By Don Newman

January 28, 2025

While we prognosticators are always cautioned to be wary of absolute, unqualified predictions in politics — especially in this era of “anything’s possible” — it is as safe as it can possibly be to say at this writing that Pierre Poilievre will be confirmed as leader of the Conservative Party at its convention in Calgary later this week.

Poilievre will quite likely be confirmed by a large enough majority to quell any dissent surrounding his continuing in the job. And once that has happened, some Conservatives may wonder what they’ve done.

Those Conservatives are not the far right-wing base of the party that will give Poilievre his convincing victory in Calgary. Those base party members are the true believers who buy into Poilievre’s narrative that he deserves to continue in the top job because in last spring’s election, he increased the party’s popular vote, increased the number of Conservative seats in the House of Commons and (narrowly) prevented the Liberals and Mark Carney from winning a majority government.

Of course, buying into that argument requires ignoring or at least discounting a number of countervailing facts. Among them: for more than a year before the election, the Conservatives coasted consistently at a comfortable 20 points ahead of the Liberals in the public opinion polls and seemed on the verge of a majority government of record-breaking, mammoth proportions.

Poilievre managed to squander that lead, ending up more than 20 seats behind the Liberals and losing his own Ottawa-area seat, which he had held for 20 years, by more than 5,000 votes. This was not all attributable to the critical mass of timing, qualifications, and Trump-phobia that helped make Mark Carney prime minister. Poilievre’s handling of the switch in rivals from Justin Trudeau to Carney was also a major factor.

During the election campaign, among many other mistakes dissected post-mortem, he abandoned the longstanding tradition of all the major political parties of having journalists travel with the leader’s tour on the campaign plane.

Political parties do that to make sure the leader can immediately communicate comments, reactions and policy announcements through the media at the back of the plane to Canadians. They also do it because they charge the news organizations for their seats, helping to defer the expense of the campaign plane.

However, Poilievre was paranoid about the press. Like Trump, he has generally preferred communicating through social media or with friendly podcasters. That reinforces his message with the party’s true believers but limits wider distribution of his thoughts.

Poilievre also antagonized traditional Conservative voters in the business community. He and other leaders of the party have decided the demographic route to power is the backing of right-wing working class Canadians, many of whom have bought into Trump’s MAGA propaganda, which exploits economic hardship to fuel grievance.

This rift with the Conservative Party’s ‘other base’ is one of the reasons for the chill between Poilievre and Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who is both a businessman and a much more politically pragmatic populist than Poilievre.

This tactical choice has alienated the traditional managerial class of Canadian Tories for whom Carney’s credentials offer an entirely comfortable political haven. In the run-up to the last election, Poilievre spoke to a Bay Street audience in Toronto, telling the executives there not to expect any favours from the government he seemed on the verge of forming.

At a recent dinner at the Albany Club in Toronto, the business and political hub of traditional Conservatives in Ontario, some in the audience were particularly complementary about Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Liberal Government. Not a good omen for a national Conservative leader.

This rift with the Conservative Party’s “other base” is one of the reasons for the chill between Poilievre and Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who is both a businessman and a much more politically pragmatic populist than Poilievre. Presented with an opportunity Wednesday during the premiers’ news conference in Ottawa to wish Poilievre good luck in the looming leadership review, Ford pointedly demurred.

Since his humiliating double defeat in the election, Poilievre has gone some way to cleaning up his act. He has lifted the ban on party MPs doing interviews with mainstream media. He has even done them himself, including with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (full disclosure, my former longtime employer), the iconic English service he had promised to defund if he became Prime Minister.

Poilievre even made an unannounced appearance at the annual Parliamentary Press Gallery Dinner, at which he made a short speech making fun of himself:  Told by advisers he had a choice, that he could make himself more likeable if he began smiling, talking with people and shaking hands, or he could try buying a dog, he joked, his response was “What kind of dog?”

Of course, Poilievre’s political persona isn’t his only problem.

His major one is Mark Carney. Since Carney replaced Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister and leader of the Liberals, the fortunes of both parties have changed.

The global reach Carney displayed in his January 20th Davos speech has already registered at home. An Angus Reid Institute poll published Monday showed Carney with the post-Davos bump of a 60% positive rating to 34% negative, up eight points since December. Spark Insights has him at 61 per cent. Meanwhile, just 36% rate Poilievre positively per Angus Reid and 39%, according to Spark.

But at the Calgary convention this week, the party faithful will ignore all the negatives. They will reconfirm some one less popular than the party he leads, half as popular as his main opponent and in some ways trying to reinvent himself. Then they will sit and wait to see what happens.

Between labour Day and Christmas, two MPs elected as Conservatives — Chris d’Entremont and Michael Ma — defected to the Liberals. Since then, there have been persistent rumours that other members of the Conservative caucus are ready to go.

Once Poilievre is confirmed in his job as party leader, two more defections from the Conservatives to the Liberals would give the government a majority, which would be a devastating setback for both the Conservative leader and his party.

Yes, Poilievre is all but certain to hold onto his leadership this week. But it could be a hollow victory.

Policy Columnist Don Newman is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a lifetime member and a past president of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery.