A few years ago, I wrote this:

“[Pierre Poilievre]is one of the Conservative Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Like the Biblical Horsemen, everything he says and does is bad. Everything that is good that he touches withers and dies…He is one of the most despicable, loathsome politicians to ever grace the national stage. He is a pestilence made flesh.

Pipsqueak Pierre Poilievre is a disgrace to Parliament. He is a joke.”

Tell us what you really think, Warren!

In the fullness of time, I revised my opinion. I thought the Conservative leader-to-be had matured, somewhat. He jettisoned the WEF conspiracy theories, the pro-convoy idiocy, the dalliances with the Covid kooks. He started to act like a leader should. He grew up.

But the good people of the Carleton riding obviously didn’t agree. They weren’t so willing to forgive and forget. Somewhere between Monday night and Tuesday morning, voters in that riding – the riding Poilievre had held for a generation, just about – sent the Tory leader packing. They chose his Liberal opponent, Bruce Fanjoy, who is probably just as surprised as the rest of us.

Fanjoy didn’t just defeat the Conservative leader – he clobbered him, by 4,000 votes. It was a humiliation. It was a pounding. But even then – tellingly – Poilievre didn’t get the massage.

“We know that change is needed but change is hard to come by,” he said to his stunned followers, early Tuesday morning.

“It takes time. It takes work and that’s why we have to learn the lessons of tonight so that we can have an even better result the next time.”

But is Pierre Poilievre the sort of guy who “learns lessons?” Is he the one who can achieve “an even better result the next time?”

The available evidence isn’t persuasive. Just a few weeks ago, Poilievre had a 30-point lead over the Liberals. He had a massive war chest. He had a party that was united behind him.

And, even after all that, he failed. His party lost. He lost. He blew it.

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When the story of the 2025 election campaign is written, when it takes up its place in the history section in the library, what will be said? What will be the moral of the tale?

Every election is like a book. It has a beginning, a middle and the end.  It has its protagonists and its antagonists, its lesser characters, its moments of pathos and bathos.  It has (usually, hopefully) a plot.

The plot in this one, this election story, was simple. Everything was going one way, towards a conclusion that seemed inevitable: the ascension of Pierre Poilievre to the office of Prime Minister, and a historically-huge Conservative Parliamentary majority – and the reduction of the despised Justin Trudeau Liberals to irrelevance.

And then, at the end of the first chapter in January, a villain entered the plot. The villain was so awful, so rotten, so cruel, he was almost a caricature. But he was real. Simultaneously, Justin Trudeau – defeated, dejected, no longer the right one for the coming battle – left the stage. 

Without warning, without just cause, the next chapter commenced with the villain named Donald Trump destroying things: the established world order, free trade, the rule of law. That was chapter two. Peace, order, and good government were shredded, and by chapter three – in and around the month of February, 2025 – the skies had gone dark and the inevitable conclusion, a Pierre Poilievre majority government, was no longer inevitable.

As plot twists go, it was almost fantastical. For that month, for that chapter, Canadians quietly went about their business, shaking their heads, quiet as church mice. Initially, we dismissed Trump’s threats as a deeply unfunny joke, told by a drunken guy at the end of the bar who refuses to leave at closing time. Then, eventually, none of it was funny anymore, and Canadians cancelled Spring Break trips to Florida or Arizona or Hawaii, and they stopped buying Campbell’s Soup. Chapter three: a crisis deepens. 

The putative hero of the piece, like all of the best heroes (King Arthur, Spiderman, David of Goliath fame), didn’t initially resemble one. He didn’t look or sound remotely like a saviour. Mark Carney, in style and content, had a banker’s approach, mainly because that was all he had ever been. It was hard to picture him in a suit of shining armour, leading a brave charge up the hill against the villain Trump. 

Pierre Poilievre, meanwhile, did look like a warrior, because that was all that he had ever been. He had a soldier’s swagger and mien. It was easy to picture him defending the Alamo, or Gettysburg, or emerging victorious at Iwo Jima. 

And therein lays the big plot twist: those were American battles, and American victories, weren’t they? There was something about Pierre Poilievre’s way – his choice of language, his policies, his style – that suggested, subtly and then not so subtly, that he may not have his musket pointed in the right direction when the final battle happened.

In other books, in other tales, there have been characters a bit like that. Dr. Watson to Sherlock Holmes, Trapper John to Hawkeye, even Chewbacca to Han Solo. Great characters, great heroes. But always playing second fiddle to the main guy. Here, in this book, that’s the quiet, analytical banker who sometimes spins fantastical tales of his own. Mark Carney.

It’s an odd story, this 2025 Canadian general federal election. An epic battle – literally, truly – for a nation’s existence, for all the marbles. And, in a plot twist that will be remembered long after the book is put away, the people abruptly decided to put their fates in the hands of the guy who has never been in a war like this before. And not the other guy, the fighter named Poilievre.

That, at the conclusion of this book, is the moral of the tale: sometimes, the people will surprise you. Sometimes, they will not rally behind the warrior, the one who knows how to fight. Sometimes, they will choose the other guy – not because they believe he is a soldier. They will choose him to lead because they think his heart is in the right place. Because they think he isn’t going side with the villain, at the end.

Quite a book, isn’t it? Doesn’t sound believable. But it’s on its way to becoming a bestseller, just the same.

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