Conservative Party

Shorter Marjory: Poilievre is a stinky butt!

I have been a Conservative all of my adult life, witnessing firsthand the party’s evolutions and iterations over 60 years. Throughout that time — as I went from being a secretary at party headquarters and in John Diefenbaker’s office, through years as a war horse in battles that all seemed momentous at the time, to my grateful service in the Senate of Canada — there was always a common bond that held Conservatives together as we worked in the best interests of the party and of the country.

Respected voices inside the federal Conservative Party of Canada are hinting at serious internal problems that portend a bleak future.

In fact, it doesn’t take much divining to see seismic fractures are beginning to emerge, ones serious enough to spell doom to a coalition masterfully held together by Stephen Harper but now teetering.

Last week, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner wrote a long screed outlining her reasons for deciding not to pursue the leadership of Alberta’s United Conservative Party, chief among them being a divided and dysfunctional caucus. She took the opportunity to point out her federal Tory caucus is plagued with the same problems.

“Internal problems” should be read as “OMG! There are people who actually want the conservative party to be conservative.”

A former Conservative Senate leader is expressing concern about the direction Pierre Poilievre is taking the party, worrying the Tories might be reaching the point of “fracturing beyond repair.”

In an exclusive interview with The West Block’s Mercedes Stephenson, Marjory LeBreton said Conservative leadership candidates jumping on the “grievance brigade” is doing a “disservice” not only to the party but to the country.

With the nation’s capital bracing for anticipated anti-mandate “freedom” movement protests during Canada Day weekend, interim Conservative Leader Candice Bergen says her MPs are free to attend.

“I support peaceful and legal demonstrations, and if my MPs want to be there, they’re free to do whatever they want, and they’ll answer to their constituents,” Bergen said in an interview on CTV’s Question Period airing on Sunday.

The Conservative leadership campaign took another nasty turn Thursday with two of the frontrunners trading shots over what the other calls unethical behavior. Pierre Poilievre is running television ads in Toronto attacking Patrick Brown over his actions as mayor of Brampton while Brown is accusing Poilievre of running a misleading membership sales campaign.

I think by now Brown must know he has no hope of winning, even his campaign manager has bugged out. Surely he must know his ethnic vote whoring is detestable even by today’s low standards. Still I expect more scorched earth from him.

Pierre Poilievre says he supports “all Canadians who peacefully stand up for their rights” amid reports a second so-called convoy protest is planned for Ottawa.

In a statement Tuesday, Poilievre denied claims the presumptive Conservative leadership frontrunner would greet the potential protest planned for Canada Day in Ottawa.

But he called vaccine mandates “unfair, unscientific bullying” and said he encourages “everyone to keep protesting government attacks on our freedoms.”

Supports but will not meet them. Wishy one day, Washy the next. That is so O’Toole.

Two years ago, Jean Charest suggested the Conservative Party had changed from what he once knew.

Today, he’s seeking to lead it. In an interview with The West Block’s Mercedes Stephenson, Charest remained adamant he can win the party’s leadership race, despite claims from his rivals that they have signed up hundreds of thousands of members.

Delusional? Given the way the last two CPC leaderships have turned out anything is possible.

Here’s why a Pierre Poilievre victory in the Conservative leadership race may not be a given

OTTAWA — On the surface, the math looks obvious: Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre claims his supporters equal roughly half of the total number of people expected to be eligible to vote in the party’s leadership race.

So even though the ballots aren’t even in the mail and the victor won’t be announced until Sept. 10, is the race already over?

It’s not quite that simple.

Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre’s campaign issued a formal complaint to the Conservative Party of Canada alleging paid-for party membership fees and other undeclared expenditures by opponent Patrick Brown’s team, the National Post has learned.

Conservative Party of Canada leadership contender Jean Charest is accusing rival Pierre Poilievre of exaggerating his membership count, calling the claim “Pierreinflation.”

The former Quebec premier says the Poilievre campaign’s assertion that they’ve signed up 311,958 Canadians thus far to support their team is “all spin.”

“At the rate it’s going, we call it ‘Pierreinflation’ in terms of recruiting members. I think he’s recruited members in the state of Maine and New Hampshire if you’re to follow his logic… He keeps inflating the numbers, no one believes the numbers,” he told CTV’s Question Period.

OTTAWA — Is Pierre Poilievre’s victory as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada inevitable? It seems more and more like that could be the case, even though opponents are questioning his membership numbers.

Poilievre’s senior advisor Jenni Byrne raised many eyebrows when she revealed that the campaign had allegedly sold nearly 312,000 memberships on Poilievre’s website, a number that, if accurate, would represent about half of the “well over 600,000” total memberships sold as of the June 3 cutoff date.