A moment Pierre Poilievre didn’t want to meet

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Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet stepped out to meet reporters and take his by-election defeat on the chin.

“We have to take it with humility. And we have to take it with patience,” Mr. Blanchet said.

There’s a wave, he said – arguing that past Conservative and New Democrat voters moved to the Liberals – that seems even stronger now than it did in last year’s general election. It’s disappointing, Mr. Blanchet said, but there is no shame in it; let’s see how Prime Minister Mark Carney weathers three years of majority government.

There wasn’t the same kind of humility from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. His response came in the House of Commons during a debate about gas taxes, but he didn’t go out to face reporters who might ask impertinent questions.

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That was a tell. It was a sign of just how bad this moment is for Mr. Poilievre. And that he didn’t know how to meet it.

Not surprisingly, he went on the attack, criticizing Mr. Carney’s announced cut to gasoline taxes as smaller than the cut Conservatives had proposed. But as for Mr. Carney’s new majority in the Commons, Mr. Poilievre was argued it was just unfair.

“He did it through dirty backroom deals against the interests of the people, with the help of politicians who betrayed their voters and their citizens,” the Conservative Leader said.

Certainly, many Canadians don’t like the unusual way the Liberals gained their majority, by luring four Conservative MPs and one New Democrat to cross the floor. But there are also many who will feel Mr. Poilievre is expressing sour grapes after his own MPs quit his team.

There was one big thing Mr. Poilievre didn’t do: He didn’t challenge Mr. Carney to prove the legitimacy of his majority government by calling a general election.

Mr. Poilievre used to do that kind of thing. When Justin Trudeau was prime minister and the Conservatives had a big lead in the polls, he demanded an election almost on the daily. He mocked opposition leaders for propping up the then-minority government. That was a big part of Mr. Poilievre’s own-the-libs identity. He used to promise to bring down the Liberals, ASAP.

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Now he is too politically weak to do that. Polls consistently show his approval ratings trail way behind Mr. Carney’s, and the number of people who say he would make the best prime minister is substantially lower than the number of people who support the Conservatives. At the moment, anyway, he is a drag on the party’s support. His party wasn’t going to win any of the seats up for grabs on Monday, but they still had a poor showing.

Mr. Blanchet said he’s glad to have three years till an election. That might be a good thing for the Conservative Party as well. It is not good for Mr. Poilievre. Conservatives now have a lot of time to think about whether the public will change its mind about their leader.

The other opposition parties suffered a drubbing on Monday, too.

The Bloc Québécois lost a riding, Terrebonne, that they’d only lost once before in the last 30 years – if one doesn’t count the one-vote “defeat” last year that was annulled by the Supreme Court. And the choice of prime minister was not at stake. The NDP, which held Terrebonne from 2011 to 2015, had 0.5 per cent of the vote there this time, although it did win an improved 18 per cent in Toronto’s University-Rosedale.

But it’s different for their leaders. The Bloc won’t form government and Mr. Blanchet can call for patience. The NDP’s Avi Lewis just took over a party going through a near-death experience.

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Mr. Poilievre lost the most because he lost the threat to take down the Liberals. He can’t change the government or threaten them politically for a long time. He can’t campaign with consequence.

That is so because he lost the year since last April’s general election. He lost standing and popularity with the public and he lost bodies in his caucus. And his party no longer needs to keep a leader in place in case of a snap election. The Conservative Party might be better off with three years to regroup. But it could be a very long time for Mr. Poilievre.