Let’s go back to 2009. Boy was I naïve. We were basking in the glow of Barack Obama’s inauguration. Not only were we witnessing history, the USA’s first Black president, we were hopeful for healthcare, for regulations for Wall Street predators — truly populist promises. The kind about people.

Also in 2009, and ever since on YouTube, I bore witness to Rick Mercer’s “celebration” of Pierre Poilievre’s receiving a full government pension at the age of 31. Today that pension is estimated to be worth $230,000 every year.

Mercer was asking for “fun stories from people who worked with Pierre before he became an MP.”

This proved a challenge: “unfortunately, we cannot find any evidence that Pierre has held what most of us would call a ‘job’,” he was forced to conclude.

Mercer was not wrong to call out a politician presenting himself as a man of the people. Two thirds of working Canadians do not have a pension. On the cusp of being fully pensioned for life, the fledgling MP actually said, on the subject of Indigenous reparations, “we need to engender the values of hard work and independence and self-reliance.” 

He was immediately forced to make an apology by then Prime Minister, Stephen Harper.

As Poilievre was groomed— quite literally, he took off his glasses and discarded his Wall Street business suit in 2023 — for party leadership, his image developed. He went from being “parliamentary secretary to the prime minister” — his function to take the heat for decisions he did not make — to “man of the people.” A leader.

His vision of “the people” seems to be that they ought to be the loyal lackeys he once was.

The evidence is plain. Poilievre’s route to power was by way of subservience.

His connections to big money are well known. He has ties with Elon Musk, the Koch brothers, the oil and gas industry, tobacco and vaping, mining, etc. 

Follow the money.

His rise to power has been through ever more powerful masters. None more so than Donald Trump.

As beholden as he is to big money, Poilievre is particularly enslaved by his adulation of the Bully-in-Chief, Donald Trump. He has mimicked Trump every step of the way: “I’m not aware of any other genders than man and woman”; “we must deport any temporary resident that is here on a permit or visa that is carrying out violence or hate crimes on our soil.”

Yes, these are Donald Trump’s talking points, but they come out of Poilievre’s mouth. Only the better grammar marks the difference. Canada’s education system is much superior to that of the U.S., it must be said.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Pierre Poilievre shows he’s Trump-loyal by being a Trompe-l’œil.

The tough guy who does what he’s told (Pierre is to Donald, for example, as Donald is to Putin) is analogous to the Man of the People who never held a job. Poilievre’s claims to populist appeal are as fraught as those of Trump.

Despite the Poilievre campaign’s halfhearted attempts to separate itself from Donald Trump after he started to attack Canada’s economy and sovereignty, a decade of parroting the master is hard to shake. So is the habit of benefitting from foreign interference in our elections.

Just last week, far-right Florida Republican conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, newly influential in the White House, asked Canadian journalist Sam Cooper, “what can President Trump do in these next three weeks to make sure that the interim Prime Minister Mark Carney does not hold another term?”

And what about the contradiction of the Trump-loving, Trump-supported Canadian: the Maple MAGA?

Even as he campaigns on a “Canada First” platform, Poilievre is not even particularly beholden to Canadian big money. As was the case with the trucker’s convoy of 2022, where he posed among the swastikas and upside-down Canadian flags in an orchestrated takeover of the Conservative party, his most powerful taskmasters are American.

Likewise, Poilievre’s attempt to suggest a true leader is strained, to put it mildly. His failure to obtain a security clearance, for example, not only means he cannot receive the intelligence and security briefings accorded all party leaders, it suggests an unwillingness to abandon the call of conspiracy theory about the Deep State. It reveals, in fact, his true allegiances: to fake news, to authoritarianism, to the circumscription of democratic process. 

These are outward signs of something dark within. We have seen them normalized by Donald Trump and other authoritarians, old and new. There is nothing more dangerous than an inwardly weak man in power.

Pierre strictly controls press access—even charges for it. He demands journalists share their questions in advance: this way he can refuse to answer without having to do so publicly.

He limits all press conferences to four approved questions. No follow ups. Like Trump, he will talk over a journalist with accusations of bias rather than directly answer a question. He prepares one talking point and is unwilling or unable to risk saying something off script. Why? Is it because he has nothing to say? Or is he worried he will reveal too much?

I do not mean to suggest that the Donald Trump and Poilievre hostility to a free and independent press is purely psychological, just “acting out.” It also serves a clear authoritarian agenda. Silence questions, discussion, divergent opinion, and debate; the basis of democratic order.

But it also must be said that the policies of Trump and Poilievre are so cruel, so hostile, so unnecessary, so self-serving and narrow, some dark psychology is behind them.

Have you noticed how Donald Trump holds a grudge forever? So keenly felt are the wounds to his shallow and narcissistic self-conception that entire political and economic policies are formulated around them. It has been suggested that all of what we’re witnessing today is revenge for injuries large and small.

I suspect that such thinness of skin stands behind at least one plank of Poilievre’s party platform: defunding the CBC. Revenge for the Rick Mercer Report.

What does it mean when politics becomes the clearing house for personal issues?

The one fundamental requisite of a national leader is to be able to think beyond oneself.