Patrick McCurdy

After the lost Liberal decade, we have a Prime Minister without a seat, without a plan, without a clue. He wants to rule this country for a fourth term while the people he’s supposed to represent have already rejected him. He’s not listening to Canadians—he’s lecturing them.

Canadians didn’t just vote him out of office in his own backyard—they showed him the door in his own home. And now, instead of respecting democracy, he’s clinging to power from a borrowed seat, hiding behind his party’s broken promises.

I asked ChatGPT to pretend to be Pierre Poilievre giving a speech in Parliament, as if Justin Trudeau had lost his seat but remained Liberal leader. The result is uncanny:

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is a man without a mandate, a leader without a riding, a boss without a base.

The many dangers of Pierre Poilievre’s war on ‘woke’ Pierre Poilievre’s anti-woke crusade mirrors U.S. far-right tactics and risks eroding Canada’s democratic and inclusive values.

On this topic, we recently published a related article by @patrickmccurdy.bsky.social and Kaitlin Clarke that dives deeper into the political weaponization of “woke” in Canada and how it echoes the American far right’s culture war tactics.

Missed it? Read it here: policyoptions.irpp.org?p=116497

The many dangers of Pierre Poilievre’s war on ‘woke’ Pierre Poilievre’s anti-woke crusade mirrors U.S. far-right tactics and risks eroding Canada’s democratic and inclusive values.

Poilievre says he’s against “woke.” But what does that actually mean?

@patrickmccurdy.bsky.social & Kaitlin Clarke unpack how Poilievre has made “anti-woke” rhetoric a pillar of his campaign & how it mirrors far-right U.S politics

A must-read ahead of April 28:
policyoptions.irpp.org?p=116497

The many dangers of Pierre Poilievre’s war on ‘woke’ Pierre Poilievre’s anti-woke crusade mirrors U.S. far-right tactics and risks eroding Canada’s democratic and inclusive values.

Pierre Poilievre's anti-woke crusade is straight out of the far-right US playbook. Here's op-ed I co-wrote with my former student Kaitlin Clarke for Policy Options @policyoptions.irpp.org:
policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/ap... #cdnpoli

will check it out, ty

Indeed and the history of the "Canada First" movement from the late 1800s is also whack

Conservative email blast

Pierre Poilievre trying to convince Canadians he’s not like Trump while dropping words like 'patriots' straight out of the MAGA playbook #cdnpoli #maplemaga

Two books abt PP came out in quick succession, and they couldn't be more different. Lawton’s reads like as a vanity project aimed at securing his Con nomination. Bourrie, a trained historian, portays PP as a lifelong ideologue w/ a talent for slogans & willingness to deploy Trump-like politics.

🚨If you get an unsolicited text from "ERG National Research" re the federal election, DO NOT reply to the text. Report as SPAM & Block. This is a PHISHING text, ERG is NOT a recognized polling company.
Here is the text I received today: #cdnpoli

Relevant 28 days later #tarrifs #Trump

As I said before, Russian bots don't buy tickets

The view from north of the 49th parallel

hey David check your DMs over on X, can't msg you here

Canexation is closer than many think...

If Trump is truly looking to tighten the thumbscrews on his "Canada as the 51st state" psyop his next move will be to rename Lake Ontario to something more... American.

When they cancel Jordan Peterson’s Ottawa talk at the Canadian Tire Centre—citing “health” or a “venue” issue—just remember that fewer than 5% of tickets appear to have been sold. TL;DR: Russian bots don’t buy tickets.

A free "Author Accepted Version" of our paper is available via the University of Ottawa's digital repository ruor.uottawa.ca/items/9e3982... #cdnpoli #cdnpolitics

More in our paper:
McCurdy, P., Clarke, K., & Cammaerts, B. (2025). From social awareness to authoritarian other: The conservative weaponization of woke in Canadian parliamentary discourse. Journal of Language and Politics. Here [Paywall]: www.jbe-platform.com/content/jour...

🔍 Strategy Results :
▪️Merged Freedom Convoy extremism w/ traditional conservatism
▪️Reframed climate action as "elite control"
▪️Normalized far-right talking points in Parliament as "protecting" Canadian values
▪️Frames progressive policies as an existential threat

📈 GAINING MOMENTUM: We tracked how this message spread & used by CPC. Each time linking progressive policy to authoritarianism:
🛻 During Freedom Convoy ("woke" = government control)
🏘️ On housing crisis ("woke mayors")
🌎 Environmental policy ("woke green agenda")

Poilievre's March 2023 definition in Parliament: "Woke has one purpose... control. It is designed to divide people by race, gender, ethnicity, religion, vaccine status and any other way." A complete inversion of the term's social justice origins. openparliament.ca/debates/2023...

📶STRATEGIC EVOLUTION: Tracking Poilievre's messaging from Finance Critic to Opposition Leader reveals how "woke" transformed from simple criticism to a powerful narrative linking social justice to government overreach.

The numbers tell the story: 122 uses of "woke" analyzed in Hansard Transcripts (2019-2023):
🔵 35 by Pierre Poilievre
🔵 59 by other CPC MPs
28 by all other parties (🔴Lib, 🟠NDP, 🔲Bloc). From social justice term to far-right rhetorical weapon in just 4 years.

First Parliamentary Use (Feb 1 2019): @gregfergus.bsky.social used "woke " to celebrate Black History Month; this would be the first and only time that woke was used positively in parliament openparliament.ca/search/?q=MP...

🧵How has woke been used in 🇨🇦 parliament? My new coauthored article "From Social Awareness to Authoritarian Other: The conservative weaponization of Woke in Canadian Parliamentary Discourse," explores this + traces Pierre Poilievre's engineering of a woke moral panic. Here's a thread #cdnpoli