Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s campaign desperately needs a reset, according to some veteran Tory campaigners and strategists.
The question is whether the former frontrunner for Canada’s next prime minister and his inner circle will acknowledge and address that Donald Trump, not carbon taxes or crime, is the ballot box question, the sources tell Global News.
The world changed with U.S. President Trump’s election last year, but seven veteran Conservative campaigners warned Poilievre appears to be fighting yesterday’s fights.
“These aren’t little waves lapping at the shore. The Trump stuff is as serious as tsunamis crashing through trees and buildings and bulldozing everything in their path. They have wiped the entire issue set off the table for most of the electorate, and it’s now just this,” said Kory Teneycke, Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s campaign manager and a former communications director for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Teneycke worked with Poilievre and his campaign manager, Jenni Byrne, during the Harper era. He also gave a scathing review of the Conservative campaign so far in a Thursday evening speech at the Empire Club in Toronto — a rare public intervention from a partisan so early in a campaign.
“You either react to (Trump) or you’re going to get drowned,” Teneycke told Global News.
There has been a dramatic reversal of fortunes. Just three months ago, the Conservatives had been leading the Liberals by double-digit percentage points in most national polls, and seemed on track to form a majority government.
Then Trudeau left. And then Trump repeatedly threatened to annex the country.
Suddenly, the game plan Poilievre established for the election — cutting taxes, building homes, “fixing” the federal budget and addressing crime — was undercut. The threat of Trump’s economic war on Canada has taken up all the oxygen.
Multiple Conservative sources describe a shambolic central campaign with an isolated leader. Most sources spoke on the condition that they not be named, in order to speak frankly about the campaign and internal party politics.
These are not people who want the Conservatives to lose. They are people who have volunteered or worked for the Conservative Party for years and over multiple campaigns, and speak to other Conservatives daily about the state of the race.
These people know each other, have worked together, and fought in the trenches through tough campaigns. And yet they were near uniform in their criticism of how Poilievre has handled the shifting political situation.
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“Everyone wants them to win, actually genuinely. (Conservatives) don’t want the Liberals to win, even people that don’t like Pierre in different parts of the party,” said one Conservative source, a longtime party member and veteran of multiple federal campaigns.
“But it’s like they’re in their own way. They’re not willing to do the things they need to do to win … And they’re still sh-tting on the Ontario PCs, and it’s like, I’m sorry, these people won a majority a month ago. They might have something to tell you.”
The fact that they are speaking frankly, though anonymously, about a faltering campaign at this stage is startling.
“The overconfidence, arrogance and meanness of the Poilievre group has really started to hurt them a little bit,” a second longtime party source told Global News.
The source said that even if the Conservatives had been flawless over the last year and first week of the campaign, the situation presented by Trump would always be challenging.
“To be fair to them, the Great Orange Menace … every single day … It’s not as easy as (some) make it out to be,” the source added.
“I can’t think of a Conservative campaign that’s seen the wheels come off so fast and so hard and so early. (Thursday was) Day Four, and everyone is already running around with their hair on fire,” said a third source, a veteran of numerous federal campaigns.
“They did not prepare. The ground game is a complete and utter mess,” the source added, referring to the campaign’s organization and communication with local candidates.
The Conservative campaign has a strict hierarchy, with Poilievre at the top, Byrne as his chief adviser, and then everyone else. Multiple sources said the leadership has declined outside help and advice despite its flagging fortunes in national polling.
Speaking to reporters in British Columbia on Thursday, Poilievre downplayed the concerns about his campaign’s dwindling support.
“We’ll wait for Canadians to make the choice on election day, and that choice will be this: after the lost Liberal decade of rising costs and crime and the economy under America’s thumb, do the Liberals deserve a fourth term in power?” Poilievre said.
Only weeks ago, Conservative candidates told Global News that despite slumping polling numbers, the party needed to stay focused on the same issues they’ve been on since Poilievre’s successful leadership bid.
But Conservatives who spoke to Global Thursday and Friday expressed frustration at the party’s inability to pivot to the moment, despite two years of preparation and planning. A fourth source close to Poilievre’s camp said the campaign needs a correction — but that he still must speak to other issues facing Canadians rather than just Trump.
“I think (the campaign leadership) is very aware they’re in a difficult and extremely competitive environment,” the source said.
“I wouldn’t say that they’re unaware that the situation is a difficult one, but they seem very cohesive and very tight. So I view that as fundamentally different from (the 2015 campaign), and that’s a good thing.”
According to the first source, the steady drumbeat of negative news has created a tense situation at the party’s Ottawa headquarters.
“There are all these people in the war room that have never worked a campaign before, there’s no one senior, no one secure,” said the source.
“I’m literally getting messages from people in the war room saying, ‘I’m worried I’m going to get fired every day I go in.’ Like, it’s miserable. No one is having any fun.”
The latest Ipsos polling for Global News had the Liberals with 42 per cent support, followed by the Conservatives at 36 per cent. The Ipsos numbers, released last week, put the NDP at 10 per cent support.
But because Conservative support is concentrated in Western Canadian provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan, projections for the party’s seat counts tell a much more dire story for the party’s chances.
Polling aggregator 338canada.com — which looks at publicly-released polling from multiple companies — is currently projecting the Liberals to win 187 seats, just north of the number of seats required to secure a majority mandate.
The website projects the Conservatives to win 127, only a slight improvement from their results in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.
Poilievre is campaigning in Nanaimo, B.C., Friday before making stops in Winnipeg Saturday and North York, Ont., on Sunday.
The Conservative campaign is expected to begin next week in Atlantic Canada, a region that has swung solidly to the Liberals in recent public polling.