Do we like Pierre Poilievre?
Our score: 3 out of 10. A mixed harm record (trans comments, climate votes, shaky podcast claims) with little verified good to set against it.
Poilievre leads the Conservatives and the push to unseat Mark Carney, and in January 2026 he cleared a party leadership review with 87 per cent support. He made his name as a hard-hitting opposition attacker. In 2022 he praised Freedom Convoy protesters and called the mandates aimed at them “unscientific and malicious.”
On trans issues it is a split record. In February 2024 he said “female spaces should be exclusively for females, not for biological males”, covering sports, change rooms and washrooms, and Pride Toronto's director said hate speech aimed at trans people jumped afterwards. In January 2025 he said he knew of only two genders and government should leave gender identity alone. Egale's Helen Kennedy said that fuels discrimination, while independent senator Kristopher Wells called the leave-them-alone line right.
On the planet, DeSmog's count of House of Commons records found roughly 400 votes against environmental and climate measures over about 20 years, and 13 in favour. His office didn't answer DeSmog's questions. He has promised to clear the way for pipelines and describes his climate approach as “technology, not taxes.”
The latest big moment was his March 2026 Joe Rogan interview, which his campaign manager says he set up himself. Academics who fact-checked it for The Conversation questioned his line that Canada admits “one million immigrants per year”. They also cited The Walrus finding no credible evidence for his claim that safer-supply drugs get sold to kids, and the Calgary Journal rating his inflation claim misleading. One analyst thought he came across as measured, so it wasn't a train wreck, just a loose grip on the numbers.
In October 2025 he called the RCMP's leadership “despicable” and accused it of covering up for Justin Trudeau. He said “Many of the scandals of the Trudeau era should have involved jail time.” Pressed on whether Trudeau should be jailed, he denied saying that: “That's not what I said.” It's the combative style his fans love and his critics call a stoush for its own sake.
On good-person, the record I could verify is thin. Nothing in the pages I read shows a court finding against him, and his party stood firmly behind him in the January 2026 review. But I found no charity or kind-act stories either, so that's a gap in what I could confirm, not a clean bill. Nothing new turned up from the last few weeks.