Pierre Poilievre on Canada, Economy, and the Western World

Steven Bartlett: Trump threw the election and then thereafter said that Canada should honestly become our 51st state -- which is never going to happen. Pierre Poilievre, leader of his majesty's loyal opposition. There's a significant probability that you could be Canada's next leader and your team said I can ask you whatever I want.

Pierre Poilievre: Okay.

Steven Bartlett: So it appears that the United States have made the decision to kind of go it alone in the world -- and that is a very big strategic mistake. In Canada's case, we have everything the United States needs if they treat us like a friend. So, for example, we have the fourth biggest supply of oil. And if you look at the leading five, which of these countries do you think the United States can most rely on? And I'm looking at the third vial there in the row, Iran.

Steven Bartlett: Has Trump taken the right course of action?

Pierre Poilievre: The Iranian government has been extremely hostile and very dangerous to Canada. They are the leading world sponsor of terrorism. And there's no doubt in my mind that the only reason that they are enriching uranium is for the purpose of developing a weapon. And there's a far greater risk to them having a nuclear weapon than even North Korea. So the initial actions were definitely necessary.

Steven Bartlett: But how do you think this plays out? And if Trump had called you and asked for your support, would you have given it?

Steven Bartlett: What is the thing that you're most concerned about?

Pierre Poilievre: We're overtaxing our population. We're punishing initiative. We have 20,000 immigrant doctors who can't work in medicine. Wages have been destroyed. Young people can't start a family in this economy. And that is why the working class across the Western world is so angry. The good news is we can reverse all of that.

Steven Bartlett: Pierre Poilievre, leader of his majesty's loyal opposition. There is so much I want to talk to you about. I think you have a truly fascinating formative childhood. But I think the most appropriate thing to start with is what the hell is going on in the world? I'm up all night trying to figure out if we're on the verge of World War III. What's going on with all these alliances we used to have?

Pierre Poilievre: The history starts really in the post-war period with a massive increase in the power and wealth of the United States. They unleashed the capitalist system. They effectively buried the Soviet Union just by out-hustling, out-producing, and outgrowing until the Soviet Union collapsed. And then a new authoritarian power snuck up on the United States. China went from having 80 percent of its population living on less than a dollar a day to being the second biggest economy in the world. At the same time, the American working class has been thoroughly screwed over by relentless money printing that has inflated their cost of living while also inflating the wealth of a small group of elites. And I think this resulted in a major push back. Now, some of that push back is justified. But I also think some of it is very much unjustified. Tariffing countries like Canada makes no sense. If you're the United States, you should want more friends, more trade with those friends. And that's one of the reasons why I've been touring the United States to make the case for Canada.

Steven Bartlett: It appears that the United States have made the decision to kind of go it alone in the world. I was at Davos and I saw what Trump said. Taking Greenland, turning Canada into the 51st state. That's never going to happen. It seems to be very adversarial. Through my childhood and adulthood, over the last 30 years, the US has always been the strong ally, not an individualistic isolated force in the world. What's going on here?

Pierre Poilievre: I think that is a very big strategic mistake. I think America would be better off working with the traditional Western alliance that helped win the Cold War. In Canada's case, we have everything the United States needs if they treat us like a friend. We have the fourth biggest supply of oil. We could build up an enormous reserve of this oil so that if, God forbid, the Strait of Hormuz were to be closed, Canada's friends would have a couple hundred million barrels already produced and ready for use. So this is rocket fuel for the Canadian economy, but it's strategically important for our American friends. We could cooperate better on this if we got a friendly posture and a fully tariff-free trade arrangement with the US.

Steven Bartlett: I'm looking at the third vial there in the row, Iran. Has Trump taken the right course of action in bombing Iran in the way that he has? And how do you get out of this? Is this going to end well?

Pierre Poilievre: The Iranian government has been extremely hostile and very dangerous to Canada. They killed 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents by shooting a civilian aircraft out of the sky -- PS752 -- for reasons we still do not understand. They have unleashed agents into our communities to harass the Jewish and Persian communities of Canada. And they are the leading world sponsor of terrorism. It is absolutely unacceptable for the Iranian government to ever acquire nuclear weapons. There's no doubt in my mind that the only reason they are enriching uranium is for military purposes. There's no need to enrich to the degree they have in order just to have nuclear power plants. If that were to happen, it could be catastrophic for neighboring countries but also for far away lands if given the ability to develop long-range missiles. My view and the view of the Canadian government is that the Iranian government cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons and any action to stop them from doing that is necessary for world peace.

Pierre Poilievre: I think the initial actions were definitely necessary, particularly the bombings four or five months ago to target the nuclear development sites. Any actions to degrade their nuclear capabilities and prevent them from ever achieving them is favorable. And I hope that it will weaken the regime enough for the people to overtake it and claim control of their country.

Steven Bartlett: It doesn't look like that's the case. They've appointed the son of the Ayatollah to lead the country and they seem to be firing at everybody in the region. There were some reports that they might have ballistic missiles that could reach Europe. This is what we have to stop. The idea that they are carrying out this aggression simply because they've been attacked is false. They would have eventually carried it out. The question is when and with what means.

Pierre Poilievre: This is different than North Korea. North Korea was allowed to get nuclear weapons, but they don't have the same celestial fundamentalist ideology. Ultimately, the regime in North Korea is interested in its own survival and its power. The regime in Tehran has a theocratic dream. They believe there's an afterlife in which they could be rewarded for carrying out mass destruction on what they call the infidels. They don't respond to deterrence the same way that Pyongyang would. There's a far greater risk to them having a nuclear weapon than even having that in a communist totalitarian state like North Korea.

Steven Bartlett: If Trump had called you and asked for your support, had you been leading the government of Canada, would you have given the support?

Pierre Poilievre: Our prime minister did support the attack and I agreed with Prime Minister Carney on that point. That is distinct from contributing Canadian soldiers or sailors and air crew. I'm not proposing that we send ground troops to Iran and we are not in a position right now to supply a lot of the demands that this conflict would require. It depends on what they ask for before we get an answer from Canada on what it is we can provide.

Steven Bartlett: How do you think this plays out based on everything that you know about history, about Trump, and from your pattern recognition?

Pierre Poilievre: Remember the first Persian Gulf War. George Herbert Walker Bush decided he had downgraded and penalized Saddam Hussein enough for the invasion of Kuwait. He declared victory and moved on -- and ultimately that left a lot of stability in the region. His son then pursued a full-out regime change and that was a much longer enterprise. The president will have to decide which of those two Bushes he uses as a model. But I think the important thing is to know what the objective is. For me, the objective has to be to make sure that the Iranian government never gets the capacity to send long-range nuclear missiles to countries. Beyond that, I think it's up to the Iranian people to take advantage of the weakness of the regime and rise up and reclaim their country. I don't think this regime has popular support. I know a lot of Iranians. We're blessed to have a lot of very secular, pro-western Persians who live in Canada, are proudly Canadian, and they will tell you there's almost no support for the regime among the people of Iran.

Steven Bartlett: For me at the moment it looks like it's a little bit lose-lose for Trump in an interesting way. Nobody really has a perfect answer for what to do next because it's all just trade-offs.

Pierre Poilievre: That's right. As Thomas Sowell said, there are no solutions, just trade-offs in life.

Steven Bartlett: And it's hitting the price of gas at the pumps in a big way.

Pierre Poilievre: It shouldn't have to concern Canadians. Our enormous supply of oil should actually insulate us from it. Normally, when the global price of oil rose, our dollar would rise with it because people would be buying more of our oil, which meant they had to first buy our dollar. A more powerful Canadian dollar meant more buying power for internationally priced commodities like oil and food. So we used to be protected from international oil price increases in a way that we're not anymore, because our sector is no longer as strong and as big as it was as a share of our economy. What I want to do is unleash oil production in Canada, clear the regulatory bureaucracy, get rid of industrial carbon taxes, and have a stronger dollar that makes life more affordable.

Steven Bartlett: There's a significant probability that you could be Canada's next leader. Your relationship with Trump -- good, bad, indifferent?

Pierre Poilievre: I've never met him. I've never spoken to him. I made the decision that we have one prime minister at a time and because we are negotiating a trade deal, or it's more like a review of an existing deal, I don't want our side as Canadians to be divided even though I obviously disagree with my prime minister on a whole range of policy issues. I don't want to undermine in any way the Canadian side of the bargaining table. What I've said is that our approach toward Trump should be to focus on what we can control. Unlock our resources. Build up a strategic reserve of minerals that are important to our American friends but also to our other allies. Clear the way to export more goods to overseas markets. Build alliances with the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia to diversify and become more self-sufficient.

Steven Bartlett: You keep using this word "unlock." What are you referring to when you say "clear the way" and "unlock"?

Pierre Poilievre: Removing bureaucratic obstacles. The resources we have are massively profitable for the private sector to mine, refine, store, and ship -- as long as they can get the permits and low enough taxes to do it. So we need to remove those obstacles so that private investment, not subsidized by government -- no handouts for business -- but private investment can unlock and unblock those resources.

Steven Bartlett: Why are you better than the current leader of the Canadian government? What is it you offer that is better than what he has to offer?

Pierre Poilievre: My mission is to make Canada the most affordable, freest, and richest country in the world. My upbringing -- I grew up in very humble beginnings. I grew up surrounded by working-class people. These are my folks. My mother and father were school teachers. My brother is my half brother because we came from the same biological mother but different biological fathers, adopted into the same family. Kind of a complicated story.

Steven Bartlett: Your biological mother put you up for adoption at 16 years old.

Pierre Poilievre: She was 16 and then about three years later she had another little boy, Patrick, who was then adopted by the same parents. They were both teachers. I still remember when we went to pick him up. We got a phone call and they said, "There's a little boy who happens to be half brothers with Pierre. Would you like to adopt him too?" And they said, "Absolutely." So we went over to this building and walked into a room with all these rows of babies, and they said, "That's him right there." That was when I met my brother. That's why I thought that's where babies came from -- there was a store. We grew up in working-class neighborhoods. When I was about three or four, we lost everything. We got smashed by high interest rates. My mother had saved up enough to buy two little rental properties. We lost those and our home and had to borrow from our grandfather to get a down payment so we'd have a place to live. My dad was driving this old car that was falling apart. And our neighbors were working-class folks -- electricians, oil workers, police officers. Those are the people I grew up with, and I always grew up admiring them, believing that they were generally taken advantage of by government, never listened to, and kept on the outside of decision-making. My mission has been to bring back what I call the promise of Canada: that anyone can achieve anything. It doesn't matter if you start off as an adopted kid raised by school teachers, or an immigrant from Botswana who grows up really poor. If you work at it, you should be able to buy a house, launch a business, become a famous global podcaster, or maybe cure a disease. That was what Canada was all about. And that is what I'm trying to reinstate.

Steven Bartlett: What age did you get to meet your biological mother for the first time?

Pierre Poilievre: 21, 22. My adopted mother was very gracious because I said I won't meet my biological mother without the permission of my adopted mother. She did all the work of raising me. All the hardships. She put up with all my rambunctiousness and teenage years, drove me to hockey practice, emptied her bank account to pay for our food. So I did not want her to feel like she was going to be left behind or forgotten about or replaced. I asked her, "Would you be okay if I met her?" And she said, "Yes, of course, because I won't always be here and I always want you to have a mother." I thought that was a really incredible thing to do. Because such a big part of a mother's identity is that they are the mother of that child. But to have a love so much deeper than that personal identity or interest -- that's one of the most gracious things I've ever seen.

Steven Bartlett: I can see the emotion in your face as you say it. It's still there.

Pierre Poilievre: Yeah. I hadn't thought about that in a while. What beautiful people.

Steven Bartlett: So you get to meet your biological mother at 21, 22. What does one say? What are the questions one needs to ask?

Pierre Poilievre: We went on a bit of a road trip from Ottawa to Montreal and we just got to know each other. She had a lot of questions about how my life had been, and I had a lot of questions about our biological family -- about her father, who was a really great man, a great Irishman. And the circumstances that led to my conception and birth. I really came to understand her decision to put me up for adoption. And I've never been resentful for it at all. She was 16. She had just lost her mother to a heart attack. She didn't have a lot of means. And she made a selfless decision that we would have more opportunity if we were raised by someone else.

Steven Bartlett: Did you ever learn anything about your biological father?

Pierre Poilievre: Yes. He works at a concrete plant in British Columbia. So I went and met him. He's a great father with children that he subsequently had and raised. He's a very good man as well. And my adoptive father is a teacher -- he gave me a lot of wonderful lessons and I think is responsible for my way with words.

Steven Bartlett: Marlene and Donald. Marlene's your adopted mother. Donald's your adopted father. They divorce when you're 12 years old.

Pierre Poilievre: Yes. It would be around that time. I was in grade five. A very difficult time for parents to divorce. I remember my parents coming to me and telling me they didn't love each other anymore, that they were going to get a divorce. I remember where I was standing in the house. I remember what I was wearing when they said that to me, because it's earthshattering. My dad told me and he wanted to tell me alone. We got into the car, he said he wanted to take me for a drive. We drove to the local corner store and we parked there and he told me. It was very traumatizing. But at the same time, they were very very good parents. They loved us very much and gave us all they could.

Steven Bartlett: And Donald would eventually come out as gay.

Pierre Poilievre: That's right. He had been raised in a very devoutly French Catholic household and that's why we have a French name. Before he got married, he'd even considered going into the priesthood. He genuinely loved my mother, but obviously he wasn't programmed that way. He has a wonderful partner and we're very close with him and his partner Ross right now.

Pierre Poilievre: I think it gave me the chance to understand that you don't judge people. You love them for who they are. My parents also taught me an important lesson. Shakespeare says, "To thine own self be true." My mother, when she was a small baby, was in a car accident and her fingers were burned off. She had horrible burns on her hand. As I got to my adolescence, I said to my dad, "Did it ever bother you when you started dating her that she had this injury?" And he said, "No, because it didn't bother her. She was totally at peace and she never hid it. It wasn't long after we met that I forgot it was even there." The message I took from that is: be yourself. Don't try to hide the scars. Scars are the trophies of survival. My dad was the same about who he was. He lived his life unapologetically and openly and he never apologized for who he was. And that has stayed with me.

Steven Bartlett: When you speak of Marlene, you speak of her with a great fondness. She's clearly on the podium.

Pierre Poilievre: Yeah. She's a very feisty little lady, very short and very forceful. She taught me a lot about being pugnacious and fighting for what you want in life. And we argued a lot when I was a kid and I think that maybe forged some of my current political argumentation as well. My wife has a big part of it as well. She's a very strong, feisty, intelligent lady with an incredible upbringing. She's a refugee from Venezuela and came with really nothing. So she has this MacGyver-like skill set to get anything done no matter how difficult the logistics. I've been very blessed with strong women around me.

Steven Bartlett: Politics -- when did it come into your psyche?

Pierre Poilievre: I would have been kind of in my mid-teens. I got into football, hurt my back in football, so I couldn't stay on the team. My mother had always gone to these sort of local conservative meetings -- sometimes just bringing baked goods or attending a volunteer meeting. And I said, "Well, why don't you bring me to one of those because I'm bored out of my skull?" And she did. This gives me meaning. This gives me purpose. I want to pursue this. So I started getting more and more involved. I got an internship making almost no money and dressing up in a used suit and really threw myself fully into this mission.

Steven Bartlett: One of the books that you read at that time was Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Pierre Poilievre: This book has to be accompanied by its more famous sister book, The Wealth of Nations. Think of Adam Smith as kind of the father of capitalism. In 1776 he wrote that book, which described what we now call the free market system. This was a really revolutionary idea because up until then we basically had various forms of feudalism -- where a small group of lords and knights and aristocrats controlled all the land and the great masses did all the work. Along came the system of free enterprise that Adam Smith describes, which has a very simple premise: voluntary exchange of work for wages, product for payment, and investment for interest. And the economy rather than being guided by the iron fist of the king or the state is guided by the invisible hand of the free market. The answer is through price signals. If the price of something goes up, people just automatically start making more of it. If you need more workers to make that thing, you raise the wages and the workers arrive. This system is absolutely ingenious. When you go into a coffee shop and buy your coffee, you say "thank you" -- but they also say "thank you" because they have something worth more to them than they had before, the money, and you have something worth more to you than you had before, the coffee. This voluntary exchange has led to a spectacular increase in the quality of living -- a 200-fold increase in economic growth in the free enterprise era versus the feudal era.

Pierre Poilievre: The other half was in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, in which Smith explains how self-interest overlaps with virtue. We have something called fellow feeling -- we feel for the other person, and we feel good when someone else does good. It's why people donate to charity, leave the door open for a stranger, or might help an injured person on the street. I saw this in my own son. He got a little toy and he gave it to his sister. It was the first gift he'd ever given in his life. And he was so happy. He literally ran in a big circle around the foyer of our residence, just laughing and screaming. Just made him so happy -- happier than she was even to receive it. This is the best of human nature -- his happiness was served by seeing his sister better off. And this is really laid out in some detail in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. It brings together all of human nature in one place.

Steven Bartlett: And how did that change your perspective and therefore your policies and your career?

Pierre Poilievre: I have found that those who push a socialist ideology have a gross contradiction in their view of human nature. They say that human beings are wretched, self-interested, greedy when they're in the private voluntary economy, but they're angels when they're in the governmental economy. But that is a huge contradiction. If a man is not capable of deciding for himself, surely he's not capable of deciding for others. And I think the worst vices in human nature come out when there is too much power concentrated in their hands. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. So my ideology is that we should disperse power. It should be a bottom-up system with as much freedom and agency as humanly possible. People should be free to choose for themselves and the purpose of government is to do only those things people cannot do for themselves.

Steven Bartlett: If there's, you know, socialists listening now, they might think -- we tried this sort of capitalistic approach to the economy and it's resulted in us being able to buy less food and vegetables for our money. The price has gone up at the pumps. People are struggling. Inequality has widened. Clearly we need socialism, they would argue, because the current system has not worked.

Pierre Poilievre: What we have now is socialism for the very rich. We have governments that are actively redistributing wealth from the working class to the very, very wealthy. And that is why we see record inequality. Government is actively intervening in the economy to forcefully redistribute wealth up the chain. When they block home building with heavy regulations, they limit the supply of homes. Those who have mansions are therefore richer because their houses are worth more. But young people, newcomers, working-class people can't actually get a home.

Pierre Poilievre: Canada is a great example. We have ten times as much land per person as the second-closest G7 country. And yet we have the fewest homes per capita to live in. Why is that? It's because the vast majority of the cost that goes into building a new home is not land, labor, or lumber. It's government. When you buy a home in Canada, more of the money for your purchase would go to bureaucrats in office buildings than to the carpenters, electricians, and plumbers who actually built the home.

Steven Bartlett: Why? How?

Pierre Poilievre: Because the bureaucracy has grown like any organism in nature which seeks to survive and multiply. They give us the second slowest building permits of any country in the OECD. They charge enormous development taxes which started out just to pay for plumbing and roads for the related housing but have now grown into just a huge cash cow for local governments. Sales taxes still apply on most new homes. And all of that gets compounded. We are the most expensive in the G7 even though we should be dirt cheap because we have the most dirt to build on. My goal is to remove all of that bureaucracy, have the fastest permits in the world, and make it tax-free to build homes so that everyone can afford one.

Steven Bartlett: Canada needs to build roughly 450,000 new homes every single year until 2035 just to restore affordability. And you're building about 240,000 per year.

Pierre Poilievre: That's right. We need to roughly double our home building. The good news -- or not good news -- is we have 100,000 unemployed construction workers who'd be happy to pick up a hammer and start building. We have hundreds of billions of dollars of investment that's ready to do it. We have an abundance of land. What we need are fast permits and low taxes so that we can unlock that building.

Steven Bartlett: What is the case for slow permits?

Pierre Poilievre: There isn't one. There is no benefit to having slow permits. They do not protect the environment. They do not protect public safety. We used to build houses a lot faster and they didn't fall down. After the Second World War, permits were almost instantaneous. We had a massive buildup of homes so that our returning veterans could have a place to live. In many neighborhoods of Canada, those homes are still standing. I'm not saying we get rid of building codes. They should all follow standards of environmental responsibility and be fire resistant and safe. But it shouldn't take seven years to approve a subdivision to do that.

Pierre Poilievre: In Canada we increased the number of homes over the last 10 years by 13 percent. But we've increased the money supply by 100 percent. In other words, the growth in the money supply is eight times faster than the growth in the housing supply -- which means for the average person it bids up the price. There's something called the Cantillon effect, which is that the first people to touch the money in a monetary expansion are those who are already wealthy and already connected to the financial system. When government creates cash to fund its deficits, it doesn't just dump bills out of an airplane into a suburban neighborhood. It injects it into the banking system by buying government bonds at inflated prices. Those connected to the financial system are the first to borrow it, they get to deploy it before it loses its value. By the time it trickles down to working-class people, it's lost its value and their wages have been destroyed. This has been particularly bad in the last 55 years. And that is why the working class across the Western world is so angry.

Steven Bartlett: Canada has consistently dropped down the happiness league table. You went from fifth to 25th.

Pierre Poilievre: From 2015 we've gone from fifth to 25th -- 18th to 25th just in the last year. Part of it is food. We have the worst food price inflation in the G7 today. It's due to a lot of hidden taxes baked into food production. We have an industrial carbon tax that charges on farm equipment, fertilizer, and food producers. We have a new fuel tax that's just come in. Single-use plastic is now banned, which makes food go bad about five days quicker. It sounds kind of virtuous -- we're not going to use plastic anymore. But ultimately it means food goes bad and somebody pays for that. I want to get rid of all of those taxes and fees and unnecessary regulations that do nothing for our health and safety so that we can have more affordable food. But more broadly, we have to get rid of the monetary inflation. We've doubled our money supply in Canada from 1.4 trillion to 2.8 trillion in 10 years. It's not actually that these things cost more. It's that the money with which we buy them is worth less -- because we're creating so much of it. To fund deficits. And the deficits come from having a big government.

Steven Bartlett: GDP per capita. What does that actually mean for the average person?

Pierre Poilievre: It's your income, really. GDP -- gross domestic product -- is the value of all the things that you produce. If you're producing more per person over time, people will see their real wages rise. If you don't produce more per person, then your wages are flat. And so that is what we've effectively had in Canada over the last 10 years.

Steven Bartlett: Why?

Pierre Poilievre: Because we are not unlocking our resources. Our biggest industry is oil and gas and it's locked behind very aggressive anti-development laws and bureaucracies. We're blocking home building and we're overtaxing our population. We're punishing initiative with high taxes. The good news is that we can reverse all of these things. If we have the most pro-development and fastest permits in the world, if we cut taxes on work, investment, home building, and energy, then we can massively increase our output of the things that we need to have a good life.

Steven Bartlett: This seems to be a familiar story across some Western nations. What is the thing they've all got wrong in common?

Pierre Poilievre: Let's take Germany. They shut down their nuclear sector and tried to drive oil and gas out of their country. The end result was extremely high energy costs. This was another intervention that took from working-class people and gave to the very rich. Those who were able to get the subsidies for windmills and solar panels got fabulously wealthy. But the workers in the plants and mines of rural Germany ended up losing their jobs and paying higher prices for electricity. All of which has now been reversed because the Germans are back to burning coal. So it did absolutely nothing for the environment. This is another example of government intervention totally screwing over the working class -- a phenomenon across the Western world. The big lie is that when government gets big, it gives people their fair share. What it does in fact is give the money and resources to those who have the most political power. Those people are all rich, and it pays for it by taking from the working class.

Steven Bartlett: Looking at GDP forecasts -- Canada looks like it's going down. 2025 estimate 1.7 percent, 2026 estimate 1.3 percent. Germany in 2024 had GDP growth of only 0.2 percent. But clearly there's a problem with GDP growth for Canada and the United Kingdom relative to the United States. It looks like the United States are doing something right.

Pierre Poilievre: There are some policies we can learn from. But it's not just the United States. Look at Switzerland. The Swiss are among the wealthiest in the world. They have the best money, the lowest inflation -- almost no inflation in Switzerland. They have very strong money. The Swiss franc is the best currency in the world. What do they have? Free enterprise, small government. The share of the economy consumed by government spending is significantly lower than anywhere else in the Western world. And how is it that the Singaporeans have become one of the wealthiest nations on earth? They have no resources, literally nothing. They have to import their water. They took a swampy, mosquito-infested island and created the wealthiest country in the world outside of the Gulf States. Why? Free enterprise. Low taxes. Easy to start a business. You're rewarded for your hard work. Lee Kuan Yew, who founded the country and created this miracle, should be studied by every leader in the world.

Steven Bartlett: What are the trade-offs of your economic strategy and philosophy?

Pierre Poilievre: The leadership has to have humility because it has to let go of power and turn it back to the people. And that is a very hard thing for politicians to do. I should also say that there is a role for government. I'm not suggesting there isn't. There should be a basic social safety net that provides the things that people who are less advantaged would not be able to have for themselves -- health care even if they can't afford to pay for it, basic schooling, roads, and infrastructure. But what happens is that once you get beyond providing those basics and government starts to metastasize into all kinds of other things that are not its core responsibility, each dollar spent has less and less return. And then it turns into a negative return where the more they spend the more damage they do. And I think we're beyond that point on the curve.

Steven Bartlett: How does one run an economy when you're not having new children being born without bringing in lots of immigrants to help support that economy?

Pierre Poilievre: First of all, I think we have to ask ourselves why has the birth rate gone down? I would argue it's economic reasons. If you cannot afford a home, you have no place to raise children. We have this phenomenon in Canada of 35-year-olds still living in their parents' basements. How do you even get a date? These are great high-achieving people who've got jobs, but they just can't afford a place to live or they're stuck in a small apartment because that's all their paycheck will buy them in the way of rent. So I think for those economic constraints, we have a lot of young people who otherwise would love to have children in their late 20s, early 30s who simply have nowhere to raise them.

Pierre Poilievre: I think that a lot of multinational corporations have abused the immigration system in order to drive down wages. In Canada, the government massively expanded the international student and temporary foreign worker programs and that allowed corporations to pay artificially low wages to people who do not have the same mobility rights and opportunities. That drove down wages, displaced people from their jobs, and ultimately ballooned housing costs. So my position is that we need to cap numbers and ensure that the economy, healthcare, and housing grow faster than the population at all times.

Pierre Poilievre: We have 100,000 unemployed construction workers. They could be building the homes that we need built. We have young people coming out of high school without a job. We have 30-year highs in unemployment among youth. They should be getting those jobs. And if Starbucks says they don't want to take them -- maybe you're not paying enough. If you're not paying the right wage, you're not going to get the right worker. Pay an equivalent wage and you'll attract a worker who will do the job.

Steven Bartlett: One of the interesting ways lots of employers are finding efficiencies is this new technology called AI. Anthropic released a report showing roughly a 14 percent increase in youth unemployment because entry-level jobs are the ones being taken out first. As an employer of hundreds of people all over the world, I have started to notice that the case for hiring certain groups of people is becoming much more tricky. Specifically entry-level grads -- if they aren't really AI proficient, they are a lot less appealing in some roles. The people that are extremely AI proficient -- it's kind of like they come with 50 team members of their own.

Steven Bartlett: There's a certain group in society -- people with deep domain expertise and people who are technical -- that I think are in higher demand than ever before. And everybody else, as AI continues to replace them through autonomous driving and robotics, I think there needs to be a real conversation about what happens to these people.

Pierre Poilievre: Throughout history we've had these scares where new technological developments have threatened to replace, and in reality have replaced, certain human labor. During the industrial revolution, machines were replacing muscular power and then you had the Luddites who came and tried to smash those machines. In the end they just got different jobs with higher pay because they could do more with these machines. And in the dotcom era, we were told again that people would lose their jobs to computers. In fact, they were made more productive by computers. Do you think this time is fundamentally different?

Steven Bartlett: I would say first thing is nobody knows. The second thing I'd say is yes. And the reason I'd say yes is just the speed of disruption. Unlike the industrial revolution where it takes some time for new technologies to become adopted -- this technology is built on the internet, which has global distribution. And it can do anything on a computer. The speed of adoption that we're seeing is staggering. My concern is actually the near-term displacement before we figure out the types of new jobs. And with robotics on the way, you hear someone like Elon Musk saying that there'll be more humanoid robots than humans.

Pierre Poilievre: I think it was John Adams who said something to the effect of: my father studied warfare so that I would have the security to study commerce. I study commerce so that my children will have the prosperity to study arts. If these new systems give us the ability to focus on the things that we love doing that give us meaning in our lives -- while at the same time supplying us with a lot of our material needs -- it could be very positive. If it simply strips away our utility and leaves lots of people without the ability to work at all, then it could be very, very dangerous. So the public policy objective is to ensure that it becomes an enabler of humanity, not a replacement for it.

Steven Bartlett: You could come into power in 2029. Have you thought much about how you would counteract huge job disruption? Sam Altman has suggested they might support things like universal basic income. Elon says we're going to live in the age of abundance where working is going to be optional.

Pierre Poilievre: I have principles that I would apply as these technologies present themselves. The principle for me is: how do we make sure that the AI enables and empowers people to make more decisions for themselves and have more freedom, rather than replacing them and giving them a sense of lost meaning and purpose? Do I think it's great that every minimum wage worker might have a personal assistant and a chauffeur vehicle? I do. Because that would mean more of their life could be spent on the things that thrill them and make them happy, and less on the drudgery of driving in a traffic jam. But at the same time we have to make sure that people have the ability to work and contribute and give themselves a sense of meaning. The other thing I would say is that as these technologies bring down costs, those savings should be passed on to people. They should not be inflated away. The government should not use this as an opportunity to just print more cash to reflate the cost of living. We should actually seek as our goal to lower the cost of living, make life more affordable, make our dollars go further -- which hasn't happened in generations.

Steven Bartlett: The subject of immigration seems to be a winning formula for political leaders. Across the Western world. Do you feel that it's a weaponized, divisive tool for people to get elected?

Pierre Poilievre: I'll just give you the Canadian experience. For roughly 200 years, we had the most successful immigration system in the world by far. We had a point system that measured whether someone would be a good fit for our labor market, whether they would integrate well into our system. And overwhelmingly, people integrated, intermarried. My wife is a refugee from Venezuela. That is not an uncommon story in Canada. What we encountered was a very sudden and inexplicable increase in numbers in the period from 2021 to 2024 that was strictly out of line with our ability to absorb people into housing, healthcare, and jobs. And this upset the social peace on immigration that we had had for two centuries. Now everyone across the political spectrum agrees it went too far too fast. The approach we're taking is that it has to be a lawful system. People have to come in legally in numbers that we can absorb and ultimately integrate into jobs, society, and our way of life. Population cannot grow faster than the housing stock or you'll run out of places to live. It can't grow faster than the number of jobs or you'll run out of paychecks for people. We need a controlled, orderly system that's both compassionate and common sense.

Pierre Poilievre: One of the things we have to do is when people get to Canada, they have to be able to fulfill their potential. In Canada today, we have gatekeepers that block immigrant professionals from even working in their field. We have 20,000 immigrant doctors and 32,000 immigrant nurses who can't work in medicine because they can't get a license to practice. There's this incredibly bureaucratic system they have to go through that takes eight or nine years to prove they actually have the qualifications. I went in for my eye surgery and there's a technician there who literally flies to the UAE to do eye surgeries 10 days a month and then comes back to his family in Ottawa where we only let him work as a technician. So the UAE is a more technologically advanced country than Canada in this respect. I want to fix that with a merit-based test that gets them into the high-paying jobs that will actually strengthen our economy.

Steven Bartlett: What is the biggest threat to the Western world and the Western way of living?

Pierre Poilievre: I think it depends on what China decides to do. China is a spectacular and brilliant civilization with so much to contribute to world harmony -- if that's their choice. If the government decides to direct the immense successes of that country toward trading and working with other countries, then there's nothing to worry about. But if it's a very aggressive, bellicose approach -- using technology for espionage, interference in foreign countries, invading Taiwan -- then China, and Beijing in particular, could become the biggest risk and threat to our country and our world.

Pierre Poilievre: There is an incredible book called "The Thucydides Trap" by a professor named Allison. He took roughly 20 occasions where an incumbent superpower was challenged by a rising superpower and in the majority of cases it did end up in war. But he said it's not necessary. It can be avoided. I think it can be avoided as well if Beijing can be made to understand that it is in the interest of China to be part of the community of nations, to work collaboratively, to trade freely, to be a partner rather than an enemy. And I hope they make the right decision.

Steven Bartlett: Canada doesn't have nuclear weapons, does it? Why?

Pierre Poilievre: We made a decision, I think about 40 or 50 years ago, not to pursue nuclear arms. We didn't think we had any need for it. Lots of nuclear power, lots of uranium, but we don't use it for weaponry. I don't see a need for that right now. But make no mistake -- we are a warrior nation. We were in the World Wars two years before the Americans. We're kind of like a golden retriever. We're friendly. We like to get along. But if provoked, we will fight back.

Steven Bartlett: Canada is building up its military. Why?

Pierre Poilievre: Because there's a consensus that we have not done enough to protect our territory from the incursions of hostile powers. And we often say in Canada, if you don't use it you lose it. We have large territories of our country that are very hard to live in. So how do you assert sovereignty over those treasured territories? You have to have a military presence there. It has been very good for Canada to be next door to the biggest military power the world has ever seen and have friendly relations going back to the early 1800s. But what has become clear is that we cannot simply rely on the Americans to protect us. We have to be able to protect ourselves. And that requires a massive military buildup for a country of our size -- the second biggest country anywhere in the world with the longest oceanic coastline, even longer than Russia.

Pierre Poilievre: Trump threw the election and then thereafter said that he was going to make Canada an American state -- which is never going to happen. But when the leader of the most powerful military on earth says even jokingly that they are about to take your country, you laugh -- but at the same time if I was leading Canada I'd go: wait, is this possible? Are we ready to defend ourselves? We as Canadians react very badly to that. We're not going to ever be the 51st state or any part of the United States of America. The American people are our friends. As President Kennedy said: history has made us friends, economics has made us partners, geography has made us neighbors, and necessity has made us allies. Let no man put us under. He understood that Canada was a separate country with its own unique interests.

Steven Bartlett: You were leading in the polls until what seems to have been the very last moment. What happened?

Pierre Poilievre: Our support didn't drop that much. The other parties collapsed in behind the Liberal party and it was largely due to the Canada-US issue. But we got the biggest vote count we had ever received and the highest share of vote since 1988. So we did perform very well. Our opponents performed even better. And now we have to build on the solid base that we've accumulated in order to win the next election.

Steven Bartlett: What caused the drop in the home stretch?

Pierre Poilievre: I wanted to focus on the things that were going on in people's lives -- the doubling of housing costs, the rising crime rate, the inflation crisis, and my solutions to all of those problems. But a lot of that was swept off of the conversation because everyone was focused suddenly on the tariffs and the president saying he was going to take Canada as a state. And that always helps the incumbent and hurts the challenger -- when the conversation moves away from the domestic record of the government and onto external factors.

Steven Bartlett: How was this emotionally?

Pierre Poilievre: Oh, it was a roller coaster. Things were changing so fast and moving so quickly in the moment. You don't really have time to feel anything. You're just doing so much so quickly that your emotions are put on delay until after it's all over. I had people who placed so much hope in me. They would tell me they felt like they'd lost control of their lives and they vested hope in me. Young people would say, "You have to win because I want to start a family and I can't start a family in this economy." Or mothers would say, "We just can't afford food anymore." I had a lady come to one of my rallies. She went up to the membership desk and said, "Can I borrow $8?" And they said, "What do you need it for?" She said, "Well, I only have $7." They said, "Well, is there perhaps some money in your car?" She said, "I don't have a car." And eventually she said: "I live in my car, and the $7 is all the money I own, and I'm spending it on a membership so that I can vote for Mr. Poilievre because he is my only hope." This is the only chance I have. So I wanted to deliver for these people and when we didn't win, I felt terrible that I hadn't delivered for them.

Steven Bartlett: What does the disappointment look like the night of election and the day after?

Pierre Poilievre: I didn't spend a lot of time on that. I just got back at it. At the end of the day, you have to focus on what you can control. And my approach in life is to zero in on what is in your control. That is the greatest thing you can do for your mental health and for your output as a person. I believe in a stoic approach. So I didn't spend a lot of time rolling around on the ground in melancholy.

Steven Bartlett: Do you think that if Trump hadn't said the thing about taking Canada and hadn't done the tariffs, you would be leading Canada right now?

Pierre Poilievre: I don't like to make excuses. I like to say: look, I have to own my result and that's what I do. The people voted and they made their decision. I have to be at peace with it. I can't spend my time thinking on what-ifs because if that what-if hadn't happened, then there might have been another what-if. I have to focus on what I can control.

Pierre Poilievre: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is a great book. He talks about -- this is just a random page -- "when you wake up in the morning, tell yourself the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil." What it basically says is: expect these things, and if you do but don't be controlled by them. These are factors outside of your control. Put all of your emphasis on the things that are within your control and it will bring a tremendous amount of peace. When you're focused on what you can control, you're the boss of your life. When you're focused on what you cannot control, you become a helpless victim. Whereas if you focus on what you can, you become the driver of the car -- you decide where it goes. Nelson Mandela used to recite to himself the poem Invictus to remind him that he could focus on what was in his control -- which was his own soul. "I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul." And that gives you a lot of peace.

Steven Bartlett: I have this document you wrote when you were about 20 years old, which was part of a contest where you won $10,000. Could you just read the opening three paragraphs?

Pierre Poilievre: "Although we Canadians seldom recognize it, the most important guardian of our living standards is freedom. Freedom to earn a living and share the fruits of our labor with loved ones. The freedom to build personal prosperity through risk-taking and strong work ethic. The freedom of thought and speech. The freedom to make personal choices and the collective freedom of citizens to govern their own affairs democratically. Government's job is to constantly find ways to remove itself from obstructing such freedoms. Human beings are graced with the gifts of creativity, wisdom, and ingenuity. The best way for a society to go about improving its living standards is to allow citizens to apply these qualities to the challenges of everyday life. Asking a prime minister to single-handedly improve the living standards of 30 million of the world's brightest is about as realistic as asking him to take to an Olympic sprinting track to help a lineup of world-class athletes reach the finish line. The more the government becomes involved in the race, the greater the number of hurdles competitors will encounter. Therefore, as prime minister, what I would do to improve living standards is not nearly as important as what I would not do. As prime minister, I would relinquish to citizens as much of my social, political, and economic control as possible, leaving people to cultivate their own personal prosperity and to govern their own affairs as directly as possible."

Steven Bartlett: In the last decade, since you've been out on the road speaking to people and campaigning -- where have your views evolved?

Pierre Poilievre: I would say my temperament has matured. Ten years ago, I did not have a wife and kids. As a father, you end up having to grow a tremendous amount of patience because kids don't do what they're told, or they have needs that must supersede your own. You're constantly making compromises with a spouse in order to juggle all the difficulties of family life. And that necessarily spills over into your political approach. I'm much more careful and thoughtful than I was in my late 20s and early 30s.

Steven Bartlett: The people that have opposition parties have often referred to you as Trump light. What do they base that on?

Pierre Poilievre: I guess because we're both conservatives and we've both spoken out against wokeism and DEI. What I think happened with wokeism is that it is a deeply illiberal ideology. Traditional liberalism was a color-blind ideology based on total equality regardless of gender, sexuality, race, or anything else. Wokeism is exactly the opposite of that. It accentuates all of those differences and disagreements. It groups people based on what should be irrelevant characteristics like race and gender. And then having divided people into groups, it seeks to expand state control over their lives. What I believe in is treating people as individuals and letting them live their own lives, judging them exclusively on their own merits.

Steven Bartlett: I'm a black man. I moved from Botswana when I was a baby and came to the UK. One of the things I did know, when I was 18 and dropped out of university and started to get into business, is I was aware that there's like a systemic disadvantage of some sort. I find myself in an interesting position where on one end I want to be treated like everybody else. But on the other side I do believe that there is systemic discrimination that is going to hold certain groups back if there isn't something done to level that playing field.

Pierre Poilievre: I think the answer is equality. There has to be strict equality and equal treatment regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, religion. That is the ideal. What we need is a meritocracy that is colorblind and judges people based on what they can do.

Steven Bartlett: People aren't colorblind, though, are they? My dad said to me when I was younger, "Everybody's prejudice." Prejudice is part of how we survived as humans. So if prejudice is very prevalent in society, does there need to be measures that counteract that to give everybody a fair chance?

Pierre Poilievre: Our institutions have to be conscious about making sure that they are judging people based on their merit and should work aggressively to make sure that everyone, regardless of where they come from, has a chance to succeed -- get the job, get the promotion, move up the ladder. I don't think that is achieved by breaking people down into more and more different groups and divisions. I think it's by actually removing the barriers. The problem I have with wokeism is it seems almost designed to divide people. And that is exactly the opposite of the objective that we all sought when we pushed for racial equality and personal freedom and responsibility.

Steven Bartlett: Black mortgage applicants are up to 200 percent more likely to be denied a home loan than white applicants with a similar financial profile. What is going on there?

Pierre Poilievre: I had not seen that data point before, but I would say these sound like really stupid bankers -- because they're making a bad decision to deny people a mortgage and ultimately deny themselves the business. DEI comes in to make sure that their judgments aren't stupid. But DEI has been in place now for several decades, and how is it working? You're reading the statistics to show that it's not. So maybe it's not actually doing what it's designed to do. Maybe it's doing other things. I go back to my first principles. I think that government is responsible for a lot of the barriers that are put in place. Anti-housing policies impact far more on minorities and disadvantaged people than on established people. Occupational licensing rules block immigrants from working in their professions even when they're thoroughly qualified. And a lot of soft-on-crime policies have actually hurt minority communities most. So ironically, it's actually government policies that are causing people of disadvantaged backgrounds to suffer even more. Wokeism accentuates all of those problems rather than solving them.

Steven Bartlett: Is this little Valentina there?

Pierre Poilievre: That's little Valentina. She loves to be on daddy's shoulders. She's seven years old. She's non-verbal. She's autistic. She's on the spectrum. Her biggest difference between herself and other children is the ability to communicate verbally. We're working very hard on that and she's making some encouraging progress. She's very acrobatic and rambunctious. She loves to climb, swing, bounce, jump. And she is extremely affectionate. One of the superpowers she has is that whatever she does, she does 100 percent. She's also 100 percent authentic. She doesn't put on acts or artifices. She's the real deal all the time. You know exactly how she feels because she indicates it. And she's very blessed to have a little brother, Cruz, who adores her and treats her better than anyone else in the world.

Steven Bartlett: I often hear parents talk about their concerns with someone like Valentina growing up in the world as non-verbal. You're not going to be here forever to protect her. How does that relate to how you think about the future?

Pierre Poilievre: We obviously have to build up a nest egg for her so that if she can't earn income, she will have the resources for a great life after we're gone. And second, we're really hoping that we forge a very permanent and deep bond between her and her brother Cruz. One of the things he says again and again is "my job is to protect Valentina from bad guys." So this is a good attitude -- especially that they are actually in the same class at school. He's daddy's eyes to protect our little princess. And based on his nature, I believe he's going to be there for her when he's older.

Steven Bartlett: How has it changed your politics?

Pierre Poilievre: It's reinforced my sense of compassion for people who can't provide for themselves. I've talked a lot about how government should be limited. I do think there's a very real role for government to help people who genuinely cannot provide for themselves -- people who suffer from disabilities being probably the best example. And it has reinforced to me that we have to also have policies that recognize the inherent worth of every individual. Too often governments have seen people with disabilities as just someone they have to care for, not someone who can contribute. I believe that everybody has something to contribute and that we should try to unlock that in every human being. It gives you a sense of compassion because when you see somebody who might be different -- like I see my daughter in that person. My wife is very good at this. She'll see someone who might be acting differently in a crowd and she'll grab my hand and say "I think he's autistic" -- and then she will often go and talk to that person and make them feel loved. Compassion is about feeling what the other person feels. And you have a greater ability to do that when there's a loved one close to you who has the experience.

Pierre Poilievre: When the specialist gave us the diagnosis, she paused, like waiting for us to burst into tears. And we were just kind of like, "Yeah, we expected that, let's get on with it." And then we just started doing the things that we had to do. My message to parents of autistic children is just focus on what you can control. Get on to the things that you have to do. Get a speech therapist. Get the play structures in the house that they love. And enjoy them. They're so much fun. She's a thrilling little girl to be around. They call it autism because they're auto-tapping on something that might give her a tremendous sensation that we can't appreciate. On the other side, minor irritants that you and I would brush off might drive her completely crazy. If she's having a meltdown, it's not because she's a bad kid. It's because she's going through a horrific sensation that we can't quite understand. But you just have to embrace it all.

Steven Bartlett: What are your closing statements? If you had to send one final message to our listeners all over the world, what would that message be?

Pierre Poilievre: I'm actually optimistic about the future and I think Canada's got a very bright future. We have the most resources of anyone in the world. We have probably the most diverse and educated population. We have the most fresh water. The future belongs to Canada. We're going to be an incredible place -- the MBA of the world -- if we do the right things. I don't want to be egotistical about it, but I think it would help if I were prime minister as well.

Pierre Poilievre: And I think any politician should be more transparent and willing to come into these environments. Your team said nothing was off limits. They didn't ask to be able to edit this. And I would like more politicians to follow in that vein.

Steven Bartlett: We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest. The question left for you is: what are you most afraid of and how do you deal with that fear?

Pierre Poilievre: For myself, it would be that something would happen to my kids. Every parent worries about something happening to their kids. I think that would be my biggest fear.

Steven Bartlett: What about for Canada at large?

Pierre Poilievre: The biggest fear I have for Canada is that we just keep blocking our own potential and declining -- and opportunity vanishes and slowly our people lose the promise that the country gave me and so many generations. My fear is that we become the frog in boiling water and it just gets slowly warmer and warmer and the frog really never notices. I think it is unfortunately the trajectory of travel. But I think we can change that if we make some big reversals in direction.

Steven Bartlett: And lastly, what about for the world generally, the Western world?

Pierre Poilievre: I would say my biggest fear is that the Western world does not stay true to its foundational principles. I want the Western world to stay true to the basic principles that grew out of the Magna Carta -- government that is servant, people that are masters -- and that the free democracies not only succeed at home but work together abroad to preserve that civilization.