Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is having a hard time challenging the public perception that he is US President Donald Trump’s mirror image this federal election. The person most responsible for bolstering that Trumpian resemblance is Poilievre himself.

Before Trump retook office in January, Poilievre was known to sing the president’s praises, including on a Jordan Peterson podcast three months ago in which the Conservative leader acclaimed Trump as a “highly successful businessman” and vowed to emulate his governing style by “putting Canada first.” Poilievre’s constant references to border security and “woke ideology,” his tough-on-crime brand, his promise to slash public employment, his false claim that anti-genocide activists are leading “hate marches” on Canadian streets, not to mention his threat to “deport foreigners” who protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza, all seem consciously designed to mimic Trumpian rhetoric in an effort to replicate the electoral success of Trump 2.0.

Will Poilievre’s continued allegiance to Trump-style politics win him the election? That remains to be seen, but Trump’s threats of economic sabotage and annexation against Canada have largely soured voters on the US administration, and at least temporarily made Poilievre’s brand a liability.

After maintaining a dominant polling lead for several months, the Conservatives lost momentum following Trump’s aggression toward Canada and the Liberal Party’s dumping of the widely disliked Justin Trudeau. Meanwhile, rifts are opening in the Canadian right over Poilievre’s sinking political fortunes, as shown by the public spat between the Poilievre campaign and Doug Ford’s office in Ontario. After Ford’s campaign manager Kory Teneycke warned that Poilievre’s Conservatives were running a losing campaign, the Ontario premier doubled down, saying “sometimes the truth hurts.”

Despite Poilievre’s flagging popularity and disagreements within the Canadian right over his divisive style, the Conservative leader refuses to pivot from MAGA-style politics. In fact, he is reinforcing his Trump-like image in the final days of the election, including by threatening crackdowns on Canadian universities to suppress criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

On April 19, Conservative candidate Neil Oberman—whose law firm was hired by anti-Palestinian commentator Dahlia Kurtz in her efforts to silence and imprison author and activist Yves Engler—expressed support for the idea of cutting funding to universities that don’t “combat antisemitism” (in other words, universities that don’t censor student activists calling for an end to Israel’s genocide). This is exactly what the Trump administration is doing right now, paired with arrests and attempted deportations of student activists for criticizing Israel.

Poilievre quickly echoed Oberman. When asked about the idea of defunding universities that allow Palestine solidarity activism, the Conservative leader liked the idea, stating that his government would not “subsidize antisemitism… federal funding will be cut to universities and organizations that promote or tolerate antisemitism.” Such a policy represents nothing less than a state effort to muzzle criticism of Israel (and by extension criticism of Canada’s alliance with the Israeli government) at higher learning institutions. It is a political campaign to forcibly restrict debate, discussion, and education within Canada at the behest of a foreign state currently waging a war of extermination against Palestinians.

Caption:

Strong message.
No ambiguity. No excuses. Just moral clarity.

A powerful statement from @pierrepoilievre standing up against antisemitism in all its forms.

Canada needs leadership that won’t waver in the face of hate. #cdnpoli #PierrePoilievre #StandUpToAntisemitism… pic.twitter.com/exwIQNn4HT

— Neil G. Oberman (@NeilOberman) April 20, 2025

This is a frightening prospect, and one that mirrors the agenda of the Trump administration. In March, the White House threatened to withhold $400 million from Columbia University unless it agreed to suppress criticism of Israel on campus. In April, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in federal funding to Harvard on the grounds that Harvard is not sufficiently cooperating with Trump’s efforts to stamp out Palestine solidarity on campus. In the meantime, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been abducting students off the street, including solidarity activist Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University whose “crime” was co-authoring an article in the campus paper “criticizing the college’s handling of student anger around Israel’s war in Gaza.”

This is the future Poilievre wants for Canada. A future in which the Conservative Party can criminalize and deport people in Canada for statements the party deems politically incorrect. A future in which university funding is contingent on supporting a Conservative government’s devotion to an apartheid state halfway across the world.

In Canada, the situation facing Palestine solidarity is already difficult, as I outlined in a recent essay for Cosmonaut magazine. Many people sympathetic to Palestine had been fired from their jobs, journalists at major networks have been censored for covering Israeli crimes, politicians and news outlets have spread misinformation about the protest movement, right-wing politicians have called for the deportation of activists, and police have violently attacked anti-genocide protests and allowed non-state intimidation by Zionist groups. On top of this, solidarity activists have faced invasive police surveillance and militarized raids on their homes.

All of this happened under a Liberal government, but Poilievre’s Conservatives want to take these repressive policies a step further. They appear to be relishing the opportunity to criminalize and deport activists, and to pressure universities into stifling speech and scholarship, just like their ideological partner in the White House is currently doing.

Poilievre may be down in the polls, but solidarity activists in Canada should prepare themselves for the worst. Even if he loses on April 28, the anti-Palestinian racism that runs rampant in the Conservative Party will remain, and its proponents will continue to push for the dismantling of Canadians’ political rights in order to defend Israel’s genocide. Canadian supporters of peace, justice, and liberation must not give an inch.

Owen Schalk is the author of Targeting Libya: Canadian Dams, Canadian Bombs, an exploration of Canada’s pivotal yet little-known role in Libya’s history, forthcoming from Lorimer Books.