A Canadian Conservative Not in Name Only

Mr. Poilievre, an Ottawa-area Member of Parliament with Alberta roots, pledges to scrap the carbon tax, cap deficit spending, end Covid vaccine mandates and fire the central bank governor, who had dismissed inflation as transitory and was slow to address it. Sound familiar? Above all, Mr. Poilievre wants to dismantle bureaucracies that restrict competition and raise prices. “Let’s remove the government gatekeepers to build more homes, grow more food and produce more energy right here in Canada,” he said in his acceptance speech.

The contrast with his predecessor,

Erin O’Toole,

could hardly be starker. In Canada’s 2021 election, Mr. O’Toole pledged to spend even more than the Liberals and keep their carbon tax and sweeping gun ban. He was pro-choice on abortion, pro-union and generally inoffensive. The latter is how he emerged as leader in a divided field under the party’s ranked-choice-voting system.

“We’re not your dad’s Conservative Party anymore,” Mr. O’Toole pledged. This lunge to the center-left was supposed to persuade enough moderates to bring Conservatives to power. The party lost two seats.

The errant conventional wisdom was that Conservatives had to become Liberal-lite to win. Today the media refrain is that Mr. Poilievre is too conservative to win. While Mr. O’Toole dissociated himself from the trucker protest against vaccine mandates earlier this year, Mr. Poilievre said, “I’m proud of the truckers and I stand with them.” This could be a vulnerability, but it might also help Mr. Poilievre retake votes from the breakaway People’s Party, and an inquiry over the use of emergency powers in the trucker dispute still looms over Prime Minister

Justin Trudeau.

Mr. Poilievre stresses that the free market can revive Canadian dynamism, and his talent lies in framing this not as an economic abstraction but as a moral and political attack on failing government and business elites. That’s what his “fire the gatekeepers” theme is about—taking on those in bureaucracy, industry and the left who collude to restrict competition and protect their own power. This is dismissed in the media as “populist” but it also tends to be popular. Mr. Poilievre has drawn large crowds and signed up a record number of new party members, including people who don’t usually vote.

Alas, Mr. Poilievre refuses to touch the supply-management system that produces Canada’s high dairy prices. Perhaps some gatekeepers are more equal than others.

Weak opposition has allowed Mr. Trudeau to stagger through scandal after scandal. But after seven years in power, the Prime Minister’s charms may be losing their appeal. As the economy has worsened and issues of incompetence have emerged in the management of airports and passport offices, the Liberal Party’s main response is passing out money.

Canadians deserve a Conservative leader who can offer a clear alternative. When the next election comes, they may finally have one.