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No, Pierre Poilievre isn’t Donald Trump. But he sure acts like him sometimes

A fondness for rallies isn't the only thing Pierre Poilievre has in common with Donald Trump. As the CPC leader showed again recently, they also share a remarkable disregard for the truth. Photo by Natasha Bulowski

For most Canadians, Remembrance Day is a moment to reflect on the sacrifices of the past and how they helped underwrite much of the freedom and prosperity we take as a given. For Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party of Canada, it was apparently an opportunity to sow division within Canada — and confusion within its Christian community. 

“Contrary to what Liberals claimed last year,” Poilievre wrote on social media, “Chaplains are banned from prayers at Remembrance Day ceremonies.” As proof, he cited a piece in the Epoch Times, a far-right publication with close ties to the Falun Gong movement and a well-documented history of spreading conspiracy theories. The company’s CFO also faces money laundering charges in an alleged $67-million US operation, one described by the U.S. Southern District attorney as a “sprawling, transnational scheme.”

Not exactly a credible source, in other words. 

This is all a deliberate misrepresentation of a decidedly mundane directive handed down in 2023 by the Chaplain General, one that encourages a more inclusive approach to public addresses for military members. “Chaplains must ensure that all members feel respected and included by undertaking inclusive practices that respect the diversity of beliefs within the CAF.”

Daniel Brereton, an Anglican priest in the Diocese of Toronto, provided a more robust explanation on social media. “Once again, the directive from the Chaplain General of Canada does not ‘ban prayer’ or ‘prevent Christians from practicing their faith,’” he wrote. “No one is stopping you from going to church. No one is stopping you from praying. No one is stopping you from actually following Jesus in your life. Prohibiting the hegemony of my religion in a multifaith society is not the same as prohibiting or ‘banning’ my religion.”

Of all the things to lie about, this is one of the oddest. There are, after all, easily accessible videos of the Remembrance Day ceremonies in question, as well as any number of people who can attest to the presence of chaplains at their own local remembrances on Monday. As NDP MP Charlie Angus noted on social media, “I thank the reverends who prayed at our services today and will pray this evening.” It’s as though Poilievre is determined to test that famous line — well, one of them — from George Orwell’s 1984: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” 

In this, he has an awful lot in common with Donald Trump. The former and future U.S. president routinely gas-lit his own supporters, whether it was about the size of his crowds or the trajectory of incoming hurricanes. As presidential historian Michael Beschloss said, “I have never seen a president in American history who has lied so continuously and so outrageously as Donald Trump, period.”

Poilievre won’t be able to match Trump here, if only because that’s not humanly possible. His lies are appropriately Canadian, by comparison: more modest in scale, less adventurous in content. But they’re still corrosive to our collective understanding of the world and the role that truth plays in it. 

Take his continued misrepresentation of the carbon tax and its supposedly catastrophic impacts on the cost of living (and apologies in advance, but there will be some math here). In his social media posts, he routinely claims the federal government plans to “quadruple the carbon” tax on gasoline by 2030 to 61 cents per litre. But his math makes no sense whatsoever. To arrive at that 61 cent figure, he includes the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s modelled costs of the Clean Fuel Standard of 17 cents per litre, then adds the GST on top of it all. 

Never mind, for the moment, that the federal government’s modeling shows the CFS would only add 4.3 cents per litre by 2030. Let’s just take Poilievre’s figures at face value. With the carbon tax on gasoline already at 17.6 cents per litre (18.5 if you include the GST, as he has), said quadrupling is already mathematically impossible. 

Of all the things to lie about, Remembrance Day ought to be near the bottom of any politician's list. So why did Pierre Poilievre do it, and what does it say about his political future — and ours?

If you strip out the Clean Fuel Standard — and you should since it isn’t actually a carbon tax, much as Poilievre wants to pretend otherwise — the total increase by 2030 is 21.7 cents per litre, or a little more than double where the carbon tax on gasoline is at today. Yes, the rebate would more than double as well, although Poilievre’s not about to tell his supporters that. But why lie about the size of the increase when you can make plenty of political hay over what’s actually true? 

Because, I suspect, this is just who he is. No, Pierre Poilievre isn’t Donald Trump, much as some Liberals will desperately try to pretend otherwise. He isn’t nearly as charismatic, for one thing, and lacks Trump’s almost pathological need to be liked and admired. If anything, he has the opposite tendency. 

He’s also still beholden to a parliamentary system that, for all of its grotesque exaggerations of our democratic intentions, can still hold leaders to account if they stray too far or act too rashly. And while a Poilievre government would threaten some of our institutions, most notably the CBC, they haven’t yet been tested (or weakened) to the same extent as America’s. 

But Poilievre’s wanton disregard for the truth and his willingness to weaponize abuses of it should still be deeply worrying. “Post-truth is pre-fascism,” American historian Timothy Snyder warned in his 2017 book On Tyranny. “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.” We’d all do well to remember that as we watch Trump’s return to power in America — and Poilievre’s continued pursuit of it here at home. 

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