Conservative Party

Canada’s new Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has vowed to “fight tooth and nail” for Canadians as he sets his sights on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government.

“Canadians are hurting, and it is our job to transform that hurt into hope,” Mr Poilievre said in his first address to his party caucus on Monday.

Mr Poilievre was elected leader of the Conservative party on Saturday after winning it in a landslide first-ballot victory with nearly 70% of the vote from party members.

Commentators have said the leader of the right-wing party will usher in a new era of populist politics in Canada.

Pierre Poilievre became the new leader of the Conservative party on Saturday, sweeping the contest with 68 per cent of the vote. Poilievre’s victory is good for Canada — his disruptive politics, while not always pretty, are sorely needed in a country where the seldom-challenged status quo has left too many Canadians behind.

In his first speech to caucus since winning the party’s top job, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Monday his focus at the helm will be on holding the government to account for its perceived failings on the economy and inflation.

Poilievre — who spoke for roughly 10 minutes, sometimes to thunderous applause from the assembled MPs and senators — said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the governing Liberals are out of touch with the struggles of working people.

He said that, as the son of a single mother and the adoptive son of two school teachers, he comes from “humble origins” and can sympathize with the plight of Canadians struggling to get by.

OTTAWA — Despite the carefully crafted strategy that delivered Pierre Poilievre a resounding victory in the federal Conservative leadership race, campaign insiders say they were caught off guard during the six-month campaign by the thousands of young people who flocked to take out memberships and support Poilievre.

Pierre Poilievre’s new challenge

Pierre Poilievre needs to engage the issues with serious debate and policy and leave behind the fringe theories and divisiveness of his leadership campaign.

The candidate is now the leader. Can Pierre Poilievre rise above the divisive tactics of his Conservative leadership campaign to grow into the role of a potential prime minister in waiting?

That is, after all, the role that Poilievre now has after his overwhelming win to become leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and leader of the official opposition.

The answer to that question will determine whether Poilievre can build the Conservatives to be a credible challenger to the governing Liberals, a task that requires the support of a broader base of Canadians beyond what he built to win the leadership.

Federal Liberals should be very worried.

Pierre Poilievre’s decisive victory Saturday confirmed not just that the Conservative party belongs to him — but also that it is now more unified, more focused, more organized and better packaged to win.

For the first time since the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative parties merged, the Liberals face an opposition leader who must make no real effort to keep his party united.

OTTAWA — Pierre Poilievre began putting his mark on the Conservative party Sunday after a stunning victory in the leadership race which put to bed all questions about how big a mandate he’d get from the membership.

Poilievre swept 300 of the 338 available ridings, analysis of Saturday night’s results shows.

Among them: those represented in the House of Commons by two of the other candidates in the contest, Scott Aitchison and Leslyn Lewis, and the riding of York Centre, which another candidate, Roman Baber, once represented provincially in Ontario.

That couldn’t be clearer.

The Conservative Party has decided what it wants to be, and what it wants to be is Pierre Poilievre’s party.

The rank and file, and the hundreds of thousands who joined the rank and file, from convoy supporters to frustrated suburbanites, have decided they want the party to be an unabashed, never-apologize movement, and they wanted someone just like that to lead them. Those folks were always drawing a picture of Mr. Poilievre in their minds and eventually they sketched it onto leadership ballots.

Pierre Poilievre’s victory to win the Conservative Party of Canada leadership comes as no surprise, but now begins the hard part.

At a subdued convention, which nixed $8,000 worth of confetti cannons out of respect for Queen Elizabeth II and began with a melancholic jazz rendition of God Save the King, Poilievre won on the first ballot with 68.15 per cent of points and 330 ridings under his belt. Jean Charest, with 16.07 per cent, wasn’t even close.

OTTAWA, Ont. — Pierre Poilievre is the new leader of the Conservative Party. The seven-term MP was born on Canada’s Prairies and represents a riding on the outskirts of the nation’s capital. He attracted unusually large crowds to dozens of campaign rallies and unleashed bombastic rhetoric everywhere he went.

Now he has a shot at forming the next government. Ottawa’s political bubble is obsessed with one question: Where exactly will Poilievre lead a Conservative movement hell-bent on booting Justin Trudeau’s Liberals from power?

During an interview in July — sometime after it became clear that he was more than likely to win the leadership race — Pierre Poilievre buried any notion that he would change his ways once he became leader of the Conservative Party.

“People know what to expect from me,” he said. “There is no grand pivot. I am who I am.”

Poilievre has never been a shrinking violet. He first ran for office when he was 24 years old and he was a central character in some of the biggest political battles of the Stephen Harper era.

Watch what he does not what he says.

In politics it’s important to have the right political enemies.

New Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has clearly decided one of the right political enemies for him to have in terms of running against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa.