Pierre Poilievre Has a New Product to Sell Canadians: Fear
When the facts are uncertain but the political message is absolutely certain, Canadians should start asking harder questions.
There is a very old trick in politics.
Convince people their country is falling apart.
Tell them criminals are everywhere.
Tell them dangerous outsiders have slipped through the gates.
Tell them the government has lost control.
Then arrive with the convenient conclusion…
Only I can save you.
Pierre Poilievre appears to be leaning harder into that territory.
And before anybody starts screaming that I’m defending terrorists, criminals or the Iranian regime, save your typing finger.
I’m defending something much more basic.
Evidence.
Because national security is serious enough that politicians shouldn’t have to exaggerate it.
Let’s start with the 700.
Poilievre has repeatedly talked about 700 IRGC terrorist agents being in Canada.
He said it right in the House of Commons in March:
“There are 700 IRGC terrorist agents on our streets.”
That’s a hell of a sentence.
It’s also a hell of a claim.
The number didn’t suddenly fall out of a fresh Canadian intelligence assessment.
Global News was reporting a figure of roughly 700 Iranian regime affiliates as far back as 2023, based on information provided by an Iranian-Canadian activist organization.
At the time, the description was people with temporary residence, permanent residence or citizenship who were believed to have some form of regime affiliation.
That’s not the same sentence as…
There are 700 proven terrorist agents roaming Canadian streets.
Yet Poilievre used exactly that kind of language in Parliament in March 2026.
See the difference?
That’s where my ears perk up.
An affiliate isn’t automatically an operative.
An allegation isn’t a conviction.
A name in somebody’s database isn’t automatically an intelligence finding.
And suspicion isn’t proof.
None of that means Canada should shrug off the IRGC.
Quite the opposite.
Canada designated the IRGC as a terrorist entity. Anyone credibly involved in terrorism, foreign interference or criminal activity should be investigated and dealt with under Canadian law.
But that’s exactly why the language matters.
Real national security doesn’t need political seasoning sprinkled on top.
Now here’s where this gets strange.
Poilievre has spent years refusing to go through the security-clearance process that would give him access to certain classified national-security information.
That isn’t Liberal spin.
His refusal has been publicly reported for years.
His explanation has been that accepting the clearance would restrict what he could publicly say about classified information.
There is a legitimate argument buried in there… opposition leaders need to be able to challenge governments publicly, and classified briefings necessarily place restrictions on what recipients can disclose.
Fine.
Let’s acknowledge that argument.
But there’s another side Canadians are perfectly entitled to consider.
If you’re going to make enormous public claims about foreign agents, terrorism and threats inside Canada, wouldn’t access to the best available intelligence be rather useful?
In 2025, the issue became particularly awkward when CSIS reportedly had information concerning possible Indian interference in the Conservative leadership race… information Poilievre couldn’t receive in the same classified form because he had not obtained the required clearance.
That’s the contradiction that interests me.
You can’t simultaneously tell Canadians the national-security situation is terrifying and then pretend access to national-security intelligence isn’t particularly important.
And fear is becoming the message.
Listen to the vocabulary.
Crime.
Open borders.
Terrorists.
Illegal guns.
Shootings.
Synagogues attacked.
Iranian dissidents killed.
Hundreds of terrorist agents supposedly loose in the country.
Then connect all of it to one villain:
The Liberals.
Poilievre did exactly that in Parliament when he blamed what he called Liberal “open borders” and immigration policies for criminals, terrorists and illegal guns entering Canada.
Now we’re no longer simply discussing individual crimes or legitimate national-security threats.
We’re building a story.
Canada is unsafe.
Canada is out of control.
The people running it can’t protect you.
And Pierre Poilievre can.
Sound familiar?
We’ve watched the American version of this movie.
I don’t particularly want the Canadian remake.
Here’s the part that bothers me most.
When something violent happens, investigators have a job.
Police gather evidence.
Intelligence agencies investigate national-security connections.
Prosecutors determine whether charges are warranted.
Courts determine guilt.
Politicians should demand that those institutions do their jobs.
But politicians shouldn’t race ahead of them because the scary version makes a better video.
The transcript that prompted me to dig into this cites a shooting at a gym and Poilievre’s subsequent attempt to connect the incident to the IRGC.
It also notes his reliance on media reports and U.S. court filings when discussing other incidents.
There may ultimately be connections.
There may not.
That’s what investigations are for.
“I believe” is not the same thing as “we know.”
And that’s a distinction Canadians need to protect.
Something else is happening inside the Conservative Party.
Four Conservative MPs have crossed the floor to join Mark Carney’s Liberals since the 2025 election.
Chris d’Entremont went first.
Michael Ma followed.
Matt Jeneroux became the third Conservative to move to the Liberals.
Then Marilyn Gladu became the fourth in April.
I’m not going to pretend I can crawl inside their heads and tell you every reason they left.
I can’t.
Neither can anybody else who wasn’t sitting in those conversations.
But four MPs walking away from your caucus and joining the government isn’t nothing.
It’s a flashing dashboard light.
You can keep driving.
You probably shouldn’t cover it with electrical tape.
This isn’t about pretending Canada has no problems.
We do.
Crime is real.
Foreign interference is real.
Iranian intimidation of dissidents is a serious issue.
Immigration policy deserves scrutiny.
Border security matters.
So does public safety.
And any government that screws those things up deserves to get hammered for it.
But there is a difference between identifying a problem and turning fear of that problem into a political business model.
That’s the line I’m watching.
Because Canadians have spent years watching what happened south of us when every crime became proof of national collapse, every immigrant became part of an invasion narrative and every institution that challenged the leader became part of the conspiracy.
Eventually politics stopped being about fixing things.
It became about keeping people frightened enough to keep watching.
And angry enough to keep voting.
Canadians don’t need a saviour.
We need competent government.
We need an opposition that holds that government accountable.
We need intelligence agencies doing intelligence work.
Police doing police work.
Courts doing court work.
Journalists digging for evidence.
And politicians telling us what they actually know… including the inconvenient bits that don’t fit neatly onto a slogan.
If Pierre Poilievre has evidence that 700 terrorist agents are operating in Canada, Canadians deserve to know what can responsibly be made public.
If the evidence supports a smaller or more complicated claim, Canadians deserve that too.
National security shouldn’t become another three-word slogan.
Neither should fear.
We’ve already watched another country discover what happens when politics becomes a permanent emergency broadcast.
Canada doesn’t need to follow.
We need hope, all right.
But hope begins with knowing the difference between what we’ve proven, what we suspect, and what somebody wants us frightened enough to believe.
FACTS, NOT FABLES.
The Recap…
Pierre Poilievre says hundreds of IRGC terrorist agents are on Canadian streets.
That’s an extraordinary claim.
So let’s separate intelligence from allegations, affiliates from terrorists, and evidence from political theatre.
Because when somebody is selling fear, Canadians should always check the label.
The Gut-Punch…
If you have to make Canadians afraid of their own country before they’ll elect you to run it, maybe Canada isn’t the thing that’s broken.
Source credit: Research prompted by a political commentary transcript supplied to GeezerWise. Key factual claims independently checked against parliamentary records, Government of Canada material, Global News, CBC reporting, The Canadian Press and other published reporting. The original transcript was treated as research notes and opinion only, not as verified evidence.
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Good article. PeePee is nothing more than a trump wannabe. We need to keep rejecting the conservatives.
Keep reminding your readers that these arguments are exactly the same as the US Pedo has used for years and he's lied on every 1 of them and everything else he's ever had to say. If they don't want what we have here in the US, they need to shut this joker up.