Good morning. The Conservatives will decide tomorrow night if they should keep Pierre Poilievre around as leader – more on that below, along with the U.S. Democrats’ ICE demands and Canada’s Olympic flag-bearers. But first:
Tomorrow night, at a convention centre in downtown Calgary, Pierre Poilievre will ask his party for something it hasn’t given a Conservative leader in more than 20 years: a second chance.
Anyone in his position who fails to win a federal election must be subjected to a leadership review. But this is the first one the Conservatives have actually held since 2005, when Stephen Harper easily secured enough votes to stay on. He stepped down as leader after losing to Justin Trudeau in 2015. Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole, who lost in turn to the Trudeau Liberals, were both forced out before they could face the membership.
Now, Poilievre must persuade thousands of Conservative delegates that he still deserves the job – and that he has a plan for where to take the party next. To figure out what that pitch might sound like, I spoke with Stephanie Levitz, a senior reporter in The Globe’s Ottawa Bureau, right before she hopped on a plane to Calgary.
Let’s get this out of the way: Is there any world in which Poilievre doesn’t survive tomorrow’s leadership review?
I highly doubt it. There is no sign of any organized effort to vote him out. There is no sign, broadly speaking, of widespread discontent within the membership. Poilievre and his inner circle have expended a lot of time and effort in the past few months getting ready for this convention, including his own one-on-one meetings with delegates to make sure they’re onside.
What’s a good outcome for him? Is there a magic number he needs to reach?
Stephen Harper won 84 per cent of the vote at his leadership, so you could say Poilievre has to clear that number. Or you could look at the 2022 leadership race, when Poilievre won 68 per cent of the vote on the first ballot, and say he has to at least retain that support. The challenge there is that then-B.C. Conservative leader John Rustad faced a leadership review last year and cleared 70 per cent – but he was forced to resign. Ultimately, Poilievre has to decide what number he considers acceptable.
Before the voting begins, Poilievre will give a speech at the convention. Who is it meant for?
He’s speaking to different audiences at the same time. The first is the voting delegates, so he has to make them feel good about where the party is now. He’s going to remind them of their successes: They picked up seats in the April election, they increased their share of the popular vote, and the party has remained strong in the polls. Then he’s going to talk about building on those successes and broadening the Conservative coalition so they can win the next election.
But, obviously, this will be a televised address. It will be recorded for social media and broadcast on the mainstream TV networks. So, he is also speaking to all Canadians, in a much longer format than a scrum or Question Period allows. And that’s a chance to start shifting how people see Poilievre. Because his biggest challenge right now is not his party’s platform. It’s him. The current polling on preferred prime minister puts him so far back of Mark Carney that it will be very hard to overcome.
How does he start changing that?
He needs to consider taking a lesson from what happened to the Trudeau Liberals. Everything was personified by the leader, wrapped up in the leader, and the minute people turned on the leader, it was over.
Poilievre is not going to change who he is. Part of his political success is that he will proudly say, “I don’t change my mind.” But a lot of people – people in the party, in the caucus – are saying: Do not focus solely on showcasing yourself as a prime minister-in-waiting. You need to show a government-in-waiting. You need to identify the bright stars, the excellent communicators, the smart policy people hustling behind the scenes. And they need to be pushed forward, in order for Canadians to get past Poilievre and say, “Well, okay, who else is around him?”
Is there any evidence of that happening yet?
There are small signs. Before the federal election, none of their MPs were allowed to do interviews with local media or be public in any way, shape or form. And that’s changed. We’ve also seen MPs being given a little more latitude to be the voice on issues, so it isn’t always Poilievre speaking about X, Y or Z. There are definitely more opportunities for Canadians to take the measure of parliamentarians within the party.
Assuming Poilievre wins the leadership review, what’s the next test for him?
A really enormous unknown is what happens if there’s another Conservative floor-crosser that leads to a Liberal majority government. That’s a big problem for Poilievre. How does he then manage the caucus? Because they can use a piece of legislation known as the Reform Act to remove him as leader without his own decision to go.
But I know Conservatives are quite anxious about what they’re fighting on if a federal election were held tomorrow. If there is a majority, it buys a lot of time. Canadians are still willing to give Carney some string. But the longer he’s in power, the more he owns the choices he’s making, and the better it potentially is for the Conservatives. So maybe a majority government – particularly if the floor-crosser is from another party – is not end times.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
U.S. Democrats are calling for major reforms to ICE – the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency – if Republicans want to avoid a partial government shutdown this week. Read more about the demands here.
Milan: Mikaël Kingsbury and Marielle Thompson – who share five Olympic medals between them – have been named Canada’s flag-bearers.
Read more on The Globe and Mail
