Ben Woodfinden, the 31-year-old former director of communications for Pierre Poilievre, understands the challenges confronted by youthful Canadians. Ten years of a Liberal-led, no-growth authorities, Ben laments, “means they stay in a rustic that doesn’t work for them anymore.” They need change.
And there’s a flip aspect, he cynically suggests: Some Canadians are content material with the established order, as a result of it advantages them. They purchased homes many years in the past which might be price 20 instances what they paid for them. It’s of their curiosity, he argues, to encourage unsustainable ranges of immigrants to help present social packages and to constrain funding within the infrastructure wanted to re-energize the Canadian economic system.
“Lots of people have had it fairly good, and the established order on this nation works for them,” Ben asserts. “However what which means in actuality is managed decline.”
These are the type of folks, he says, who lean into the nostalgic “elbows up” nationalism (
being essentially the most emblematic, he notes), reminding them of a Canada that now not exists. “That type of imaginative and prescient of Canada,” he frowns, “doesn’t converse to me in any respect.”
In 2022, Ben was tapped to be Poilievre’s comms director, liable for crafting the Conservative chief’s public picture and the celebration’s populist, anti-elite messaging, focusing on the gatekeepers — bureaucrats, regulators and company elites — who stand in the way in which of alternative for unusual Canadians. Through the 2025 federal election, Ben turned a degree man in Poilievre’s media technique, usually by-passing mainstream media in favour of extra direct messaging.
Ben’s in Toronto once we join for a dialog. Now resigned from his partisan function, and scheduled to return to McGill within the fall to complete his political science PhD, he’s exhausted.
“I had two and a half years working for Pierre,” he says, taking off his glasses to rub his eyes. “He’s the hardest-working man I’ve ever met in my life,” he chuckles. “…The most important problem for me is simply maintaining with him. So I’m a bit burnt out.”
There’s a variety of soul-searching happening in conservative circles, he admits, and factors to Poilievre’s latest assertion affirming the CPC’s want so as to add roughly a million folks to the conservative coalition to get the celebration over the end line in a two-party system.
“New Canadians, youthful Canadians, working-class Canadians — these are the varieties of individuals for whom the deal of this nation has been basically damaged,” he asserts. “So if you wish to make that coalition cohesive, you should add folks to it that match that mould.” And, he explains, “Should you add a bunch of disparate teams collectively which have completely different pursuits and values, completely different norms, that coalition will simply collapse in some unspecified time in the future.
“I do suppose that is going to be a problem for Carney and the Carney coalition,” he provides, and I concur. The Liberals siphoned off voters from the left and the correct within the election, and past the “shield us from Trump” mandate, the priorities of Carney’s supporters gained’t essentially align.
Discuss of the brand new type of conservative coalition that’s rising animates Ben; his faint British accent (he moved to Canada as an adolescent) turns into noticeably extra pronounced as his enthusiasm builds.
“What group do you recommend could possibly be added to this coalition?” I ask. “Feminine voters” is Ben’s unequivocal reply. “We did very properly with youthful males,” he explains, “and I feel there are a variety of ladies, youthful ladies … who face the identical issues as younger males … making it more durable for them to attain the issues they need to obtain in life.”
Whereas I agree wholeheartedly with Ben’s aspiration to have interaction ladies, it’s no secret the Conservative messaging didn’t land properly with feminine voters within the federal marketing campaign. We each wince recalling the backlash to Poilievre’s observations about organic clocks early within the marketing campaign.
“So I feel it’s going to be about determining a approach to converse to ladies … on points that have an effect on them,” Ben displays, in ways in which don’t alienate different folks. However, he admits, it’s a problem to string that needle.
There are a lot of divides effervescent up in Canada’s political panorama — generational, regional, rural versus city, training ranges. And now gender. “The events of the correct are more and more male-dominated,” Ben notes, and the “events of the left are more and more female-dominated.” It’s an unhealthy social divide, he provides, “a pattern that’s occurring impartial of any particular chief or any particular celebration, and I feel that’s a part of why we didn’t do as properly with youthful feminine voters.”
These traits, Ben explains, are occurring everywhere in the Western world, throughout superior democracies. “So you’ll be able to speed up them and you may decrease them, however you’ll be able to’t essentially keep away from them.”
In an effort to show the dialog in a extra constructive path, I ask Ben about Poilievre’s resolution to run for election in Alberta. “There’s a contact of future about this,” Ben solutions thoughtfully, “I feel he’s going to be an essential voice within the subsequent few years, concurrently talking to these (western) frustrations and what wants to vary, but in addition articulating a barely completely different however extra expansive imaginative and prescient, a extra inclusive imaginative and prescient, of what it means to be Canadian.
“I feel the centre of political gravity is slowing shifting west in Canada,” Ben continues, “simply following inhabitants traits and demographics.” And our imaginative and prescient of what it means to be Canadian must be up to date, which he acknowledges is an enormous undertaking and “not one thing you’ll be able to impose from the highest down.”
The ever present image of Canada is the maple leaf, Ben explains, “however you don’t get maple timber west of Manitoba.” (He means sugar maples, as seen on the flag.) There are shared values throughout the nation — he’s lived in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Calgary, since immigrating to Canada — however, he observes, “it’s very a lot an eastern-centric Laurentian imaginative and prescient of what this nation means, and I nonetheless suppose the way forward for Canada could be very a lot out west … If folks transfer inside Canada, folks go east to west, not west to east.”
The resurgent wave of patriotism, triggered by Donald Trump’s threats, is a chance to create a barely completely different imaginative and prescient of what it means to be Canadian, Ben suggests, one which speaks to a Canada of 2025 and never a Canada of 1991.
The final election was about change, Ben concludes, and that want for change will not be going to go anyplace. “Some folks suppose it would simply bubble down, and I feel it would simply bubble up much more.”
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