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Kelly McParland: Poilievre Conservatives remain a house divided

Conservatives have a leadership problem just weeks after their Calgary convention

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Three weeks after a convention in Calgary seemed to put their leadership issues to rest, Conservatives again find themselves with a problem, and its name is still Pierre Poilievre.

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The Tory boss sailed through the required review of his performance with an overwhelming 87 per cent vote of approval. One would think so solid an endorsement would ensure Poilievre’s command of his troops. If so, one wouldn’t have allowed for the best laid plans of mice and men oft going straight down the crapper.

Kelly McParland: Poilievre Conservatives remain a house divided Back to video

In Poilievre’s case, the crapper has three parts. Maybe four. One is Jamil Jivani, who might as well have had “Not A Team Player” tattooed on his forehead before he set off to Washington to embarrass his boss.

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Another is the line of Conservatives queueing for their photo op with Mark Carney after fleeing their party to join the Liberals.

The third is the yawning gap separating the popular prime minister from the much less popular Poilievre, a divide to which the term “new low” has, for the Tories, been all too often applied.

And the fourth, which really isn’t a maybe after all, is Poilievre’s disturbingly apparent inability to do anything about it. Leaving Calgary, the official party readout was one declaring renewed vigour. They’d stick to their focus on kitchen table issues — crime, inflation, housing, jobs — while promising greater co-operation on issues “that matter,” i.e. crime, inflation, housing jobs.

Three weeks later Carney is so far ahead in approvalpolls the chatter in Ottawa is all about whether he should call an election, less than a year after the last one. Sure it would be transparently opportunistic, but with numbers like he’s got, could anyone resist? While Carney ponders that dilemma, Poilievre has been forced to devote too much time trying to control his own caucus.

He doesn’t seem to be succeeding. Jivani’s one-man junket to hobnob with a president and vice-president who have repeatedly sought to insult and undermine the country called for a swift and clear-cut response firmly establishing who was in charge and who wasn’t. Instead Jivani got a mild admonition that couldn’t even qualify as a rebuke.

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“He speaks for himself, and I speak for the party,” Poilievre said when pressed by reporters, conceding that he didn’t agree with Jivani’s Trumpian enthusiasms. If that’s the case, why is a junior Member of Parliament allowed to go gallivanting around the globe making up his own foreign policy?

Before Jivani’s escapade even had a chance to fade, Alberta Conservative Matt Jeneroux announced he was quitting the party to join the Liberals, claiming he was won over by Carney’s much-discussed speech in Davos.

“I think it opened a lot eyes … just how serious this national unity crisis truly is,” he said. “And for me, it felt disingenuous and quite simply wrong to be sitting on the sidelines anymore.”

He’s the third defection in three months. And his contention that staying with the Conservatives represents “sitting on the sidelines” goes straight to a faultline in Conservative strategy under Poilievre, who has yet to outline a meaty response to the threat from the U.S. and the dangers it represents.

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Many assessments of the 2025 election concluded that the Conservatives’ narrow loss, after leading for months by double digits, had much to do with their handling of the dangers of Donald Trump.

While Carney focused on the need for a wholesale effort to counter the attacks and minimize the damage, Poilievre, convinced voters were more interested in bread-and-butter concerns, stuck largely to his game plan. And apart from a number of references to tariffs and “diplomatic distractions and disruptions from down south,” the bulk of his Calgary speech reworked the same themes, mixing attacks on Carney with pledges of a brighter Conservative future.

It was a fine enough speech but seems to have left many Canadians still wondering how less government, less spending and a war on crime successfully counters the damage from a hostile neighbour nine times our size when it sets out to rupture the economy.

Poilievre also alluded in Calgary to Carney’s raid on Conservative policies. Tories have every right to resent the Liberals’ theft of their ideas on everything from the carbon tax (gone) to bail reform (in the works), immigration (cut), defence spending (raised), red tape cuts (promised) and even a pipeline expansion (embraced).

“The best part of being Conservatives is that eventually everyone admits that we were right all along,” Poilievre joked. Unfortunately the joke looks to be on him, given that the gap in approval ratings strongly suggests Canadians are keen enough on the Conservative platform, it’s the Conservative leader that leaves them cool.

Assuming Liberals resist an election call, Poilievre’s challenge in coming months will be to somehow talk voters into accepting he can implement a Conservative platform at least as well as Carney’s been doing, while also finding a voice on the U.S. threat able to compete with Carney’s.

It may not be easy, given his performance since becoming leader in 2022 has shown a decided reluctance to risk offending harder-line western supporters while courting the eastern votes needed for victory. Jivani’s visit to Washington looked a lot like a bid for leadership of the MAGA wing of the party, making him a de facto rival. Poilievre’s refusal to condemn the stunt leaves him looking weak in the face of a direct internal threat. Add to that the caucus defections that show a captain lacking the faith of the crew.

“A house divided cannot stand,” Poilievre said in Calgary, quoting Abraham Lincoln’s observation prior to the American civil war. Despite his convention victory, the Conservative leader still looks to sit atop a very wobbly house with serious divisions to repair.

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