Canada

Thank God, the Conservative Party of Canada leadership race is over. To paraphrase Thomas Hobbes, it was nasty, brutish and long, way too long for anyone’s mental health. Especially if you were volunteering on a campaign, and even more so if your candidate did not win. Which was my experience: despite valiant efforts, and a noble fight, Jean Charest did not take home the crown. In the end, rival Pierre Poilievre swamped all his adversaries, winning 68 per cent of the points. Let’s just say the after party was not exactly a rocking good time.

Pierre Poilievre is quick-witted, more libertarian — and he may change his country yet

Contrary to media messaging, Pierre Poilievre, the new leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, is no Donald Trump. But he does represent a challenge to the left, so the brush must be dipped in the most lurid colors available.

On September 10, Poilievre won the Conservative leadership contest in a landslide, giving the party its first credible leader since Stephen Harper. Andrew Scheer, a former leader who squared off against Justin Trudeau, was likable but failed to project confidence, notably when the left held his feet to the fire over his Catholic pro-life views. Far less convincing was Scheer’s successor, Erin O’Toole, who wasn’t even likable. When it came to policy, O’Toole acted like a Liberal who’d somehow wandered into the Conservative caucus.

With Pierre Poilievre’s decisive victory in the federal Conservatives’ leadership race, the party now has a generational opportunity to radically re-imagine what Conservative policies could be palatable to the Canadian public. With a strong mandate at his back, the man nicknamed Skippy need only to win the trust of a plurality of the electorate to implement reforms that would have been dismissed as untouchable by Stephen Harper.

And if this Conservative leadership race was a fight for the soul of the party, as former Progressive Conservative activist and senator Marjory LeBreton recently posited, well, the results are in. Reform is back, baby. Moderate conservatism is dead, and the harder-right, angrier, rougher edge will live the life everlasting. In the end, it wasn’t even close.

TORONTO — Canada’s recently hapless Conservatives, losers of three straight federal elections that exposed divisions between their populist and more moderate factions, are poised on Saturday to elect a 43-year-old firebrand with a scorched-earth style and social media savvy as their new leader to take on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

All indications are that Pierre Poilievre has the contest it in the bag.