Pierre Poilievre’s loss in the 2025 federal election wasn’t merely a matter of strategic mistakes or media bias. It marked another chapter in a half-century pattern of cultural retreat by Canadian conservatives. While conservatives talk economics, the left seizes culture—and with it, the future.
As a Canadian expatriate returning after a decade in Asia, I’ve watched the country I once called home drift into malaise. Housing is unaffordable, crime is on the rise, and national discourse has grown brittle. Yet the official narrative—of inevitable progress, multicultural harmony, and moral superiority—remains stubbornly intact. What’s missing is not prosperity alone but meaning, confidence, and cultural clarity.
Conservatives, time and again, have failed to challenge this progressive narrative. From John Diefenbaker to Stephen Harper, they’ve governed as economic custodians, rarely touching the cultural assumptions underpinning Canadian society. Even during Poilievre’s promising rise, he focused on “freedom from” inflation and government interference, but offered little “freedom for” a coherent Canadian identity.
The pattern is clear. Conservatives pass tax reforms while the left rewrites the national story through the schools, the media, the bureaucracy, and the courts. Even victories feel defensive and temporary. The result? A public square where conservative ideas are tolerated on fiscal matters but banished from moral and cultural debate.
Poilievre’s message of economic freedom resonated with younger voters, disillusioned by ever-worsening housing costs, declining services, and a sense that opportunity was slipping away—or being pulled beyond their grasp. But his campaign lacked cultural courage. He avoided the questions that animate national life: What does it mean to be Canadian? How do we live together? What should we preserve? In bypassing these questions, he forfeited the deeper contest.
It’s fashionable in some conservative circles to dismiss “culture war” as unserious, a distraction from economic policy or constitutional governance. But history shows otherwise. Nations are stories we tell ourselves; lose control of the story, and you lose the nation. The left knows this. That’s why they fight for the schools, the corporate HR departments, the broadcasters, the arts councils, the film boards, and not just for the bureaucracy or unions. They know that while budgets come and go, and governments rise and fall, cultural institutions shape how people see themselves—and what they expect from their leaders.
Conservatives, by contrast, have avoided confrontation—too afraid of being labelled intolerant or mean-spirited. The result is a kind of institutional loneliness for conservative voters. Poilievre seemed poised to break this pattern. But when it mattered, he blinked. He skipped bold opportunities, like a potential appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, which had helped swing the 2024 U.S. election to Trump. Instead, he played it safe—and lost.
Yet the loss wasn’t just tactical. It was civilizational. By refusing to challenge the cultural orthodoxies of identity politics, victimhood, and hollowed-out liberalism, Poilievre offered relief without renewal. And Canadians noticed. Late-stage ambivalence dimmed his earlier clarity. Many were left asking: Is he just another politician?
The pattern of conservative retreat didn’t happen overnight. It’s the result of what the left has long understood and the right has long ignored: that politics follows or is “downstream” of culture, not the other way around. While conservatives balanced budgets, progressives marched through the institutions. The universities that once taught history, literature, and philosophy as pillars of Western civilization became sites for deconstructing the very idea of Western civilization. Public broadcasting transformed from nation-building to narrative management. Even primary schools shifted, replacing citizenship and civic virtue with “inclusion” and identity politics.
Each generation of Conservatives told themselves they could make peace with these cultural shifts. Brian Mulroney apparently thought free trade would secure prosperity no matter who controlled the media. Harper acted as if he believed fiscal management and security policy were enough to govern around the cultural rot. Even Poilievre, for all his rhetorical skill, sought to harness economic discontent while barely touching the sacred cows of diversity, multiculturalism, or radical progressivism.
The left never stopped building. They understood something conservatives didn’t: Win the schools, win the screens, win the songs—and you win the next generation’s soul. As progressives seized the cultural heights, conservatives retreated to fiscal talking points, hoping the numbers would eventually tell a story. But spreadsheets don’t inspire movements. Narratives do.
Canadian conservatism now faces a choice. Continue managing decline, or offer a compelling moral vision. That means recovering what conservatism is for: rootedness in family, faith, and tradition. Order that makes freedom possible. Citizenship as responsibility, not merely rights.
To win the future, conservatives must stop treating culture as secondary. They must challenge corrosive ideologies and offer a story worth believing in. A story of duty, dignity, and shared purpose. Without that, they may win debates—but lose the country.
