Pierre Poilievre is the gambler’s choice to become Canada’s next Prime Minister and he is becoming an international political superstar in the process. With Justin Trudeau’s government looking worse by the week, Canadians are buying into Poilievre’s blend of traditional conservative principles and economic populist flavour.

If polling trends hold, Poilievre’s Conservative Party will win the next election with a super-majority not witnessed since the 1980s. How could stereotypically progressive Canada become the home of a revitalised conservatism?

Context is a major part of it. Trudeau’s progressive government has presided over a toxic stew of lagging productivity, across-the-board inflation, and paycheques that have not kept up.

Even if wages have modestly risen in the past year, and the rise of inflation has slowed, it is not enough to dull the indignity of a young couple forking over almost 50 AUD for a greasy fast-food meal. The dispiriting cost of living remains a fact that Trudeau’s own Cabinet ministers will acknowledge.

Monthly payments for new automobiles are historically bruising, and above all, the middle-class dream of owning property requires a considerable fortune. The latter is made worse by exorbitant monthly rents making it nearly impossible to properly save for a down-payment.

For Australian readers, perhaps this sounds familiar.

Instead of changing course, Trudeau’s government seems intent on tripling down on its ambitious and aimless social democratic agenda. More than shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic, they’re stacking as many as possible and hoping the ship will stay afloat.

Trudeau is not the root cause of all these problems, but his government’s policies have done little to soften them, let alone fix them. His supporters have settled on a strategy of telling Canadians that they’re actually doing very well despite everything, and should be glad about it.

Unsurprisingly, Canadians appear far more enthusiastic for Poilievre’s stridently different alternative. That alternative is certainly not the mouldy, religiously pro-business rhetoric of the 1980s, reheated and re-served ad nauseam for 40 years.

The formula of Poilievre’s appeal is contained in a book titled Right Here, Right Now, published in 2018. It was written by his old boss Stephen Harper, Canada’s former Conservative Prime Minister. One of Harper’s main points is a call for conservatives to stake out the middle ground between traditional political principles and full-blown populism.

‘Reform conservatism to address the issues that are driving the populist upheaval,’ urged Harper in the book. ‘That is to say, adapt conservatism to the practical concerns, interests, and aspirations of working and middle-class people.’

Someone on Poilievre’s team has certainly read the book many times. The recommendations of Right Here, Right Now are clearly reflected in Poilievre’s agenda, like his plan to restore affordable, or perhaps less unaffordable, housing to Canada.

Poilievre has pledged to slash the taxes and red tape that discourage the building of new housing. He had also promised to punish municipalities that block new housing starts, and to sell federally-owned buildings for conversion into affordable units.

In effect, Poilievre is pledging to thumb the eyes of those who constrict market forces, and to cheapen and streamline the process of building new homes. This is fully aligned with traditional faith in the market by presenting a tailored, market-oriented solution, rather than merely repeating your uncle’s conservative ramblings.

Poilievre has promised to tie federal funding for municipalities to their yearly housing starts. Any municipality that misses the annual target of increasing the local housing supply by 15 per cent will have their funding clawed back, while those exceeding the 15 per cent will receive a bonus.

There is palpable anger in Canada over the housing market’s brutality. Promising accountability for the ‘gatekeepers’ who helped cause the housing crisis satisfies a justified and populist anger.

Critics of Poilievre have slammed the plan as poorly conceived, but Canadians appear to like that the Conservatives have hatched a bold plan in the first place.

After Poilievre’s populist and popular rhetoric on housing Trudeau’s government released their own affordability plan, but there is no doubt that Poilievre has led the debate. The increasingly unpopular government has not escaped the perception that they are playing catch up with the Conservatives on affordability.

On the topic of affordability, Canadians pay some of the highest cellular phone bills in the world, to the tune of over AUD 50 per month on average. Canada’s telecommunications giants have bathed in a warm protectionist bath since 1994, resulting in no more than three major carriers on the Canadian market.

With near-criminally high cell phone bills, Poilievre has promised to open the market for more competition so Canadians can enjoy more dynamic and diverse pricing. Do not expect Canada’s artificially enriched telecommunications giants to be an ally of Poilievre’s Conservatives.

For the corporate world, their formerly automatic alliance with the centre-right has been shattered. Florida governor Ron DeSantis is feuding with Disney, and the London financial establishment fiercely opposed the Tory-led Brexit.

In an address to the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade earlier this month, Poilievre slammed corporate lobbyists in the national capital who sucked up the Trudeau government and never pushed back against its policies.

Poilievre declared that natural resource giants would have to justify any attention paid to it under a future Conservative government. He praised his Vancouver audience for being productive and worthy economic players, unlike their Ottawa counterparts.

It may surprise many that a conservative politician would establish that kind of relationship with big business. Nonetheless, is it not keeping with free-enterprise principles to demand that companies demonstrate their economic value before getting special attention?

In Right Here, Right Now, Stephen Harper wrote that conservatives need to adapt to a changed world.

‘This does not mean changing our core beliefs. It means applying them in ways that are relevant now. It means shifting from the macroeconomic issues of more than 30 years ago to the challenges emerging today,’ wrote Harper.

Poilievre is applying this to his Conservative Party, even if it still must win the next federal election. Even so, he is disproving that conservatism must reform itself to appeal to Guardian subscribers, be the slavish voice of the corporate world, or abandon its principles altogether in favour of right-wing authoritarianism.

For those in Australia and elsewhere wondering how to push back against their progressive political rivals, Canada is the country to watch.

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