Canadians are finally only weeks away from a long overdue federal election featuring Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative Party leader, and Mark Carney, the new Liberal Party leader.

This election is crucially important to Canada’s future as a strong, united, independent country. Canadians need a strong, coherent national government, either Conservative or Liberal. Given our current two-party reality—pending electoral reform that enables a constructive role for smaller parties and independent candidates—the NDP, the Greens, and the People’s Party will not figure prominently.

No doubt front of mind for Canadian voters is how Canada will manage the unhinged faux-populist U.S. president’s ongoing threats to our economy and security and his expansionist territorial delusions.

Which leader and political party is best able to build up Canada’s collective economic and social resilience across regional and partisan divides and ensure we never again find ourselves so exposed to existential threats from an adversarial United States?

The answer is not Mark Carney and the Liberal Party.

The Liberal Party—weakened by years of divisive, short-sighted, faux-democratic leadership under Justin Trudeau—has been reduced to operating a phony grassroots organization that serves only as election machine for the party leader. Carney is now the untested successor, selected by a relatively insignificant number of Canadians who signed up online for a free Liberal Party membership in order to vote.

As I describe in my comprehensive critique – Canada’s Faux Democracy – under the faux-democratic leadership of Justin Trudeau, the Liberal Party has become a withered party of insular elites.

Three successive Liberal governments have consistently sidelined Parliament and perfected self-absorbed, faux-democratic governance out of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), valuing polarization and short-term wedge issues – like carbon pricing and immigration – and micro-managing docile Liberal/NDP MPs to maintain political power. All the while sidestepping much-needed, longer-term initiatives that require the hard work of constructive compromise among MPs across regions and partisan divides.

The Liberal Party needs a serious time out to thoroughly rethink its principles, values, policies, and commitment to democracy.

Consecutive Liberal governments have dangerously weakened our collective economic and social resilience; accelerated the decay of our democratic institutions and practices; undermined the principled, coherent, civic consciousness essential for Canadian unity; and made us increasingly vulnerable to attacks on our economy and security by Donald Trump.

This is reflected in an excellent Globe & Mail editorial assessment (March 8, 2025) of Trudeau’s tenure.

Trudeau’s utter contempt for Parliament culminated in his lengthy prorogation in January, just as Trump was revving up his machine. Trudeau gracelessly agreed to resign, granting himself and his remaining acolytes a two-month farewell tour unencumbered by any accountability to the Canadian people.

Canada is not a one-party state. Canada will survive and thrive without a Liberal government.

Prorogation was the logical final act of a lame duck Liberal prime minister with a legacy of divisive governance for short-term partisan gain. Trudeau slunk off stage-left, leaving us to elect a new government to deal with the following serious challenges:

· no coherent foreign or national security and intelligence policies.
· an internal Canadian economic market with enormously costly internal barriers to flows of goods, services, investment, and people.
· an incomprehensible, inefficient, and unfair tax system, riddled with costly regulatory and licensing regimes across a jumble of jurisdictions.
· a tragic K-shaped post-Covid economic recovery that favours high-income Canadians while exacerbating inequality and the affordability crisis for the vast majority of ordinary Canadians with precarious incomes.
· a tragic failure of government service delivery: government public servants bogged down in countless bureaucratic processes and procedures, unable to focus on the needs of the people they are supposed to serve outside government.
· dysfunctional “federal relations architecture”: the current structure and operations of intergovernmental institutions and practices discourage collaboration and harmonization in the national interest across Canadian jurisdictions. One level of government simply blames another for inevitable policy failures, and the federal government shrinks from leadership, leaving Canadians unable to hold multiple jurisdictions accountable for their joint action or inaction. Ad hoc First Ministers’ Conferences, and the premiers’ Council of the Federation are of questionable impact.

Overcoming these challenges requires a leader (and party) that is neither faux-democrat nor faux-populist – one that that connects with Canadians in their communities and in Parliament, encouraging active citizen engagement to shape the crucial long-term initiatives that will protect us from our adversaries and build a more productive national economy for all, with stable jobs, affordable housing, and a sustainable social safety net.

Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party deserve an opportunity and strong mandate to serve as the next federal government.

Poilievre’s proposed Canada First policy framework should include as many firm, thoughtful initiatives as needed to help Canada withstand Trump’s tariff bullying and annexation threats.

Eventually, a Canada First program will help define new terms of coexistence with our now unfriendly neighbour, by reducing our dependence on the U.S. and developing a constructive role for Canada in the emerging multipolar world [dis]order, rooted in our historical commitments to upholding international law and institutions.

In the meantime, the Conservative Party under Pierre Poilievre has become an effective voice for many hardworking Canadians who are disillusioned and frustrated, too used to feeling disenfranchised and left behind by those governing us with secure indexed wages and gold-plated benefits. All Canadians need a strong voice in Parliament and Pierre Poilievre rightly recognizes this.

Canadians need to hear more about Conservative plans for managing the “gatekeepers” and improving the delivery of government services, as well as practical commitments to building a productive economy less dependent on the U.S. while increasing steady, well-paying work and making housing affordable again.

The Conservatives’ years of opposition in a neutered Parliament should equip them to implement measures to reverse the decay of our democratic institutions, and reengage with Canadians in accountable and transparent parliamentary forums.

The mayhem of the social media age is here to stay, and those elected to Parliament must be committed to maintaining a civil discourse on behalf of the Canadian people for whom they hold power in trust, and keeping in check those who irresponsibly douse the mayhem with gasoline.

Improved access to information, stronger enforcement of ethics and conflict of interest guidelines and lobbying regulations, and eventually electoral reform are among the initiatives Conservatives already recognize as necessary to end the destructive pattern of divisive and polarized governments stewarded by Liberals.

These democratic reforms must be backstopped by coordinated reforms to political structures, especially our unaccountable political parties. Only the Conservative Party introduced and adhered to useful political party reforms (under the Harper government) that reduced the autocratic power of the party leader.

A new Conservative government is better positioned to unite Canadians—to do whatever may be necessary to oppose Trump and restore our collective economic and social resilience—than yet another faux-democratic Liberal government.

Now, more is needed to open up the political parties’ antidemocratic underbellies and eliminate rigged nomination meetings where an all-powerful party leader develops their farm team to serve as pawns and sycophants once elected (and where foreign interference seeps in).

One easy initial change: require oversight by independent bodies like Elections Canada and the Privacy Commissioner to ensure open, accountable candidate nominations of persons of independence and integrity, committed to working in the national interest for the people of Canada. This has already been recommended by the Hogue Inquiry as a way to prevent dangerous foreign interference in our elections.

Finally, Poilievre must address our dysfunctional federalism and build a new “federal relations architecture” to enable constructive consensus and compromise across our multiple jurisdictions, while ensuring full transparency and accountability to the Canadian people. (See discussion of a possible Council of Canadian Governments: Chapter 10 in Canada’s Faux Democracy.)

Canadians want to pull together to build a uniquely compassionate and productive country that is fiercely independent and more than a sum of fragmented parts. We need our federal government—the one government elected by all Canadians—to rejuvenate our democratic and federal institutions, and support our collective efforts to strengthen national unity. It’s time to give Pierre Poilievre and a Conservative government an opportunity to lead the way.