Pierre Poilievre's Path Forward

Pierre Poilievre survived a post-election leadership review with the support of over 87% of Conservative Party delegates. Now the real work begins.

We have two overarching rules when it comes to our political panels on the Progress Canada Podcast:

1. No empty, uncritical partisanship

2. No regurgitating party talking points

We have these rules because we figure if people were just looking for the party line, they could visit a party’s website or tune into a number of TV panels that feature party-endorsed spokespeople and strategists.

Sometimes our listeners think that’s us. I was once asked by a curious listener if the Liberal Party gave us talking points before we record our episodes. I laughed and said I think that sometimes they probably wish we wouldn’t speak at all.

There’s a place for that kind of pre-molded analysis by approved party strategists, but when you’ve been on the inside of campaign headquarters during numerous elections, the party line is seldom all that interesting.

We’ve found people are more often looking for what’s behind the headlines and the decisions those operatives are making that drive them. We tend to share that curiosity and try to dig out what others might have missed while toeing the party line.

That curiosity is also why I tuned in to all 50 minutes of Pierre Poilievre’s speech at the 2026 Conservative Party of Canada Convention in Calgary this weekend. It’s also why my takeaways from the speech differ somewhat from other Liberals. Here are a few things to watch as Poilievre takes a second crack at becoming Prime Minister.

Pierre the Culture Warrior

Poilievre’s speech was delivered in front of a crowd of 2,700 or so die-hard Conservative supporters ahead of a vote to reaffirm his leadership after an election loss last spring. The event was held in Calgary at the same time Ontario conservatives were gathering at a provincial convention in Etobicoke. A limited number of East Coast delegates made the trip.

The make-up of the delegation meant that Poilievre largely leaned into his long-standing culture warrior persona when he hit the stage, riling up the base to secure an election result that would end any questions about his leadership or his hold over the party going forward.

While many have argued he must back away from his support of the “freedom” convoy in order to win over everyday Canadians, he instead leaned into that support (which, after all, predates his leadership of the party).

He opened his speech by telling the delegates, “I love seeing so many conservatives in one place, but it must freak the Liberals out enough to invoke the Emergencies Act.”

Hours after Poilievre delivered his speech, delegates passed a new policy program they want to see him enact as Prime Minister.

They proposed:

• A “stand your ground” law to allow lethal force against home invaders

• Ending DEI programs and restoring “meritocracy”

• Defunding the CBC/Radio Canada

• Immediate deportation of non-citizens convicted of a serious crimes

• Tighter immigration rules and border security reform

What didn’t make the cut? A proposal to reverse the federal ban on conversion therapy received the support of a majority of delegates, but failed because it did not have enough support from enough regions of the country as required by the constitution. Reopening the abortion debate is also off the table, as delegates let it die in a breakout room instead of advancing it to the wider convention floor.

While some may view these as the choices of the delegates and not their leader, it’s worth pointing out that very little makes it onto the final agenda without the leader’s support at a convention where the leader receives the backing of 87% of delegates. The culture warrior is here to stay.

Pierre the Prosecutor?

Much ink has been spilled on how skilled Poilievre is as a debater in the House of Commons. It was presumed by many that skillset would spill over into an election campaign, especially against a brand new politician like Carney.

Yet Poilievre has really struggled to turn the page on the Trudeau era and failed to convince voters that the Carney era is merely an extension of 10 years of failed Liberal rule. To this day, and in this speech, most of Poilievre’s key messages still focus on the record of the previous Prime Minister, an inconvenient fact for a politician looking to replace the current one.

Poilievre has pivoted some of his message and gave it a road test in his convention speech, saying that as Carney approaches a year in office, he has had more than enough time to deliver change for Canadians. He said:

After 10 years of Liberal rule, Canada is more costly and crime-ridden, dangerous and dependent and divided than ever before. Now, Mr. Carney, he promised to change all that. But here we are a year later. You know, what’s changed? Sure, the words have changed. The style has changed. But what’s changed in your life?

After the Joe Clark Government’s brief, nine-month mandate came to a close, former Conservative Finance Minister John Crosbie famously quipped that it’s duration was “long enough to conceive, just not long enough to deliver.”

Canadians, for their part, seem to agree with Crosbie and are willing to give Carney more time. They seem to understand that while a week may be a lifetime in politics, a year in power is too short a period to turn around Plato’s metaphorical Ship of State.

While conservative delegates frothing over every one of Poilievre’s quips may feel like his critiques of Carney have landed, current polls show the Prime Minister continues to enjoy the favour and patience of Canadians as he battles one crisis after another. Poilievre has more work to do.

Pierre the Prime-Minister-in-Waiting

Poilievre spent the middle of his speech defending - no, practically crowing - about his election performance. He framed the election as a stepping-stone to a later victory, highlighting the fact that his party won more votes than at any other point in the party’s history, that it added 25 more members to its caucus, and that it won in new places across the country. Despite coming in second.

But what many outsiders see as a clear failure after being up by over 20 points in the polls at the beginning of the election year, Conservatives seem to view the campaign as a throwback of the 2004 campaign. To them, Poilievre is not the latest in a string of losing leaders. He remains the Prime Minister-in-waiting whose victory, Much like Stephen Harper’s, is just around the corner.

True Blue Conservatism Can Win Elections

That belief is fueling Poilievre’s rejection of the idea that true blue conservatives will never form government. Poilievre’s own political history further drives these beliefs.

He was elected for the first time under a true blue conservative worldview back in 2004 when Stephen Harper stopped the Liberal’s from earning a majority for the first time in a decade. While Harper moderated his tone, he did not back down on the kind of conservatism he was offering to voters and formed government just two years later. In 2011, that same worldview eventually elected the first Conservative majority government in over two decades.

Poilievre’s belief that a return to true blue conservative government is possible isn’t just nostalgia. In his speech, he argued that while many told him to pivot away from conservative ideals, he stood firm and earned 2.5 million more votes than the party attracted during the previous election. What went unsaid was the comparison between his result and how the party performed under the more moderate leadership of Erin O’Toole.

Poilievre told delegates:

And you have told us many things, but one of the most important lessons I have gained from listening to you throughout this convention is that you told us to ignore the voices who keep telling us to abandon our Conservative principles. We will remain true to our principles.

You know, on the issue of the principles that we hold, we won the debate in the last election on every single one of the big issues. On carbon taxes, inflation, housing, resources, crime, drugs, and soon we will be proven right once again on the wasteful and insane Liberal gun grab.

It’s clear that Poilievre has no intention of rejecting the socially conservative worldview he has always held to achieve power. He clearly believes his pre-election popularity was because of these values and not the unpopularity of a long-time incumbent Prime Minister. It’s also clear he sees Carney’s victory as the result of an unlucky geopolitical bounce rather than the Prime Minister having any real political chops. That Carney has moved the Liberal Party to the right only deepens this belief.

Embracing Young Voters Will Be a Willing Formula

While baby boomers have controlled Canadian politics for years, Poilievre made a choice early in his leadership to bet on young people as being the key to Conservative electoral victory. That choice required him to pick a clear side when it comes to the generational prosperity government actually invests in.

The Conservatives began hemorrhaging older voters in such large numbers that they released a much-mocked boomer-focused ad - sans any mention or visual of Poilievre - at the end of the election to try and salvage the campaign. It was such a memorable moment of the campaign that former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney mentioned it on the floor of this weekend’s convention.

Despite the election result, Poilievre refused to abandon his focus on young voters. In his speech, he highlighted the fact that the Conservatives formed government in the mock student vote elections held by Elections Canada during the writ period. Many Liberal supporters mocked this online, suggesting only a Trumpian-style loser would crow about winning a mock student vote while losing a real election.

I didn’t. It’s a fact I’ve been concerned as a progressive voter because, while people can and do change their minds between elections, past voting behaviour often does hint at future voting behaviour. And students who will make sure to vote in a mock election that won’t impact their lives are likely to show up for a real vote with real stakes.

In 2008, student voters elected a Conservative Government and an NDP opposition, dropping the Liberals to third place. Three years later, when many of those one-time student voters became eligible to vote in their first federal election, they helped elect a Conservative Government and an NDP opposition, dropping the Liberals to third place. Sometimes, even a mock vote can be a strong indicator of things to come.

Poilievre, and many conservative talking heads on the broadcast, mentioned that this was the youngest conservative convention they had ever attended. And while they acknowledge they’ve lost ground with older voters, they are betting on a demographic swing in their direction in future campaigns.

Pierre as a Messenger of Hope

Little of what I’ve written so far is news to anyone who follows Canadian politics. But the part of Poilievre’s speech that got my attention was his new focus on being a messenger of hope rather than an unceasing critic of the status quo.

There’s a saying in politics that governments defeat themselves. But it’s not entirely true. Governments certainly lay the groundwork for their own defeat as they sink under years of scandal and unfulfilled promises. But it’s almost always the case that voters are unwilling to take a risk on an alternative unless that alternative makes a credible case that changing course will lead to better.

The old saying “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t” is one of the best summations about how voters respond to uncertainty. They fear losing ground more than they believe in the possibility of gaining it. And while fear can work as a campaign strategy for incumbents, a believable case for hope tends to elect challengers.

Three insurgent campaigns in my lifetime act as strong examples of this tendency: Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Justin Trudeau. In 1992, Bill Clinton campaigned as “The Man from Hope.” In 2008, “Hope” became an unofficial slogan of the Obama campaign after artist Shepard Fairey created an iconic poster of the candidate with the word inscribed beneath his portrait. And while “hope and hard work” never actually appeared on the cover of a Liberal Party platform, it became a common refrain for the leader and party activists as they won back power in 2015.

Throughout Poilievre’s speech, delegates chanted the words, “We want hope!” And at the 43-minute mark, he made a full pivot towards it as a theme. It happened so late in the speech many may have already tuned out. And it remains to be seen whether it’s a pivot he will stick with for the long term. But those last five minutes of his speech were exactly what he needs to do to go beyond his base and become Prime Minister.

Here’s the full transcript of the final five minutes of his address:

Hope. That’s really the theme of this convention this evening. Hope is on the way for our people as well. But hope is not just a comforting blanket. Hope is the knowledge that your work will fulfill your purpose, your “why.”

“He who has a ‘why’ can bear any ‘how,’” Viktor Frankl wrote in the great book, Man’s Search for Meaning. That thing that you call meaning could be for you a home, a career, a family, a business. Seeing your autistic daughter speak for the first time. It’s the thing — that meaning is the thing that keeps people fighting on through hardship.

People ask me why I keep going. You know, the slings and arrows, they’re the easy part. Constantly being away from family, that’s the harder part.

You know, my little boy, Cruz, he cut out and coloured a little paper Spider-Man and gave it to me to take on the road to stop bad guys. I look at it when I’m in the hotel room, sometimes late at night. It makes me smile. I see all those little scribbles and cut marks and imagine those little fingers working away. And I know that one day I’ll come home and those fingers will have grown big, and I miss him. And too often I kiss my wife and daughter goodnight through FaceTime.

So why keep going? Because we want our kids to have the same promise that we had. Because we want them to know that when you care about something you work for it when you believe in something you fight for it. And most of all, when you start something, you never give up.

Because the unsung heroes who built and protect this country, who have it infinitely harder than I do, they never give up, so I have no right to give up.

Because all of you who pound signs on frozen ground, knock doors on dark nights and sacrifice warm family dinners for cold campaign pizza, you never give up, so I’ll never give up.

Because the young couple scrimping to start a family, and the single mother fighting each day to feed her kids, they never give up so that we never give up.

Because the Canadian Pacific Railway workers who pounded spikes into frozen ground and forged steel ribbon that united east and west, they never gave up, so we never gave up.

Because the Canadian teenagers living in frozen, rat-infested trenches, who had it infinitely harder than we do, they fought on, they never gave up and they won wars so that we will never give up on our country in these times.

Canadians don’t give up because our country is worth fighting for, as are its people and its promise.

Because we are Canadians. Only Canadians could carve the world’s best country out of a big, cold, vast land. Because we never give up. We never back down. We never run away.

We stand united tonight, together, always, because this country, its people and promise are worth fighting for.

Because while some say this is as good as it gets, we know the best is yet to come. Thank you very much.

Beyond his emotional delivery, I think the reason why this part of the speech was so effective was because it was the first time in years that a conservative leader has defined what it means to be a Canadian by what unites us rather than what divides us.

Stoking anger over real and imagined culture wars has been extremely profitable for the Conservative campaign war chest. But it has greatly harmed the party’s ability to connect with everyday voters who have complex and conflicting views about what it means to be Canadian that prevents them from embracing an “us versus them” frame.

Poilievre’s message of hope isn’t rosy. It’s a sales pitch for a future where Canadians still work hard and struggle. But it’s one where that hard work and struggle actually pays off. As he laid out in his speech, there’s nothing more Canadian - or that unites Canadians more - than working hard to earn a better tomorrow. It’s what we’ve always done as a country.

Many Liberal commentators have brushed off the speech as the same old Poilievre rage-farming. But I saw a glimmer of something that could prove to be a powerful pitch to voters should Carney’s trickle-down style of economics and global deal-making take too long to reach Canadians’ wallets.

And with the strong backing of his party faithful, Poilievre now has the one thing he needs to turn his dream of becoming Prime Minister into reality: a second chance.