Who Stands to Win in Poilievre’s Canada: Crypto Evangelists

In 2022, when Pierre Poilievre was a Conservative leadership candidate, he said he’d make Canada the crypto capital of the world. According to him, the Bank of Canada was “ruining” the Canadian dollar, printing money and ramping up inflation to fund COVID-19 relief. His solution? Give Canadians crypto as an alternative currency. This wasn’t his only pitch to crypto believers: he appeared on crypto podcasts and even paid for shawarma with bitcoin in London, Ontario. 

Then came the crypto winter of 2022. Cryptocurrency values tanked, and Poilievre’s public enthusiasm waned. But industry and political insiders believe that his private enthusiasm remains strong. 

After all, a lot has changed since the crypto winter. The value of cryptocurrency has rebounded. Donald Trump recently signed an executive order to create a national crypto reserve, while Vancouver mayor Ken Sim recently pushed for his city to establish one. And so-called stablecoins may tamp down crypto’s notorious price volatility. Because cryptocurrency values fluctuate too wildly to be a plausible alternative to fiat currency, regulators in Canada treat them like securities—stocks, essentially. Stablecoins, whose value is pegged to that of dollars or other liquid assets, are intended to address this problem. Last year, payment company Stripe announced it would accept stablecoins issued by a company called Circle, whose stablecoin is pegged to the U.S. dollar. 

Still, Canadian regulators are not ready to treat crypto as currency. For Canada’s crypto enthusiasts, who believe you shouldn’t need expensive banks and slow pre-Internet payment systems to participate in the economy, this is a mistake. 

But a Conservative government may well change this. For clues as to how, one only need look within the ranks of the Conservative Party, where enthusiasm for crypto remains strong—along with plenty of hostility to Canada’s banking oligopoly, perceived by many in the party to be holding back fintech innovation.

In 2022, Calgary MP Michelle Rempel Garner introduced a private members’ bill aimed at encouraging the crypto-asset sector. The following year, MP Ryan Williams lamented the departure of crypto exchange Binance from Canada; he recently introduced his own private members’ bill aimed at boosting banking competition. Last October, Adam Chambers, a Conservative MP, made representatives of big banks squirm as he grilled them, during a parliamentary committee, about whether they’re gouging customers. He’s previously suggested that crypto assets can guard against inflation. Most recently, Rick Perkins, the Opposition’s innovation and industry critic, told reporters that tech companies that compete with banks “are going to get a big runway with us in government.”

To the crypto industry, these are all encouraging signs that Poilievre’s now-muted support still has plenty of currency within the CPC. If he wins—and wakes from his crypto hibernation—he and his party will have plenty of options. The most revolutionary would be to bring fiat-backed stablecoins under the purview of federal bank and payments regulation. It could mark a new era, in which you can use stablecoins to pay for shawarma—without worrying about a crypto winter freezing you out of your digital wallet.