Canada awaits the outcome of Canada/ USA Hockey Armageddon II it’s fair to assess just how much a single hockey game has sharpened the focus on the political line brawl between the the nations. The proxies on skates have revealed a few truths about contemporary Canada.

While the Liberal party has suspended reality so that it can pretty-up Mark Carney, Canada’s media instead fawns over conflicting polls showing a Kamala Harris-like ascension of Carney to contender status. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s Canadian rhetoric gets more belligerent as his 30-day tariff reprieve runs out. Finally, Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary has advised Trump to delay the tariff Apocalypse till Canada can get an election done.

The common denominator in all this is Conservative leader Pierre Polievre. Or, at least, the mystery of Pierre Poliievre. There are several Poilievres in circulation. There is the Liberal/ NDP version of a nasty wolverine who savages innocent reporters and talks down his nose to opponents.; Next, there is the sunset media’s version of an untested slogan-reciting automaton.

And finally there is the Paul Ryan nerd clone who thrives on explaining kitchen-table economics to people awash in debt and despairing of ever getting ahead in DEI land. Which is the real deal? And does Poilievre himself know who he is anymore?

This distinction is important because, barring a charisma implant for Mark Carney, Poilievre will be the next prime minister, likely with a healthy majority. Neither of the first two Poilievre constructs will disappear soon, of course. The comms teams on the Left are determined to ride over Poilievre, however bad the polls. You need only look at the how the vanquished Left in the U.S. still acts as if they, not Trump, won a mandate last November to understand that Liberals are loath to accept any public rebuke.

The best place to answer the question of who is PP does not come from his apple-eating defenestration of the hapless reporter in B.C. While the MAGA right worshipped that moment and other slap-downs of the press— and the Left demonized him for it— it seems that the Poliievre being groomed by his advisors is meant to be softer and more statesmanlike.

His Saturday rally in Ottawa, shortly before the Canada/ USA hockey brawl, was a good place to start. In the face of Trump’s imminent tariff threat gone was the pitiless street fighter and in came the statesman, full of talk about the glories of Canada and why America needs us.

He seemed intent on tying up the Boomer vote with this speech. Oh wait. Boomers still love Liberals and Carney. Why is Poilievre going after that unwinnable demographic? Isn’t that the quicksand every Conservative, save Steven Harper, has floundered in? But there was Poilievre wandering into Liberal Speak, trying to list the benefits of the nation’s past.

Real Canadians– eg those not voting for Carney– know what a great place it can be. They don’t need to be given a Tourism Canada commercial. And as we wrote last week younger Canadians need a reason to reject Trump’s offer of citizenship. Poilievre needed to level with Canadians about what happened the past decade on defence, crime, DEI. He needed to be frank about money laundering, fentanyl production and the penetration of China’s Communists into the fabric of the land.

While his handlers seemingly urged him to go statesman,  Canadians were willing to hear the truth, not another Carney eye glazer. He needed to channel Harry “Give ‘Em Hell” Truman (“I tell my opponents the truth and it feels like hell.” ) He needed to say he’ll be pitiless in his treatment of those (media, PSA) who stand in the way of a bright new day. As so often happens it was CPC playing on Liberals turf instead of staking out their own. Canada already has Doug Ford, they’re saying. We don’t need another mushy Tory.

Poilievre concluded with a Churchill barb about how America will always do the right thing— after they’ve exhausted the other possibilities. It was an unnecessary and provocative one liner from a guy who’s try to establish his bonafides as the capable negotiator for Canada O’Leary is promising he’ll be. Did he and his brain trust think the thin-skinned Trump would simply slough off the jibe?

It is performances like these that leave Canadians wondering if they’re voting for Poilievre or simply voting against Trudeau and the thoroughly corrupt Liberal/ NDP coalition. Wobbly performances like this will lead to vote leakage to Liberals and to Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada. Bernier has urged a realistic assessment of Canada’s precarious position vis a vis the USA.

Instead of perpetuating the shopworn homilies to 1970s Canada that have expired, Bernier suggests looking at the opportunities of closer economic— not cultural— cooperation with the Americans. Let Liberal/ NDP moan about collaboration. They’re like the three little pigs expecting their houses of straw and twigs will survive the ongoing attacks of China and international money laundering.

Poilievre has to stop pretending that a heavily indebted and structurally crumbling Canada can withstand the next four years of Trump bombast. He must have an intervention with the Canadian public to bring them to the bracing reality they face. Only when they know which side is up, away from Trudeau, will they start to climb out of this mess.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.