Conservative Party

The election dust has settled, leaving the Liberals with a minority government. This has led to calls — from both conservatives and progressives — for Pierre Poilievre to step down as Conservative party leader. But these calls are premature, overlook the success of several of Poilievre’s policies — many of which were co-opted by the Liberals in order to win — and severely underestimate the Liberals’ incumbent advantage in the face of an unforeseeable natural disaster that plagued an otherwise normal Canadian election campaign — U.S. President Donald Trump.

Canada is worth fighting for. pic.twitter.com/cT0r0UI2rG

— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) May 5, 2025

Pierre Poilievre was far from faultless in losing his own Carleton seat in the Ottawa suburbs — a seat he had held for nearly 21 years, through six federal elections.

Leaders can’t take their own seats for granted, or at least their local organizers can’t. They have to develop a sense for when there is a voter uprising forming and warn the leader that he or she has to return home more often from cross-country campaigning.

OTTAWA — Seat-less Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre will try his luck in Alberta.

After losing on election night in his now-former Ottawa-area riding of Carleton, the Tory leader will get the chance to snag a seat in the House of Commons thanks to Battle River-Crowfoot MP Damien Kurek, who has agreed to step aside.

Mark Carney and the Liberals won another minority on Monday while the Conservatives overperformed expectations. But beyond the seat count, the real story might be the deep changes in the coalition of voters for both parties, both in terms of regional strength, but especially with respect to some demographics—age and ethnicity in particular.

OK, Boomers pic.twitter.com/0aSbpoBtw5

— Robyn Urback (@RobynUrback) May 1, 2025

Ontario Premier Doug Ford clearly doesn’t like federal Conservatives, but did he really sabotage their campaign in the province, as one re-elected Ontario MP recently suggested? Not likely, if you stick to the facts.

The unseemly infighting between the leaderships of Ontario Progressive Conservatives and Pierre Poilievre’s federal Conservatives boiled over this week, to the credit of neither. Ontario Conservative MP Jamil Jivani took quite a run at Ford after the federal party’s election loss Monday. “ When it was our turn to run an election, h e couldn’t stay out of our business, always getting his criticisms and all his opinions out, distracting our campaign, trying to make it about him, trying to position himself as some kind of political genius that we needed to be taking cues from,” Jivani said. He added that Ford was a “hype man” for the federal Liberals.

OTTAWA — Some Conservative MPs are expressing support for party leader Pierre Poilievre after he lost both the federal election and his own seat on Monday.

In his concession speech early Tuesday morning, Poilievre indicated he would stay on as leader. The Conservative party did not respond when asked Wednesday whether he has officially decided to stay.

“My view is he’s not going anywhere,” said Kory Teneycke, Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s former campaign manager and a former director of communications for former prime minister Stephen Harper.

As Mark Carney settles into the role of Canada’s prime minister, he will not only have to take on US President Donald Trump, but also wider divisions within his own country.

Among those is a generational divide, with young voters who are concerned about housing unaffordability, crime and the cost of living coalescing around the Conservatives.

It’s a reversal from 2015, when youth voted in record numbers, helping sweep Carney’s predecessor Justin Trudeau to power.

By now, it is pretty clear that the 25-point lead Pierre Poilievre enjoyed in the polls a mere four months ago had very little to do with him. He looked like a shoo-in to be the Prime Minister of Canada because he faced an extremely unpopular opponent and was catering to a very disgruntled electorate who were focused on their personal grievances. But remove the opponent, have voter’s concerns shift from past angers to future uncertainties and his massive electoral edge disappeared.

In fact, even when he was leading, it was evident that Canadians were not particularly enamoured with Poilievre the person — his favourability ratings never exceeded his negatives.

‘It’s an unmitigated disaster’: Conservative insiders debate Pierre Poilievre’s future as leader after election defeat

OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is not the prime minister. As of Tuesday morning, he was not even an MP.

At the nexus of those two outcomes, which just months ago would have been nearly unthinkable, is a maelstrom of questions: How are Conservatives processing the results? Can Poilievre stay on as leader after failing to form government and losing the seat he has represented for more than 20 years? And how can he helm a newly expanded caucus from outside the House of Commons?

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Voter turnout in Canada’s election the highest since 2015