Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre at the national convention for the Conservative Party, in Calgary, on Jan. 30.Jennifer Gauthier/Reuters
Pierre Poilievre garnered rousing applause Friday night when he told delegates to the Conservative convention in Calgary the party won’t change its principles.
“We won the debate in the last election on every single one of the big issues, on carbon taxes, inflation, housing, resources, crime, drugs, and soon we will be proven right once again on the wasteful and insane Liberal gun grab,” he said.
Then he joked that Liberals called Conservative policies “scary” but eventually adopted them.
“The best part of being Conservative is that eventually everyone admits that we were right all along,” he said.
It was more than a joke. It was a theme. The Conservative Leader kept suggesting he had it right all along.
Poilievre wins 87.4% in leadership vote, cements hold over Conservative Party
There was a change in tone. At this convention, Mr. Poilievre’s criticism of Liberals was capped with a theme of hope and optimism. He ditched three-word slogans. He spoke with emotion about his family. He was warmer.
But the substance was the same. There was no shift, no pivot, no updated agenda. It could have been a speech he delivered a year ago. Or in 2024.
The warmer Pierre Poilievre remained frozen in time.
Most of the rank-and-file delegates liked his speech, it must be said. It was self-affirmation for Conservatives. They like Mr. Poilievre: He won his leadership-review vote with 87.4-per-cent support. The unambiguous result will strengthen his hold on his party.
The efforts to warm his image are obviously a good idea, a tweak to dial back the polarizing attack-dog image that scared off some voters.
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Still, the agenda and much of the rhetoric were just like a year ago. And since there was an election between then and now, and the Conservatives lost to a new Liberal in Prime Minister Mark Carney, you’d think there would be room for adjustment without Conservatives giving up conservative principles.
The “lessons learned” that Mr. Poilievre did own up to were about internal party matters. He promised to stop heavy-handed tactics that his party headquarters used to block or delay local nominations in many ridings – a hot issue for the delegates voting on Mr. Poilievre’s leadership.
To be fair, Mr. Poilievre has spent most of the nine months since the general election consumed with keeping his place.
After losing his Ottawa-area seat, he had to run in an Aug. 18 by-election in Alberta’s Battle River-Crowfoot riding. The first delegate-selection meetings for the convention that would review his leadership were held in September. He had to spend months campaigning to ensure a clear victory.
Mr. Poilievre did signal some kind of change in that intraparty campaign, reaching out to Conservatives who hadn’t been supporters, including a January appearance at the Albany Club, a bastion of establishment Toronto Tories he had previously eschewed.
Now all that’s over, perhaps Mr. Poilievre can move on to the big picture for the future. But this convention was an opportunity to relaunch for the broader public and he was still talking about how the party won 2.5 million more votes in the last election and won mock elections among high-school kids.
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It felt like Mr. Poilievre still hasn’t processed the fact that he lost that election. And he aimed at all the same targets.
Affordability remains a top public concern and is still the Conservatives’ strong suit, so it’s not surprising that’s still there. But not much was updated.
Mr. Poilievre did insert a newish passage about ensuring Canada is independent from other countries, about building up the military, and about tariffs, but somehow still didn’t deliver a direct knock at U.S. President Donald Trump. He’s still coming to grips with the emerging issue of January, 2025.
For his immediate purposes, Mr. Poilievre got the job done at his party convention. He won the leadership review handily. An update to the Conservative offering was not on the menu.
Even the hot-ticket speech delivered Saturday by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was jarringly caught in the same time warp. In a 10-minute blast at 10 years of Liberal rule, she decried the “woke activist” approach of former prime minister Justin Trudeau and paused for boos when she named former environment minister Steven Guilbeault.
Her timeline pretty much ended in 2024, too. She didn’t talk about Mr. Poilievre’s current opponent, Mr. Carney, or the memorandum of understanding she signed with him in November, in a ceremony full of smiles. She read the room.