Conservative Party

With all due respect to the “Bring it home” tagline that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre really, really likes, a more accurate slogan for the policy convention that his party just wrapped up would be, simply, “Enough.”

Enough woke-ism, the gathering heard over and over in Quebec City. Enough spending like drunken sailors on shore leave. Enough scolding and preening and apologizing. Enough identity politics. Enough with the broken social contract and the cruel obliviousness they see in the current federal government.

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre appears to be in the pole position with an enviable lead over the governing Liberals in most public opinion polls and he commands near-total loyalty from the Tory base.

The party’s three-day policy convention, which ended Saturday, broke past attendance records with more than 2,500 delegates registered for the Quebec City love-in.

The party is flush with cash after eye-popping fundraising hauls in the first and second quarters of this year — funds that will allow the party brass to continue its expensive ad campaign touting Poilievre in this pre-writ period.

Two things in Poilievre’s favour – The Trudeau authored housing crisis and his prosperity killing environmental policy are not going away.

A key member of the brain trust that surrounds Pierre Poilievre says that the Conservative Party is undergoing a “rejuvenation” under the new leader, partially through outreach to several previously skeptical voting blocs.

“There’s been an evolution in terms of who the Conservative supporter is, who the Conservative voter is. Right now, we’re seeing an entirely new group of people … a new demographic of people that are looking at the Conservative Party and looking at Pierre Poilievre as being the next prime minister very seriously,” Jenni Byrne said in an interview with CBC’s The House airing Saturday.

If an election were held tomorrow, polls suggest Pierre Poilievre would defeat Justin Trudeau and become the 24th prime minister of Canada. And if an election were to happen tomorrow, the Conservative leader says the choice would be quite straightforward.

“Canadians will have only two options,” Poilievre told the Conservative party convention in Quebec City last night. “A common-sense Conservative government that frees hardworking people to earn powerful paycheques that buy affordable food, gas and homes — in safe neighbourhoods.

“Or a reckless coalition — of Trudeau and the NDP — that punishes your work, taxes your money, taxes your food, doubles your housing bill and unleashes crime and chaos in your neighbourhood.”

QUEBEC CITY—Two decades after he helped merge warring factions of federal conservatives into a new party, former Progressive Conservative party leader Peter MacKay went back before party members Friday urging them to maintain a united front.

Voicing his confidence in Pierre Poilievre’s leadership, and also lavishing him with praise, MacKay said in Poilievre he sees the opportunity for the party to build another new coalition of conservatives.

But to take back government also requires the current coalition to stick together, he told the Conservatives’ policy convention Friday.

QUEBEC CITY – A year after his decisive first-ballot leadership victory coming in as members’ first choice in nearly every riding across the country, Pierre Poilievre is delivering a rally-style speech at the Conservative convention aimed at pushing his “common sense” message beyond the base, to the broader public.

So far this weekend, buoyed by positive polling numbers and a growing list of prominent party members proclaiming he’ll be Canada’s next prime minister, party unity seems to be holding strong, even as some contentious issues are back on party members’ priority lists.

It’s running live.

QUEBEC CITY – The Conservative Party’s moment has come to sell Canadians on its “common sense” plan, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre told his caucus on Thursday, as they gathered in Quebec City for the federal party’s three-day policy convention where controversial policy pitches risk impacting the party’s broadening appeal.

To start the day, Poilievre rallied his MPs with a speech filled with the anti-Justin Trudeau messaging that would be familiar to anyone who had attended one of his rallies this summer: the prime minister and his nearly eight years in power are to blame for the rising cost of living, housing costs and the “crime, chaos, drugs and disorder” that are “common on our streets.”

Conservative party members will assemble in Quebec City starting Thursday for a three-day policy convention — a chance to craft a playbook to woo voters who are showing signs of fatigue with the governing Liberals.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has seen his fortunes improve over the summer months with the party registering higher support in public opinion polls — figures that suggest the party could form a majority government if the next election were held any time soon.

Poilievre is laser-focused on affordability, inflation and the government’s perceived failings but some party members have other issues on their mind.

OTTAWA – Quebecers might be slowly but surely cozying up to Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative party, poll trends suggest, in a province where voting predictions can rapidly crumble with what can prove to be a volatile and emotional electorate.

Conservatives are used to trailing far behind the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals in Quebec and have rarely managed to make it above the 20-per-cent mark in polls of the province in the last decade. On the rare occasion they do, it’s even rarer for them to hold those numbers for an extended period.

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OTTAWA—There’s a long-accepted wisdom in federal political circles: the best chance for the Conservatives to form government happens when the vote is split on the left.

It was New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton’s surge in 2011, after all, that handed the federal Conservatives their majority that year.

But Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre isn’t one for sticking with the orthodoxy.

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre doesn’t know if he’ll attend the “Million Person March” against gender ideology being taught in schools, but he says parents should be the arbiters on how children are educated.

While attending a Pakistan Independence Day event in Toronto on Aug. 20, Mr. Poilievre was asked by Awaz media whether he will attend the march, according to social media posts.

OTTAWA – As conservative premiers change the rules around pronoun use in schools, members of the federal Conservative grassroots want Pierre Poilievre to wade further into the debate around gender.

A submission advancing to a policy convention next month proposes discussion of a Conservative government prohibiting “life altering medicinal or surgical interventions” for those 18 and younger who are looking to transition.

The pitch is similar to ones found across the United States, including in Florida where Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill in May banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth.