Conservative Party

Pressure is mounting on Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to fire Jenni Byrne, his national campaign manager, whom critics hold responsible for the party’s election defeat last month, sources told Radio-Canada.

“After a loss, heads have to roll,” said one Conservative.

“If Jenni Byrne stays, we won’t be able to support Pierre,” a second added.

Sounds like Doug Ford again.

To limit the time Pierre Poilievre’s critics have to organize ahead of his leadership review by party rank-and-file members and to eliminate uncertainty, some senior Conservatives are considering moving the party’s convention to this fall instead of the spring 2026. And former two-term Calgary MP Devinder Shory says Poilievre should resign as party leader, call a leadership race, and seek a fresh mandate if he wants to lead the party in the next election.

“I know we’re going to be advancing the convention because we have to have that [leadership] vote,” said one senior Conservative. “It’s a matter of practicalities how soon can it be organized. I believe it would be September or October. Without that vote it’s hard, it’s going to distract everything.”

Ben Woodfinden, the 31-year-old former director of communications for Pierre Poilievre, understands the challenges faced by younger Canadians. Ten years of a Liberal-led, no-growth government, Ben laments, “means they live in a country that doesn’t work for them anymore.” They want change.

And there’s a flip side, he cynically suggests: Some Canadians are content with the status quo, because it benefits them. They bought houses decades ago that are worth 20 times what they paid for them. It’s in their interest, he argues, to encourage unsustainable levels of immigrants to support existing social programs and to constrain investment in the infrastructure needed to re-energize the Canadian economy.

As the dust settled on election night, things immediately got off on the wrong foot for the defeated Conservative Party.

Older voters had instructed Tory candidates that they wanted to see a “more conciliatory tone,” according to Calgary Centre MP Greg McLean, yet Bowmanville–Oshawa North MP Jamil Jivani weaponized what should have been a perfunctory election-night interview to settle personal scores with Ontario Premier Doug Ford. It’s true that certain provincial leadership teams haven’t had a constructive past couple of years with their federal cousins, but no future votes will be gained airing that dirty laundry in public.

In addition to selecting an interim Opposition leader in the House on May 6 while Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre remains without a seat in the House of Commons, Tory MPs also voted to invoke the federal Reform Act, which allows for a secret-ballot vote to review party leadership at any time.

While many Conservative MPs have expressed their support for Poilievre, the legislation could haunt him as he gets ready for the next federal election.

Susan Delacourt: One word leapt out at me in a piece you wrote for this paper last week, Matt, and it was this one: “killed.” As in, the Conservatives got killed in the election. I agree that their hopes got killed — especially the hopes they had when they were 20 points ahead of the Liberals. But here’s the thing: I’m not convinced Conservatives are staring down that reality. The early indications, in fact, point to more of the same from Pierre Poilievre and his team.

Matt Gurney: I was using that word more as a play on the phase “election post-mortem” than I was to describe what I think happened to them. I’ll confess something. I don’t know what to make of that election. It’s different from any other I’ve covered. Something wild I discovered when writing my column is that Poilievre got a bigger share of the vote this time than did the last five PMs to win a majority. So I can get why Tories might want to stay the course and write this one off as a fluke. They could be right. They could go wrong, though. Someone needs to be that guy in the room and get them thinking about that.

OTTAWA — Nearly two weeks after a bitter election defeat, the Conservative party has turned its sights to its next chapter: rolling out tone shifts, a renewed media strategy, and the reintroduction of its leader to start courting voters who turned elsewhere at the ballot box.

Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives — for supporters have, at least publicly, united around him — are keen to point to the party’s expanded vote share, seat count and base as reasons not to depose their seatless leader and those central to his campaign.

But that refrain can’t last forever.

Toronto Star advice is the best advice.

The dust has begun to settle after the Conservatives lost a fourth consecutive election and there’s been no notable effort to stir things up again, with no widespread or open criticism of leader Pierre Poilievre emerging so far.

This has not been a typical scenario for the Conservative Party in recent years, with previous leaders being ousted by a vote or intense campaign of criticism following an election loss.

Federal Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre is rejecting a severance package estimated at about $150,000 that he was entitled to receive after losing his Ottawa-area riding, a party official says.

Under the rules of the House of Commons, Mr. Poilievre is eligible for severance worth $154,850, according to the calculations of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF).

A staple of Mark Carney’s stump speech during the election was the line that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is the kind of politician who has never changed his mind since he was 17.

“Who hasn’t changed their mind since they were 17?” the Liberal leader would mock.

The attack was validated by Poilievre’s own words in his interview with Jordan Peterson in December, in which he said he has been “saying precisely the same things” since he was a teenager.

A Conservative Party fundraising email alleges the Liberals are trying to “tip the scales” in riding recounts, language some political watchers say is concerning as some Canadians say they don’t trust the results of last week’s election.

The email, sent to the Conservatives’ mailing list on Wednesday, solicits donations to “help us hold the line” as recounts play out.

“The Liberals are working to flip just enough seats to edge closer to a majority. We can’t let that happen,” reads the email.

Before the Conservatives decide Pierre Poilievre’s political fate, they should consider how their “one and done” approach of dumping their leader after one election loss, ever since Stephen Harper was defeated in 2015, has worked out for them.

The answer is not well.

Poilievre fell victim to a Liberal media TDS eruption. He did more than well enough to merit a 2nd chance.