Described as populist, Poilievre has primarily focused on issues pertaining to the cost of living in Canada; since mid-2023, the Conservative Party has held a lead in opinion polling for the 2025 federal election.

As a finalist, Poilievre won $10,000 and a four-month internship at Magna, with the essay being published in the book that collected the essays titled @Stake — "As Prime Minister, I Would..."[9][21][22] Poilievre was president of the Young Tories at the University of Calgary, a club composed of both Progressive Conservative and Reform members focused on Alberta politics, where he clashed with Patrick Brown, who at the time was the president of the national Progressive Conservative Youth Federation.

[8][28] After Jean Chrétien announced he would retire as prime minister in 2002, Poilievre and Ezra Levant, who practised law at the time,[29] wrote an op-ed advocating for the merger of the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative parties.

[33] With preparations being made for the 2004 Canadian federal election, the 24-year old Manordale resident Poilievre won the Conservative nomination in the riding of Nepean—Carleton against Liberal incumbent David Pratt.

[3][39][40] Poilievre took up the cause of the Queensway Carleton Hospital, which was in the midst of an expansion project while facing provincial funding reductions for operations and an increase in rent as its lease with the National Capital Commission was set to expire in 2013.

[49] Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed Poilievre to act as Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board, who was his fellow Nepean-area Conservative MP John Baird.

[55] He was assigned to be a member of the Special Panel on Employment Insurance, tasked by Harper and Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff to find an interparty compromise to address the 2008 financial crisis.

[63] In early September 2012, while serving on the FedDev Ontario, Poilievre echoed then-Ontario MPP Randy Hillier's calls for ending workers' mandatory union payments.

[68][69] Poilievre wrote forcefully against the 1946 Rand formula used in Canadian labour law, which stems from a Supreme Court ruling that allows unions to collect mandatory dues from workers they represent.

[98] In the lead-up to the next election, Poilievre used all the House of Commons time allotted for debating the 2019 Canadian federal budget to deliver one 4-day long speech to remark upon the SNC-Lavalin affair.

[117][118][119] From the end of June to early July, Poilievre's campaign aired attack ads on Brown in local Toronto television stations, criticizing his policies as mayor of Brampton.

[134] On June 19, 2023, Poilievre and his caucus voted in support of the Liberal government's legislation for long term funding to a Canada-wide early learning and child-care system.

[140][139] Liberal government house leader Karina Gould described the reasoning as a "red herring,"[140] and the president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress called on the Conservative Party to rethink their position.

[145] On October 6, 2022, it was reported that between 2018 and 2022, Poilievre's team-managed YouTube channel posted hundreds of videos with a hidden tag labelled "MGTOW", referencing the misogynistic online community.

[148] On October 20, 2023, in an emailed statement, Poilievre "encouraged Albertans to stay in the CPP" amidst ongoing debate in Alberta on whether to leave the Canada Pension Plan.

[179] The bank's deputy governor Paul Beaudry responded by stating "The aspect that we should be held accountable is exactly right", and also listed the Russian invasion of Ukraine and supply-chain bottlenecks due to the COVID-19 pandemic as the most significant influences on inflation.

[180] Poilievre has said that the bank's governor Tiff Macklem, is Prime Minister Trudeau's "personal ATM" in terms of printing money to fund deficit spending for the pandemic.

Poilievre cited increased competition in the aviation industry and travellers being provided with an alternative to Toronto's Pearson International Airport which had dealt with congestion and flight delays surpassing 50% around the month of July 2022.

[203][205] Poilievre believes Canadian energy is cleaner than that of other countries, and proposes a ban on importing foreign oil and a review of all pipeline projects cancelled by the current government.

During the spring and summer of 2020, Poilievre was critical of what he perceived as the Trudeau government's misplaced trust in the Chinese Communist Party, which had cancelled CanSino's contract with Canada for its COVID vaccine, Convidecia.

[221] After the Israel-Hamas war broke out, Poilievre repeatedly accused the Liberal government of speaking from both sides of their mouth for political gain by "sending one group into synagogues to say one thing to Canadian Jews, and then send another group of MPs to mosques to say exactly the opposite to Canadian Muslims", arguing that Canada like all countries only gets one vote at the United Nations and therefore a government can only take one position on every foreign policy issue.

[221] During his speech at a Montreal-area synagogue in March 2024, Poilievre spoke for a "negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, with Palestinians and Israelis living in peace and harmony, and where all of the Abrahamic peoples have unhindered access to their places of worship on the holy land.

Lastly, Poilievre declared that "common sense Conservatives under his leadership will be cutting back foreign aid to terrorist dictators and multinational bureaucracies and using the money to rebuild the Canadian Armed Forces.

[234] In September 2023, Poilievre accused Trudeau of "demonizing concerned parents" after the prime minister released a statement in support of LGBTQ+ Canadians on Twitter in response to anti-gender movement protests.

[254] In 2022, Poilievre described himself as pro-immigration and put forward policies aiming to speed up processing times to reunite families, keep refugees safe, and get jobs filled in Canada.

[257] In June 2023, Poilievre, as well as NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, joined protesters in support of students who were facing deportation for being scammed into moving to Canada on fake admission letters to universities.

[261][262] In 2024, Poilievre stated that if he became Prime Minister he would significantly reduce the numbers of asylum seekers and temporary residents, citing the high amount of new arrivals compared to Canada's housing supply.

[267][268] In October 2024, he stated that a Conservative government under his leadership would introduce further border control and background screening measures of immigrants to stop foreign citizens with criminal and terrorism convictions from entering Canada.

"[271] Poilievre plans to address healthcare shortages in Canada by implementing interprovincial standardization for doctors and nurses which he would call the "Blue Seal" program and also by ensuring provinces expedite the approval of professional credentials of certified immigrants to increase the number of health care providers.

[285] According to his disclosure statement to the federal ethics commissioner, Poilievre co-owns a real estate investment company that owns a condo in the Calgary area, which he rents out to a tenant.