With Carney's victory, can Conservatives avoid a fresh fracture?

National Observer

01-05-2025

In the aftermath of the Mark Carney Liberals' stunning win on Monday evening, pundits and party strategists haven't been shy about weighing in on what went so wrong for a party that seemed destined to win a massive victory mere months ago.
While the Conservative Party measurably improved both its seat count and popular vote on April 28, the election of a strong minority Liberal government and the loss of Pierre Poilievre's Ottawa seat represents a massive failure for a party that led the governing Liberals by a staggering 25 points in early 2025.
As many debate the immediate future of the Conservative Party, including whether Poilievre should remain at its helm, Conservatives confront a more existential threat: can the party avoid fracture?
The question harkens back to the 1980s, when the then-Progressive Conservative Party of Canada saw similar divisions. Those divisions led to the formation of the Reform Party, which was primarily concerned with Western Canadian issues, in 1987. Then, in 1991, some Quebec Conservatives splintered to join former Liberals and form the Bloc Quebecois in response to the Meech Lake Accord.
Though the Progressive Conservatives continued to exist, the split led to three Liberal majority governments throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Canadian conservatives did not return to power until the Conservative Party formed in December 2003 as a result of a merger between the Reform and PC parties.
Today's Conservative Party remains home to a variety of disparate small-c conservative voices, in addition to a growing faction of Trump-style populists. But in a post-Stephen Harper era, the party has mostly struggled to find its ideological bearings, charting an uneven course that has seen it lurch from moderate to increasingly right-wing depending on its leader.
While Poilievre's grievance-based approach to politics paid huge dividends for 18 months, four (mostly) foreseeable events brought the Conservative Party's momentum to a screeching halt by early 2025: the resignation of Justin Trudeau, the rise of Carney, the return of Donald Trump to the White House and the corresponding US-Canada trade war that plunged our economy into uncharted waters.
Those factors have exposed growing fault lines in the Conservative coalition that could critically destabilize the party as it returns to the opposition benches for a fourth consecutive term.
As many debate the immediate future of the Conservative Party, including whether Poilievre should remain at its helm, the existential threat of fracture looms large, writes Andrew Perez.
The Trump Problem
The menace of Trump has cast a long shadow on Canadian conservatives since the U.S. president first came to office in 2016. But his return to the White House and the destructive trade war that followed have both played a major role in stalling conservative momentum amid unfavourable comparisons between the president and Poilievre.
Even prominent international media outlets such as the Financial Times picked up on the similarities. A Times op-ed appearing in the final week of the campaign went for the jugular: Pierre Poilievre, Canada's right wing leader, has a Donald Trump problem.
Poilievre's aggressive style, obsessive attacks on 'woke ideology', disdain for legacy media and the Laurentian establishment and incessant sloganeering have rightly drawn comparisons between the lifelong Canadian politician and the US president. Like Trump, Poilievre and the Conservative Party recast in his image are driven by anger and resentment of 'elites.'
This resentment was palpable when Poilievre aggressively goaded a reporter mid-campaign, peppering her with questions about the crowd size at a Conservative rally in Edmonton. The awkward and unnecessary interaction with the Globe and Mail's Laura Stone was plucked right out of Trump's playbook, stunning media and party strategists alike.
Trump has always been an unpopular figure in this country. But his determination to launch the biggest threat to Canada's sovereignty and economic prosperity in our 157-year history has made the mercurial president the public enemy number one for most Canadians.
Public opinion on Trump isn't so clear-cut among Conservatives, however. A November 2024 Leger poll found that 42 per cent of those planning to support Poilievre's Conservatives chose Trump as their preferred candidate in the US election. A March 2025 Leger poll found that 33 per cent of Conservative voters still support Trump, despite his unprecedented attacks on Canada.
It's no wonder Poilievre wasn't willing to launch a full-frontal assault on the US president throughout the recent campaign; an opening Carney's Liberals took full advantage of by tying Poilievre to Trump in virtually all of their public messaging.
The Doug Ford Factor
Since 2019, there has been a growing rupture between federal and Ontario Conservatives. It first began when Doug Ford refused to campaign for Andrew Scheer in the 2019 federal election — an approach the Ontario premier stuck with during the 2021 election under leader Erin O'Toole. In that campaign, Ford barred his cabinet ministers from campaigning for the federal party, even asking them to refrain from posting about interactions with federal Conservative candidates on social media.
But the relationship between the two conservative parties metastasized from frosty to downright hostile in this most recent campaign when Ford's chief strategist, Kory Teneycke, accused Poilievre's team of 'campaign malpractice' for squandering a 25-point lead.
'I know it's uncomfortable for people to hear that said out loud, but it's in every poll and every poll aggregator, the numbers are the numbers, and saying that you don't believe in polls. If you're managing a campaign, it's delusional,' Teneycke told CTV Power Play host Vassy Kapelos.
When asked about Teneycke's pointed comments, Ford defended his chief strategist's criticisms of the Poilievre campaign, telling reporters 'sometimes the truth hurts.'
The estrangement between Poilievre and Ford no doubt contributed to undermining the federal party in an election it should have easily won. The federal and Ontario Conservatives had long worked in tandem, using the same organizers, volunteers, donors and drawing upon a similar voter base.
But the organizational damage this rupture inflicted on the federal party is a symptom of a broader challenge: Doug Ford and Pierre Poilievre represent two starkly different conservative visions. Ford's approach has been one of pragmatism, mirroring Bill Davis, the late Ontario Premier; Poilievre has championed an ideological conservatism that is often Trump-like.
Watch for the two camps representing these contrasting visions to be thrust into an all-out brawl for the soul of the Conservative Party over the coming months and years.
The Menace of Western Populism
The final factor that will divide Conservatives over the coming years is how the party addresses the perception of Western alienation from within its ranks. Throughout the election, leading Conservative figures such as former Reform Party leader Preston Manning and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith intervened in the campaign in ways that undercut the Conservatives' commitment to national unity.
In the second week of the campaign came a stunning op-ed from Manning asserting that a vote for the Carney Liberals is a vote for Western succession and the breakup of Canada. While rooted in anger over the Liberals' natural resource policies, Manning's comments went over like a lead balloon in most of a country buoyed by renewed national pride.
In the final days of the campaign, Manning reiterated his claim, forcing Poilievre to distance himself.
Danielle Smith also raised concerns during the election of a 'national unity crisis' should Alberta's demands not be met by the next federal government, but didn't outright say that a Liberal win in itself should trigger a crisis.
It was Smith's comments in an interview with far-right U.S. media outlet Breitbart News in early March that inflicted the most damage on the Conservative leader. In the Breitbart interview, Smith shared that she directly lobbied Trump to lift US tariffs on Canada to help Poilievre, who is 'very much in sync' with the White House.
The comments from the Alberta Premier and Western populist placed Poilievre in the crosshairs, leading many observers to conclude that he didn't push back forcefully enough against Smith's willingness to invite the US to get involved in a Canadian election.
These three factors all contributed to Poilievre's Conservatives snatching defeat from the jaws of victory on Monday evening. They also point to the fact that, more than two decades after its founding, the modern Conservative Party has yet to engage in genuine soul-searching.
Are Canada's Conservatives a brokerage party or one steeped in right-wing ideology? How will they confront those within their ranks convinced that Western succession is the only path forward? And at a time when Canada faces existential threats to our economic prosperity and sovereignty, do Conservatives want to be affiliated with Trump-style populists?
The clear defeat of Poilievre's Conservatives on April 28 has plunged a party destined to an unprecedented win mere months ago into a precarious position where its very unity is threatened. The coming months and years will reveal what path the party intends to pursue.