Poilievre will have to ‘soften the edges’, act prime ministerial as he returns to Ottawa: experts

CTV’s Political Commentator Scott Reid on what to expect from Pierre Poilievre after he regained a seat at the House of Commons.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre will have to hold the government accountable while showing he can appeal to a wider set of Canadian voters, as he gets ready to head back to the House of Commons following his resounding byelection win, experts say.

After losing his seat in the Ottawa-area riding he’d held for two decades to a political rookie in April’s general election, Poilievre won a Monday byelection in the rural Alberta riding of Battle River—Crowfoot with 80 per cent of the vote.

Now, when the House returns on Sept. 15, Poilievre will face off against new Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney for the first time in question period.

Kory Teneycke, a leading Conservative campaign strategist, campaign manager for Ontario Premier Doug Ford and former director of communications for former prime minister Stephen Harper, said he anticipates Poilievre will face a set of specific challenges.

“His personal popularity continues to be a ballot drag compared to the Conservative party as a whole,” Teneycke said in an interview with CTV News on Tuesday. “So, trying to improve his image with Canadians is, I think, something that they should be focusing on, maybe softening some of the harder edges there.”

“The second challenge is maybe a little more tricky, and that’s that the Carney government has adopted most of what the Conservative campaign platform was, and so you’re got to come up with a critique that is a little bit more nuanced and a little more complicated than it was under the Justin Trudeau Liberals,” he added.

Former Conservative cabinet minister James Moore called Poilievre “one of the most effective opposition leaders Canada has seen in a very, very long time,” but said the challenge will be to balance that while being seen as prime ministerial.

“It’s one of the most difficult ju-jitsu moves in all of politics,” Moore said in an interview with CTV News on Tuesday. “If you’re the leader of the opposition and you do it really well, Canadian voters might want to have an instinct to want to keep you in that role, because you do it so well.”

Moore said “the ground has really shifted underneath the country” in response to the protracted trade war with the United States, which began in February following U.S. President Donald Trump’s imposition of sweeping tariffs on Canadian goods.

He said Poilievre should bring the Conservative caucus in line with the momentum behind that shift.

“I think making sure Canadians see that he understands that the mission of this Parliament is to consolidate a clear Canadian position in defence of Canadian interests, relative to the threat of Donald Trump, and making sure that the caucus is united in that message, while the same time not letting other issues slip by,” Moore said, pointing to taxes, housing, and defence as other critical issues of the day, and adding that a “tough opposition” is necessary to make the government more effective.

“It’s a tough task,” Moore also said. “And (Poilievre) has to really make sure that Canadians know that he’s not just speaking for Conservatives, he’s not just speaking for centre-right voters, but he actually aspires to be a prime minister for all Canadians.”

Poilievre to face leadership review in January

After winning Monday’s critical byelection with a clear margin of victory, Poilievre now has another important deadline ahead: he’s set to face a mandatory leadership review at the Conservative convention in late January.

“When it comes to his leadership, I think a lot of it will have to do with how the national numbers pan out,” said Nanos Research founder and chief data scientist Nik Nanos. “Think of it this way: there are caucus members who were elected in the last federal election when the Conservatives had the support of more than four out of every 10 Canadians. Now they’re in the low thirties.”

“I don’t think you can underestimate that dynamic, because for some caucus members, they will be self interested,” he added. “They’ll be thinking can they win another time locally with Pierre Poilievre as the leader, and if Conservative caucus members believe that they can win with him as a leader, then he won’t have a problem. If his numbers are flat, could be a different story.”

Nanos said Poilievre will have to move quickly to close the gap between his party and the Liberals, and critically, between himself and Carney, with January’s leadership review as a possible target date to see improvement in national polling.

According to the latest numbers from Nanos Research, the Liberals are 12 points ahead of the Conservatives, at 44 per cent and 32 per cent respectively. But, Poilievre is trailing Carney by 27 points when it comes to the preferred prime minister question.

Those numbers are a sharp contrast to the start of the year when the Conservatives led the Liberals — under former prime minister Justin Trudeau — by more than 20 points.

Teneycke, meanwhile, said Poilievre’s position as leader is likely safe, with no other candidates waiting in the wings to mount a challenge.

“Normally when you see an unsuccessful leadership review for an incumbent, it’s a result of others wanting to push that person out,” he said.

He added that while there’s “some discontent” among Conservatives who were disappointed they didn’t win the election as handily as they were expected to at the beginning of the year, the party under Poilievre still picked up several seats.

“It was a mixed result,” Teneycke said. “Losing his own home riding, obviously, is an embarrassing thing to have happen, but coming back to the House this fall and having gotten a very strong mandate from the people of Battle River—Crowfoot, I think that’s going to be a positive thing for them compared to what they were potentially facing.”