Pierre Poilievre is widely expected to comfortably win a leadership-review vote on Friday at the Conservative convention in Calgary.Jennifer Gauthier/Reuters
There’s always the chance that there will be a quick rerun of last year’s federal election, even within a matter of months. That’s a prospect that will be helpful to Pierre Poilievre over the next day or two. After that, it will make things a little tricky.
For all the rough knocks that Mr. Poilievre has suffered over the past year – blowing an election he once seemed sure to win, losing his own riding, and watching his personal poll ratings sink – he has impressively maintained a hold on his leadership of the Conservative Party.
His loyalists argue that he energized a conservative movement and built a new voting coalition that gave the party 41 per cent in last year’s election – but there was, and is, some lingering discontent and second-guessing. Two MPs crossed the floor. It’s not easy to persuade a party to keep you after a loss. Ask Mr. Poilievre’s two immediate predecessors, Erin O’Toole and Andrew Scheer.
Yet Mr. Poilievre is widely expected to comfortably win a leadership-review vote on Friday at the Conservative convention in Calgary.
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One reason is that no one else is standing by to lead the Conservatives if there is a snap election campaign against Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals.
There are no potential successors seriously organizing. And the risk of an election in 2026 weighs against going through the process of pushing out the leader and searching for a new one.
For Mr. Poilievre, that thought is probably worth more than a few percentage points in the leadership-review vote. The 2026 rerun election scenario is an asset that will help keep the grumbles down this week.
Next week, however, it will start to complicate matters. Mr. Poilievre doesn’t want an election soon. There are still Conservatives who’d like to see him fight to push out the Liberals, but he has to dodge that. He needs time.
For all of Mr. Carney’s protests this week that he and his Liberals are focused on governing, a minority government has to keep one eye on its hold on power. Unless Mr. Carney can induce more opposition MPs to cross the floor to give him a majority in the Commons, that means keeping an eye out for an election opportunity.
Liberal strategists would prefer that Mr. Carney face Mr. Poilievre again, and preferably sooner than later. The Liberals and Conservatives are relatively close in opinion polls but on the question of who Canadians prefer as prime minister, Mr. Carney was 28 points ahead in the latest Nanos Research tracking poll. The Liberals will be tempted to go to an election before they lose that edge.
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That’s where it gets tricky for Mr. Poilievre. For most of his tenure as Conservative Leader, he aggressively threatened to defeat the Liberals. He taunted the Bloc Québécois and NDP when they helped the Grits stay in power. That was when Justin Trudeau was prime minister, not Mr. Carney – but still, it was part of Mr. Poilievre’s persona. He was the gung-ho Conservative out to stop the Libs, immediately. That was popular with Conservatives.
That can’t be Mr. Poilievre’s game now. He doesn’t want to help the Liberals find a pretext for a snap election. But it’s awkward to go from throw-the-bums-out rallies to dodging confrontation. In November, the Conservatives hid two MPs behind the House of Commons curtains until it was clear that the Liberals were going to win a high-profile confidence vote on the budget.
Now, Mr. Poilievre has to embark on a campaign to rebuild his image with voters, and that takes time. He is trying to look more prime ministerial, less activist. This week, he sent a letter offering to co-operate with the government to pass legislation.
All the logic of Mr. Poilievre’s leadership now begs for time. His fundamental critique of Mr. Carney is that the Prime Minister is failing to meet his own pledge to respond to a crisis by acting quickly to approve projects, build the economy and revamp government – that the Carney Liberals are working at the same-old pace of the same-old system.
That’s an argument that counts on time wearing on Mr. Carney’s credibility. But offering co-operation and buying time is not the Pierre Poilievre that the Conservative Party used to know.
This week, he will benefit from the fear that a quick election might come. After that, he has to try to avoid one.