How Will Pierre Poilievre Tackle US Election Interference?

It wasn’t the party leaders or platforms that took centre stage on the election campaign’s first day.

What caught the media’s attention was a two-week-old interview Alberta Premier Danielle Smith gave to the far-right American news outlet Breitbart.

Smith told the interviewer she had urged officials in the Trump administration to delay tariffs until after the Canadian election to help the Conservatives’ prospects of forming government.

Smith and her supporters were quick to point out that nothing she did violated any Canadian election laws. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Smith was free to make her own comments.

That stands in contrast to the way many conservatives reacted in 2022 when it was discovered that the Chinese, Indian and Russian governments may have attempted to influence the 2019 federal election. Global News reported that Canadian intelligence agency CSIS had briefed then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on attempted Chinese interference in the 2019 election.

Poilievre was so upset about that alleged interference that he spoke about it in the House of Commons for months. In May 2023, he dared NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh to bring down the Liberal minority government if Trudeau did not agree to a public inquiry into the allegations.

A public inquiry into possible foreign interference was established in September 2023 and concluded nothing that originated from China, India and Russia broke any election laws and that "Canada’s democratic institutions have held up well and remained robust in the face of attempted foreign interference."

But the Conservative position on the issue was clear: Foreign interference in our national elections is wrong.

Smith’s efforts didn’t persuade Trump to delay his tariffs.

But his changing comments on Poilievre raise questions about whether he is attempting to influence the election outcome.

In a recent interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham President Donald Trump professed that he didn’t much care for Poilievre and that he’d "rather deal with a liberal than a conservative."

This is a complete reversal of what he said just two months earlier on the Hugh Hewitt show.

During his interview with Hewitt in January, when asked if he was looking forward to possibly working with Poilievre instead of Justin Trudeau, then-president elect Trump replied, "I am. I am, if that’s what happens. Certainly, it will be very good. Our views would be more aligned, certainly."

Considering Trump has spent his entire political career attacking the "radical liberal left," one can only assume that he’s now attempting to engage in election interference on behalf of the federal Conservatives. Trump recognizes that the best way to help Poilievre is to criticize him.

You would think that someone like Poilievre, who was so concerned with election interference, would step up to the nearest microphone and denounce Trump’s blatant attempt to meddle in our democratic process.

But without hesitation, just hours after the Laura Ingraham interview aired, the leader of the opposition was in front of national media taking advantage of the gift given to him by claiming to be the "tough guy" best equipped to take on Trump.

Now, there is absolutely no evidence that Trump and Poilievre acted in co-ordination with each other. Or even that Trump actually came up with a plan to boost Poilievre.

But to use a patriotic sports analogy, Trump sent Poilievre in on a breakaway with his comments on Fox and the Conservative leader did his best to score.

International election interference campaigns by far-right and authoritarian governments are unfortunately nothing new. Trump certainly benefited from Russia, Cambridge Analytica and WikiLeaks in 2016. The combination of Russian hackers leaking Hilary Clinton's private emails to WikiLeaks and Cambridge Analytica using nefarious methods to collect data on hundreds of thousands of Americans proved to be effective in swaying potential voters away from Clinton and into the waiting arms of Trump.

Trump’s latest comments also play into Poilievre’s populist narrative. Even though Poilievre has been a federal MP for 20 years and served as a cabinet minister in two Stephen Harper governments, he has still fashioned himself as a political outsider.

Now that Justin Trudeau has sailed off into the sunset, Poilievre the career politician is looking pretty establishment, even compared to new Liberal Leader Mark Carney. Trump’s public statement that Poilievre is "not his guy" helps gives him the outsider veneer he wants.

Unfortunately, I think we can only expect more of the same when it comes to Trump and his attempts to manipulate the Canadian public.

He recently praised Carney after a phone call between the two of them, claiming the two men "agree on many things." He even refrained from calling Carney "Governor." One has to wonder if this newfound "respect" has anything to do with the election.

At the end of the campaign, many Canadian voters will face a choice between a man who has fashioned himself as a Trumpian, populist outsider or a more centrist alternative in Carney, who will move the Liberals and Canada to the right of where it has been for the last nine years.

One thing we should be able to agree on as Canadians is that foreign leaders and governments have no business attempting to influence or interfere in our elections.