You're right that PP doesn't have great polls: https://angusreid.org/federal-politics-poilievre-favourabili...

But he polled better than Trudeau: https://angusreid.org/trudeau-tracker/

CPC was firmly in the lead for the elections before Trumps' attention to Canada and the Liberals jumping on this to frame PP as another Trump or someone who would yield to Trump, both couldn't be farther away from his actual policy stances, but in the age of social media (and I guess major government owned media that does its bidding) that doesn't matter.