AN UNACCUSTOMED FEELING took hold among attendees at the Conservative Party of Canada’s annual convention in Quebec City in September. For years, they had felt the impoverishment — economic, but also cultural and spiritual — of their country under Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government without being able to do anything to stop it. But polls were now giving the Conservative Party a double-digit lead and a crushing parliamentary majority. For the first time in many years, they felt that victory was at hand.
At the centre of it all was Pierre Poilievre, the party’s newly-elected leader. His keynote speech garnered so many unexpected standing ovations that he went over time by more than half an hour. Afterwards, the line to take photos with him stretched across the entire width of the conference centre and into the small hours of the night.
In two years, Pierre Poilievre
