campaign chose to double down on law-and-order and cost-of-living issues rather than pivot to address the threats posed by Trump. Poilievre promised to crack down on fentanyl trafficking with mandatory life sentences. He also proposed an American-style “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” law for maximum life imprisonment and vowed to implement his tough-on-crime agenda by using the notwithstanding clause to override certain Charter rights. He also unveiled a “Boots Not Suits” plan to increase training and financial support for people in the skilled trades. The plan was endorsed by several trade unions across the country. “Liberals and lobbyists want… me to stop talking about high food prices,” Poilievre told a reporter on 14 April. “They want me to stop talking about the doubling housing costs during the lost Liberal decade. I’m not going to stop talking about that.” Instead, emphasizing the effects of “the lost Liberal decade” and the potential dangers of granting the Liberals a fourth consecutive government became the new party gospel.

Conservative attempts to preach that gospel were somewhat undermined by Poilievre’s restrictive control over his caucus members, who were not allowed to talk to the press, and his adversarial relationship with the media. Poilievre’s campaign banned reporters from travelling with the campaign team, as is customary. It also limited the number of questions that could be asked of Poilievre at each appearance to four, with no follow-ups, and tightly controlled which four journalists could ask a question. (At one event, Poilievre referred to a reporter who shouted an unauthorized question as a “protester.”) Poilievre and his campaign manager, Jenni Byrne, drew criticism for what the CBC called “the party’s iron grip on message control.” David Colletto of Abacus Data openly questioned why Poilievre was still running a frontrunner’s campaign even though “that strategy doesn’t seem to be working because the entire landscape has changed.”

But that strategy did appear to bear fruit eventually. By the final week of the campaign, the issue of affordability and cost of living surpassed Canada-US relations and Canadian sovereignty as the top-ranked election issue. As a result, the Conservatives managed to close the gap with the Liberals in the polls. However, Poilievre’s favourability ratings remained low. One week before the election, the Angus Reid Institute pegged his overall favourability at 38 per cent — a high-water mark for him — compared to 54 per cent for Carney. Also in the final week, the Poilievre campaign began to pour party resources into his riding, which he had held since 2004, out of fear that he might lose.

Many pre-election polls predicted a Liberal majority government, but the Conservatives fared better than expected come election day. The party increased its seat total by 23 — more than any other party. In the end, the election proved to be a two-way race. The Liberals and Conservatives combined for 85.1 per cent of the vote. The Liberals won 169 seats (3 short of a majority) with 43.8 per cent of the vote, while the Conservatives received 41.3 per cent and 143 seats. It was the largest share of the popular vote for the Conservative Party since the 1988 election. It was also the first election since the 1930s that two parties both finished with more than 40 per cent of the vote. The closeness of the election was reflected in the surprising number of races that were decided by incredibly narrow margins. For example, the Liberals won the Montreal-area riding of Terrebonne by a single vote.  Voter turnout was a robust 69.5 per cent, the highest since 1993 but still lower than some pundits had predicted, given the high-stakes nature of the election.

But while the Conservatives moderately exceeded expectations, Poilievre fell short in his own riding. He received 45.7 per cent of the vote in Carleton compared to 50.9 per cent for Liberal candidate Bruce Fanjoy. On election night, with the Conservative loss confirmed but the final result in Carleton still unknown, Poilievre told his supporters, “I will continue to fight… everyday, and we will never give up on fighting for the Canadian people.”

2025 Election Aftermath

Immediately after the election, the long-simmering feud between Canada’s federal Conservatives and provincial Progressive Conservatives boiled over. While the votes were still being counted in his riding, re-elected Conservative MP Jamil Jivani lashed out at Ontario premier Doug Ford, accusing him of sabotaging the election and “being a hype man to the Liberal Party.” Ford responded, “Last time I checked, Pierre Poilievre never came out in our election [on 27 February]. Matter of fact, he… or one of his lieutenants told every one of his members, don’t you dare go out and help the PCs. Isn’t that ironic?” The day after the election, Tim Houston, the Progressive Conservative premier of Nova Scotia, said “I think the Conservative Party of Canada was very good at pushing people away, not so good at pulling people in…. I hope they do some soul searching.”

Contrary to Houston’s comments, however, the Conservatives did manage to pull some new constituents into the party. The CPC made significant gains among younger, multi-ethnic and working-class voters, although it remained significantly under water in support among women and older voters. The Conservatives managed to flip 14 ridings from the Liberals and 11 from the NDP. This included 7 from the Liberals in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and four from the NDP in each of Ontario and BC. The breakthrough in the GTA alone, where Poilievre’s focus on crime proved to be a decisive factor, was enough to deny the Liberals a majority. And many observers credited Poilievre’s “Boots Not Suits” plan with helping to convert blue collar voters from the NDP, particularly in Ontario and BC.

As the dust settled, the most pressing issue for the Conservative Party was whether to keep Poilievre as leader. Some questioned whether he had enough appeal to push his party over the finish line, especially since his mirroring of Trump had gone from being an advantage with conservatives to a liability with much of the rest of the country. As a “veteran party source” told the Toronto Star about Poilievre, “He’s divisive. He’s polarizing. He’s so aggressive. And he drove people that would have ordinarily voted for other political parties to the Liberal party. That’s not a winning strategy for us.” In his post-election analysis, Dan Letts of the Winnipeg Free Press asked, “Can Pierre, the angry Tory attack dog, learn to stop scaring the neighbourhood?” Meanwhile, in reference to the party’s communications clampdown, the Hub wondered, “Can the Conservative Party loosen up and let the public in?”

But with several electoral gains to show for and, perhaps most importantly, no clear challenger within the party, Poilievre’s leadership appeared to be safe. On 6 May, the Conservative Party announced that it had chosen former leader Andrew Scheer to serve as interim leader of the Opposition while Poilievre seeks to gain a seat in Parliament in a by-election in the Alberta riding of Battle River—Crowfoot. Scheer said that Poilievre should “absolutely” remain as leader and credited him with the party’s “historic gains” in the election. As Matt Gurney echoed in the Toronto Star, “Poilievre got a bigger share of the vote this time than did the last five PMs to win a majority. So I can get why Tories might want to stay the course and write this one off as a fluke. They could be right.”

By-election Victory and Return as MP

On 18 August 2025, Pierre Poilievre unsurprisingly won the by-election in Battle River—Crowfoot, one of the safest conservative ridings in the country, with 80.4 per cent of the vote. His most vocal challenger, local Independent candidate Bonnie Critchley, finished a distant second with 9.9 per cent. In his acceptance speech, Poilievre said, “Getting to know the people in this region has been the privilege of my life. I really love the people of Battle River-Crowfoot… They reinforced a lot of lessons all of us in politics have to learn and relearn again: humility and hard-work, loyalty and love.”

Poilievre will return to the House of Commons as an MP and as leader of the Opposition when the fall session of Parliament resumes on 15 September. He will also face a mandatory leadership review at a Conservative Party convention in January 2026.

Personal Life

Pierre Poilievre met Venezuela native Anaida Galindo when she was working as a parliamentary aide. They were married in Portugal in December 2017. They have two children together: daughter Valentina (born 2018) and son Cruz (born 2021).