In The Weekly Wrap Sean Speer, our editor-at-large, analyses for Hub subscribers the big stories shaping politics, policy, and the economy in the week that was.
Poilievre reaches the pivotal moment of his career—will he rise to the occasion?
Today Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre will deliver one of the most important speeches of his political career. His afternoon rally in Ottawa comes at a moment of significant political uncertainty and social angst.
Two and a half years ago, he was overwhelmingly chosen as his party’s leader and soon skyrocketed to the top of Canadian polls. His diagnosis of and prescription for the challenges facing the country resonated with millions of Canadians. He understood better than any other politician in the country the risks of inflation during the pandemic and the public’s broader concerns about affordability and the cost of living. This enabled the Conservatives to uniquely position themselves as agents of change on the principal issues animating voters.
In so doing, Poilievre broke through previous ceilings of Conservative support and brought new and different voters—including younger Canadians—into the party’s fold. Major by-election wins in Toronto and suburban Vancouver were signs of its breakneck growth. The Conservative surge has increasingly drawn attention from centre-right commentators and political parties across the Anglo-American world.
Many of us assumed that Donald Trump’s election could destabilize the political landscape and put pressure on the Conservatives—though we didn’t quite know how it would manifest itself. The notion that it would involve the U.S. president incessantly speculating about annexing Canada would have surprised even the most seasoned and cynical political observers.
Donald Trump’s provocations have reshaped Canadian politics. The first reverberation was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation in early January. The next has been the growing anxiety and emotion among Canadians themselves. We’ve seen the elevation of Canada-U.S. relations in mere weeks become the singular issue dominating our politics.
This is having immediate implications for Poilievre and the Conservatives. The polls have tightened. An election is no longer a lock for them. They’re going to have to compete with what appears to be a seemingly reinvigorated Liberal Party.
Importantly, what it means to compete has also changed. The ballot question is no longer about affordability, or the cost of living, or even the public’s overwhelming demand for change. Today Canadians are sizing up which leader and party is best positioned to defend and protect our interests vis-à-vis the Trump administration.
It’s probably a fair critique that the Conservatives were too slow to adjust to these fast-evolving political dynamics. One gets the sense that they were almost in a temporary state of denial given it necessarily meant parting ways (at least in part) with the party’s successful message and strategy from the previous 30 months.
In the past week or so, however, Poilievre has clearly come to terms with the new political reality. He has rolled out several substantive policies on interprovincial trade barriers, border security, drug sentencing, and Arctic defence that signal that he and his team understand the new ballot question. They’ve demonstrated a willingness and capacity to compete on these revised terms.
Yet if one was being critical, Poilievre’s policy pronouncements have lacked the coherent framework that marked his pre-Trump appeal. His “Canada First” message still involves unanswered questions.
Herein lies the significance of Saturday’s rally speech. It will be the next major step in this necessary evolution of the Conservative Party’s communications and policy in the age of Trump. The public’s attention will be uncharacteristically high.
Poilievre will need to set out the principles and priorities that would guide his interactions with the mercurial president, as well as the steps that he would take to protect Canada’s economy from Trump’s erratic and unpredictable actions over the next four years.
He’ll need to speak to the country’s rawness at a visceral level but also articulate a clear plan rooted in the evidence and facts with which he’s become associated. He must also make a forceful case for why he’s more capable of advancing our collective interests than Justin Trudeau, Mark Carney, or Chrystia Freeland without appearing to side with the Trump administration’s criticisms of Canada itself. It won’t be easy to precisely square these different circles but it’s how the speech will ultimately be judged. Poilievre in short is going to need to rise to the occasion.
One way to think about our current political moment is as follows: while the Conservatives were decisively winning in a world where the ballot question was about unaffordability and a demand for change, a Trump-induced shift to a ballot question about Canada-U.S. relations has reset the political landscape, and now Poilievre needs to compete and win according to these new terms.
Saturday’s speech will preview the ideas and arguments that he intends to present in the face of such a shifting ballot question. It’s not hyperbole to say that we may eventually look back at Poilievre’s speech as one of the most pivotal moments in this election cycle.
JD Vance addresses the audience at the Grand Palais during the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025. Michel Euler/AP Photo.
JD Vance’s techno-populist vision is conservatism’s way forward
One of the big questions for the early Trump administration and the New Right more generally is whether major fissures will emerge between its populist wing and the so-called “Tech Right.” One might think of it as an intra-coalition divide personified in the figures of Elon Musk and Steve Bannon.
Although these different parts of today’s Republican coalition agree on various issues—including their shared aversion to so-called “wokeism”—there are also potential sources of tension, including immigration and big tech itself.
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has persuasively argued that Vice President JD Vance is key to determining whether a coherent and durable “tech-trad” synthesis is ultimately possible. Not only does he have strong populist bona fides but he’s also worked in Silicon Valley and his political career has been backed by key tech figures, including, most notably, Peter Thiel.
This week, Vance’s major speech at an AI conference in France provided a window into the makings of such a New Right synthesis. One can argue that it’s among the most significant conservative speeches in a long time precisely because it searches for a fusion between national populism and techno-optimism.
In particular, he synthesized a positive vision of technological progress with a clear articulation of American national interests and an attentiveness to the working-class voters who increasingly comprise the Trump-Vance base. It’s worth unpacking each point in a sequence.
First, Vance laid out a powerful case for AI’s transformational potential for the economy, education, health care, and national security. His optimistic view about AI technology stands in such stark contrast with the negativity and safetyism that dominates policy thinking in Europe. It’s a perspective that’s sorely needed—particularly at the precise moment that the U.S. and the West more generally find themselves in the middle of a technology race with China. Halting progress through excessive regulation would effectively mean surrendering to Chinese AI dominance.
The significance of Vance’s optimistic message should be underscored: there’s been an open question about how today’s populist politics would position itself on AI. If populism came to instinctively oppose the evolving technology, it would represent a huge threat to AI progress. As one of populism’s leading political exponents—and arguably its political future—Vance’s categorical endorsement is powerful.
Second, Vance communicated a message of collaboration and partnership to allies in the room but he also wasn’t afraid to advance the administration’s preferences for an open and limited regulatory framework or to bluntly defend American companies from Europe’s excessive regulation and taxation. While this wasn’t quite President Trump’s obnoxious version of America First, it wasn’t the message of a benign hegemon either. It’s another sign that the Trump administration isn’t going to accept asymmetric arrangements with others in the name of protecting the liberal global order or other expressions of its post-Cold War hegemony. When it comes to AI (and other issues), it will advance a narrower conception of national interest—including its technological advantage.
Third, he rightly pushed back against the idea that AI should be understood as a threat to American workers and their livelihoods. Notwithstanding a lot of the doomsday speculation, AI technology actually has the potential to be hugely additive for workers. It will supplement their efforts, boost productivity, and raise wages. It will also spawn new applications, industries, and unanticipated labour demands. As Vance summed it up: “[AI] is not going to replace human beings…we believe, [it] is going to make us more productive, more prosperous, and more free.”
The combination of these different ideas was novel and interesting. This wasn’t the typical political speech. It felt like an intentional effort to get at something deeper. I think one can interpret it as a Straussian effort on the part of Vance to shape the underlying assumptions and ideas of the New Right movement that he ultimately aspires to lead.
Although there are a lot of outstanding questions about the policy implications and political fecundity of Vance’s techno-populism, his speech presented a credible and compelling path forward. It holds out a future in which technological dynamism and the political realignment can fit together in a coherent and durable politics. If so, we’ve may have just witnessed the future of Anglo-American conservatism.
Sean Speer is The Hub's Editor-at-Large. He is also a university lecturer at the University of Toronto and Carleton University, as well…
