Meet Pierre Poilievre's not-so-secret weapon: his wife

OTTAWA—Anaida Poilievre is not a secret weapon. It’s been a long-held belief among observers that Pierre Poilievre’s wife provides some kind of hidden advantage to the Conservative leader, working behind the scenes to build his brand and lend a discerning ear. But for two years — and especially during this election campaign — her impact has been right out in the open.

It was Anaida Poilievre, or Ana, as she is more often called, who coined her husband’s signature “bring it home” slogan after he took the helm of the party in 2022. It was Anaida who designed her husband’s merchandise: ball caps, T-shirts, and more emblazoned with his name and phrases like “women for Pierre Poilievre,” “protect hunters,” and “Pierre Poilievre for prime minister.” Swag bearing that final message peppered the crowds at the Conservative leader’s rallies as he swung across the GTA during the first week of the campaign.



At those events, Anaida Poilievre was treated as a political hero: she received her own introductions from Conservative candidates singing her praises, before delivering impassioned speeches about her husband that electrified the thrumming crowds awaiting his arrival. Her journey to the stage was often interrupted by those hoping to shake her hand, a sea of smartphone cameras hoisted above the masses, straining to snap a shot. And in a custom usually reserved for leaders themselves, her procession was accompanied by its own song.

Her anthem is Dean Brody’s 2012 country single “Canadian Girls,” which includes the following lyrics in its opening verse: “She can wear high heels and flannel / She can look sexy in a toque / She likes snow storms and Gordon Lightfoot / And if you’re lucky she’ll love you.” For the Conservatives, at this moment, the power of a political spouse could be critical. Amid a Liberal surge in public support, some Tories have raised concerns about how Poilievre and Pierre Poilievre entered a close and ever-shifting campaign without the certainty of an election victory.

The party is grappling with Mark Carney’s Liberal revival, and reports have already emerged of discord between the Conservative leader’s innermost circle and his wider campaign team, particularly over beliefs that the party has not adequately responded to U.S. President Donald Trump.

(The leader’s office has denied that is the case. His office also did not respond to the Star’s request to speak to Anaida for this story.) But in Anaida, the Conservative leader has something his rivals do not.

Carney’s wife, Diana Fox Carney, and Gurkiran Kaur Sidhu, the wife of the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh, may appear at some events, but they do not occupy the spotlight. “Political spouses are partners in leadership. The spouse is someone that a leader would turn to to confide in their concerns, to workshop their ideas, often before they have those discussions with the rest of the team,” said Melanie Paradis, former director of communications for former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole and president of Texture Communications.

Paradis said there is great value in Anaida showing up for her husband now, appearing strong and motivated and boosting morale. Indeed, throughout week one of the campaign, she seemed to be everywhere. She attended news conferences, standing just out of view of the cameras and regarding her husband with a look of pure pride.

At one news conference on Sunday, Pierre Poilievre prematurely left the podium: it was his wife who had to remind him that he’d missed a talking point. She was also visible at campaign stops, and, at an event with diaspora news outlets last Monday, it was Anaida Poilievre who joined the Conservative leader behind a cluster of microphones and spoke, at her husband’s prompting, about her family’s beginnings in Canada. “It’s really clear that she is Pierre’s most trusted adviser,” Paradis said.

Anaida’s first major speech introducing her husband occurred the moment he won the Conservative party leadership race in 2022. A year later, she narrated a YouTube video introducing him not just to party faithful, but to the country. “His schoolteacher parents know him as the boy they adopted and raised in their modest home in the suburbs of Calgary,” Anaida says over photos of her husband’s upbringing and clips of the Conservative leader playing with their children, Valentina, six, and Cruz, three.

“When Pierre says, it doesn’t matter who you know or where you’re from, but rather who you are and where you’re going, these aren’t just empty words. He’s lived it.” Even today, in the thick of the most crucial fight of Pierre Poilievre’s life, the video is still pinned to the top of his YouTube page.

At the Conservatives’ 2023 convention, when Pierre took to the stage after his wife, he told those assembled about the moment he first saw the love of his life. “For a few seconds, I could no longer breathe. ‘Who is she?’ I wondered.

A lot of people are asking themselves that very same question tonight,” he said in French. Anaida Poilievre, 38, was born in Caracas, Venezuela. Her family immigrated to Canada in 1995 when she was eight years old, settling in Montreal’s east end.

She speaks often about her family’s early years in Canada, noting how her father, a bank manager back home, went from “wearing business suits ...

to jumping on the back of a pickup truck to collect fruits and vegetables because that’s what he had to do to feed his family.” She says her family lived paycheque to paycheque, and that she and one of her brothers worked at McDonald’s to afford the fees for activities like organized sports. “I think that notion of the Canadian dream is still very alive in her, and by that I mean coming to this country with nothing and building something to be proud of,” said Paradis.

Anaida also serves a key role in showing Canadians that there is more to her husband’s unyielding political persona. “I think it’s really important to demonstrate that Pierre is different (from) what the Liberals are attacking him on. He is a father.

He is a husband,” said Jeff Ballingall, president of Mobilize Media Group and founder of conservative media groups Canada Proud and Ontario Proud. At her husband’s Hamilton rally last Tuesday, Poilievre said she became financially independent at 17 and moved to Ottawa at 19. That’s where Anaida Poilievre, née Galindo, eventually met her future husband.

The pair’s courtship is chronicled in Andrew Lawton’s 2024 book (the former managing editor of True North is now running as a Conservative candidate). In it, Lawton writes that Pierre Poilievre insisted they go on a date in November 2012 after they had several run-ins in downtown Ottawa, and by that Christmas, he had introduced his now-wife to his parents. Anaida had worked as a staffer for numerous senators since 2008, and moved to Conservative MP Michael Cooper’s office in 2015.

She is also frequently noted as a co-founder of the online lifestyle magazine Pretty & Smart Co., a champion of the fight against human trafficking, and one of the founders of LeadHerForward, which, in her own words, is an “apolitical initiative focused on uplifting women in their personal and professional journeys.” The Pretty & Smart Co.

website is not presently active, but archived versions of the webpage show Anaida wrote about topics like managing holiday expenses and following experts’ advice during the pandemic. In one post, she offers career advice, writing that dressing for the job you want is of paramount importance. Last week on the campaign trail, she wore elegant, monochromatic outfits, the kind of sartorial choices associated with some of the world’s most high-profile spouses, like Michelle Obama, Melania Trump and Meghan Markle.

But being in the public eye, and her proximity to the Conservative leader, also means she is the subject of criticism. Last week, independent media outlet The Breach published a report about how Anaida Poilievre’s uncle, Venezuelan lawyer José Gerardo Galindo Prato, entered Canada in 2004, lived in the country for three years while his appeals to remain were denied, and crossed back into Canada on foot in 2018 through Roxham Road — a rural road that connects New York and Quebec. The Breach obtained correspondence, not seen by the Star, indicating that Anaida assisted her uncle in preparing another submission to remain in the country on humanitarian and compassionate grounds and that she had also enlisted the help of an unnamed MP.

Pierre Poilievre, however, has been critical of “illegal border crossers” and had previously called for Roxham Road to be shut down. In response to the story, Pierre Poilievre’s office sent the Star a recent affidavit from Galindo Prato’s application for permanent residency on humanitarian and compassionate grounds that corroborates the story’s timeline, but also outlines the struggles he faced for opposing “the corruption of the Maduro/Chavez government.” The Conservative leader’s office did not answer the Star’s question about the identity of the unnamed MP, but said it was “ridiculous to suggest that opposition Conservative MPs would be able to influence cases under a Liberal government.

” “This is a disgusting smear of Ms. Poilievre’s extended family who have been subjected to persecution and political repression in Venezuela, and we will not be commenting further,” the statement read. Ballingall, who said he knows Anaida through Conservative circles, described her as smart, shrewd, and someone who doesn’t take herself too seriously.

“I don’t think there’d be much that Pierre would do without consulting Ana,” he said. In some ways, the way people speak of her is similar to the spouses of Canadian political leaders past. Aline Chrétien, former prime minister Jean Chrétien’s confidant, was known to frequently advise her husband.

Former prime minister Stephen Harper’s wife, Laureen Harper, meanwhile, took on a larger role during the 2015 campaign as the Conservatives sought to leverage her popularity. The difference? Their husbands were prime ministers. Anaida Poilievre is determined to join their ranks.

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