Ripper: Why Pierre Poilievre isn’t the man for the moment 

Mark Bourrie’s new book Ripper borrows its title from New York Times columnist David Brooks, who identified two types of western politicians: rippers and weavers. 

“Rippers, whether on the right or the left, see politics as war,” writes Bourrie, a bestselling author, historian and winner of the Charles Taylor Prize. “They don’t care about the destruction that’s caused as they fight for power. Weavers are their opposite: people who try to fix things, who want to bring people together and try to build consensus.”

Pierre Poilievre, says Bourrie, is a ripper. 

The page-turner is crack for political junkies. Over 400 pages, Bourrie charts Poilievre’s early years and his rise in Canadian politics as he slowly builds a reputation as a highly ambitious, hard-working member of Parliament with a talent for cheap theatrics and cutting soundbites. 

Poilievre, says Bourrie, has had that “dial a quote” skill since he was a teenager. The politician never met a controversy or conflict he didn’t rush to exploit, turning “anxiety into anger” for political gain.

The making of a populist

Bourrie doesn’t mince words when he targets the CPC leader’s “sneering, incivility, insults, over-the-top accusations and utter meanness.” 

The author says he was motivated to write about Poilievre because he felt that previously published biographies were incomplete.

“Everything I read about him, even recent political books,” he says, “left out a lot. Not that it was necessarily false, but I wanted to tell the whole story.” Bourrie was interested in showing how a guy like Poilievre could get so close to power. 

“He’s a very unique person in modern Canadian politics,” he says. “There aren’t many opportunities for someone with such a low level of education and such a mediocre life story to get so close to the position of prime minister the way that he has.” 

Bourrie attributes much of his success to being at the right place at the right time. That, along with Poilievre’s solid “attack-dog” opposition critic skills and his talent for providing media with short and snappy soundbites, propelled him to the top quickly. 

The Trump curveball 

Bourrie started writing the book in a very different political context — when it appeared all but certain that Poilievre was going to become the next prime minister, and Canadians weren’t losing sleep over the unpredictable and chaotic behaviour of a newly re-elected U.S. president 

Donald Trump would change all that. Suddenly, the world was a very different place. Concerned about threats to their economy and territorial sovereignty, Canadians no longer appear interested in a political leader yelling that “Canada is broken.” A wave of patriotic fervour has swept the country, as Canadians now look for stability, unity and quiet competence. As a result, the Liberal Party and its new leader Mark Carney have catapulted to the top of voters’ intentions. 

“I thought Trump was going to win,” says Bourrie. “But I also thought that Poilievre would stay in synch with him. I never expected Trump to attack Canada, and so I couldn’t anticipate the Canadian rage towards Trump. That quickly changed everything and almost required a rewrite of the book.” 

Between Christmas and early February, Bourrie wrote an additional 40,000 words while updating the manuscript. “A week and a half before going to press,” he says, “we were still updating it as Trump was getting weirder.”

Bourrie says he knew the first time he heard the “51st state” comment that Trump wasn’t joking. “His mind doesn’t go to places like that unless he’s serious,” he says. “I knew he meant it. “People told me, ‘Oh, it’s a joke, it’s a negotiating strategy,’ but I’ve interviewed serial killers; I know sociopaths really well.” 

Among the many books the prolific author and lawyer has written is a profile of Peter Woodcock, Canada’s youngest serial killer. “Between interviewing serial killers and spending 24 years on the Hill and around lawyers — I understand sociopaths. I can tell when they’re talking about something they consider important or not.”

Too late for Poilievre to pivot

With Trump’s threats materializing, and Justin Trudeau and the carbon tax both gone, Poilievre has had a hard time pivoting. His three-word angry slogans no longer resonate with many Canadian voters now looking for the economic expertise and experience to fight back against Trump. Anger, it seems, was fine as a protest mechanism against Trudeau, but the moment now requires something else. It’s time for a weaver. 

“Everybody who’s not on the fringe is now very pro-Canada,” says Bourrie. “We’re like a bunch of clans fighting each other, and when a foreigner arrives, we unite to fight them — and then go back to fighting each other again.”

Bourrie thinks it’s unlikely Poilievre will be able to turn this around. “He’s going to a sawmill, where the workers are now worried about whether they’ll have a job in a month, and he’s talking about fentanyl,” he says. “To me, that’s insane. I thought he had a better ear for politics than that. People are focused on saving the country and he’s talking about TFSA top-ups? Who gives a shit?”

Bourrie thinks Poilievre is having a hard time deviating from a script that has worked so long for him. “And if they try to change his messaging and the way he talks,” he says, “it will just come across as phoney. Because he’s really burned into people’s minds who he is.”

And who he is, is angry. 

Anger has been the CPC leader’s main political tool. “Poilievre had most of the advantages that life in Canada offers,” Bourrie writes, “but still he’s the angriest person on Canada’s political stage and the nastiest leader of a major party in this country’s history.”

The danger of disinformation and ‘fake news’

Ripper is about more than just Poilievre. It’s also a critical look at the political system in Canada and what Bourrie refers to as a “democratic deficit,” which allows cliques — small groups that meet in universities (Justin Trudeau’s clique, Pierre Poilievre’s clique, Brian Mulroney’s clique, etc) — to gain power and climb to incredible heights, often with what Bourrie refers to as “mediocre people,” while many others are basically cut out of the system. 

The author also casts a critical eye at disinformation and pseudo-media used by the right, masquerading as legitimate media. 

“This fake-media world — sites that look like news sites and act like news sites, but aren’t — are essentially propaganda sites,” he says.

“People are watching and reading all kinds of media,” says Bourrie, “but they’re getting this material from people who are bad-faith actors who pass themselves off as a journalists but are really propagandists for political parties, political movements or vested interests. And that’s a big thing the right does in Canada.”

Poilievre, who’s currently shunning traditional media, not even allowing media on his party’s campaign plane, still found the time to sit down for a lengthy interview with self-help guru and conservative grifter Jordan Peterson. 

Bourrie says that’s part of a deliberate strategy. “Harper did the same thing back in the day,” he says. “The idea is to replace the media. The goal is to look like you’re engaged with the media, but you’re really not.”

Bourrie points to Trump’s administration treating fake media as real media at the White House, accrediting questionable outlets and letting them ask questions so they appear legitimate. 

“Poilievre is doing something similar,” Bourrie says. “He’s very safely getting his message out through these people who’ll never, ever challenge him, and keeping real media away from him. Everything is canned and planned. Nothing is spontaneous.”

Is Poilievre Maple MAGA?

Poilievre is often compared to Trump, even referred to as Trump Lite or Maple MAGA, and his campaign manager, Jenni Byrne is openly a Trump supporter, but Bourrie finds the comparison unfair. 

“It’s unfair to Trump,” he says, “because the Conservatives in Canada started this stuff before Trump even ran. They pioneered a lot of what he’s now doing. I don’t know if he copied them or not, but the degrading of mainstream media, the attacking of institutions that are checks on authoritarian power, etc. All this stuff was happening in Canada before Harper lost in 2015 and Trump didn’t even run until 2016.” 

Bourrie does see similarities, though, in the name-calling, in how both politicians see politics as a “zero-sum game” and how both play fast and loose with facts. Trump and Poilievre also share a total lack of respect for people who don’t completely agree with them and bend the knee. “If you’re not with Poilievre,” he says, “you’ll be treated as a non-person whose views aren’t worth listening to or considering.”

This bothers people who grew up around bullies, Bourrie explains, because it’s bullying behaviour. “A lot of women are turned off by it,“ he says, “because many women have experienced cycles of abuse. I think men don’t quite get it.”

Poilievre is essentially who he was as a teenager. “He hasn’t developed intellectually,” says Bourrie.

“Is he a bad person?” the author asks in Ripper. “I’m reluctant to make that claim. I think he’s an angry teenager in the body of a grown man. That makes him a stellar opposition politician. It is a bad combination in a prime minister.”

I ask Bourrie how someone so privileged has managed to convince people he’s railing against the elites.

“I think it was empty space that was there for the taking,” Bourrie says. “It wasn’t his idea. This started in the U.S. Poilievre has political strategists who went after the working-class vote and convinced these folks that the Conservative Party could put money in their pockets and that people who run the system didn’t care about them.

“I think the NDP in Canada and the Democrats in the U.S. went off into Grad Lounge talk and left the shop floor open to people who offered easy answers and simple solutions.”

Poilievre aligning himself with the trucker convoy was also opportunistic class warfare. 

“The vast majority of truckers didn’t take part in the Ottawa convoy,” Bourrie says. “Most opposed it, and most were vaccinated.”

What’s next for Poilievre?

Bourrie believes a leader has three jobs. “One is to be political,” he says, “which Poilievre is really good at. One is being an executive, the capable person we don’t have to worry about screwing up. Mark Carney has that part nailed down. And the third is an old Roman concept, the pater patria, a father (or mother) figure — the person who’s the embodiment of the country. People just don’t believe that Poilievre is that.”

What’s in store for Poilievre’s political future, the author says, depends mostly on what happens on April 28. 

“If Poilievre wins the election, he’s fine, of course,” says Bourrie. “If the Liberals win a minority, I think he’s fine. He’s a really good opposition politician and he’s got a good lock on his party right now. But if the Liberals win a majority, he’s got a problem. It would be pretty hard for him to stick around.”

At the same time, Bourrie concedes, the Conservatives don’t have a likely successor. 

“Doug Ford seems to be angling for it, but I don’t think Ford speaks French. But I’d pay a dollar just to hear him try.” ■

For more on Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre, please visit the Biblioasis website.

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