Over the course of a 101-minute-long podcast interview released in January, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and his host, Jordan Peterson, lamented the erosion of “traditional values” and the loss of “masculinity” in Canada.
It’s possibly the most extensive interview Poilievre has given to date. And it’s revealing. Poilievre tells Peterson, a psychologist and right-wing commentator, that Canadians want to raise their kids with “good, traditional values.” And Peterson notes, with admiration, that it’s this element that makes Poilievre so popular among young men in particular.
“There’s been a real conservative swing, especially among young men. No wonder, because they’ve been demonized for thirty straight years,” says Peterson. “There’s definitely an opportunity there, and clearly your political party and you are capitalizing on that. You have the support of young people, increasingly, across Canada.” As of early April, the interview had been viewed over 5.5 million times.
The masculinity they refer to can be tricky to define. But scholars have described it as reflecting rigid gender roles and cultural norms that set expectations for how men should behave. This includes men being the breadwinners in their homes; it also emphasizes emotional restraint, toughness, independence, ambition and competitiveness, and dominance and aggression.
These concepts undergird the “manosphere,” as it’s known, which encompasses a “network of interconnected misogynistic websites and online communities,” according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate. Communities within the manosphere promote the belief that women have gained too many rights, which, in turn, harms men.
It’s a world view familiar to anyone who followed Donald Trump’s ascension to a second term and his seemingly deft capturing of the young male vote. US media have covered in depth how Trump’s ability to tap into the anxieties and beliefs within the manosphere—particularly by appearing on right-wing podcasts in the lead-up to the US election—sealed his victory.
His interviewers were typically male, with massive online followings, including the Nelk Boys, known for pranks and conservative commentary; Theo Von, a comedian who mocks “wokeness”; and podcaster and anti-establishment comedian Joe Rogan. In October, Trump made a three-hour-long appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, one of the world’s most popular podcasts. Trump repeatedly criticized “woke” ideologies and how political correctness is stifling ambition, and he praised “strong guys.”
Experts have observed a similar rightward shift among young men in Canada. And while Liberal leader Mark Carney is gaining ground and overtaking the Conservative Party in the polls, some suggest right-wing ideological leanings could become entrenched, regardless of who the next prime minister is.
A decade ago, students on university campuses largely leaned further left than older Canadians and mobilized around Justin Trudeau’s messaging on progressivism, says David McGrane, a political scientist and professor at the University of Saskatchewan. An Abacus Data survey showed that 45 percent of those between eighteen and twenty-five voted Liberal in the 2015 election.
But by 2022, the Toronto Star identified youth expressing deep dissatisfaction with Trudeau, feeling disenfranchised amid the high cost of living and the housing crisis following a pandemic that upended crucial years of their lives. A prosperous and safe future seemed out of reach.
At the end of July 2024, an Abacus Data survey found that support for the Liberal Party had the most pronounced decline among voters aged eighteen to thirty-five. The age group identified the rising cost of living and housing as their most pressing issues—more so than those over thirty-six. The Conservatives, by contrast, had been gaining ground over the past few years, particularly with young people, according to the Angus Reid Institute.
On the surface, Trudeau’s resignation in January and Carney being named his successor have flipped the electoral landscape. In a poll published on March 24, the Angus Reid Institute showed the Liberals overtaking the Conservatives with an eight-point lead. Angus Reid says support for Carney is consistent across all ages and genders (at least two-fifths of all surveyed demographics say they’re voting Liberal).
That seems to include young men: support for the Liberal Party is at 42 percent for men aged eighteen to thirty-four, compared to 33 percent for the Conservatives. (A March 31 poll reported the figure for Liberal support in this age group to have risen to 45 percent; that survey also noted rising support for the party among women voters.)
But it depends on which polls you look at. On March 23, Abacus Data reported that 39 percent of those aged eighteen to twenty-nine plan to vote for the Conservatives—one percentage point higher than the 38 percent support for the Liberals.
In its March 24 survey, Angus Reid stipulates that about three quarters of Conservative voters say they are iron clad in their choice, compared to just half of Liberal voters—which indicates the Tories have a “high floor” for their support and their numbers could rise, while it’s unclear whether the Liberals have already peaked. And McGrane cautions against concluding from the recent Liberal surge that young people in Canada aren’t shifting rightward after all.
“You see a couple of good weeks of polls for the Liberals, and all of a sudden you’re denouncing what’s been ten years of observation, of polling around the entire world, around the growing popularity of conservatives amongst young males,” he says. Just because a young man might decide to vote Liberal this election, he adds, doesn’t mean he’s abandoned conservative values—especially those promoted on social media—permanently.
Online research indicates there has been an increased polarization between young men and women on their views of social issues, such as gender roles. Data released in early March by IPSOS found that 17 percent of those surveyed between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five—Gen Zs and younger millennials—agree that a man who stays home to look after his children is “less of a man,” as stated in the survey. Thirteen percent of those between thirty-five and forty-nine and just 6 percent of those aged fifty to seventy-four felt the same. People under thirty-five—men and women—were also more likely than older respondents to say women’s rights have “gone far enough” in Canada (40 percent). About a third of the other demographics agreed.
But these viewpoints become even more pronounced when men and women in that age group (IPSOS does not account for other gender classifications) are separated. Slightly more than a quarter of the men surveyed agreed that men who stay home with children are “less of a man.” Only 10 percent of women felt the same.
There were also contradictions in the views men in that age group espoused. Nearly half said that if more women held positions in government and companies, “things would work better.” But at the same time, about half of the men surveyed said gender equality has gone “far enough” in Canada.
Meghan Miller, a senior account manager at IPSOS, says the research firm has been noting a rise in young men expressing conservative viewpoints and a greater likelihood that they would vote for the Conservative Party. The data suggests that they may be feeling “left behind” by the “progressive agenda” and are more likely to say they aren’t being treated fairly in comparison with other age and gender groups, says Miller. While the polls are changing rapidly, she says that as of late February, IPSOS surveys indicated that nearly half of Gen Z men were planning to vote Conservative.
“But they don’t necessarily have party loyalties, as we found,” she says. In late February, IPSOS found about 49 percent of men under thirty-five said they would vote Conservative. As of mid-March, that number has dropped to 38 percent. But it’s still a sizable amount more than Gen Z women, among whom 24 percent indicate they plan to vote for Poilievre, says Miller.
Edison Liu, a twenty-two-year-old political science student and a member of the University of British Columbia’s campus conservatives group, balks at the data. He believes in fiscal conservatism but also believes in gender equality and that “women have the right to choose whether or not to be in the workplace.”
“Of course, you have to treat men and women fairly, regardless of gender,” he says. Liu is clear that voting Conservative in Canada doesn’t mean a regression to outdated views. Yet he concedes that the party is a “big tent,” and all major parties contain people who may think differently than him about the importance of gender equality.
Liu was drawn to the Conservative Party in high school. His parents run a small business, and protecting and supporting business owners is important to him. He’s seen how the cost-of-living crisis has gotten worse and affected him and his family, and Liu believes the Conservatives will chart the best path forward for those issues.
“I want to have a bright future, right? A lot of people are depressed by the current economic state,” he says. “And Pierre Poilievre kind of gives a light.”
To better understand younger generations’ rightward leanings, look to Trump and “the creation of a right-wing ecosystem when it comes to social media,” says McGrane.
Americans increasingly get their news from right-wing podcasts and social media content, according to a report published in mid-March by the nonprofit Media Matters for America. In Canada, according to Triton Digital’s 2024 report on podcast listening habits in the country, news is the third most listened to genre behind comedy and true crime.
But Canada’s right-wing podcast ecosystem is nevertheless influential. Alex Glikman, a Canadian American podcaster who talks about pop culture, politics, dating, and sports, also supports the Conservatives. He encouraged his over 6,000 followers on TikTok to watch the interview with Peterson and openly supports Poilievre. He’s also spoken about how people like right-wing influencer Andrew Tate, who is a self-proclaimed misogynist, are being unfairly attacked.
Conservative TikToker Mario Zelaya has also praised the Poilievre–Peterson chat. Zelaya has close to 250,000 followers on the platform and told his followers that the discussion is “phenomenal . . . he’s saying everything I’ve been saying for years.”
Zelaya has also appeared on a Toronto-based podcast called Couple Casuals to talk about his views. The podcast’s most viewed TikTok has hosts and commentators stating that immigrants do not want to “become Canadian” and that they should be assimilating.
Taylor McKee, an assistant professor in Brock University’s sport management program who specializes in masculinity and history, says he has noticed a discernible shift on campus when it comes to the views of the young men he teaches. He says he’s witnessed a growing discomfort in men who are asked to confront power, privilege, dominance, and whiteness in academic spaces. He senses some resistance and opposition when he teaches the importance of Indigenous history in sport and reconciliation.
Sports podcasts have been a vehicle to usher in more right-wing and traditional views, and he sees how young men have been affected. They feel unequipped to deal with a challenging economic environment that has thrown their futures into jeopardy, while the manosphere offers the wrong type of guidance, says McKee.
“Joe Rogan and even more odious [figures] like Andrew Tate . . . have used sports to reach a generation of young males,” he says. And while McKee says his students don’t all subscribe to these viewpoints, such podcasts can normalize extreme views on topics like gender, race, and immigration.
One example McKee points to is Cam Newton’s podcast. The former American football quarterback frequently speaks about how women should ensure they cater to men’s needs and says that those who think they are a “boss bitch” don’t know how to cook and “don’t know when to be quiet and allow a man to lead.”
McKee worries about teenage students of his who may have been listening to these kinds of podcasts for the past few years. “You know, if you’re twenty-six and you’re getting life advice from those podcasts, we’ve got to have words. But I remember being fourteen . . . we can’t imagine ourselves to be impervious to these types of things,” he says. When Newton describes women as social capital and says that to be a man means to leverage them, young listeners might believe him.
Michael Kehler, an education professor at the University of Calgary who specializes in masculinity, agrees that some sports podcasts are promoting a harmful rhetoric. “While socially, politically, economically, and educationally we can see a shift and a movement towards greater equity, more diversity acknowledgement, particularly here in Canada,” he says, some men are still looking to find spaces that validate certain notions of masculinity.
Liu says he doesn’t feel the American podcast environment is as influential here. He listens to Rogan sometimes, more for entertainment. “It’s not a top thing for me to listen to some online person tell me about things I already have convictions about,” he says. But Rogan, he says, “is allowed to have on whoever he wants, it is his choice, and listeners have a choice to not listen as well.”
Martha Capener, a fourth-year student at the University of Ottawa, thinks more students are expressing support for “traditional values” because of social media. She advocates for more resources to combat sexual violence on campus.
“The rhetoric that the US is spewing is resonating with [young men] because they’re not educated on it, and they’re getting their education through these podcasts and through these social media platforms,” she says. “And they’re taking it at face value.”
She sees this shift reflected in politics. She’s concerned that neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives seem interested in speaking about protecting marginalized groups—even as the US is slashing DEI initiatives under Trump.
At Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, fourth-year education student Natalie Viebrock says she fears what she calls a “regression” to stereotypical gender roles, advocated by some men and even women on campus. She’s observed in recent years that some students seem more comfortable promoting a gender binary and are advocating for men to be “providers” and for women to stay at home. This is becoming idealized and normative as opposed to something that should be looked at critically, she says.
Viebrock wrote about her alarm at the “trad wife” trend for the campus newspaper, the Queen’s Journal, last year. “Trad wives,” short for “traditional wives,” are young women who are social media influencers advocating a return to prescribed gender roles, where a woman stays home, cooks, cleans, and provides for the children—and is often positioned as inferior to her husband. This is promoted as idyllic, safe, and a return to what’s “natural.”
Viebrock says that for some women her age, “it’s really attractive to see a man as a ‘provider.’ Whereas I think in older generations, that idea was disrupted pretty heavily.” She describes being raised to be self-reliant and adds that women do not need men to sustain safety or happiness.
“It’s concerning if this generation is instilled with . . . heteronormative ideas,” Viebrock says. Those notions could ripple out to “future generations,” she says, “who are raised with that sort of bedrock.”
