Carrying his 6 -year -old daughter on his shoulders, Pierre Hairy, the leader of the conservative party who was running to lead Canada, waded through a crowd of sympathizers in his electoral district in Ottawa.
“Hey, he’s there, Mr. Alexander!” He said, striking the hand of Mark Alexander, whose dairy farm that the politician had visited 21 years ago during his first race for his functions.
Mr. Poilievre remembers sitting at the farmer’s kitchen table. He also recalled that Mr. Alexander had not obtained his conservative membership card because “the party was spoiled”.
“Then, I came to your home cows with you,” continued Mr. Hairyvre, while the farmer’s wife, Lynn, sounded: “Yes, you did it!”
After asking questions about four family members – by name – Mr. Hairy has moved. “He really cares about people,” said Alexander, who planned to vote for Mr. Hairyvre. “And he has an incredible memory. As he will remember these very small details of the first time we met. ”
Mr. Hairyvre, 45 years old – who aims to defeat Prime Minister Mark Carney, 60, and at the end of a decade of liberal rule in the general elections of Canada on April 28 – is considered one of the most skilful activists, communicators and politicians in Canada.
Mr. Poilievre had seemed to become the next leader of Canada when his party was sitting on what looked like a Insurmountable lead in polls Barely a few months ago, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, faced by two years of hammering by Mr. Poilievre, was forced to resign.
“Pierre Hairyvre is, on the Cup of Politics, one of the most incisive and aggressive withdrawal artists,” said Ken Boessenkool, a curator who worked for former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, curator. “He has the ability to find the weakness of an opponent and go in a devastating way.”
“He understands the political game and successfully played this political game, better than almost anyone else,” added Mr. Boessenkool.
But the advance of the 25 percentage points of the conservatives in the ballot boxes quickly turned into a deficit in a figure because Mr. Trump became the dominant question of the race. Surveys show that voters think that Mr. Carney better suited to the management of the American president.
Mr. Hairy’s campaign, however, said relatively little about Mr. Trump and continued to focus on the liberal attack. Many voters associate with Mr. Hairy to Mr. Trump, say the analysts, a link that has become a passive.
“He and his team will have to recognize that the game is playing out in a different arena at the moment, and the way you play in this arena may require a demonstration of other political skills,” said Tim Powers, a curator who has worked on several campaigns.
“Part of this shows people a relatability which does not always consist of being the noisiest, the most difficult, the most aggressive in the room,” added Mr. Powers. “That you can listen to, that the fights do not always launch the first punch.”
Mr. Hairyvre’s angry policy style has channeled the fatigue and frustration of Canadian voters towards Mr. Trudeau, but now that he has gone and that Canada is threatened, many voters turn away from Mr. Hairy, The polls show.
“Honestly, I think he is a tyrant,” said Mohammad Jubaer, 47, a resident of Mr. Hairyvre’s electoral district. “He tries to scare people to vote. I don’t think it’s the right approach. Maybe it’s an approach that works in the United States, but not for Canadians.”
A spokesperson for Mr. Poilievre’s campaign did not respond to a request for comments for this article.
A career politician, Mr. Hairy, nevertheless describes himself as a stranger because of his origins. Born in Calgary of a 16 -year -old single mother, he was adopted by two teachers and raised in a middle -class house in the suburbs of the city. He is married to Anaida Hairy, a Venezuelan immigrant who grew up in Montreal and worked in Parliament. The hairy has two young children.
Mr. Hairy was interested in politics in adolescence, joining the reform party, a right -wing populist party which embodied the alienation of Western Canada in traditional power centers in the country, Ontario and Quebec. He studied at the University of Calgary, where a group of political scientists supporting the movement became known as “Calgary School”.
Tom Flanagan, a member of the Calgary school who continued to serve under Mr. Harper, said that Mr. Hairyvre and other future political leaders had been influenced by the university’s climate in the late 1990s.
“Among the students, there was a ferment because of the reform party,” said Flanagan. The reform party merged with conservative progressives to form the current conservative party in 2003.
Mr. Poilievre left Calgary before graduating to work for a legislator in Ottawa in 2002. After his surprising elections at the age of 24, Mr. Hairyvre quickly increased under Mr. Harper, who was Prime Minister between 2006 and 2015.
In the political culture of Canada, it is almost impossible for an individual legislator to propose important bills and to establish a personal legislative file.
Mr. Poilievre therefore managed to stand out by being a qualified pugilist in political theater and social media, said Alex Marland, political scientist at Acadia University. Mr. Hairy also showed an in -depth understanding of the budget and other political questions, attracting a strong contrast with other populists like Mr. Trump and Boris Johnson, said Marland.
“A difference,” said Marland, “is that Hairyvre would probably stay late at night by reading everything.”
The two decades of Mr. Hairy in Ottawa ride what Mr. Powers described as the “professionalization” of party policy: the general use of political consultants, the construction of databases for fundraising and the profiling of voters and the use of direct communication with voters, in particular via social media.
Mr. Poilievre is “the first professional politician that the Conservative Party of Canada had,” said Mr. Powers. “He spent years studying how to master his profession – he made mistakes along the way. But he is really a professional politician, for good or for evil. ”
Since became a conservative leader in 2022, Mr. Hairy has campaigned on a traditional conservative message of low taxes, smaller government and personal freedom, as well as the relaxation of regulations for the petroleum industry and hardness for crime.
But he also turned more strongly towards populism than the previous conservatives, said Flanagan.
Mr. Poilievre defended the truckers who occupied Ottawa for weeks to protest against the mandates of the vaccine during the pandemic. He was the subject of a “utopian steakism”. Mr. Poilievre attacked the consumer information media, preferring to give interviews to the right -wing media and the podcasters.
“He polarizes the electorate,” said Peter Woolstencroft, professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo who was also involved in conservative policy for decades. “He is not trying to accumulate a great victory in coalition.”
Mr. Jubaer, the voter who lives in the district of Mr. Hairyvre, said that he had been tired of Mr. Trudeau. But he planned to vote for the main rival of Mr. Hairyvre in the district, Bruce Fanjoy, a liberal candidate who said that he had struck 15,000 doors in his attempt to dislodge Mr. Hairyvre.
One recent afternoon, Mr. Fanjoy fell by Brian Vallipuram’s room, 64, a restaurant owner who said he had voted for Mr. Hairy in the previous elections. But now that the main problem of the elections was Mr. Trump, Mr. Vallipuram was leaning against Mr. Carney, who was chief of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England.
“Carney knows business,” said Vallipuram. “But Hairyvre is a career politician.”
The Canada’s political landscape having changed so radically, Mr. Hairy is three weeks to find his balance, a challenge even for someone with his political skills and decades at the heart of Canadian politics.
“Everything he did will have prepared well for this moment or not,” said Boessenkool, the curator who worked for Harper. “I would not bet against him, but I would not bet my house.”