OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has been encouraging Prime Minister Mark Carney to steal his ideas on everything from tax cuts to bail reform since the April election — but he says what Carney is doing with those ideas amounts to “counterfeit conservatism.”
“He will tell you that he has copied my idea on, say, the carbon tax but then while he hides the most visible part of the carbon tax, he raises other fuel taxes,” Poilievre said.
Carney is widely seen to be moving the Liberals to the political centre after years of centre-left policies under former prime minister Justin Trudeau.
Steven Guilbeault, who was Trudeau’s environment minister, recently quit Carney’s cabinet over what he calls the dismantling of climate policies he helped introduce. His decision came after the Liberals signed a memorandum of understanding with the Alberta government that sets out a path to approving an oil pipeline to the West Coast.
Poilievre has employed a highly effective strategy of attacking unpopular Liberal policies with snappy slogans.
He spent months touring the country in 2024 with his “axe the tax” rallies, where the consumer carbon price stood in as the proxy for broader frustrations Canadians were feeling about the rising cost of living.
In his first move as prime minister last March, Carney terminated the consumer carbon price — and with it, the most reliable Conservative applause line.
Then in August, Poilievre publicly announced plans for a cross-country campaign against what he had dubbed “the Car-ney tax” — the name he’d given to the electric vehicle sales mandate that rural constituents and car manufacturers were complaining about.
The Liberals paused the EV mandate in September and are reviewing the program.
The Conservative leader spent much of the spring election campaign talking about crime, promising crackdowns on drug dealers, repeat offenders and people who commit intimate partner violence. He vowed to use the notwithstanding clause to bring back mandatory minimum sentences (Section 33 of the Charter allows governments to temporarily shield legislation from Charter challenges).
Crowds at Conservative rallies enthusiastically chanted along to the slogan “jail not bail” throughout the campaign.
The Liberal government recently introduced legislation to reform the rules on bail and brought in a bill that looks to restore some mandatory minimum sentences and increase penalties for gender-based violence.
In a year-end interview with The Canadian Press, Poilievre said the challenge for his party is to show the Liberals aren’t actually following through on their promises. On bail reform, for example, he accused the government of “blocking its own bill.”
The Conservatives and Liberals have been battling at a House of Commons committee about how best to study different bills,
“(Carney) says he’s going to spend less, but his deficit spending is 100 per cent more — his deficit is literally twice the size of Justin Trudeau’s,” Poilievre said.
“So it’s a counterfeit for him to pretend that he agrees with my very popular ideas for an affordable, safe Canada, but if you scratch the surface, you see he’s doing exactly the opposite of what he’s saying.”
The more immediate challenge for Poilievre isn’t the Liberals poaching his ideas, however. It’s the Liberals poaching members of his caucus.
Two Conservative MPs have left his caucus to join the government benches in as many months, pushing the Liberals tantalizingly close to majority status.
After Chris d’Entremont crossed the floor on budget day, Parliament Hill was awash in rumours that more Tories were considering defection.
Alberta MP Matt Jeneroux, whose name was floated as a potential floor-crosser, announced his plans to leave politics altogether a few days after d’Entremont’s departure. It’s not clear how long Jeneroux will stay in Ottawa but he has not cast a vote in Parliament since his announcement, even on confidence matters.
Ontario MP Michael Ma surprised many last week when he announced he was joining the Liberal side on the final day of the House of Commons sitting.
One more defection would give Carney the slimmest majority government.
Poilievre brushed off the suggestion that his leadership style is partly to blame for the defections. He instead accused Carney of trying to “manufacture a majority” he didn’t earn in the election through “backroom wheeling and dealing.”
Should the Liberals fail to secure a majority, an election could be in the cards sooner than later.
Poilievre declined to speculate on whether Canadians will head back to the polls in 2026, despite having pushed a confidence vote to the brink in November. He said his team knows they “always have to be ready.”
With the two parties more closely aligned on policy than they’ve been in years and with the polls showing almost a dead heat between the Liberals and Tories, Poilievre said his task is to “provide that hope for an affordable, safe country” and remind Canadians about the government’s failures.
He said the “most obvious example of Mark Carney’s bait-and-switch” is his failure to date to secure the removal of U.S. tariffs from Canadian exports.
“He said he was a master negotiator who would get us a deal by July 21, 2025. Here we are in mid-December, still no deal,” Poilievre said.
Carney did not make himself available for a year-end interview, breaking a long tradition for prime ministers, cabinet ministers and major party leaders.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 15, 2025.
Sarah Ritchie, The Canadian Press
