By Lori Turnbull

October 3, 2025

In a recent interview on CTV’s Question Period, host Vassy Kapelos talked with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre about his upcoming leadership review, scheduled for the end of January in Calgary.

Kapelos asked Poilievre whether he had a “magic number” in mind in terms of a threshold of support that must be attained for him to continue as leader. He replied: “No. I don’t believe in magic.” This was a smart response, as there is no right answer to that question for a leader who has something to prove.

The backstory to the magic number question as a political trope dates to the last century, to January 1983 to be precise, when Joe Clark resigned the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party after a party convention in Winnipeg defeated a motion to review Clark’s leadership by 66.9% — a result most people thought was more than enough support for the status quo to keep Clark in place. But Clark resigned and lost the leadership to Brian Mulroney that June.

Which has left the magic number question as a feature of all party leadership reviews, but especially Conservative ones, ever since — mostly because everyone knows that, based on cautionary due diligence, the leader in question has a threshold in his head. And everyone knows the leader in question is not going to articulate that number because he wants to keep his options open.

But if former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s political trajectory is any indication, Pierre Poilievre has nothing to worry about in January.

The Conservative Party of Canada constitution requires that leaders be subject to a review by vote of the party if they fail to form a government and do not resign. However, it must be noted that the Conservatives have chosen to avail themselves of the Reform Act, which means that the leader can be excused by a vote of the majority of caucus – regardless of how much support they receive in the leadership review by the party.

The Conservatives haven’t won an election since 2011 and the last two leaders, Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole, were both shown the door before a leadership review could  materialize. They were both turfed despite having won the popular vote and holding Justin Trudeau and the Liberals to a minority government. The Conservatives generally don’t keep leaders who lose elections around, asterisks notwithstanding.

But Pierre Poilievre is not like Andrew Scheer or Erin O’Toole. He’s more like Stephen Harper, who lost the 2004 election to Paul Martin but received the support of 84% of the party in a leadership review the following year. Both Harper and Poilievre had a command of the party and the caucus that eluded Scheer and O’Toole.

Both Harper and Poilievre won the leadership of the party easily on the first ballot (Scheer won on the 13th, O’Toole on the third), leaving opponents in their dust and earning the right to claim to speak for the Conservative movement. Both had a capacity to keep the Party united and intact.

The default assumption is that the leadership review in January should be a cakewalk for Poilievre, as long as people think he can still win an election.

Scheer and O’Toole, on the other hand, were not the first choice of a significant number of party members. They both ran against a chief opponent who seemed more likely to win and, even after the votes were counted and the winners proclaimed, the party still seemed divided.

This meant that, as leaders, both Scheer and O’Toole were pulled in competing and contradictory directions, leaving them destined to disappoint key constituencies among the party faithful.

Both Stephen Harper and Pierre Poilievre managed to keep the party together, despite its various and, at times, seemingly irreconcilable factions, by offering the prospect of electoral victory. It’s much easier to keep a party united when you’re winning.

Prime Minister Harper was known as a micromanager and was famous for his control-freak approach to caucus relations but he delivered three wins in a row, which kept both the caucus and the party-at-large behind him. Poilievre was poised to do the same thing until U.S. President Donald Trump started talking tariffs and musing about Canada as the 51st state, and Justin Trudeau resigned.

The 2025 election ended up being a referendum on who was best equipped to handle President Trump and the related economic fallout. Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberals won a plurality of seats and Poilievre lost his own.

In other words, the default assumption is that the leadership review in January should be a cakewalk for Poilievre, as long as people think he can still win an election. Anything less than 85% in favour of his leadership would be a disaster. After all, no one is challenging his leadership and party members need to travel to Calgary to cast votes in person. Surely, not many people will spend their resources to attend the vote in the dead of winter just to take a shot at him.

Furthermore, the status of the government – a minority rather than a majority – means that an election could happen at any time. It would make no strategic sense for the Conservative Party to shop around at this point, not knowing who might be interested in the job, especially with Carney’s political capital among Canadians not yet exhausted.

By all accounts and observations, the Conservative caucus is entirely behind Poilievre.

If the leadership review in January produces a high number, it could be the shot in the arm for Pierre Poilievre that lights a fire under Prime Minister Carney. By that time, the austerity budget will have sunk in and, if the status quo pertains, relations with the United States could still be under intense strain with no end in sight.

If Poilievre and the Conservatives continue to hammer home their messaging around affordability, and the leadership review ends up a love-in for Poilievre, the battle between the Liberals and the Conservatives could become closer to call.

Policy Contributing Writer Lori Turnbull is a Senior Advisor at the Institute on Governance.