OTTAWA: Canada’s Conservatives look set to embrace a career politician, who has promised to fire the central bank governor and has promoted bitcoin as an inflation hedge, to become its fourth leader next month.
Having lost three consecutive elections to Liberal Justin Trudeau since 2015, the Conservative Party is keen for a leader like Pierre Poilievre, who is a skilled communicator and right leaning. Poilievre, 43, has signed up more than 300 000 new Conservative supporters, more than the total number of party members who were eligible to vote in the last leadership race in 2020 and far more than his four rivals.
Poilievre’s main competitor is a more traditional Conservative from Quebec, Jean Charest, who has criticised his support for anti-Covid-19 vaccine protesters.
Poilievre represents a largely rural area…