NO FRIEND OF MINE — As Canada’s April 28 election draws ever closer, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre bounded onto stage in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, on Wednesday night, sounding familiar notes. “Who’s ready to stop the crime, for a change?” he asked the cheering crowd. “And who’s ready to put Canada first for a change?” Those lines have come to define both his stump speech and his broader political ideology of a new Canadian nationalism: cut red tape, build homes, talk regularly about ‘the everyday Canadian.’ It’s the kind of messaging behind his party’s rise in the polls and that helped boot out former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last year. But the election landscape has shifted dramatically in a relatively short period of time, and it’s no longer enough. Poilievre suddenly finds himself forced to drive a secondary message: Donald Trump is no friend of mine. Up until January, Poilievre had praised the U.S. president as a “successful businessman” and assured that the two neighboring countries had the same geopolitical enemies. He wasn’t exactly MAGA, but Poilievre drew from the same playbook enough to draw comparisons to Trump — which worked for him until it didn’t. Trump’s onslaught of tariffs against Canada and taunts to make Canada a 51st state proved ruinous to Poilievre, whose popularity tanked after being seen as a man who aligned himself, both ideologically and style-wise, too closely with Trump. It’s been a boon to the Liberal Party, and especially for Liberal leader Mark Carney, a banker whose level-headed nature is seen as the best antidote to Trump’s volatility. Poilievre and his party know that he needs to distance himself from Trump to have any hope of winning, which has led the Conservative leader to finally begin criticizing Trump during his stump speeches. In a Monday news conference, Poilievre made his strongest attack yet: Not only did he single out Trump as the sole reason behind the stock market chaos, he criticized the close relationship between Canada and the U.S. “We have to acknowledge that this chaos is the direct result of wrong-headed, unnecessary, chaotic policies coming from President Trump,” Poilievre said. “These tariffs are a massive distraction, and it reminds us why it was such a mistake for the Liberals to make us so dependent on the Americans.” That pivot on Trump — and the assignment of blame to Liberals for Canada’s dependency on the U.S. — is part of the case Poilievre is now making to convince voters that he can stand up to the American president. Last Thursday, when the automobile tariffs kicked in, Poilievere said that Trump had “chosen to betray America’s best friend and closest ally” and called him “unreliable to deal with.” The week before, he addressed Trump directly: “My message to President Trump is, ‘Knock it off,’” Poilievre said. “Stop attacking America’s friends.” The attacks, however, haven't entirely been convincing because Poilievre still sounds like Trump — his firebrand rhetoric closely resembles the messaging that propelled Trump to the White House. And it’s making it hard for Canadian voters to not see Trump’s shadow as Poilievre speaks. His use of the “Canada First” slogan is reminiscent of “America First,” the signature Trump phrase that serves as a rallying cry for his MAGA movement. His strongman posturing also bears a stylistic resemblance to Trump. “I will protect Canada. And I will always put our country first,” Poilievre said during his campaign launch speech. Another problem is that Poilievre’s messaging still focuses on the country’s ills at a time when the nation is becoming more patriotic — 44 percent of Canadians now say they are “very proud” of their country , a 10-point jump from December to February. Like Trump, Poilievre bemoans a nation riddled with crime and drugs, ruined by open borders and disastrous economic policies led by the opposition party. It was an effective attack against Trudeau, a man who led the country for 10 years, but less so against Carney, a relative political newbie who has tapped into Canada’s rising nationalism by emphasizing that “Canada is strong .” “When you have a wave of patriotism to fight against Trump, who’s saying that Canada should not exist as a country, and you spend your time criticizing the country, it creates a cognitive dissonance. And so many people reject the design, the style to negative. There’s a sense of solidarity,” says Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Quebec. There are signs that Poilievre’s party is growing increasingly frustrated with Carney’s resemblance to Trump. Last month, top Conservative strategist Kory Teneycke told CBC News that Poilievre sounds too Trump-y for a lot of voters and warns that change must come, fast. “I think we're just on the wrong track. And I think we need to adjust, refocus the campaign on the one big issue and soften the tone," Teneycke says. For a candidate who has been defined by his anger, though, change might be hard to come by: “He’s trying, but it’s hard for him to do this,” Béland says. “It is his personality, right?” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at ckim@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @ck_525 . REALITY CHECK — Want a quick, thorough and to-the-point read about the tariff situation, and what it means for the economy, the world and for Trump? Sudeep Reddy breaks it all down in POLITICO Magazine .
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