OTTAWA — In two weeks, Conservative leader Erin O’Toole will give a keynote speech at the party’s policy convention that could be the most important of his leadership so far.
But the convention will be a virtual one, meaning it will be difficult to get a sense of how the speech is going down with the thousands of party delegates attending. That might be a lucky thing for O’Toole, because just seven months after he was elected as leader, there are signs he’s created significant internal turmoil.
With an election that could come any month now, the Conservatives have been essentially flat in national public polling since the fall, persistently stuck well back of the Liberals even as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came under withering criticism over vaccine supply delays. Trudeau’s favourability rating has taken a five-point hit, according to the newest Angus Reid survey — but O’Toole’s favourability still fares worse.
What’s more troubling for O’Toole is the increasing unrest among Conservative MPs, grumbling that has been making its way into the media. There’s a disconnect between O’Toole, who believes the party is in good shape electorally, and some members of caucus who feel the party is floundering and would get clobbered in an election held soon.
Gauging the mood of the 120 MPs in caucus is never easy from the outside, but one longtime party insider told National Post they haven’t heard this much caucus turmoil since Stockwell Day was in charge.
Furthermore, O’Toole’s abrupt shift from the “True Blue” persona of the leadership race to a much more centrist leader — the kind of politician he repeatedly slammed Peter MacKay as representing — has not gone over well with some MPs. O’Toole has quickly gone from being a leadership contender who boasted about being the only Ontario caucus member to defend Derek Sloan, to booting Sloan out of the party in January on the thin pretext of a $131 donation (from white nationalist Paul Fromm) that Sloan said he didn’t even known about.
“The rapidity with which he’s pivoted away from the people and regions that got him elected, my constituents don’t know what he stands for,” said one Conservative MP who was neutral in the leadership race. “I think Erin is jumping up and down on the fault lines in our party.”
Every Conservative Party leader has occasionally had trouble managing a caucus that’s notorious for having clashing ideologies and independent-minded, sometimes ornery MPs. New opposition leaders also often find themselves under intense scrutiny early on in their tenure if they aren’t having immediate success. On top of that, nearly half of the caucus did not back O’Toole in the leadership race, so some sniping is unsurprising.
Still, what’s undeniably true is there are Conservative MPs very unhappy with how the O’Toole era has gone so far. Some seasoned Conservatives say the atmosphere is unusually bad. “I’m surprised it took you guys this long to start writing about it,” said a Conservative MP who endorsed one of O’Toole’s leadership rivals.
The Post spoke to a range of party insiders — MPs, O’Toole advisors and party organizers — in different parts of the country to get a sense of how things are going for O’Toole’s leadership, and what it means going forward with an election on the near horizon. To allow the sources to speak freely, the Post agreed not to name them.
Broadly, there are two sides to how O’Toole’s leadership is viewed within the party.
O’Toole’s critics say his leadership style has proven to be top-down and over-confident, and that he’s plowed ahead with sharp changes in the party’s messaging that his own caucus and base haven’t been prepared for.
They’re concerned about the election strategy, arguing it’s shown no signs of success so far, and they worry the party is moving too far away from core conservative principles. The removal of Pierre Poilievre from the high-profile finance critic role struck some as a foreboding sign that fiscal conservatism is being de-emphasized, and there is suspicion over how far O’Toole is preparing to go in overhauling the party’s environmental platform .
But O’Toole’s defenders argue they’re facing a situation where the Liberal government has all the advantages. Trudeau and other Liberal ministers are getting prime TV exposure nearly every day. The pandemic has taken up all the political and media oxygen for a year now, making it extremely hard for other issues to break through. The prolonged national crisis also has a rally-around-the-flag effect, and running negative ads against Trudeau carries a heavy risk of backfiring.
“Even with the vaccine debacle, (the Liberals) continue to enjoy strong public support for their overall handling of the pandemic ,” said one O’Toole advisor.
Despite all this, the Liberals have not pulled into a commanding lead. The Conservatives’ more detailed internal polling — which has been presented to caucus — shows them running close to the Liberals nationally, and competitive in the ever-important Toronto suburbs. O’Toole’s advisors believe they’re well positioned for the post-pandemic political climate.
“We need the landscape to change,” the advisor said, pointing out the vaccines will have that effect. “We need people to start thinking about the economy and their jobs and how we’re going to get out of this mess.”
There’s also a big issue with putting too much weight in polls right now: O’Toole himself is still undefined in the public eye. An unknown. The party is only now running TV ads that feature O’Toole literally introducing himself to Canadians, without saying much more. “We know there’s a problem with awareness that has to be addressed,” said one O’Toole strategist. However, it does mean the current polls aren’t very predictive about how O’Toole would perform in an election campaign when Canadians are fully tuned in.
Some MPs find this whole line of argument — that the pandemic has made it hard for the opposition to break through — hard to take.
“The national polling, take it for what it is, shows us in every poll in a worse position than we were at the 2019 election,” one MP said. “And so there is not trust that the plan is working.”
Overall, there isn’t consensus among Conservative MPs over how to fight Trudeau on COVID-19. Some think the party should be taking a tougher line on, for example, hotel quarantine. Others argue that Canadians don’t want to see a lot of partisanship right now, and the party needs to navigate this carefully. O’Toole is walking a tricky line here.
Environmental policy is another flashpoint in caucus, and it taps into a longstanding tension for the Conservative Party: how to keep your Western MPs — especially in Alberta — on board with the overall plan while you also work on winning in the Greater Toronto Area and Quebec.
Although there have been rumblings from some corners that O’Toole may drop the party’s opposition to the federal carbon tax, that isn’t likely to happen. “I have been clear that an O’Toole government would repeal the Trudeau Carbon Tax that makes everything from gas to groceries more expensive for Canadians,” O’Toole said in a statement issued this week.
I think Erin is jumping up and down on the fault lines in our party
But O’Toole has committed the Conservatives to achieving net-zero emissions in Canada, meaning the country must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and offset the remainder. The Liberal policy is to achieve net-zero by 2050; O’Toole told the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade in February that his plan will reach it even faster.
One member of O’Toole’s team said they are trying to better communicate what net-zero means, pointing out that it has already been embraced by industry associations in the energy sector.
The question remains: how do you achieve net-zero quickly without a federal carbon tax? O’Toole is effectively asking his caucus to trust him on this until the election platform is released. But given his other abrupt shifts since the leadership race, some MPs are skeptical. They also warily note the overlap between some of O’Toole’s leadership campaign team and that of former Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown, who famously shocked the provincial party’s 2016 annual convention when he announced his support for carbon pricing.
O’Toole’s handling of the Sloan ejection has also left some lingering distrust. Booting Sloan in itself was not overly controversial, as Sloan had repeatedly made it clear he wasn’t a team player. But it was transparent to everyone that the Paul Fromm donation was dubious grounds for an ejection given that Fromm had also mistakenly been granted a party membership. Regardless, O’Toole quickly and publicly committed himself to booting Sloan, and it left many MPs frustrated over his clumsy management of the matter.
O’Toole has urged his caucus to be careful to avoid unforced errors, especially when it comes to COVID-19. He warned caucus before Christmas not to travel or be seen doing activities that violate public health advice or are unavailable to most Canadians.
But MPs point out that the unforced errors of late have come from O’Toole himself — the most recent example being the viral video of O’Toole promising to move Trudeau out of the Prime Minister’s Office and into a portable toilet. (The video was widely circulated by Liberal Twitter accounts recently, who described it as juvenile, frat-boy behaviour. The video actually dates back to June in O’Toole’s “True Blue” leadership days.)
According to one account, when an MP brought up the video in a recent caucus meeting, O’Toole talked about it as a teachable moment for everyone about the dangers of social media missteps. “That didn’t go over well with a lot of colleagues,” one MP said dryly.
All of this sets the stage for a policy convention starting March 18 where O’Toole will give the strongest indication yet of his strategy for an election that could conceivably come any time now. Sources say it isn’t likely to outline specific policy planks, but it will set out his plan for positioning the Conservatives.
The convention will also be important to watch for how the votes on policy planks and the party’s constitution play out. There is talk that delegate positions have been snapped up by social-conservative groups determined to take back the agenda after O’Toole turned his back on them, though some party organizers believe that movement is overblown. The truth will come out in the vote counts.
But if O’Toole is going to win back his faltering support in caucus, he’ll have to start showing that his vision for the party is working. If not, and the MP disgruntlement worsens, it bodes ill for a party that only wins elections when it’s united.
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