Canadian Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre will return to Parliament in September after losing his own seat during the general election in which he campaigned to be prime minister, winning a special election with over 200 candidates on Monday.
Poilievre, who had been in Parliament uninterruptedly since being elected at age 25 in 2004, lost his seat representing the Ontario electoral district of Carleton in April. He had initially led the Conservatives to a 26-point lead in the polls in January, when radical leftist former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation after a decade in power. Trudeau chose Mark Carney, an international banker with no political experience, to succeed him. Carney led the Liberals to a comfortable defeat of the Conservatives in the national election in April, successfully depicting Poilievre as a conservative whose leadership would benefit American President Donald Trump – despite Trump openly endorsing Carney and disparaging Poilievre for “stupidly” distancing himself from the American head of state.
Following his defeat in both the prime minister battle and his own parliamentary election, Poilievre refused to cede leadership of the Conservative Party, planning to return to Parliament instead by elbowing into the seat of a duly elected member of Parliament in a safe Conservative district.
“Now, it wasn’t enough. We didn’t get over the finish line, which means that I need to learn and grow and our team needs to expand,” Poilievre observed in his first message after his election defeat, before launching a campaign to take the seat of Damien Kurek, who won his Battle River-Crowfoot riding in April with 82.8 percent of the vote.
Battle River-Crowfoot is a largely rural riding with a rich history of ranching and cowboy culture. Poilievre integrated those elements regularly into his campaign, representing a significant rebrand for the longtime Ottawa MP. Canadian media outlets noted that the dramatic change attracted “criticism painting him as a parachute candidate,” though Poilievre was born and raised in Alberta.
Poilievre won the riding with 80.4 percent of the vote, slightly less than Kurek’s total. The percentage represented a little over 40,000 votes.
As a national-level leader, Poilievre attracted a massive campaign to derail his comeback plans. A group called the “Longest Ballot Committee” sabotaged the election by recruiting as many candidates as possible for the sake of making the ballot unwieldy for voters to user. Ultimately, Poilievre was one of 214 candidates to represent the riding; according to the Globe and Mail, the Longest Ballot Committee recruited 201 of them.
Canadian election officials refused to print ballots with names on them, instead making the entire election write-in, to prevent the “Longest Ballot” efforts from undermining the integrity of the election.
Poilievre’s closest challenger was not part of that effort. Independent candidate Bonnie Critchley attracted 9.9 percent of the vote. She criticized the “Longest Ballot Committee” following the election for harming the chances of legitimate candidates who were trying to win.
“My entire purpose has been to tell Mr. Poilievre that he is not allowed to just walk in, use us as a tool and disappear back to Ottawa,” Canada’s Global News quoted Critchley as saying. “I’ve left a very large boot print on the Canadian politiscape, on our elections, to say that a nobody from nowhere can stand up and say enough is enough and the big parties need to pay attention.”
Some voters told local media that, rather than opposite the arrival of an outsider, many of them saw Poilievre as a rare opportunity for the concerns of their riding to be addressed seriously at the major party leadership level.
“That was the longest line I’ve ever been in to vote here,” Lance Neilson, a voter in the Alberta region, told the National Post. “I don’t think other parts of Canada understand what this represents to us. No one is leaving this to chance.”
Poilievre described moving into Battle River-Crowfoot as “the privilege of my life” in his victory speech on Monday.
“I really love the people of Battle River-Crowfoot … They reinforced a lot of lessons all of us in politics have to learn and relearn again, humility and hard-work, loyalty and love,” he asserted, adding that, during the campaign, “In fact, I’ve had a hell of a lot of fun.”
Winning the district guarantees that Poilievre will return to Parliament as the leader of the Conservative Party when a new session starts on September 15 – giving him the privilege of debating Prime Minister Carney directly. The position is not permanent, however – Conservatives are scheduled to review their leadership in early 2026. Poilievre’s popularity within the party, judging from anonymous reports based on comments from prominent Conservatives, indicate little enthusiasm for Poilievre but no formidable opposition or obvious successor emerging from the Party.
Anonymous comments offered to the National Post indicated that “most party sources do not anticipate that Poilievre will have a problem hanging on to his leadership for two main reasons: he’s still popular in most party circles and there’s no active challenger waiting in the wings.”
The National Post then proceeded to follow up its claim that Poilievre is “still popular” by citing anonymous comments calling him “arrogant,” lacking in self-awareness, and a “big part of the problem” during the April election. Critics offered no coherent advice on how Poilievre could improve his likability.
“One Conservative source said Poilievre needs to stop being the ‘know-it-all nerd’ because ‘there’s no charm in it,’” the Post shared. “Another Conservative source said Poilievre needs to go back to embracing his ‘inner nerd’ so that he comes across as more himself.”
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