Campaign signs for The Conservative Party of Canada's leader Pierre Poilievre remain the day after he lost his seat in the Carleton riding to Liberal Party candidate Bruce Fanjoy, in Ottawa, April 29.Amber Bracken/Reuters
Pierre Poilievre was supposed to win the next federal election on a wave of anti-Liberal sentiment and a promise of change.
At one point, polls put his party so deep into majority territory that even well before the scheduled 2025 election, businesses, community groups, local governments and others were readying themselves for the first Conservative government in a decade.
But the campaign came months earlier than expected, under conditions never predicted, and Mr. Poilievre fell short.
Preliminary results pointed to the party winning 144 seats and 41.3 per cent of the popular vote – each significant increases, but not enough to defeat the Liberals under Mark Carney. Mr. Poilievre also lost his own seat.
The outcome has Conservatives looking at their party’s third consecutive failed attempt to unseat a Liberal government and asking, why can’t we win?
There will be a formal campaign review, though its scope is yet to be determined.
But The Globe and Mail spoke with more than a dozen conservatives – candidates and current MPs, strategists, operatives, volunteers and others – to take the pulse of the conservative movement at an inflection point in its modern history, and figure out what they think ought to happen next.
For many, it’s two things: Mr. Poilievre must continue building the bridges that led to a historic popular vote count and repair the ones he has burned down that could keep that vote from going higher.
It’s a matter of both tactic and tone.
A criticism of Mr. Poilievre‘s campaign is that he didn’t refocus enough when the ballot question changed out from under him.
He had planned for an election that was to be a referendum on the Trudeau Liberal years, except the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, the launch of a trade war, and then the election of a new Liberal leader flipped the script.
That he was making announcements on crime and plastic wrapping when Liberal Leader Mark Carney was talking Trump was seen as tone-deaf at best and “campaign malpractice” at worst, in the words at one point of Conservative strategist Kory Teneycke, who led Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s three back-to-back majority campaigns.
Those close to Mr. Poilievre‘s campaign argued they did talk about Mr. Trump. Their emphasis on solving the problems Canadians were facing was their way of defending Canada’s sovereignty.
And Mr. Teneycke acknowledged in an interview Friday the campaign did further adjust over time, placing the issue higher in his speeches and putting maple leaves on his podiums.
The party also worked to tamp down what he referred to as a sense among some voters that, in rhetoric and style, Mr. Poilievre parroted the U.S. President.
“I think you saw them try to do this as the campaign progressed. Smile a little bit, stop being on maximum asshole setting,” Mr. Teneycke said.
“I think you want to be a little bit more charming. You want to be a little bit more positive.”
He was able to do that during the debates, Mr. Teneycke said, and that helped too.
But the collapse of the NDP was something it also appeared the campaign wasn’t ready for.
Harjit Singh Gill, who ran for the Conservatives in Surrey-Newton, said most of the NDP votes in his riding shifted over to the Liberals, allowing them to pull off a win.
At issue, he said, were the over-60-year-old voters who were concerned about Mr. Trump and believed Mr. Carney was the man to take him on.
“Politics is about perception,” said Mr. Singh Gill.
At the same time, it was also in his riding that the party saw its vote share jump more than in any other. For years, South Asian voters have thought Conservatives are “right wingers,” Mr. Singh Gill said.
The results show a community coming around – and he remains convinced the party will win the riding next time – with Mr. Poilievre at the helm.
Whether Mr. Poilievre can hang on to leadership appears a settled question in the short term: Former and current MPs have publicly affirmed he deserves a right to stay and can win the next election.
“When you look at what the Liberals had to do to win – dump a sitting prime minister, quickly install a new leader, call a quick election and take advantage of a crisis from the United States – I don’t know how they recreate those conditions in the next election,” said former party leader and current MP Andrew Scheer.
“So I think we‘re going to have a much more solid base of support going forward.”
On Monday, the party picked up seats in the Windsor, Ont., area, for example, on the strength of outreach to the region’s manufacturing sector.
Mr. Poilievre also picked up B.C. seats such as Richmond Centre-Marpole, where his push for more drug treatment resonated with voters who had led local efforts to stop a safe injection site.
Those pitches to voters emerged from Mr. Poilievre‘s 2022 Conservative leadership campaign, when he spent hours talking to people at his rallies who were frustrated by the direction of the country under the Trudeau Liberals.
Those close to the Poilievre campaign said that approach was also part of the election. He‘d talk to every member of the so-called human backdrops at his events – the crowd of regular people used to illustrate his daily announcements.
Though, he also limited media questions at those events, and his campaign kept reporters from speaking with supporters at announcements and rallies.
Candidates said they would have preferred Mr. Poilievre to be more present in the media.
“I would’ve liked to see him do more media because he would’ve handled himself well and maybe reached a broader audience,” said Halifax Conservative candidate Mark Boudreau.
“I don’t say there were mistakes made, but I think putting Pierre in the spotlight more actually would’ve helped us.”
Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative Premier Tim Houston argued this past week that Mr. Poilievre‘s team isn’t broadening the tent, but narrowing it.
The Globe reported in April that after Mr. Houston distanced himself from Mr. Poilievre during the provincial election, his staff were chastised by Mr. Poilievre‘s senior adviser Jenni Byrne, a move Mr. Houston nodded at in his reflections on the state of the federal party.
“I think the Conservative Party of Canada was very good at pushing people away, not so good at pulling people in, and I think they probably saw that in some of the results they had across the country,” Mr. Houston told reporters Wednesday.
Ontario PC Premier Doug Ford also weighed in, accusing the federal Conservatives of willingly sitting out his own re-election campaign earlier this year and refusing to help – something he didn’t do to them.
Federal Conservatives bristle at the accusations. Mr. Houston, many said, has been distancing himself from the federal Conservatives well before Mr. Poilievre. Meanwhile, Mr. Ford’s approach to governance – including enthusiastically praising federal Liberals – was seen as a shot against the federal party.
Those close to Mr. Poilievre say in the weeks to come he must reach out both to Mr. Houston and Mr. Ford, but the historic grassroots are waiting for outreach too.
Ahead of the election campaign, and in numerous ridings across the country, people were told they couldn’t run as MPs then watched people they believed were hand-picked candidates willing to toe Mr. Poilievre – or Ms. Byrne‘s – line being bumped ahead for nominations.
What role Ms. Byrne might play with Mr. Poilievre going forward is unclear.
Mr. Teneyckye said in his view, the two are so closely connected you can’t have one without the other, but conservatives have expressed frustration at her management style and tactics, and say a quick way to showcase a change in tone is to remove her.
Others argue that the broader issue is for Mr. Poilievre to start showcasing – quickly – that the party is more than just him or her.
Who is chosen as the party’s leader in the House of Commons in the coming days will matter because it is that person who will be the face of the party in clips from Question Period at least in the short term; Mr. Poilievre needs to win a by-election first before he will have a seat.
Laryssa Waler, Mr. Ford’s former executive director of communications and now a managing partner at Henley Strategies, said at this point in time, all conservatives need to take a deep breath and find a way to build consensus.
“I don’t think that anybody’s fortunes, or any book, is finally written.”