Conservative Party

Polls are stating Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), will be our next prime minister and will enjoy a large majority government.

But before Poilievre begins measuring the drapes in the prime minister’s residence there are some things he should keep in mind.

First, has he peaked too soon? Yes, he and his party are riding high in the polls. In fact, I am not aware of any opposition party that has been so far ahead of its opponents a year or so ahead of an election. But that is the key phrase — “a year or so ahead of an election.”

It was Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s birthday on Monday, but he could’ve probably done without the package that one of his more obscure backbenchers dropped on his doorstep.

Conservative MP Arnold Viersen might want to consider another line of work after getting lambasted publicly by Poilievre and being forced to issue a groveling retraction.

Ouch.

Liberals like to portray Pierre Poilievre as scary, but a lot of Canadians simply aren’t frightened

Liberals like to say that the large polling gap with the Conservatives will be narrowed when voters stop and take a hard look at what Pierre Poilievre would do to the country.

But a new poll from Abacus shows that many Canadians have no illusions about how much Poilievre could shake up things — beyond just axing taxes — and the Conservatives are still holding a comfortable, 16-point lead in this latest survey. It should be noted that Abacus removes undecided voters from these horse-race results.

I think the hidden message from the poll is that people do not expect Poilievre to govern much differently from Trudeau.

Cosmetic change will be the order of the day.

OTTAWA — Stephen Harper feared a revolt in his Conservative caucus when, as prime minister, he decided to go ahead with compensation for residential school survivors, a newly published book reveals.

That’s part of the reason why Pierre Poilievre got in such hot water in 2008 when he made disparaging remarks about Indigenous people and questioned the point of the payments, writes journalist Andrew Lawton in his new book “Pierre Poilievre, A Political Life.”

All indicators suggest that an absolute rout is coming for the Liberals, at the hands of Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party of Canada.

The next election is presently set for October 20th next year, although legislation (Bill C-65) has been introduced to delay it a week.

But Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party aren’t Poilievre’s biggest threat to forming government — it could be the unions.

A former Conservative is accusing party brass of blocking him from running to be nominated as a candidate in the next election.

Anthony Yacub, 24, said he believes the party made him ineligible for the nomination in order to run a “star” candidate in his riding, currently held by Liberal MP Jennifer O’Connell.

“it’s a real slap in the face to grassroots people,” he told CBC News. “What does it say to them? It basically says, ‘We don’t really care what you think.'”

No one knows what the ballot-box question will be in the next election, whenever it does come.

But at least one legal scholar in Canada believes voters should be asking some hard questions about the Constitution — specifically, whether a future prime minister would be willing to opt out of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Pierre Poilievre has dropped some broad hints in the past couple of weeks that he could be ready to blaze a trail here as prime minister. No federal government has ever used the notwithstanding clause in the 40-plus years it has been part of the Constitution. But the Conservative leader told a police chiefs’ gathering he might go down that road to get tougher on criminals.

Canada’s corporate titans are helping the country’s Conservative Party build a financial war chest to oust Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as frustration grows among business leaders about the country’s economic performance.

The Conservatives have raised C$2.45 in donations for every C$1 Trudeau’s Liberal Party has pulled in since the start of last year. Their support base is broad, but the donor lists include a roll call of executives from the upper echelons of Canadian finance and business — including telecommunications billionaire Edward Rogers, private equity executive Paul Desmarais III and Dan Daviau, head of brokerage firm Canaccord Genuity Group Inc.

The next federal election could be more than a year away but political parties are already deep into planning their next campaigns — and recruiting new candidates.

Well ahead in the polls and reporting record-breaking sums in political donations, the Conservatives are also leading the pack on nominating candidates new to federal politics.

To date, the Conservative Party of Canada has nominated about 40 new faces as candidates. The party currently has 118 members of Parliament.

Sir Keir Starmer is leader of the United Kingdom’s Labour Party and looks all but certain to become prime minister sometime between now and Jan. 28, the latest the next election can be held.

Starmer, who got his knighthood from a previous job as the director of public prosecutions, has two things going for him. While he’s not the most exciting or personable politician to come strolling down the pike, he’s not nearly as scary as his batty predecessor, the Marxist crank Jeremy Corbyn. He’s also not nearly as disliked as Rishi Sunak, the fifth consecutive Tory prime minister and third in six years to get the job without voters first having a say-so.

OTTAWA — Political pundit Sabrina Maddeaux has suspended her campaign to become a candidate for the Conservative Party of Canada in the Greater Toronto Area, saying she has lost faith in the election’s integrity, while the party disputes allegations she has made about misconduct in the nomination process.

OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s view of lobbyists as “useless and overpaid” hasn’t stopped him from meeting with them, according to records in Canada’s lobbyist registry.

Poilievre denounced the lobbying culture in corporate Canada in a speech in March and again in an opinion piece published in the National Post last week. He said any corporation looking to make legislative change should convince Canadians of the merit of the idea rather than reaching out directly to MPs and senators.