Former B.C. politician shows how Pierre Poilievre's Conservative agenda is the Canadian version of Trump-Musk-MAGA
Gordon Wilson's deft Facebook post is worth considering in an election where a man who wants to be Prime Minister parrots Trump administration officials word for word
The federal Conservative agenda under the leadership of Pierre Poilievre is the Canadian version of MAGA.
Make no mistake, whether it's the ever-rotating catalogue of three-syllable slogans, or diluting resource policy to Trump-style "drill baby drill," or promising a Musk-style DOGE slash-and-burn of government, Poilievre's plan is MAGA-lite, it's just that he won't be honest about it.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is at least honest, pointing out that Poilievre is the same as Trump and that she'd like to see election interference by the U.S. government to make sure the Conservatives win.
Gordon Wilson is a deft commentator on political matters, a former leader of the BC Liberals from 1987 until 1993 when he was replaced by Gordon Campbell. He then founded the Progressive Democratic Alliance under which he won the only seat out of 66 candidates. He disbanded the PDA in 1999, joined the NDP as a cabinet minister then lost his seat in the 2001 election.
Now Wilson describes himself as an author and a scholar who has studied geography and demography for several decades. He is retired on his sheep farm in Powell River where he continues writing.
A recent Facebook post by Wilson caught my eye and lays out some of the above and much more. It is a good analysis of the situation in our current federal election.
"The Poilievre agenda is the Canadian version of the MAGA agenda," Wilson writes in the March 25, 2025 post.
That is, of course as he points out, OK in our democratic system if that’s what you want. But it would be nice if Poilievre and his campaign and his supporters started to admit it, because voters don’t just have a right to know, we need to know.
His post entitled "The Dance of the Marionette – To Verdi's Requiem 'Dies Irae'" is a suggestion that Poilievre is really a puppet of Trump dancing to Verdi's Requiem while his supporters cheer for what they think is some Canada First/MAGA brave new world, ignorant of the meaning of the latin 'dies irae': a pending day of wrath.
I think the marionette metaphor is too simplified. The reality as I see it is not any more flattering in that either Poilievre is either fan-boying Donald Trump as a MAGA groupie might, or he was thinking these Trump ideas before Trump acted them out and now he’s playing catch up.
To repeat his words and share the entire paragraph: “The Poilievre agenda is the Canadian version of the MAGA agenda that Americans voted into office under Donald Trump, and that’s fair enough, as long as he is honest and courageous enough to clearly say so and not dance around stage podiums like a marionette repeating learned clichés and political tropes at the end of strings pulled by influencers who are decidedly not Canadian.”
Wilson has a lot to say about Premier Smith, suggesting Elections Canada should investigate her seeming violation of the Elections Act when she urged the Trump administration to interfere in Canada's election by pausing the tariffs, which she said only help the Liberals. She cleverly if mischievously claimed "no, no," that wasn't interference because she was asking the U.S. government to not do something so it was the opposite of interference.
That's like telling a traffic cop you shouldn't get a ticket for going through a stop sign because you didn't blow through the intersection, you simply didn't apply the brakes.
Smith, however, is at least being more honest in that she points out Poilievre's Conservatives are marching in lock step with the Trump-Musk-MAGA saga.
“The perspective that Pierre would bring would be very much in sync with, I think, with the new direction in America,” she said.
“There is a mountain of evidence to confirm that Danielle Smith was telling the truth and Poilievre had no problem with her remarks or making it known she had contacted the U.S. administration on his behalf,” Wilson wrote.
Parallel policies
“There are too many examples of parallel policy and language between the Trumpian narrative and that of Pierre Poilievre to list them all in a single Facebook post, but here are two with potential consequences for Canada,” Wilson wrote.
With respect Mr. Wilson, he prefaces his post saying he will lay out two but I say his post in fact lists five ways that the 2025 Conservatives = MAGA. Poilievre is Canada’s Trump.
Poilievre=Trump No. 1: On Dec. 23, 2024, the Toronto Sun interviewed Poilievre about recruitment in the Canadian military. Poilievre responded that “the first thing I am [he was] going to do as prime minister” was “create a warrior culture” and “get rid of the woke culture” in the Canadian military.
Wilson quotes Pete Hegseth during his Secretary of Defence Senate confirmation hearing on Jan. 15, 2025, when asked how he intended to improve recruitment into the US military. He said the first thing he was going to do was "create a warrior culture and get rid of the woke culture that currently exists.”
"The language used was not simply similar, it was identical, scripted as one might a character in a play," Wilson wrote. "Canadians should know who wrote the script and whose hands are on the cross braces of Marionette, Poilievre.
Poilievre=Trump No. 2: Poilievre took heed from Trump's “drill-baby-drill” sound bite (or as I argue above, he's playing catch-up only because Trump said it first) and said he will deregulate the oil-and-gas sector and eliminate “bureaucratic impediments to unfettered resource development and extraction.”
One of those “bureaucratic impediments” are those pesky Indigenous people in the country. He has promised to remove Indigenous consultation to get to “drill baby drill” faster.
Poilievre=Trump No. 3: As Wilson explains, Poilievre has promised he will gut the civil service a la Elon Musk. He says he will rein in the federal budget through a "pay-as-you-go" law that will tie the release of every dollar of new spending to a dollar cut from existing spending. It’s Canada playing DOGE ball.
Poilievre=Trump No. 4: All of the above are open for discussion, they are promises anyone is allowed to make, and are topics worthy of discussion in debates and among the electorate via the media.
"But Poilievre’s team has again taken a page from the MAGA campaign manual and limited press access, preferring staged events with vetted crowds and no questions from the media."
Poilievre broke from tradition by blocking political reporters and other journalists from travelling on the Conservative campaign plane or bus during the campaign.
Poilievre=Trump No. 5: Directly related to No. 1 is what both Poilievre and Hegseth meant with their identical language regarding a military culture that is "warrior" vs. "woke." Because Poilievre is not admitting (or denying) what it clearly means, and that it doesn't just apply to the military. In the U.S., it doesn’t just mean is firing senior officers who are gay or black or transgender or Asian with the circular logic that any of those people got those jobs only becsause of so-called diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) policies. It also means eliminating DEI programs across government. That is what Hegseth and Trump and Musk are doing right now so if that is not what Poilievre means when he copies MAGA speaking points word for word, he needs to tell voters.
Again, it's clear that the Poilievre agenda is the Canadian version of the MAGA agenda, but he rode MAGA coattails when it suited him, and he hides his true agenda when Trump and Musk start getting bad press in Canada. This is disingenuous and voters should know.
"Perhaps Canadians must learn not to expect a forthright answer from a pre-programmed marionette," Wilson writes. "Maybe we should pay more attention to the puppeteers. If we ask nicely, Premier Danielle Smith might give us a list of who they are."
Not likely. But I agree with Wilson, if you don't want Trump-style politics in Ottawa and Musk-style decimation of government across the federal public sector, vote for someone else.
Visit Gordon Wilson's website at gordonfdwilson.com
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Paul J. Henderson
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