Poilievre-“Skippy” to fans and foes alike, after he was assigned the nickname as a very young MP-has been one of the main characters in the House of Commons since he was elected in 2004, largely thanks to his rhetorical skills and his gleeful compulsion to take up absolutely any partisan fight and go to the wall with it. Poilievre speaks during question period in the House of Commons in May 2018 (Chris Wattie/Reuters) “With freedom to build a business without red tape or heavy tax freedom to keep the fruits of your labour and share them with loved ones and neighbours freedom from the invisible thief of inflation freedom to raise your kids with your values freedom to make your own health and vaccine choices freedom to speak without fear and freedom to worship God in your own way.”
“Together, we will make Canadians the freest people on earth,” he said. And so, in the midst of the protest mayhem, Poilievre released a video announcing “I’m running for prime minister,” immediately becoming the candidate to beat in the sudden leadership race-the party’s third in five years. The convoy arrived in town with a ludicrous plan to remove Trudeau from office but it was Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole who got ousted, after his tepid response to the protesters sharpened the knife that a large faction of the Tory caucus already had at the ready. “I’m proud of the truckers and I stand with them,” he said two weeks into the occupation. Still, Poilievre refused to condemn the protest as a whole, slicing and dicing his argument to maintain that he supported anyone fighting for their rights and freedoms peacefully, while anyone who engaged in violence, vandalism or obstruction should be punished. But the most zealous protesters would occupy a sprawling territory surrounding Parliament Hill for weeks before a massive police operation finally forced them out.
Some would come and go as weekend warriors, while others would shut down international border crossings across the country, hamstringing massive sectors of the economy. The line of trucks Poilievre was applauding would, over the coming weeks, be joined by thousands of others. Truckers, not Trudeau,” he hollered over the horns that would soon torment Ottawa residents for days and sleepless nights. Nearly every one of the affronts to freedom that Poilievre listed came from pandemic restrictions enacted by the provinces and not Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberal government, but that was very much beside the point. It was like watching Mickey Mouse shout angry populist slogans. Poilievre, a long-time Conservative MP, wore a pair of puffy, red-and-white maple leaf mittens that gave him a soft cartoon quality weirdly at odds with his hard-edged talking points. Poilievre rhymed off an expansive array of grievances he said the so-called “Freedom Convoy” protesters were battling, in addition to vaccine mandates: high grocery prices, small businesses in peril, depressed and isolated teenagers, a political and media elite that ignores anyone they don’t like. Wearing a Canada Goose parka and aviator sunglasses, with his normally shellacked side-part blustered into an unrecognizable tuft by the wind, he grinned into a video camera. The bellowing honks of freedom nearly drowned out Pierre Poilievre’s voice as he stood on a frigid overpass in late January, cheering the truck convoy on its way to lay siege to downtown Ottawa.
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