By Diane Castellano
Here is something nobody in Ottawa will say out loud, so I will: Canada is thirsty for a man in charge.
Not a manager. Not a facilitator. Not another earnest fellow in a fleece vest who wants to hold a listening session. Canadians, whether they admit it at the dinner table or not, are aching for a strong, steady, unapologetically masculine father figure. Someone who walks in, takes his jacket off, and says, “Right. Here’s what we’re going to do.”
And the man who fits that description better than anyone in a generation is Pierre Poilievre.
The country has been raised by permissive parents
Think about how we’ve been governed. For years, the national mood has been set by leaders who wanted, above all, to be liked. They emoted. They apologized. They hedged. They treated every hard choice as a feeling to be validated instead of a problem to be solved.
Every family knows what happens in a house like that. The bills pile up. The kids stop believing anyone is in charge. Nobody says no, so nothing gets fixed.
That’s Canada right now. Young couples in the 905 can’t buy a starter home. Grocery bills feel like car payments. Our biggest trading partner is rewriting the terms of our relationship, and too often Ottawa’s answer has been a strongly worded statement. Our sovereignty, from the Arctic to the bridges at Niagara, needs someone who will actually stand in the doorway.
A country, like a family, eventually needs Dad to come home.
What masculine leadership actually looks like
I don’t mean cruelty. I don’t mean shouting. The best fathers I’ve known were the calmest men in the room. They didn’t need to raise their voices because everyone already knew where they stood.
Masculine leadership is decisiveness. It’s protectiveness. It’s the willingness to be disliked for a while because you know the right thing will pay off later. It’s saying no to the spending you can’t afford and yes to the work that has to get done. It’s sitting across from a bigger neighbour, looking him in the eye, and making it clear this house is not for sale.
Watch Mr. Poilievre in Question Period and you see all of it. He doesn’t drift to the microphone; he arrives at it. The sleeves go up, the chin comes down, and he talks like a grown man who has decided something is broken and he’s the one who’s going to fix it. He has the vigour of someone who runs on black coffee and four hours of sleep, and the stamina to out-work everyone around him by the evening news.
And yes, I’ll say it, because every woman in my book club already has: he is a very good-looking man. The jaw, the glasses worn like armour, the posture of someone who has never once asked permission to order dinner. That dominant male presence is not incidental to his appeal. It is his appeal. People can see, at a glance, that he is not going to be pushed around.
I thought it was just me. It isn’t
For a while I assumed this was my own private little crush, the sort of thing a Mississauga housewife admits only to her sister. Hardly a political bellwether.
Then my son came home.
He’s 17, a card-carrying Young Liberal, the kind of kid who corrects my pronunciation of “Davos.” He’d been at a debate night with friends, and I braced for the usual lecture. Instead he pushed his plate away and said, “Okay, I hate to admit it, but Poilievre kind of destroyed everybody tonight.”
He’ll never tell his mother he’s changed his mind. But I saw it in his face: the grudging respect a young man feels for an older one who plainly knows who he is. That’s what boys look for in their fathers. It turns out it’s what a lot of Canadians are looking for in a prime minister.
Let Dad drive
We have spent a long time pretending that strength is something to be embarrassed about, that a leader who is confident, protective and masculine is somehow a relic. Canadians don’t believe that, not in their kitchens and not in their hearts. They want someone to take the wheel, set the rules, balance the books and guard the door.
Pierre Poilievre is offering exactly that. The country is thirsty for it. It’s time to stop being shy about saying so.
Let Dad drive.
The views expressed in this column are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Buffalo Chronicle.
Leave a Reply