Conservative Party

OTTAWA — Nearly two weeks after a bitter election defeat, the Conservative party has turned its sights to its next chapter: rolling out tone shifts, a renewed media strategy, and the reintroduction of its leader to start courting voters who turned elsewhere at the ballot box.

Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives — for supporters have, at least publicly, united around him — are keen to point to the party’s expanded vote share, seat count and base as reasons not to depose their seatless leader and those central to his campaign.

But that refrain can’t last forever.

Toronto Star advice is the best advice.

The dust has begun to settle after the Conservatives lost a fourth consecutive election and there’s been no notable effort to stir things up again, with no widespread or open criticism of leader Pierre Poilievre emerging so far.

This has not been a typical scenario for the Conservative Party in recent years, with previous leaders being ousted by a vote or intense campaign of criticism following an election loss.

Federal Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre is rejecting a severance package estimated at about $150,000 that he was entitled to receive after losing his Ottawa-area riding, a party official says.

Under the rules of the House of Commons, Mr. Poilievre is eligible for severance worth $154,850, according to the calculations of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF).

A staple of Mark Carney’s stump speech during the election was the line that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is the kind of politician who has never changed his mind since he was 17.

“Who hasn’t changed their mind since they were 17?” the Liberal leader would mock.

The attack was validated by Poilievre’s own words in his interview with Jordan Peterson in December, in which he said he has been “saying precisely the same things” since he was a teenager.

A Conservative Party fundraising email alleges the Liberals are trying to “tip the scales” in riding recounts, language some political watchers say is concerning as some Canadians say they don’t trust the results of last week’s election.

The email, sent to the Conservatives’ mailing list on Wednesday, solicits donations to “help us hold the line” as recounts play out.

“The Liberals are working to flip just enough seats to edge closer to a majority. We can’t let that happen,” reads the email.

Before the Conservatives decide Pierre Poilievre’s political fate, they should consider how their “one and done” approach of dumping their leader after one election loss, ever since Stephen Harper was defeated in 2015, has worked out for them.

The answer is not well.

Poilievre fell victim to a Liberal media TDS eruption. He did more than well enough to merit a 2nd chance.

The election dust has settled, leaving the Liberals with a minority government. This has led to calls — from both conservatives and progressives — for Pierre Poilievre to step down as Conservative party leader. But these calls are premature, overlook the success of several of Poilievre’s policies — many of which were co-opted by the Liberals in order to win — and severely underestimate the Liberals’ incumbent advantage in the face of an unforeseeable natural disaster that plagued an otherwise normal Canadian election campaign — U.S. President Donald Trump.

Canada is worth fighting for. pic.twitter.com/cT0r0UI2rG

— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) May 5, 2025

Pierre Poilievre was far from faultless in losing his own Carleton seat in the Ottawa suburbs — a seat he had held for nearly 21 years, through six federal elections.

Leaders can’t take their own seats for granted, or at least their local organizers can’t. They have to develop a sense for when there is a voter uprising forming and warn the leader that he or she has to return home more often from cross-country campaigning.

OTTAWA — Seat-less Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre will try his luck in Alberta.

After losing on election night in his now-former Ottawa-area riding of Carleton, the Tory leader will get the chance to snag a seat in the House of Commons thanks to Battle River-Crowfoot MP Damien Kurek, who has agreed to step aside.

Mark Carney and the Liberals won another minority on Monday while the Conservatives overperformed expectations. But beyond the seat count, the real story might be the deep changes in the coalition of voters for both parties, both in terms of regional strength, but especially with respect to some demographics—age and ethnicity in particular.

OK, Boomers pic.twitter.com/0aSbpoBtw5

— Robyn Urback (@RobynUrback) May 1, 2025

Ontario Premier Doug Ford clearly doesn’t like federal Conservatives, but did he really sabotage their campaign in the province, as one re-elected Ontario MP recently suggested? Not likely, if you stick to the facts.

The unseemly infighting between the leaderships of Ontario Progressive Conservatives and Pierre Poilievre’s federal Conservatives boiled over this week, to the credit of neither. Ontario Conservative MP Jamil Jivani took quite a run at Ford after the federal party’s election loss Monday. “ When it was our turn to run an election, h e couldn’t stay out of our business, always getting his criticisms and all his opinions out, distracting our campaign, trying to make it about him, trying to position himself as some kind of political genius that we needed to be taking cues from,” Jivani said. He added that Ford was a “hype man” for the federal Liberals.

OTTAWA — Some Conservative MPs are expressing support for party leader Pierre Poilievre after he lost both the federal election and his own seat on Monday.

In his concession speech early Tuesday morning, Poilievre indicated he would stay on as leader. The Conservative party did not respond when asked Wednesday whether he has officially decided to stay.

“My view is he’s not going anywhere,” said Kory Teneycke, Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s former campaign manager and a former director of communications for former prime minister Stephen Harper.