Canadian journalist Andrew Lawton’s “A Political Life” examines the life and career of Pierre Poilievre, a rising conservative star in Canada who is the odds-on favorite to become that country’s next prime minister.
Focusing on a politician who is relatively new on the national scene—Poilievre just turned 45—and little known outside Canada, Lawton’s biography does an outstanding job of recapping Poilievre’s personal life and political career. Lawton concludes “Pierre Poilievre: A Political Life” by contemplating what the future of Canada could be should Poilievre become prime minister.
Donald and Marlene Poilievre adopted young Pierre when his biological mother couldn’t care for him. Otherwise, he had a fairly normal childhood, but his parents separated when he was 20 and his father came out as gay.
Poilievre makes it clear that he loves both his parents as well as his father’s gay partner. By this time, Lawton writes, Poilievre knew he wanted to be involved in politics. In fact, he knew this since age 14 and he sought to impress his fellow Western Canadians rather than the so-called elites.
Poilievre officially expressed his political ambitions at age 20, when he wrote an essay for a contest held by Magna International, the Canadian auto parts manufacturer, on the topic: “As prime minister, I would … ”
He ended up as a finalist, receiving a cash prize and an internship with Magna International. His essay’s title: “Building Canada Through Freedom.”
Although Lawton notes that Poilievre prefers to keep his family life private, his book gets into personal detail about how the conservative politician met his wife Anaida—also called Ana—as well as when the couple found out their daughter was autistic.
In introducing the reader to Poilievre, the author explains Canada’s political system and contrasts its parliamentary system, in which the party with a majority in parliament chooses its leader as prime minister, with that of the U.S., in which the president and Congress are elected separately.
Poilievre’s wife Ana has supported his political races, which made him a member of Parliament for nearly two decades before he became leader of the Conservative Party of Canada in 2022 and thus the leader of what Canadians call the Official Opposition.
The Canadian media sometimes refers to Poilievre as the “Canadian Donald Trump” despite many tangible differences on the issues as well as style.
One cause with which Poilievre was identified closely is the so-called Freedom Convoy of early 2022. Canadian truckers were fed up with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates and chose to protest in the capital city of Ottawa to send a strong message to Trudeau.
Poilievre took to the highway to cheer on the truckers as they made their way to Ottawa to protest. He even gave coffee to them.
There was already a Conservative Party leader with whom a growing number of party activists were getting fed up: Erin O’Toole.
O’Toole described himself as a “true blue” conservative rather than a progressive conservative, and many thought him to be former Foreign Minister Peter MacKay’s rival for the party helm. O’Toole narrowly won the Conservative Party’s leadership post over MacKay, but those on the right dominated the party and increasingly thought O’Toole wasn’t serving them as they expected.
One issue on which grassroots conservatives were particularly upset was COVID-19 vaccine mandates, and they said O’Toole didn’t respect their view.
Instead of doing what many Canadians wanted, they argued, O’Toole followed what others in the Trudeau government wanted—continuing imposition of government restrictions on the unvaccinated.
Lawton’s biography of Poilievre goes into rich detail about his rise to power, his disposing of O’Toole as party leader, and his chances of becoming prime minister. The author concludes by envisioning Canada under a Prime Minister Poilievre and just what he would do with a majority in parliament to change domestic and foreign policy. (His slogan, “Bring It Home,” refers to making Canada a great country once again.)
How and when Pierre Poilievre gets the opportunity to try to make Canada great again remains to be seen. For now, though, readers inside and outside Canada have a good guidebook to his thinking in “A Political Life.”
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