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How Trump Sabotaged Canada's Conservatives and Gifted the Ruling Left-Wing Government a Fourth Term

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  April 30, 2025 10:05 AM

Canada's Liberal government has won a fourth consecutive term in power -- despite widespread public dissatisfaction with their leadership and policies, and having trailed badly in the polls for more than a year.  How did they manage that?  Let's review.  We started telling you about Pierre Poilievre, the Canadian Conservative opposition leader, in September of 2023.  He is smart, likable, focused, disciplined, and demonstrated a penchant for delivering devastating critiques of then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with a smile.  Even by that point in the proto-campaign, Poilievre's party had already opened up a double-digit lead over the ruling Liberals.  Throughout 2024, the Conservatives' polling lead held steady or expanded.  Liberals and their media allies strained to use the specter of Donald Trump as a cudgel against Poilievre, but those desperate attacks fell flay.  It helped that Poilievre was very agile in parrying them, most famously doing so in a viral interview at an apple orchard.  By December of last year, the Liberals were in a total tailspin, on track to be wiped out at the polls.  Conservatives, ahead by 25 points, were demanding an election.  Trudeau announced he'd resign in early January. 

A Conservative Canadian government was on the way.  Until it wasn't.  Around that same time period, US President-elect Donald Trump started trolling Canada about annexing its territory and making it America's 51st state.  Within days of taking office, as previewed literally on day one, Trump imposed punitive tariffs against our northern neighbors (these were briefly paused, then reimposed).  He doubled and tripled down on the '51st state' comments throughout this showdown, enraging the Canadian electorate.  Trump's favorability rating up north plunged to 14 percent, with three-quarters of Canada's population viewing him unfavorably.  The numbers among Canadian conservatives weren't much better (24/60) and still massively underwater.  'Buy Canadian' movements sprouted up throughout the country, alongside anti-American boycotts on goods, services and tourism.  With Toxic Trudeau heading for the exits, the Liberals greeted Trump's actions as political manna from heaven.  They were dead in the water electorally, but Trudea's departure, coupled with Trump's actions and rhetoric, gave them new life.  The reoriented their entire campaign around Trump, then began to surge.  They sliced their polling deficit on a nearly-daily basis, eventually jumping back into the lead.

Among many voters, Poilievre's message on the economy, inflation, housing, crime, immigration, energy, and everything else got swamped by tariffs and Trump.  Canadians saw the Liberals as the more aggressive, angrier anti-Trump option.  The Liberals, in turn, cast the Conservatives as too chummy with Trump to stand up for Canada.  Despite Poilievre criticizing Trump's policies in this realm, and firmly rejecting the '51st state' nonsense, he tried to check those boxes without inflaming Trump or attacking the US government too aggressively, while pivoting back to the central themes of his until-now-succeeding campaign.  But momentum had shifted, and Liberals were indignantly (and privately gleefully) exploiting the country's collective and acute offense to great effect.  They transformed themselves into the conduit for nationalism among voters who felt gravely insulted and economically threatened by an outside force.  The baked cake of a blowout Conservative win was tossed in the garbage bin.  The whole election turned, dramatically and quickly.

On Tuesday, Canada's Election Day, Trump (who'd previously said he didn't care if he was tanking the Conservative Party because a Liberal leader would be weaker at the negotiating table) needled Canadian voters one more time as they went to the polls, again publicly insisting upon the '51st state' fantasy.  The Liberals won, albeit short of an outright majority of seats, which some polling projected they'd pull off.  The Conservatives actually attracted more than 41 percent of the popular vote, up from the 34 percent they won in 2021.  That year, Conservatives actually narrowly won the popular vote, but still lost the election under Canada's system.  This time, despite hugely improving upon both their vote share and number raw votes (more than 8 million in 2025, compared to just 5.7 million four years ago), Conservatives still fell short.  This was an astounding reversal from their 25 point lead around Christmas. Support for third parties also collapsed, further boosting the Liberals.  In 2021, the two major parties combined for around 65 percent of the total vote.  This week, that number jumped to about 85 percent.  The Liberals used Trump's economic interventions and annexation talk to make the election about him, rather than their failed and unpopular leadership, and it worked.  Especially among older voters.

From a conservative American perspective, I think it reflects poorly on the Canadian electorate that they'd abruptly swing nearly 30 points toward the ruling party that has failed them so comprehensively -- unambiguous failures reflected in polling since at least late 2022.  I understand the nationalistic impulse in the face of outside agitation, but channeling that fury into a giant political kiss for their failed socialist overlords strikes me as an act of deeply foolish self-harm.  Voters have agency.  Blaming Trump for the destruction of a seemingly indestructible Conservative lead is largely accurate, but that reality doesn't absolve the electorate of making their own destructive choice.  Poilievre would have been better on virtually every issue, but now he won't be Prime Minister.  Not only that, because his seat is in a marginal district, filled with the sorts of voters who stampeded to punish Trump, he actually lost his own re-election bid.  Insult to injury for Canada's talented Conservative leader:

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The most absurd "analysis" and spin I've seen from some American Righties is that Poilievre deserved to lose and sealed his fate by joining the anti-Trump bandwagon.  This is pure cope, pumped out for a 'Trump can do no wrong' audience.  Trump's choices over the last few months are the singular reason why Canada will once again have a left-wing Prime Minister, rather than a much more sensible center-right one.  The claim that Poilieve was a bad, weak candidate is belied by the powerful coalition and sustained polling lead he'd built -- right up until Trump decided to slap huge tariffs on our number one trading partner (also a signatory to the Trump-negotiated-and-signed USMCA trade deal), while repeatedly spouting off about swallowing a sovereign country into our own.  Even with the sabotage, Polievre's Conservatives still won more seats than they have in any election since 2011, and won their highest vote share since the 1980s. Nevertheless, the Liberals ridding themselves of Trudeau, immediately followed one of the biggest political gifts of all time from Trump, was their Deus ex machina moment.  It's simply undeniable:


Mark Carney, a leftist technocrat and quintessential globalist, has now secured a full term for himself and another for his party.  Their failed policies will continue to batter Canada.  He delivered fiery anti-Trump remarks in his victory speech, so Trump appears to have tariffed and trolled a hostile leader into office, whose entire governing mandate is Trump opposition.  Congratulations?  And similarly dubious congratulations are due to the voters of Canada, who have allowed anger at a foreign leader -- no matter how understandable, under the specific circumstances -- to displace their own urgent priorities, such as housing, affordability, liberties, crime, and the like.  They've re-elected a ruling party that has unambiguously failed them, choosing the path of, thank you, sir, may I have another?  How depressing for the millions who voted for needed change.

One more point: Even if Trump or some of his supporters still find the '51st state' narrative to be amusing, why on earth would any conservative American want to add Canadians to our electorate?  After years of leftist mismanagement and policy-caused pain, voters there nevertheless decided to once again prize Trump resistance above all else, rewarding their left-wing party for, or despite, its many failures.  That sounds a lot like...California. More than 8.5 million Canadians voted for the Liberals this week, which is in the ballpark of the number of ballots cast for Kamala Harris in California last year.  Fifty-nine percent of Canadians sided against the Conservatives on Monday.  Harris won 58 percent of the presidential vote in her home state.  We already have one California in this country.  We don't need another one, dragging our politics and our electorate further left.  If Canada were somehow to become our 51st state, it would instantly make it much harder -- if not impossible -- for conservative Republicans to win nationwide.  With all due respect to our friends to the north, that's a hard, hard pass, in my book.  I'll leave you with this, which is probably both cold comfort and a silver lining for Canadian conservatives licking their wounds: