Conservative Party members from across the country are gathering today in downtown Calgary for the federal party’s convention, set to run through the weekend. They’ll cast non-binding votes on a variety of policies and conduct a mandatory leadership review. But their real task will be to demonstrate that the party is both unified and gaining momentum, even after a federal campaign this past April in which the Conservatives lost their grip on a twenty-four-point lead, and party leader Pierre Poilievre lost his own riding, allowing the Liberals to stay in power with a minority government.

Many Conservatives argue that President Donald Trump’s return to the White House was the decisive and uncontrollable factor that transformed Poilievre’s early polling lead into Prime Minister Mark Carney’s April victory. Trump’s shadow continues to loom over the party. An EKOS poll, in late October, found Conservative vote-intenders almost perfectly divided on Trump’s job performance, with 49 percent approving of it, and 51 percent disapproving. Among Liberal, New Democratic, Green, and Bloc Québécois voters, disapproval was near universal.

That split among Conservatives captures Poilievre’s central dilemma heading into the convention. He cannot loudly embrace Trump-style populism without shrinking the party’s appeal to the country he hopes to govern. But he cannot fully repudiate Trump either, at least not without alienating a substantial faction of his own coalition.

Despite that tightrope, those expecting Poilievre to stumble in his leadership review are likely to be disappointed, according to party insiders. This vote won’t involve “average Canadians” or even “average members” of the party, says Ginny Roth, who ran communications for Poilievre’s leadership campaign. It is a vote of delegates: committed party volunteers who have won positions within riding associations and have been nominated to attend the convention.

That distinction matters. Poilievre won the Conservative leadership in 2022 with an overwhelming mandate and claimed to have brought 312,000 new members into the party in the process, though previous party leaders have contested that figure. Many of those members remain intensely loyal to Poilievre.

Carl Qiu, a thirty-year-old Conservative volunteer and former Ontario provincial candidate, says Poilievre remains deeply aligned with........

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