Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is celebrating his 46th birthday today. He was born in Calgary to a teenage mother and was later adopted by two teachers, Marlene and Donald Poilievre. They later divorced, with his father coming out as gay afterwards.
The future Tory leader’s interest in politics came early and he got involved in Reform Party politics as a teenager. He studied international affairs at the University of Calgary and graduated inn 2008. Poilievre remained active in federal politics after leaving university and in 2004, was elected to the House of Commons.
When the Conservatives under Stephen J. Harper formed government in 2006, Poilievre went on to hold a variety of Parliamentary Assistant posts. In 2013, he was put in cabinet.
After the Conservative defeat in 2015, he remained a MP and was considered one of the Opposition’s “attack dogs.” In 2022, Poilievre was elected his party’s national leader and was widely-considered one of the most effective Leaders of the Opposition since John Diefenbaker decades before. Defeated by Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Liberals earlier this year (losing his own seat in the process), Poilievre remains party leader and is expected to return to the House this year.
Happy birthday from Art’s History Mr. Poilievre.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.