Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre lost his own seat in Parliament in Monday’s election, but he has not resigned as leader of the party and some prominent Conservatives have spoken up to defend his position.
“There is no doubt that Pierre Poilievre and his team ran an incredible campaign,” former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer said in a post on social media platform X on Tuesday.
Scheer noted that while the Conservatives came up short of forming a government, they won “the highest vote percentage in modern Conservative history” and “the most amount of total votes for our party, ever” on Monday, leading to “new seats all over the country.”
“His inspirational leadership has brought more people into the Conservative movement. His continued leadership will ensure we finish the job next time,” Scheer said of Poilievre.
Both the Liberals and Conservatives saw their shares of the national vote rise, largely at the expense of Canada’s other left-wing party, the NDP. The two major parties collected over 40 percent of the vote apiece and won 90 percent of the seats in Parliament, while the NDP completely imploded, and its leader Jagmeet Singh lost his own seat. The highest overall turnout in over twenty years allowed both the Liberals and Conservatives to claim record levels of support for their candidates.
The BBC on Tuesday backed up Scheer’s contentions by noting that “in a different election year, this would have been a successful one for the Conservatives.” They actually scored a higher percentage of the vote than in 2011, when they won the majority in Parliament. When former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resigned and effectively suspended Parliament, the Conservatives held 120 seats, and today they have 144.
Another Conservative leader lining up behind Poilievre was Shannon Stubbs, who won her own re-election campaign on Monday.
Stubbs was even more fulsome in her praise for Poilievre than Scheer, writing a barrage of posts on X on Tuesday that praised him for making “truly historic gains for the Conservative party, which he turned into a passionate, diverse, hopeful, powerful movement across the country.”
Stubbs was especially enthusiastic about Conservatives making gains with “ethnically diverse Canadians,” “working people,” and “suburban areas” on Monday.
“Pierre, your consistent principles and your purpose-driven, people-focused leadership inspire all of us as Conservatives and have brought new energy, hope, and unity to our movement across the country,” she wrote.
“You have captured and emboldened the hearts, minds, hopes, and aspirations of record numbers of Canadians, from so many different backgrounds, who voted for Conservatives because of you,” she said.
The Conservatives have a history of ejecting their leadership after disappointing election results, and Stubbs was among those who wanted to replace Erin O’Toole after a poor showing in the 2021 election, paving the way for Poilievre’s landslide victory to become his successor. Stubbs’ support for Poilievre today is significant, given the fate of O’Toole.
“Other senior Conservatives, including former cabinet ministers Jason Kenney, James Moore and former interim party leader Rona Ambrose, defended Mr. Poilievre’s ability to stay on as leader as the results were rolling in on Monday night and into Tuesday morning,” the Globe and Mail reported on Wednesday.
As for whether Poilievre can continue as Conservative leader without holding a seat in Parliament, the Globe and Mail cited the precedent of Brian Mulroney, who did not have a seat when he became party leader in 1983.
Since the party leader needs a seat in Parliament to be formally recognized as “opposition leader,” another MP stepped aside and let Mulroney take his rather safe seat in a special election. One of the questions that determines Poilievre’s future will be whether any sitting MP supports him strongly enough to give up their seat for him.
“I don’t think that’s fair, I believe, for the person that just ran for a year, trying to get elected in their area, but that’s a discussion we need to have as a caucus,” Nova Scotia MP Chris d’Entremont said when that question was put to him by CBC News.
D’Entremont was the only Conservative to win a seat in Nova Scotia on Monday. He faulted Poilievre for responding poorly to President Donald Trump’s tariffs and annexation talk, for getting blindsided by the collapse of the NDP, and for not doing enough to shore up vulnerable Conservatives as the party’s once-commanding lead in the polls evaporated over the past few months.
Bruce Fanjoy, the Liberal who unseated Poilievre in his Ottawa-area riding (district), also needled the Conservative leader for not responding quickly enough to the rise of Trump and the fall of Justin Trudeau, who was an anchor around the Liberal Party’s neck until he resigned.
“We just kept working, and Pierre, God bless him, he took the riding for granted. And people don’t like to be taken for granted, so I think that opened the door for people to consider a change in Carleton,” Fanjoy said.
Conservative commentator and public relations expert Kate Harrison told CBC it would be a tactical error for the Conservatives to replace their leadership while the Liberals are struggling to put a minority government together.
“I think he’s right to stay at the helm and I suspect the caucus will be unified around that,” she said, predicting the Conservatives would credit Poilievre with building a “new Conservative voting coalition in this country.”
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