Welcome back to This Week in Canada, because someone has to explain this place. This week, Pierre Poilievre sneaks back into Ottawa, Carney cozies back up to Trump, Canada hires a Democrat-led D.C. firm to explain MAGA, and the criminal consequences of fending off a home invasion. Buckle up!
Imagine a coach who blows the Stanley Cup final with a stacked team—and then redeems himself by leading a junior squad to an 8–0 win. That sounds a lot like the political comeback of Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre.
Poilievre is a career politician who has never really had a real job outside politics. Last week’s lopsided victory in a by-election in deep-blue, rural Alberta—where the Conservatives could have won even if they had run a garden gnome—puts Poilievre back in Parliament after April’s humiliating general election in which he squandered a 20-point lead and lost his own Ottawa-area seat.
To smooth his return, a freshly reelected Tory member of Parliament resigned, handing Poilievre an easy landing. Westminster tradition allows this when a leader lacks a seat, but rarely after voters themselves have just shown him the door.
Conservative partisans with no serious contenders waiting in the wings haven’t blinked at the backdoor reentry by Poilievre. A recent survey showed that 68 percent still back him, convinced that he is the man to lead their party.
The Conservatives boosted their vote share by 7.6 percentage points between the 2021 and 2025 elections. But the Liberals did even better, climbing 11.1 points—and they still hold the most seats in Parliament. Poilievre partisans spin this as a victory, forgetting that in Westminster politics, only seat counts matter. Like the Olympics, there is no medal for beating your personal best. (Here’s a good analysis on where the Conservatives stand.)
Michael Simmons, 58, is a finance professional and lives in Victoria, British Columbia. He has voted Liberal all his life, but in the last election, he backed the Conservatives for the first time. Until then, he told me, he had “purposefully” spoiled his ballot by scrawling “none of these morons.”
Simmons doesn’t see himself as a Conservative. He simply no longer recognizes what the Liberal Party stands for. “The entire political spectrum has shifted so violently over the years that I now sound like I’m MAGA,” he said.
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Author: Rupa Subramanya
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