What the election of Pierre Poilievre would mean for Canadian Jews and Israel
The Conservative leader poised to replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister took a hitchhiking trip through Israel in his youth
Canadian Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre on Dec. 16, 2024. Photo by Dave Chan/AFP via Getty Images
By Jacob Kornbluh January 7, 2025
The Conservative politician poised to replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister of Canada took a hitchhiking trip through Israel in his youth, has referred to Canadian Jews as “the true Indigenous people,” condemned campus protests against the Gaza war as antisemitic and is staunchly pro-Israel.
“The Jewish people are the only people I know of who, in the same language, worship the same faith on the same land in the same country as they did 3,000 years ago,” Pierre Poilievre, the leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, said at an Orthodox Montreal-area synagogue last March.
Poilievre, 45, held a commanding 24-point lead over Trudeau’s Liberal Party in polls taken before Monday’s announcement that Trudeau would soon step down as prime minister after nine years in office. He will be replaced at least temporarily by a new head of the Liberals, who would face off against Poilievre in national elections now scheduled for October but likely to happen earlier.
Trudeau resigned amid mounting internal party tensions and widespread discontent fueled by a cost-of-living crisis. In recent weeks, Trump had frequently mocked Trudeau as the governor of the “great State of Canada” after a feud over tariffs. Trudeau, in turn, has labeled Poilievre — a populist who has denounced “wokeism” — as “Trump-lite.”
Many of Canada’s 335,000 Jews welcomed Trudeau’s exit after a rise in antisemitic attacks, including firebombs and gunshots at local synagogues since Oct. 7 and protests over the war. Trudeau was critical of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, announced he would enforce the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and faced backlash for backing a United Nations resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
At least five candidates are expected to compete for the Liberal Party’s leadership nomination in March, after which a general election will be called. Polls suggest that Chrystia Freeland, a former finance minister, is the frontrunner; a 2024 book dives deep into longstanding allegations that Freeland’s grandfather, Mykhailo Chomiak, was a Nazi collaborator, something she has called a “fabrication.”
What would the election of Pierre Poilievre mean for Jews and Israel?
Poilievre previously served as a minister in the government of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who was a staunch supporter of Israel and a frequent speaker at American Israel Public Affairs Committee events. While Harper’s parliamentary secretary in 2009, Poilievre visited the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps in Poland and attended the Conference Against Racism, Discrimination and Persecution in Geneva.
In a 30-minute speech at an Orthodox Montreal-area synagogue last March, he pledged that a government under his leadership would actively oppose anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations. He also promised to eliminate foreign aid to “terrorist dictators and multinational bureaucracies” and redirect the money to Canada’s military, citing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which serves Palestinian refugees and their descendants in Gaza and around the world, as one such bureaucracy.
Poilievre said that during that hitchhiking trip as a teenager in the late 1990s — visiting “many places where goys never go” — he stayed in a kibbutz near Ein Gedi, a historic site near Masada and the Dead Sea. He also visited the Golan Heights, where he witnessed firsthand missiles being fired from Lebanon.
In a speech at Beth Tikva synagogue in Toronto last April, Poilievre said he would create a foreign influence registry requiring the public listing of names of any lobbyists receiving money from other governments.
Speaking in the parliament last June, Poilievre noted that hate crimes were up 160% in Canada even before Oct. 7. An Islamic State group terrorist, who was charged in September for planning an attack on Jewish sites in New York City, entered Canada with a student visa in June 2023.
And in a recent interview with a Jewish news outlet in Winnipeg, Poilievre said he would “defund” universities and museums promoting a “woke” antisemitic agenda.
“We’ve had countless instances where Israel has come under attack abroad, but never before have we seen Jews systematically targeted like this,” Poilievre said. “And that is why it takes strong will, takes strong leadership from a Canadian Prime Minister who in every day and every way will call out antisemitism and condemn those uprisings on our university campuses.”
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