Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre faces a leadership review in January.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
In the last federal election, on April 28, the Conservative Party received 41.3 per cent of the popular vote, the highest level of public support for federal Conservatives since Brian Mulroney’s majority government victory of 1988, almost 40 years ago.
But the Liberals received 43.8 per cent of the vote on election day, profiting from the collapse of the NDP. Crucially, the Liberals took a majority of the seats in the so-called 905, the band of suburban ridings surrounding Toronto named after its first area code, along with suburban ridings surrounding Vancouver. That proved sufficient to form a strong minority government.
If Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is to prevail in the next federal election, he needs to take about one million suburban Ontario and B.C. voters away from the Liberals under Prime Minister Mark Carney.
To do that, he must convince those voters that he has more to offer than populist outrage.
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In the runup to the last election, the Conservatives promised to eliminate the federal carbon charge, lower income taxes, cut through regulatory red tape, toughen penalties for certain crimes, reduce immigration levels and the size of the public service, and eliminate the GST on most new homes along with other measures to bolster housing construction. Those policies were so well tuned to public demand that the Liberals absconded with much of the platform and called it their own.
But in the end a plurality of voters, including many suburban voters in Ontario and British Columbia, preferred Mr. Carney, the banker, to Mr. Poilievre, the lifetime politician. Mr. Carney’s quiet, steady approach won out over Mr. Poilievre’s resentful populism – vowing to fire the governor of the Bank of Canada, to defund the CBC, to shun the World Economic Forum.
The chip on the Conservative leader’s shoulder was large enough to make him offputting for voters he will have to win over if he is to ever form government.
His post-election performance has been no better. Two Conservative MPs have crossed the floor to the Liberals, driven in part by Conservative histrionics in the House. One of the defectors, Michael Ma, represents Markham-Unionville, one of a handful of 905-area ridings won by the Conservatives, a bitter loss for Mr. Poilievre.
We should not expect the Conservative leader to pretend that he is something he is not. But assuming he receives a healthy endorsement at the Conservative leadership review in January, he might consider ways of making himself more electable.
This could include offering limited bipartisan support for some federal government priorities, such as renegotiating the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement. The duty of the opposition in a legislature is to oppose. But the Conservatives should seek to make that opposition constructive, rather than reflexive. Questioning Mr. Carney’s business interests and travel schedule, for example, reflects more poorly on the opposition than the government.
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Despite all their travails, polls still have the Conservatives running neck-and-neck with the Liberals, though those polls show that Mr. Carney is far more popular than Mr. Poilievre. As we wrote on Thursday, the story of federal politics in 2026 will be whether Liberal support rises to meet Mr. Carney’s high personal numbers, or the other way around.
Part of that answer will come from the Liberals, including whether they deliver on their campaign promises. But the Conservatives, and their leader, will need to broaden their appeal if they want to win government.
Mr. Poilievre is well aware of his challenges. At the recent Parliamentary Press Gallery dinner, he told the audience that a pollster had said he could improve his public image by working to connect meaningfully with people’s concerns. Or he could just get a dog. “So I immediately called the pollster and said: ‘What kind of dog?’” Mr. Poilievre joked. It was one of the best laughs of the night.
But a punchline is not a solution. The Conservative leader must find a way to connect with centrist voters in suburban ridings who might be willing to support the party if they feel its leader would be a capable prime minister. They will be more likely to offer that support if they see in Mr. Poilievre, not simply an angry populist, but a seasoned statesman, someone who is not only smart, but wise.