Going grassroots: How online influencers are leaving their mark on Canada’s conservative movement

It’s a Thursday night during the last week of the 2025 federal election campaign, and over 1,000 people are at a warehouse outside of Saskatoon for yet another raucous Pierre Poilievre rally.

Outside in the growing line, a stout bald man wearing a black Nike polo shirt and sunglasses walks around with a selfie stick, livestreaming the event. Tens of thousands are tuning in and hanging on to his every word.

“Let’s go! Holy shit! Look at this lineup!” he yells as he arrives at the rally and sees the crowd.

People in line are constantly coming up to him for selfies. If Poilievre is the headliner, this man, known as The Pleb, is the opening act before they enter the venue. In fact, some people showed up at rallies specifically to see him.

“I didn’t know you’d make it to Saskatchewan. I’ve watched every one of your things. I got to get a picture,” a smiling 81-year-old woman says to him.

“I watch you all the time. Could you sign my [Conservative] sign?” a middle-aged man asks.

Another fan calls her friend on FaceTime, “This girl loves you,” she says.

The Pleb is short for “The Pleb Reporter,” a play on the word “pleb,” itself short for “plebeian,” or “one of the common people.” He’s a YouTuber who describes himself as a “journalist covering politics, the culture wars and [the clown world].”

Along with myself and members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, this trucker-turned-citizen-journalist and entertainer followed the Conservative leader across the country.

But while mainstream journalists made their way to the media pen, prepping for their live news hits, The Pleb walked around and livestreamed the rally, engaging with attendees, and giving his audience a taste of what it was like to be there.

That audience funded his way.

“I went to the Poilievre campaign launch in [Toronto] on my own dime. After that first rally, people started messaging me and saying, ‘We need you back on the road.’ People just kept sending me donations,  …[despite the fact that] I never asked for a single donation during the entire campaign. I’m not paid by the Conservatives. I’ve never received a dime from them,” said The Pleb.

In addition to streaming rallies, The Pleb creates humorous YouTube videos about politics like “LIBERAL BOOMER goes MEGA VIRAL and pisses off the entire country” and “TRUMP makes Trudeau CRY ON LIVE TV.”

He’s garnered an audience. At the time of publication, he had almost 250,000 subscribers and nearly 40 million total views.

From truck driver to successful YouTuber 

Within the new wave of Canadian conservative creators, The Pleb, whose first name is Nick, is one of its most prominent members.

In the past, online personalities in the Canadian conservative movement have mostly been formal spokespeople of “small-c” conservative organizations, former political staffers, or corporate media columnists and commentators. But today, some of the most popular creators are grassroots. They’re ordinary people with a passion for politics, funded by their fans.

While they’ve faced criticism around objectivity and accuracy, their audiences are far more engaged and often outnumber legacy outlets.

“I was a truck driver, working in the transport industry,” The Pleb said. “I started my channel as a way to express myself. [I wanted to] push back on the woke movement and make fun of Justin Trudeau,” he said.

He initially recorded and uploaded videos to his channel after work, but eventually transitioned to making YouTube videos full-time after receiving generous monetization payments, the ad revenue that YouTube gives to creators who get big views.

Low barrier to entry

The Pleb is not alone. Another YouTube channel popular within Canada’s conservative movement is Northern Perspective.

Started by husband and wife Ryan and Tanya Davies in Hamilton in 2023, their channel features educational videos and livestreams about Canadian politics, along with interviews with politicians and journalists.

Behind clickbaity video titles like “Mark Miller VISIBLY ANGRY About Carney SNUBBING Him – Champagne GASLIGHTS Canadians On Economy” or “Conservatives GOBSMACKED At Carney’s $500 Billion Dollar Spending Bill,” one finds research-backed analysis on Canadian politics.

“One of our core values is educating Canadians about Parliament. We’re a couple of procedural nerds. We really get into the nitty gritty of stuff,” the couple told me.

Ryan has a background in philosophy and computer science, and Tanya has a background as a veterinary technician. Before their success on YouTube, Tanya was a stay-at-home mom. They started their channel hoping to generate some income to support their young autistic son.

“We said, ‘Let’s try a YouTube channel. We’ll see what can happen. You never know,’” said Tanya.

Two years later, they’ve amassed 180,000 subscribers and over 90 million total views.

“It was a very low barrier to entry. We probably spent less than $500 on startup. We bought a couple of microphones. We bought some software. And everything was done on our own time, on our own equipment,” Tanya said.

In the last 28 days, their channel has received 4,528,129 views. That’s more than the Toronto Star, the National Post, and the Globe and Mail.

The Davieses told me they had no idea they’d become as successful as they’ve been.

“We were hoping to make between $300 to $400 a month. Our first couple of weeks, we were getting virtually no views,” recalled Ryan. Now, he says they’re making enough money from their channel to cover all their day-to-day expenses.

Part of a new reality 

Jeff Ballingall, the founder of popular social media account Canada Proud and head of digital public affairs company Mobilize Media, told me the rise of these independent creators has arrived in tandem with the decline in one-size-fits-all legacy media.

“Society has become so fragmented. The idea that one [legacy media] message is going to appeal to everyone is quite wrong,” he explained.

Ballingall added that audiences are increasingly hungry for reliability and authenticity.

“If you’re truthful, you’re honest, and you’re speaking directly to your audience, and they can feel like there’s an emotional connection, I think that’s critical,” he said.

“I make videos for working-class people. I talk on my YouTube the same way I’d talk to people on the job site,” emphasized The Pleb.

He added that people have told him they actually started to care about politics after watching some of his videos.

The Davieses also spoke to the connection they have had with their audience.

“[We get] these comments that say, ‘You have no idea you know what you’ve done for this country, or you have no idea what you mean to me,” said Ryan. “Or people will say, ‘I was in a very dark place. I was thinking of ending it all. And you guys brought me back from that.’”

Ballingall believes anyone trying to influence public opinion has to adapt to this new reality of content creation.

We saw the federal Conservative Party adapt to a certain degree in the recent election. In the final days of the campaign, they collaborated with some influencers, including Katrina Panova, known as KatKanada online, and gave Northern Perspective rare access to Poilievre for a sit-down interview. Meanwhile, The Pleb went on stage to rile up Conservative rally crowds. He tells me that this was something he did on his own, not something the party asked him to do. “I just did it myself for the thrill.”

While that did help boost awareness with the movement, it ultimately was not enough to get the Conservatives over the finish line.

Criticisms of influencers 

While conservative influencers have gained a large share of adoring fans, they’ve also gained some critics.

Jennifer Laewetz, a Saskatchewan-based political strategist and former Conservative staffer with 113,000 TikTok followers, told me that for some influencers, as content evolves, “it feels sometimes like there is a desire to pump out more in order to gain followers or clout more so than hold the energy for meaningful engagement and opinion.”

“I think that nearly all of [these influencers] are insufferable. It’s just click bait garbage that’s devoid of thought and it’s designed for people who just want to bash the other team,” reads a comment on a Reddit page discussing their impact.

How does The Pleb respond to those who see content from creators like him as overly partisan or geared toward clickbait?

“I am 100 percent biased. This is the difference between me and the mainstream media. The mainstream media pretends to be neutral and swing to the Left for the most part,” he said. “The reason that I’m successful, that other YouTubers in my space are successful, is that we do not hide our bias.”

Can independent creators be trusted?

Members of the legacy media are often skeptical of independent creators, given that they don’t have the same ethical guidelines as established media organizations.

But Ryan and Tanya told me they do have a code of ethics for Northern Perspective.

“We don’t put out anything unless we have the evidence to back it up. There have been times where we’ve held on to a video for a couple of days because we haven’t been able to prove what we’ve believed to be true, and then once that evidence comes out, we’ll release it,” explained Tanya. “Sometimes the audience will ask our opinions on something, we’ll give them our opinion, and we’ll let them know this is just an opinion, but our opinions are based on the facts,” she added.

New norms

On Sunday before the big vote, I ran into The Pleb at Toronto Pearson Airport. Like me, he was returning to Ottawa for election night.

As we chatted about our respective campaign travel adventures, I, a 22-year-old political science and communications student working part-time as a political journalist, and he, a truck driver-turned-YouTuber, something became clear: this is the future of media.

The internet has democratized journalism. Gone are the days when only senior legacy media journalists get to cover the campaign trail. Like it or not, this is the new normal.