It is too soon to determine how many card-carrying Conservative Party of Canada members want to remove leader Erin O’Toole. But those who are working actively to get rid of him should be careful what they wish for.
It’s not unusual for the rank-and-file of political parties to overreact to an election loss. And to be sure, the defeat suffered by the Tories in the recent federal election was profound and crushing. Thanks to widespread anger over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to call a snap election, Mr. O’Toole’s Conservatives had a clear path to victory.
Unfortunately, they stumbled along that path.
The Liberals deftly drew the Conservatives into a familiar political quagmire by forcing Mr. O’Toole to confront such issues as vaccine mandates, climate change, gun control and abortion. On these issues, the Tories maintain very entrenched positions; they are generally against vaccine mandates, gun control and abortion, and on climate change, they are simply muddled.
Adrian Wyld / Canadian Press files
Conservative Party Leader Erin O’Toole
Those inclinations may be popular among hardcore Conservatives, but they are rejected by a majority of Canadians.
Mr. O’Toole attempted to change that narrative in the last election. Although he could not escape the electoral trap that accompanies traditional Conservative issues, he did offer some new ideas and a new tone that made the election much closer than it appeared it would be when Mr. Trudeau dropped the writ.
However, getting rid of Mr. O’Toole now, immediately after he fought a very close election and established a much higher profile with voters, would be a mistake. Not because he has proven he is ready to be prime minister; rather, because he has signalled a desire to modernize the Conservative Party to more closely align with a much larger constituency of Canadian voters.
And it is those efforts, and not necessarily the election results, that have prompted Tory Sen. Denise Batters and members of the party’s national executive to circulate online petitions calling for an immediate leadership review.
The Conservative Party is trapped in an electoral conundrum.
The few Tories who have stepped forward to publicly challenge Mr. O’Toole claim they are acting because of the election result. It’s more likely, however, what they are protesting is Mr. O’Toole’s open pledge to evolve the party on the issues that lower its electoral ceiling.
Mr. O’Toole decided this week to eject Ms. Batters from the Tory caucus, a move that suggests that, at least in the mind of the leader, she does not have much support for her petition. It may also suggest Mr. O’Toole is confident a significant majority of Tories are willing to give him a chance to re-invent the party platform.
The Conservative Party is trapped in an electoral conundrum: it tops the popular-vote percentage (at 34.1 per cent) on the strength of receiving overwhelming support in a minority of federal ridings, mostly in the western regions of Canada. The Liberals (31.8 per cent), on the other hand, do not win seats by large margins, but they win more seats because they appeal to a broader cross-section of Canadians in almost every region of the country save for the Prairies, where the Tories rule.
Mr. O’Toole should be given the chance to re-imagine the Conservative platform and face off with Mr. Trudeau one more time. Removing him now in an effort to avoid that necessary re-imagining in favour of the ideological status-quo would leave the Tories at a great disadvantage for many elections to come.