Tories Elect Populist Firebrand Poilievre to Challenge Trudeau

(Bloomberg) -- Canada’s opposition Conservatives elected 43-year-old firebrand Pierre Poilievre as the main rival to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

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The party announced a new leader on Saturday night, with Poilievre winning easily with 68% of points available to candidates under the voting system. Jean Charest, a former Quebec premier who represented the party’s more centrist establishment, came in second, with about 16%.

The new Conservative leader inherits a favorable political situation, as Trudeau’s Liberals -- in power since 2015 -- battle to rein in soaring consumer prices and face the prospect of an economic slowdown amid surging interest rates. Most opinion polls put the two parties in a statistical tie.

Poilievre, who was first elected to parliament in 2004, has taken on the status of a juggernaut during the eight-month leadership race. He ran a populist-tinged campaign on the theme of individual freedom, hammering Trudeau over high inflation, promising to fire Canada’s central bank governor, and allying himself with the trucker convoy that occupied the capital city’s downtown core earlier this year to protest against vaccine mandates.

Poilievre even secured the endorsement of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the last Conservative to lead the country.

The question now becomes whether Poilievre pivots more to the center to win over a broader electorate, or carries the more hardline, right-wing stance he used to win his party’s leadership into a general election.

That may not come until 2025, after the Trudeau signed a three-year power-sharing deal with the left-wing New Democratic Party earlier this year. The prime minister could also step down before then, having already led the Liberals through three elections since 2015, but he has insisted he plans to stay on through the next campaign.

The leadership race was triggered by the January ouster of former party head Erin O’Toole, who had positioned himself as a centrist alternative to the governing Liberals but failed to gain ground against Trudeau in last year’s general election.

(Updates story with leadership announcement throughout)

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