Pierre Poilievre might be cooked

The clock is officially ticking on Pierre Poilievre. The Conservative Party of Canada is reportedly set to hold a leadership review next January in Calgary, one that will give members an opportunity to weigh in on his performance. Even making it to next January’s vote will set him apart from his two predecessors, Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole, who both resigned before they had to face their party’s membership after losing their own elections. Winning it by a sufficiently convincing margin will be another matter entirely. 

First, of course, he has to win back a seat in the House of Commons. Mark Carney has said he will call a byelection for the riding of Battle River-Crowfoot, one officially resigned by Conservative MP Damien Kurek earlier this week. And while it’s one of the safest Conservative seats in the country, it also presents a special kind of danger for Poilievre given the increase in separatist activity — if not support — in the province. Alberta separatists are heavily overrepresented in the Conservative membership of Kurek’s largely rural riding, and Poilievre will have to find a way to put them in their place without risking a backlash. 

This is the kind of tightrope he’ll have to walk for the next six months. In order to secure the support of his base, and especially the members enthusiastic enough to turn out for a leadership review, he’ll have to continue catering to them with Costco-sized quantities of red meat. But it’s precisely that sort of pandering that helped cost him the last election, and could just as easily cost him the next one. The more he tries to hold onto his current job, the further the job he really wants slips from his reach. 

So far, at least, he’s shown no signs of being able to thread this particular political needle. Take his recent comments about immigration, ones that seem designed to appeal to a very specific slice of his party’s base — and alienate the rest of the country in the process. “We want severe limits on population growth to reverse the damage the Liberals did to our system,” he told reporters before turning on his heel and walking away from their follow-up questions. If this sounds more like something PPC leader Maxime Bernier would say, that’s probably by design. 

Never mind, for the moment, that the federal government has already made massive changes to its immigration policy — ones that could actually produce negative population growth over the next few years. As Waterloo economics professor Mikal Skuterud said on social media, “Poilievre's call for 'severe limits on population growth' suggests he hasn't understood how far Liberals' 2025-2027 Immigration Targets go. We may see *declining* population levels (not just growth rates) in coming quarters.” 

His comment about immigration also suggests he doesn’t understand the real challenge he faces right now. He can spend the next six months pushing his party further to the right in an attempt to motivate its base and retain the leadership. But he may simply be securing the most Pyrrhic of victories, given the impact that would have on his standing with the broader Canadian public. 

According to multiple pollsters, that standing has already eroded since the election. According to Nanos Research, Mark Carney now enjoys a 26 point advantage over Poilievre when it comes to who Canadians prefer as prime minister. “The proportion of Canadians who prefer Conservative Leader Poilievre as PM has hit the lowest level since he assumed the leadership of the party in 2022,” Nik Nanos said. 

EKOS Research has the spread even wider, with Carney’s job approval rating at +36 and Poilievre’s at -34. Maybe the most damning data points come from Spark Advocacy’s latest poll, which shows that two-thirds of Canadians have positive feelings about their new prime minister. Worse, for Poilievre and his team, Carney is more popular among young people (by 10 points) and men (by 15 points) than the Conservative leader. These were supposed to be key building blocks in the new Conservative coalition Poilievre is building. 

It’s not as though Poilievre and the Conservatives are doomed to lose a fifth federal election in a row, whenever that election happens. Canadians will eventually tire of Carney, and that could happen far sooner than the prime minister and his advisors would like to imagine. But relying on Carney to fail is not a recipe for Poilievre’s success. If he wants to win the next election, he needs to actually take stock of why he lost the last one — and make the necessary adjustments. 

Mark Bourrie, who wrote a biography of Poilievre in advance of what looked like an inevitable victory, doesn’t think that’s going to happen. In a recent piece for The Walrus, he noted that “Poilievre seems to lack self-awareness and reflection. Loyalty, a virtue in others, becomes a liability when a politician clings to those who aren’t up to the job. Or who alienate potential friends. Since he was a kid, Poilievre’s rigidity has walled out new ideas and contrary, sometimes better, ways of looking at things.”

The leader, in other words, is not for turning. He may be incapable, both by virtue of temperament and training, of the sort of introspection and humility required to acknowledge mistakes and make changes. Even if he did, it’s not clear his party’s radicalized membership, which has been trained by Poilievre and his team over the last few years to see moderation as weakness, would accept it. 

Poilievre’s leadership is safe for now, at least. But as Global News’s Mackenzie Gray noted in a recent story, “one source warned that if the Conservative leader isn’t careful, a push to remove him could snowball quickly.” He might want to ask Scheer and O’Toole what that looks like — and whether there’s any way to stop it.