After a humiliating election defeat, multiple defections from his caucus and a widening lead in the polls for Mark Carney’s Liberals, Pierre Poilievre has finally decided to make some changes. He debuted the new look at a recent speech at the Economic Club of Canada, one in which he cited the writings of Marcus Aurelius, name-checked Pierre Trudeau in a favourable (or at least, non-petulant) light and even criticized Donald Trump by name. If he’d done all that a year or so ago, of course, he’d probably be prime minister today. 

The biggest sign of this new and potentially improved Poilievre was his decision to appear on Peter Mansbridge’s podcast, The Bridge. “This is my first time on your show,” he told Mansbridge. “I made a decision on interviews that I’m going to go everywhere and talk to everyone.” This is a striking (and strategic) shift from his previous approach, where he remained ensconced inside a tightly controlled informational bubble populated mostly by influencers, sycophants and other online cheerleaders. Even when he made the occasional foray outside that safe space, it was only so he could dunk on journalists from the mainstream media for their supposed lack of objectivity and intelligence.  

He’s also trying to reinvent himself as a more conspicuously decent person. Gone is the apple-chomping dickishness that Poilievre proudly wore like it was his favourite coat, and which continues to adorn so many of the minor characters in Donald Trump’s orbit. “We disagree on our politics,” Poilievre said of the prime minister, “but we’re both fathers, we’re both proud Canadians. And in that sense, I think there’s a mutual respect.”

This is, to be sure, a clear and deliberate tonal shift. It’s also pretty obviously decency under duress. Justin Trudeau was also a father and a proud Canadian, and that didn’t stop Poilievre from heaping disrespect on him on a daily basis. The only reason he’s sparing Carney the same treatment is because it’s become clear, even to Poilievre, that he’s the reason why his party keeps falling further and further behind in the polls. And so, after spending years assailing Trudeau for being a drama teacher, Poilievre is doing his best to inhabit a new role. 

But make no mistake: this is still the same person, even if it’s not — for now — the same politician. We shouldn’t confuse any of this for genuine change, not least because Poilievre himself has already rejected the possibility out of hand. In his interview with Mansbridge he was given multiple opportunities to acknowledge that he’d changed and openings to explain the ways in which he had learned from past mistakes, and he turned all of them aside in favour of dime-store philosophizing and tone-deaf jokes. “I still love apples,” he said. 

This is, as I’ve written, a core part of Poilievre’s personality. For all of the tonal changes in his recent Economic Club of Canada speech, it still contained most of the same ideas and prescriptions he’s been peddling for years. He remains unwilling, for example, to change the way he sees Canada’s relationship with the United States or consider the possibility of decoupling from their economy. Likewise, he refuses to revisit his belief in the centrality of rising fossil fuel exports to Canada’s future. 

And for all the political costuming that his new campaign manager has convinced him to wear, he’s still the same ideologically driven creature underneath it all. During his trip to the United Kingdom he let the new mask slip just a bit when he told an audience that “Canada and the United Kingdom share language, culture, parliamentary government, and most important of all, folklore, including the possibly fictional legend of Robin Hood. And by the way I don't mean the medieval Marxist of 20th century retellings.”

Pierre Poilievre is pretending to have traded his apple-chomping ways for a more mature approach to politics. How long will it last? Break out of the head of lettuce and start the clock.

That, right there, is the true Pierre Poilievre. He’s the guy who sees Robin Hood as “a legendary tax fighter” and someone seeking “economic freedom” rather than, as the legend actually holds, an instrument of economic and social justice who fought against the rich. He’s the guy whose defining beliefs and opinions haven’t changed since he was a teenager, and worse, sees nothing wrong in that. The leader, as I’ve written before, is not for turning. 

The only question then is how long he can hold this new political posture without reverting to a truer form. Can Poilievre spend the next year — or few years, even — pretending to respect his political opponents, a habit that’s as foreign to him as voting Liberal is to Albertans? Will he continue to humour actual journalists with actual questions without resorting to unnecessary apple-chomping spite? Or will the siren’s call of ideological battle prove too alluring for him to resist? The answers here will determine what the rest of Poilievre’s political career looks like, and whether it reaches the heights of power he has always wanted to attain. 

© National Observer