Six Policy Areas Where Poilievre Mirrors Trump

In a federal election increasingly defined by U.S. President Donald Trump, the future of Canada is on the ballot.

However much Canadians have respected and admired America, we have no desire to be Americans. This reawakening is driving a surge of citizen patriotism and a renewed commitment to guard our national identity — and it is presenting a political challenge for Pierre Poilievre and his Conservative party.

Since becoming Opposition leader, Poilievre has adopted many of the hallmarks of Trumpism — the reckless promotion of falsehoods and conspiracies, a dangerous demonization of political opponents and critics, and an unprecedented disregard for democratic accountability.

In recent days, the Poilievre campaign’s disdainful treatment of journalists, controversy surrounding Poilievre’s “biological clock” comment and an obsession with crowd sizes have only entrenched comparisons to Trump.

While the styles, rhetoric and broad-strokes political visions may be similar, what about on substantive policy issues?

Based on party commitments, public statements and parliamentary actions, a Poilievre government would have much in common with Trump’s rule over the United States, from recycling failed criminal law policies to weakening gun control to promoting unaffordable tax cuts to defunding public broadcasting.

In fact, a close review of six specific Conservative policy proposals reveals the startling scope of change on offer, and clear parallels with the Trump program in all its chaos and cruelty. On climate change and public health, immigration and foreign aid, freedom and the role of government, Poilievre's policies amount to a radical reimagining of the country.

If fully implemented, our country would be poorer and sicker, more divided and less informed, more isolated and less free. In short, we would be less Canadian.

Poilievre’s proposals include:

1. Diminishing the role of government

While Canadians have watched Trump and his techno-DOGE Elon Musk heavily but haphazardly decimate the U.S. federal government, Poilievre’s Conservatives are planning their own shrinking of the government, its responsibilities and its services.

Poilievre’s pledge to introduce a “dollar for dollar” law would require any new government financing to be paid for by a spending cut of equal or greater value. This plan would almost certainly necessitate steep funding cuts to public services and social programs, especially considering the Conservative promise to greatly increase defence spending. It would also significantly limit the government’s capacity to respond to major challenges and shifting population needs until the law was repealed.

The Conservative leader has also committed to introducing a law mandating two regulations be cut for any new one introduced. This plan mimics Trump’s “one in, two out” regulation law from his first term that was widely criticized. Trump has an even more ambitious anti-regulation policy this time.

According to the Canadian government, federal regulations support “a broad range of objectives,” including health and safety, security, culture and heritage, a strong and equitable economy and the environment. Poilievre intends to cut a quarter of these regulations.

While simultaneously complaining Canadians are not getting enough service from their government, Poilievre plans to “reduce the size of the bureaucracy and the state,” claiming Canada is “not a nation of tax collectors and toll masters, gatekeepers and Grandees, bureaucrats and busybodies, rulers and rule makers.”

Combined, these actions would devastate the government’s ability to deliver programs and services Canadians expect in return for paying taxes. Spending cuts would worsen inequality and create real hardship for many. The weakening of regulations could jeopardize anything from food safety to clean air, healthy prescription drugs to secure modes of transportation.

As the 2000 water crisis in Walkerton, Ontario, reminds us, cutting red tape sounds great unless that tape keeps us safe. The leader in charge then was Conservative Premier Mike Harris, the Canadian politician Poilievre is expected to emulate in cutting government.

2. Assaulting freedom

Taking a page from Trump’s anti-woke crusade, Poilievre seems to equate basic decency with a “woke authoritarian censorship” and claims “woke obsessions dishonour our history, destroy our education, degrade our military and divide our people.” In a recent interview with Jordan Peterson, Poilievre argued “wokeism” had created an “obsession with race” in Canada.

Like Trump, Poilievre and his inner circle have railed against diversity, equity and inclusion policies, as part of his fight against whatever he considers woke, and, also like Trump, Poilievre is promising to eradicate it wherever he thinks it is, including in universities and museums over which he has no authority.

Poilievre has also promised — again consistent with the Trump administration — to “beat the insidious and divisive ‘cancel culture’ that sought to destroy our national pride and our monuments.”

Collectively, these commitments have deeply concerned Canadian academics, scientists and researchers, who fear “ideological interference” and “an attack on academic freedom and basic human rights.”

Poilievre’s meddling with freedom does not stop there. Copying Trump’s anti-trans campaign, Poilievre has spoken regularly about a “radical gender ideology” in an attempt to score political points on the backs of vulnerable young people, even going so far as to suggest that the Canadian Museum for Human Rights was imposing “toxic woke ideologies against our people.” A recently opened exhibit looks at the history of persecution of LGBTQ employees in the Canadian Forces and the RCMP. Truth is necessary, even when it is difficult.

In Orwellian fashion, freedom-touting Poilievre, like Trump, would enact policies to restore structural discrimination against some groups, restricting their lives and blocking paths to liberation.

3. Undermining science and public health protections

Waging an apparent war on public health and science has been a key facet of Trump’s second act, notably appointing anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his secretary of health and human services.

There are disturbing parallels between the anti-science movements in the United States and Canada. Trump and other MAGA leaders supported the “freedom convoy” protests against public health measures. Poilievre has decided to court the same movement here, infamously bringing doughnuts to the convoy and attacking mask and vaccine mandates as “malicious,” even as the COVID-19 pandemic was still raging. Poilievre has also promised to ban all current and future vaccine mandates, going so far as to propose legislation in the last Parliament. As we are witnessing with re-emergence of diseases like measles, discouraging vaccines has deadly consequences.

Poilievre has since branched out to fighting Health Canada regulation of natural health supplements to ensure they are safe, attacking harm reduction strategies to prevent drug overdoses and promising to fire health experts in the public service, or, as Poilievre calls them, “bureaucrats who push taxpayer-funded drug handouts.” On each of these policy issues, Poilievre is mimicking Trump.

4. Attacking newcomers

While Trump is leading an all-out assault on immigration and migrant rights in the United States, Poilievre is offering less bombast and fewer details on his own plans while clearly intending to benefit from similar anti-immigration sentiment in Canada.

Poilievre has railed against “false refugees” and committed to deporting them; he has also politicized the Roxham Road border crossing, pledged to cut immigration levels and tighten visa rules and promised to “crack down on bogus refugee claims.”

This is the same politician who was a cabinet minister in the Stephen Harper government that cut refugee health-care coverage, a policy the Federal Court deemed “cruel and unusual” treatment, thus violating the Charter.

Poilievre is also using his penchant for sophistry and conspiracy to label a long-term proposal by a non-partisan charity to increase Canada’s population through immigration as “a radical, crazy idea.” He has also attempted to negatively link this proposal to Liberal Leader Mark Carney, even though former Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney was one of its most prominent supporters.

Poilievre may not be promising measures as drastic as Trump’s, but he is still campaigning on the backs of newcomers.

5. Gutting environmental protection

Just as Trump seems content to let the planet burn while he fiddles, Poilievre is satisfied to prioritize foreign oil companies over the future of young Canadians. While Trump abandons the climate fight and rolls back environmental protections, Poilievre is capitulating to Big Oil, promising to meet all five of the industry’s key election demands, including six-month approvals for new pipelines and an end to the west coast tanker ban. Indigenous communities will no doubt like a word.

The campaign by Poilievre against evidence-based measures to reduce the threat of climate change includes opposition to everything from zero-emission vehicle sales targets to clean electricity and clean fuel regulations. Climate policy experts warn Poilievre’s plan would lead to Canada increasing its carbon emissions.

Poilievre’s ridiculous rhetoric attacking climate action exceeds even that of Trump.

Consider, a new Parks Canada national protected marine area off Newfoundland is “radical environmental extremist ideology,” according to Poilievre.

Last fall, he claimed carbon price increases — the consumer portion of which is now cancelled — would result in a “nuclear winter" causing “mass hunger and malnutrition.” To meet the United Nations Paris accords’ commitment to limit global warming, 107 countries, including Canada, have pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050; to Poilievre, this is simply “radical net-zero environmental extremism.”

Climate change is an existential threat. It is taken seriously by serious people, which neither Trump nor Poilievre can be considered to be.

6. Abandoning our global responsibilities

A quite clear policy comparison between Trump and Poilievre is on foreign aid. Just days after Trump announced a major U.S. withdrawal from international development support, the Conservative leader made his own pledge for a “massive cut” to foreign aid should he win the election.

The extent of Poilievre’s proposed cut — as much as $10 billion by one estimate — is unprecedented in Canada. It is also foolish. As a middle power, Canada gains global credibility and influence by supporting poorer countries and strengthening global and multinational institutions. In a world where our country may need allies now more than ever, this abdication of responsibility is bewildering, the prevailing of private ideology over common decency and common sense.

Put together, these policies form an agenda that would transform the country for the worse, affecting both how Canadians see themselves and how Canada is seen by the world.

Poilievre is continuing to pursue these policies even as polls reveal he may be losing. Yet even if Poilievre wanted to, extracting himself from these commitments would be exceedingly difficult — his own party would likely revolt. After years of nurturing an angry and isolated base, a more American Canada is something a good number of Poilievre’s supporters appear to desire.

One sign: when asked if Canada should join the United States, Conservative partisans were over 30 per cent less likely than Liberal, NDP, Green or Bloc supporters to say they disagree with the statement, according to a recent Ekos Politics poll.

In this final week of the election, nothing is decided. In a campaign that has been dominated by the external threat of Canada becoming the 51st state, voters will get to choose on April 28 just how American we want Canada to be. Through his policy platform, Poilievre is making that choice very clear.