Eric Montigny’s Populism in Canada: A New Surge provides much needed analysis and insight into populist discourse in Canadian federal politics from 2022 to 2025. The majority of the book analyzes and compares the distinct positions and rhetoric of Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre, New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh, and People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier across the politics of the pandemic, the economy, climate change, immigration and Wokeism. By incorporating references to public opinion research, Montigny facilitates a better understanding of the strategic use of populism and contextualizes many of the changes in positions or rhetoric seen among these leaders.

Within these chapters, Populism in Canada contributes three main theses. The first responds to the greatest domestic and international question of this era: How are we to understand Poilievre’s politics? Montigny asserts that “Pierre Poilievre’s populism will show to be a discursive strategy more than a strong ideological stance” (x). To this end, Montigny frequently demonstrates Stephen Harper’s influence on Poilievre’s ideological foundations. Montigny depicts Poilievre’s strategic opportunism as a reframing of Harper-era emphasis on economic reasoning, which utilises populist communication tactics such as emphasizing the role of political elites in crises and using concise, “common sense” branding to capitalize on trends in public opinion.

The second thesis explains the impact and success of this approach. According to Montigny, Poilievre’s ability to repackage Conservative positions for the working class allowed him to “hunt on NDP turf” (198). This represents an important shift for Conservative politics, as it forced the NDP, and Singh in particular, to re-engage in populist rhetoric. Montigny highlights Singh’s greater emphasis on attacking “the greed of large corporations” (191) as the 2025 election approached, downplaying “ideas he was defending in connection with culture wars [sic] topics or climate change” (197). This perceived trade-off in party branding remains pertinent as current NDP leadership candidates jostle to decide the party’s future.

Using De Vreese et al.’s 2018 typology, Montigny’s third thesis distinguishes between the “complete populism” of Maxime Bernier, replete with the exclusion of marginal groups, and that of Singh and Poilievre, which relies primarily on appeals to the people and anti-elitism. For example, while Bernier engages with conspiratorial and nativist rhetoric on environmental and immigration policy, respectively, Poilievre is careful to maintain a largely economic logic in his populism: “He presented himself as the only one who understood their harsh reality and presented himself of [sic] wanting to give them a break from the hard times” (133). This distinction is essential to an accurate understanding of Polievre’s and Bernier’s politics. To conflate the two is to misunderstand the Canadians who support them.

As such, Montigny provides pertinent and nuanced answers to three pressing questions which remain at the forefront of Canadian federal politics. Unfortunately, Populism in Canada: A New Surge struggles to package and present this analysis, promising a far more ambitious scope than it delivers. Notably, the introduction proposes to explain Poilievre’s discourse as “a new populist discourse adapted to the Canadian context” (v), as well as to “explain how this populism differs from that across the border” (ibid.). As the analytical chapters focus entirely on the three Canadian leaders, these international questions are not only left unanswered but are also unnecessary to justify or contextualize the research at the heart of this book. Similarly, the introduction, conclusion, and book jacket flirt with the thesis of Canadian populist exceptionalism, asking “So, can Canada be a fertile ground for populism to prevail?” (11). Montigny, however, then provides a non-exhaustive summary of provincial and federal Canadian populism past and present, demonstrating a confusing ambivalence towards the degree to which Poilievre’s populism is or is not novel: “Traditionally, populism has been struggling to make gains outside the prairies. This trend seems to have change [sic] within the Conservative Party” (ibid.). While this chapter could have included any number of non-prairie populists at least as successful as Poilievre, such as Mike Harris, Daryl Dixon, Blaine Higgs or John Rustad, to engage in summarizing and comparing Canadian populism with any semblance of comprehensiveness is to open Pandora’s box. Again, I believe such framing is unnecessary for contextualizing and justifying this self-contained analysis and its conclusions.

In sum, Populism in Canada: A New Surge answers the prominent domestic and international demand for better understanding of Poilievre’s populism, specifically, and of the recent turbulence in Canadian federal politics, more broadly. While the ambitious framing and rushed editing of the book can be distracting, Montigny’s analysis astutely compares Poilievre to concurrent federal party leaders, Singh and Bernier, across salient political issues. In doing so, he paints a nuanced and detailed picture of Poilievre’s use of populism not as an ideological foundation but as a communication style for reframing Harper’s politics.