Conservative Party of Canada Leader Pierre Poilievre tried hard to channel Prime Minister Mark Carney in Calgary Friday evening, partly succeeding.
If the notion he’s paid attention to Canada’s changing political climate and altered course enough to fool inattentive voters without sacrificing supporters’ “conservative principles” was Mr. Poilievre’s pitch to party activists to let him try again after blowing a 27-point lead in last spring’s federal election, Friday’s speech before his leadership review vote was obviously good enough.
Soon after the applause died out, he captured 87.4 per cent of the delegates’ votes, which pundits had insisted had to top the 84 per cent won by Stephen Harper in the former Conservative prime minister’s 2005 leadership review.
Whether Mr. Poilievre can keep up an appearance of moderation and balance is another matter entirely.
“Obviously elections teach us lessons,” Mr. Poilievre contritely told his listeners at one point in his speech. “And for that I want to thank all of you in this room. You have provided such valuable input in the lead-up to and throughout this convention.”
Nevertheless, he continued, “one of the most important lessons I have gained from listening to you throughout this convention is that you told us to ignore the voices who keep telling us to abandon our Conservative principles. We will remain true to our Conservative principles.”
Aye, there’s the rub! To quote a headline from last month: “Pierre Poilievre’s Biggest Selling Point Is Now a Huge Liability.” That is, the story in Politico went on to say, Mr. Poilievre’s Trump-style media strategy worked spectacularly. Until it didn’t.
In other words, some of those conservative principles – as seen by a leader like Mr. Poilievre, steeped in MAGA ideology and admiration of U.S. President Donald Trump – are among the reasons he lost both his Ottawa-area seat and the general election last April 28.
“Canada’s Conservatives Give Their Trump Inspired Leader a Second Chance,” said The New York Times in as good a 10-word summary of the leadership review vote as one could come up with. “Pierre Poilievre, a populist who led the Conservative Party to defeat last year, was retained as its leader on Friday, despite his dismal poll numbers,” added the sub-head on the story. There’s almost no need to read the story when the headlines are that accurate and thorough!
Still, the Conservative leader’s carefully choreographed performance, which rambled on for three quarters of an hour, sounded sane, as if Prime Minister Carney, Liberal though he may be, would have been comfortable delivering all but the most partisan bits.
Mr. Poilievre wore a nicely tailored blue suit, suitable for a banker, tried to remember to smile a lot and mostly did, and didn’t bark at anyone – of course, with a supportive crowd of party delegates who had already been whipped into line, there was no need for barking.
Listen carefully, though, and despite the moderate tone, there was no shortage of MAGA dog whistles – sometimes placed incongruously close to contradictory statements.
One minute he was describing how in one Ontario city “people are literally being told that because there is an extortion wave on their particular street, they should move into their basements to minimize being hit — the chance of being hit — by a stray bullet!”
Just moments later, he was vowing to protect “the rights of law-abiding firearms owners, stopping the Liberal gun grab, and putting the money into border security.”
Apparently there is no line between the dot representing stray bullets and the one representing huge numbers of guns in private hands.
For every seemingly rational statement uttered by Mr. Poilievre, there was a reference to cancel culture, identity politics, or another of the predictable bugbears on the MAGA right on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border.
It doesn’t matter, though, because not many Canadians are going to have the time or the patience listen to a speech like this in its entirety. And the reels played on social media will be algorithmically directed at their target audiences.
For the same reason, despite Mr. Poilievre’s polished delivery Friday – a distinct improvement over the sophomoric insults he fires at journalists when he doesn’t like their questions – his speech really deserves a thorough fact checking. Because not all the “facts” presented by Mr. Poilievre were strictly accurate.
Cowtown is his hometown, so he was bound to repeat Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s nonsense about how Alberta was mistreated for a decade by the Trudeau Government. “While the federal government stomps on Alberta’s energy sector,” as he put it – you know, by getting all Canadian taxpayers to pay something in the order of $35 billion for the Trans Mountain Expansion Project. (That’s about $900 for every living Canadian, 85 per cent of whom don’t live here in Alberta, by the way.)
And never mind that, as The Globe and Mail reported this week, “The share of Canada’s crude petroleum flowing to countries other than the United States hit an all-time high in November, topping the previous month’s record, as the Trans Mountain pipeline boosted Canada’s trade diversification efforts.”
Blaming Liberals for all of Canada’s problems with separatism in Quebec and Alberta, Mr. Poilievre also seemed to forget the role played by Lucien Bouchard, Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s Quebec lieutenant until he threw his lot in with the separatists in 1990 and became the leader of the Opposition when the Bloc Québécois elected 54 MPs in 1993.
But, you know, details. There are many other examples.
In Mr. Poilievre’s peroration, he vowed to restore hope to Canadians, to solve all the country’s problems – even the ones like the housing crisis that have been caused by 40 years of neoliberal economic policies that are at the core of the 21st Century Conservative Party’s ideology.
“Hang on! Have hope,” he urged the crowd. “Help is on the way!”
“Give us hope!” chanted a Greek chorus of fresh-faced young Conservatives in the background.
To paraphrase the late Ronald Reagan, U.S. president through the 1980s whose rhetoric Mr. Poilievre most certainly has read, surely the 10 most terrifying words in modern Canadian English are: “I’m from the Conservative Party! Help is on the way!”
I feel the NY Times only got it partly right, as Poilievre was practicing his style of politics years before Trump, so I don’t think it was all inspired by him. As I recall, PP was trying to put “electoral reform” into practice years ago which was really just a disguise for making voting harder way before Trump mused about it. Although of course, other politicians in the US had been trying the same for years. Perhaps they were also his inspiration.
However, maybe PP has learned something from his defeat, to try sound a bit more reasonable while still giving reassuring dog whistles to his more extreme supporters. I feel that could be called Nixon inspired and it did work for Nixon for a while. Although Nixon did not have Carney as a opponent.
I am also skeptical if Poilievre will be able to reinvent himself at this point. Canadians seem to have seen who he is and decided they are not so keen. I’m not even sure if PP can keep it up, as he seems to enjoy his very partisan combative approach even if it can be counter productive. However, I suppose we will see if he can or does change now that he is free to do so without the leadership review hanging over his head.
More importantly….
Happy Birthday Sensei !
Wishing you good health, strength and courage in these chaotic times, and for being here for us.
Arigatou gozaimasu !
In my years following the doublespeak of “government has been my only job” I have yet to hear Mr. Peepers say one positive word about how he will solve Canada’s problems. A polished presentation notwithstanding, hollow rhetoric, a forced smile and a fresh hair do won’t cut it. As for dealing with the heart stopping threat to the south, he’s like a mediocre Junior B hockey club facing off against the Oilers.
Was he wearing the padded body suit he has been appearing in in attempts to appear more manly, following photos of Carney running in marathons?
LAS: Good question. He didn’t appear to be. His suit, obviously bespoke, made him look quite trim without being too tight, as was the unfortunate fashion among young Conservatives and their ilk for a spell. In other words, it looked like the suits Prime Minister Carney wears, although not of quite as good quality. I presume Mr. Carney learned a thing or two about Savile Row and Jermyn Street during his time as the governor of the Bank of England. He has, however, been spending a lot of time in the gym, assuming the pictures on his Facebook page are not Photoshopped, building bulk as opposed to strength. That, however, was presumably a pathetic effort to match Justin Trudeau, who educated Senator Patrick Brazeau in the boxing ring. DJC
“…although not of quite as good quality..” Now David, you know some people can look really good in cheap haberdashery. Pierre is no exception.
Yes, the fight! Classic! Poor Patrick could do nothing but eat those punches from Justin Trudeau.
It’s not just that he offers little-no solutions for the problems he puts forward, he actively pushes for more division in both our system and society, half his twitter feed is just propaganda designed to push contempt without context, George Washington wrote about the pitfalls of the party system in his farewell address and I think that people like Pierre are very close to the culmination of that warning, he’s been in politics his entire adult life but has neither dreams nor decency simply ambition, he shouts catchy slogans to rile up crowds and point them at his foes but he himself offers no solutions to those very woes that he exacerbates, surrounded by lobbyists and lowlifes he tries to paint himself as an everyman when the closest he’s been to the working class is when he hands his keys to the valet, a shallow hollow man who’d create an earthquake if it would get him an extra blue seat and who has no vision for the country outside of being in charge of it and no consideration for its citizens outside of polling numbers
It’s stunning how often he changes personas, wardrobes and hairstyles. It’s almost as if he has no core values or substance. He drifts in the breeze, hoping a wicked wind from the west will blow him into the high chair some day. Maybe the Preston Manning whine will do it. Did he say, “the carbon tax”? Back to Stornoway for another round of soundbites.
BTW, who said:
“Congratulations to President Trump on successfully arresting narco-terrorist and socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro, who should live out his days in prison.
“The legitimate winner of the most recent Venezuelan elections, Edmundo González, should take office along with the courageous hero and voice of the Venezuelan people, María Corina Machado.
“Down with socialism. Long live freedom.”
It really proves how stupid Alberta Seniors are. In a crowd of mainly seniors they reward this Reform Party Clown Pierre Poilievre for praising criminal convoy truckers, buying them coffee and donuts, and creating a $70 million debt for the citizens of Ottawa to deal with and a $6 billion economic disaster for Canadians to deal with.
Seniors in Edmonton with family in Ottawa tell us about the nightmare their families went through with their young children being terrified by the constant horns blowing and they were forced to go to work without any sleep. When Poilievre was confronted with it he claimed they were heroes and he literally didn’t give a damn about what they thought and that’s why they kicked him out. The fact that he showed no concern for the financial mess they had created proved there was nothing conservative about him, didn’t it? It was another reason to kick him out, wasn’t it?
I bet we see more Conservative MPs joining the Liberals, don’t you?
Good last point. I have been wondering how many CPC MPs were biding their time, waiting to see the outcome of this leadership review. Now they know that they’ve got to work under Poilievre for the foreseeable future and they may consider crossing the aisle to be a better option.
Lars I became good friends with Jim Henderson in Devon during the Klein years. He had been an MLA for the Social Credit party and he made no bones about it the Social Credit Party disappeared because they found it impossible to be in opposition to the Conservatives when they agreed with everything Peter Lougheed had done for the people. I had never heard of that sort of thing happening but it did.
These Reformers have deliberately destroyed everything Lougheed created which is why we are in such a financial mess, thanks to these mindless seniors believing every lie the feed them.
Alan K. Spiller: I have seen photos of citizens in lineups waiting to sign the separation petition. Many of them do not look young. There are seniors, and middle aged folks. Regardless of how old they are, they are deceived by the lies that Danielle Smith and Pierre Poilievre tell them. If Danielle Smith continues to cut slack to these separatists, Pierre Poilievre will not become Prime Minister. These separatists are feeding people lies, about how good an independent Alberta would be, or how good it will be if we became the 51st state. They are blaming Justin Trudeau, Mark Carney and the NDP for the horrific mess that these phony Conservatives and Reformers left Alberta in. Peter Lougheed would never do these foolish things that we see happening. I also believe more floor crossings will happen.
Right outta Trumpy’s playbook. I’ll give PP one thing…he’s a good Trump student. Say one thing to one crowd and tailor your speech to another with zero moral fibre, no true position or the actual skillset to provide solutions for the problems he’s pointing out then say something else to another group that they want to hear.
When he hits the cringe racist flattery, he’ll have the whole spiel down, flat.
Trump didn’t win. The Democrats, failed.
They failed to see that Kamala Harris was a charisma sink but that wouldn’t have killed them–Biden didn’t have any, either. What sunk them was their absolute inability to overturn the system of corporate ownership of their party. Their refusal to stop the genocide in Gaza. Their refusal to call for universal healthcare. Their well-documented warhawkery. Their dirty war against Bernie Sanders who was clearly favoured over Trump in the first round.
One thing that pushed Trump to the forefront was his “America first” push for bread and butter issues. Abandoned. His claim he wouldn’t start any more wars. Abandoned. His push that he’d clean up the CIA and stop them from interfering in the politics of other countries. Abandoned.
PP, like his mentors Stephen Harper and Mike Harris, has the moral fortitude of a bowl of butter.
Now if we just un-Americanize our media, we won’t have to watch this stage drama play out in real time, again.
It is simply the tired old charade of selling or marketing a product [Pierre Poilievre, for example] to an audience of moonstruck consumers [electorate] using, as an example, the lame and overworked marketing strategy of new Coke vs classic Coke, where; “New Coke was a reformulated version of Coca-Cola introduced in 1985, which aimed to compete with Pepsi by being sweeter.”
What is the likelihood that the electorate even notices the crude juvenile flimflam? Not very likely.
If it is assumed that, “The phrase “there’s a sucker born every minute” suggests that there are always naive individuals who can be easily deceived or taken advantage of.”
And that, “It is often associated with the world of gambling, con artists” and politicians.
I recommend watching The Numbers podcast/Facebook with Eric Grenier and Philippe Fournier. In the latest episode, they discuss how Carney’s speech at Davos gave him and the Liberals a bump in the polls. But not enough of a bump to justify a surprise spring election. They also pointed out a further drop in PP’s personal ratings – people really don’t like him. Bottom line – the Conservative Party is trailing the Liberals but not by much; PP is a serious drag on his party. Just like Danielle is a drag on the UCP.
The blue suit would have gone well with the makeup that he obviously left behind in Ottawa, or maybe the airlines thought that “spaghetti squash spice”** was a food item.
As for the constant barrage of the PM doing photo ops, he was channeling “I am of the people” photographed from behind flying economy….sure, we believe you. Not.
**claus kellerman–color swatch– and the rational national both touched on his d’rump idiosyncrasies.
B—He has already reached the cringe racist flattery…” we will develop the resources so that the Indigenous people will be the richest people in the world “, preceded by “we shouldn’t compensate them, they should work harder ” (which he apologized for ‘at the time’).
As for the color guard behind Skippy on stage;the Jamil Jivani/ Charlie Kirk new Conservative recruits being groomed for future Reform, oops Conservative candidates, with the backing of Marlaina et al.
What could possibly go wrong?
Randi-lee: I’m pretty sure PP ain’t the PM. Or, perhaps, I misunderstood. DJC
DJC— lol..sorry. I should have said that while PP is on his high rocking horse complaining about our PM doing his job with meetings of world leaders putting together trade deals which Skippy calls photo ops, the little hypocrite is traveling around the country on the taxpayers dime doing photo ops to make sure he got the right people to come to the convention to support him.
I personally find it quite amusing that he got exactly the same number as Vladimir Putin did in his last election; but so far I haven’t heard a peep about the 12.6/13% opposition voters. Odd!
Okay boys and girls…say “cross the floor “…wishful thinking ???
Fellow writers and readers: I am afraid and I am deeply sad. Are words such as this blog and others our only tools or weapons? Is it enough to make fun of our opponents without offering an attractive alternative?
Those easy to remember buzz words of the right – Woke, Elite, IMF, DEI, and so on – make it so easy for even the least engaged to fire up their endorphins whenever the Leader shouts them out.
But my fear and sadness really originate with the free and open site SubStack. I signed up a year ago as a convenient spot to read and comment on my 4 or 5 favourite Canadian writers. But my happi-ness quickly disappeared when I stumbled upon 10 virulent and hate filled sites written by Canadians. Sure, they could be bots or North Korean cretins but I did recognize one name: Peter Menzies.
Some of you may recognize his name in relation to the Calgary Herald, the CRTC, the MacDonald-Laurier Institute and the Alberta High-Speed Rail Project. You may recognize his 3 page posts and his posse of acolytes. But what is so sad is that not one post was pro-Canada and anti-separatist. Why is that? Is it the Alberta media that is so unified in its message? Or is it the eloquence of their leaders? Or the audience being predominantly over 60, small towners and white?
Time is short. We may experience both federal and provincial elections this year, and to spell it out: bye-bye Canada. Oh, and the drinks are on me.
YYConfused– take heart, all is not lost (yet). The ‘awaken’ are also afoot. Case in point— they put a stop to Jim Pattinson’s ice warehouse sale in Virginia (at least for now and with the help of the local council) and the protesters in Vancouver over Hootsuites involvement are worth a lookup. There is one particular sign that had me choking on my coffee.
It’s time for true Albertans to follow in the footsteps of the people of Minnesota, who have their former governor,Jesse Ventura ,talking about becoming part of Canada
“Minnitoba” –and take to the streets, not in protest but in support for our country. It’s time to drown out the voices of the small minority.
@YYConfused
For all the sturm and drang (and paid-for by American interests) on substack, or in other alternative media for Alberta separatism, they’re missing some key ingredients to make that happen.
To make revolution happen, which is what a real-life separatist movement is, there needs to be a few key points and those are not there, yet.
The government fighting the separatists must be highly repressive and I don’t mean in the “whah whah daddy-won’t-buy-me-a-pipeline” kind of way. I mean dead-bodies-on-the-street, repressive. It may only take 10% of a population to take up arms to cause a revolution but it must have much wider support than that, including financial and physical support. The majority of the population must be under 25. A large percentage of those must be unemployed young men. The armed forces must collude with them and eventually join them, including police. Does Alberta’s population look like that?
In colour revolutions, external powers crush the economy for decades upon decades and involve dirty war tactics to create the conditions of unemployment, repression, basic needs scarcity–that’s the nugget of what we’re seeing from the US Empire with tariffs and trade disagreements. Typically, once the separatist movement creates enough steam and controls their own territory on a map, they petition the UN to acknowledge them as a country. I don’t see that happening any time soon. This leaves the USA with the alternative option which is crying for the USA to “free them” with military might and claiming Alberta as theirs. That will cause a whole cascade of other problems for the USA.
Somehow I don’t think it’s going to go the way the separatists think it will.
This is why I am urging everyone to focus on asking separatists concrete questions in public, “and what will happen then? And then? How much pension money do you think you’ll get? Do you want the American healthcare/education/social services system?” etc. when their leaders posit false theories of the future. Stress that political gains require long-term planning.
If you’re commenting on substack, start asking pointed questions about what the writer has said. The writer either ignore you, or prove their argument as will the commenters. Don’t worry if you get flamed–the point is to stay reasonable and present the questions so that other readers will have those stuck in their brains long after the next article is written.
What about the 1400 places that could have been filled for the CPC convention, but were not? Seems to me that’s a lot of folks that didn’t want to pay the 1k, nor promise to vote for PP. Or, maybe they just didn’t want to be part of a sort of love in for the most disliked politician in Canada?
I’m amazed that Smith and PP, just keep bring up Trudeau. He’s gone, like get over it already. Also this 87%, sure he beat Harper, but Harper faced all the PC party, East and West. In Calgary it was mostly the West that showed up, as the East stayed home, or went to Ford’s convention instead. So 87% is not a number that reflects what the PC membership really thinks. And no matter how he dresses, wears his hair, has glasses or not, I still think he’s a yappy little lap dog.
One of the reasons I was watching the Grammys this evening was to see if Katy Perry and her current squeeze — our recently deposed PM — would be there. Alas, if they were, the camera did not fall on them.
Buckle up for the long haul. Whinging Albertans are still crying about the elder Trudeau, who hasn’t been in power for well over 40 years and is dead. In fact I’d daresay those whinging Albertans have pretty much made a religion of it.
yappy little lap dogs are useful, cute, loyal and smart. PP is none of those things.
“Give us hope!” Wasn’t that Harvey Milk’s slogan?
The Politico story linked to in this blog post also said “Manotick, a suburb of Ottawa and in the Carleton electoral district where Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre is popular.” Oops…
I still hold that nominal “conservative” parties are in their throes, the latest example being that Canada’s federal opposition party just gave its leader an 87.4% approval rating under review after blowing a huge lead in 2025’s pre-election polls in unprecedented fashion: that same leader lost his own seat of 21 years. Dang!—that shoulda been the end of it (double-dang!—for the many Dippers who uncharacteristically broke ranks and voted tactically hoping it would be…)
Why do CPCers hang onto a leader who led the party to such a disappointing result, especially a leader who rose to such obvious bait (the terminally unpopular, 3rd-term Prime Minister announces he will lead his Liberals in the election scheduled 15 months hence) and set the hook deeper with each porpoising slogan? And who, instead of changing tactics when it became so very obvious that he was being reeled in, of course ended up in the net and landed like a fish out of a seat. Why? Why? Why…?
Instead of resigning, as any self-respecting party leader would have done in such devastating circumstances, the party didn’t hesitate to arrange—with unseemly speed— a by-election in the safest conservative seat in the country while its former leader whipped caucus into uproarious anticipation of its hero’s triumphant return —while bludgeoning one of its own as he headed for the door and across the floor, soon to be joined by yet another, bringing the Liberals within a whisker of majority.
One is so astounded that it’s impossible to tell if the trophy-leader’s facile return to the same, near-unparliamentary rhetoric that lost him and his party so much was a product of calculation or calcification. Dang!—his seat was barely even warm (and I don’t mean as in, ‘out-behind-the-woodshed’ where just about any other two-time loser woulda went).
If there was an elephant on the convention floor, the choreography was executed well enough that it appeared only discretely on delegates’ phones as they checked what the latest diplomatic outrage was issuing from the Oval Office in the past hour—and pray it doesn’t involve their man of the hour—or, potentially, of the next three years.
Prime Minister Carney must be happy: the opposition’s every move lets him honeymoon Poilievre right in face. Now, it’s a fairly rare occasion when my darling and I agree on political machinations, but we concur that all this talk of an early election is, appropriately enough, too early to know centre-right from centre-wrong. But we do know that the CPC is putting the best face on its increasingly dire dilemma, apparently from inside a wagon laager circled in the capitol of a sovereign Alberta, independently known as Calgary. There’s no discernible dissent on the inside —which is to be expected in the circumstance.
Poilievre has returned to his Reform roots. Radicalized buffalo heads and maverick Wexiteers have camouflaged to take back Alberta’s control of the bifurcated party, opportune when moderate dissenters are understandably afraid of standing out like a sore and red Tory thumb whilst the party is so vulnerable to floor crossings and snap elections, to association with tRump and Maple MAGA, and with Alberta secessionism. Having been routed during a short and promising sally behind fellow Eastern Tory Erin O’Toole, they are playing it very, very safe. At least for the next while.
We feel Carney will do the same: for the next while, wait see what this weekend’s events will shake out of a troubled CPC caucus. As a professional weigher of risk, Carney is more likely to let his chips ride on the chance of gaining a majority by means other than the ballot box. If we read it right, there are probably some more disgruntled CPC MPs who, playing it safer than ever, have waited for this weekend to pass before reassessing career moves.
Meanwhile the both of us watch PP with the sound off—and if I expand the screen just right, I don’t even have to look at PP’s smug face as the potted subtitles flow by with tear-inducing predictability.
But who knows: in the fullness of time Pierre might have just saved the country.
All the best, my Alberta friends!
FWIW— claus kellerman bluesky/ “They voted to keep him, this is who he is……with video receipts. This is a short but condensed version of temu-rump, so…keep the eyedrops/gravol handy or maybe whatever was in the hookah….
This wasn’t a general election, it was for card holding CPC members, and they represent neither a majority or a plurality of Canadians.
At this point I’m just giving them free advice, but this is bad for them electorally. The only way Canadians are going to throw their votes behind the CPC is if they can show they’ve changed. I honestly don’t believe the folks who vote liberal are as committed to it ideologically as the folks who are voting conservative and that’s the problem. The CPC refuses to listen to Canadians, they prefer to scold, threaten and condescend to the rest of the country. That surely is an effective tactic to retain a small but very active and very loyal base but it’s not enough to grow the party. Now they’re attempting to pivot to the youth, with some success, as they’ve managed to capitalize on the gains of the alt right / gamer gate / manosphere in the states, but those folks are themselves a small fractured group within another small group (gen z voters) and gen z women are much further left than the boys.
The CPC may as well adopted a slogan of “we hate the rest of the country and we refuse to change” I’m not shocked by the Lockstep voting either. When you have lost logic and reason, blind unthinking loyalty is all you have left, and that’s all that is left of the federal Conservative Party.