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Last weekend, however, U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threat and musing about making Canada a 51st state changed the game. A Conservative victory is now less certain — and Poilievre, who spent the past two years telling Canadians the country was “broken,� is struggling to rebrand.

On Friday, a Pallas poll suggested the Conservative lead in public support heading into the next election campaign is now just six percentage points — a stunning plunge from the 20-point lead pollsters registered a month ago, and the apparent confirmation of movement in Ontario and Quebec reported by competing pollsters.

More worrisome perhaps for them is that Pallas has the Conservatives and Liberals neck and neck if Mark Carney becomes the Grits’s next leader. 

The Pallas poll comes on the heels of a Leger survey that had support for the Liberals surging in Quebec, tied with the Bloc Québécois and ahead if Carney was their leader.

Ironically, if Poilievre had not been so successful in his prosecution of Trudeau, blaming him for everything from crime in Toronto’s subways to the rising cost of groceries, the prime minister’s unpopularity might not have prompted Liberal MPs to push him towards the exit.

If Poilievre had not been so successful in prosecuting the case against the consumer price on carbon — the “carbon tax� — the Liberal leadership contestants would not have pledged to scrap it immediately. Ditto for Poilievre’s prosecution of the capital gains tax increase.

Poilievre was left with neither the opponent he wanted nor the issue he hoped to run on.

But those were January problems. With tweaks to Poilievre’s talking points, the Tories would frame the next Liberal leader as a carbon copy of Trudeau and spend enough money to make sure the message got across.

Then came Trump.

The U.S. president’s threat to slap a 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian imports was met with a response from Trudeau that even Conservatives admitted had hit the mark. Trudeau urged his fellow Canadians “to remain united� and “to support one another.� He complemented the provinces — “This is team Canada at its best� — and pledged that the federal government would “be there for Canadians.�

That hope and optimism in the face of despair not only clashed with Poilievre’s anger narrative but also risked undermining the Conservatives’ campaign promises and the party’s internal coalition. After all, Poilievre had spent years pledging to cut government spending, balancing each dollar’s worth of new spending with a dollar’s worth of cuts. Was that now what Canadians would want?

On Sunday, Poilievre attempted a pivot. When the tariff threat was still on the table, he appeared more statesmanlike, even agreeing with Trudeau on the need for retaliatory tariffs.

But when the tariff threat was pushed back by 30 days, Poilievre pivoted again. “Whether or not we agree with (Trump) should not matter,� he told Canadians. The Liberals had caused the drug crisis, he said, and he would crack down on it — not to please Trump, but because it was the right thing to do.

Part of Poilievre’s challenge is that his coalition includes Ontario Conservatives, who want someone like Premier Doug Ford who’ll fight Trump with everything the country can throw at him, and Alberta Conservatives. who support Premier Danielle Smith and her approach of validating Trump’s concerns. Recall that back in October, another Leger poll found the U.S. presidential election than wanted Kamala Harris (42 per cent) to win.

Pallas CEO Joseph Angolano is not surprised by the uptick in Liberal support. He sees it as an emotional reaction to Trump’s tariff threat. “Public opinion tends to favour incumbents in times of crisis,� he told the Star.

Canadians certainly did respond emotionally, wrapping themselves with national pride and checking labels to ensure they were not buying American products. Even support for sovereignty in Quebec dropped to its lowest level in more than five years.

“Overnight, sovereignty dropped like eight points,� noted polling aggregator Philippe J. Fournier of . “That’s a rally-around-the-flag effect, at least in Quebec — and if it happened in Quebec, it may happen elsewhere.�

The Conservatives are hoping that any rallying happens around them. They’ve moved on to a new tag line, “Canada First,� and next week, as first reported in the Hill Times, they plan a big rally on National Flag of Canada Day to cement that message.

But after trying to brand Canada Day with red, white and blue during prime minister Stephen Harper’s time in office, you might say it’s a sign of desperate times that the Tories are encouraging everyone to ditch the blue in favour of just red and white.