What’s Next for Poilievre After Election Loss

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre speaks to supporters after the April 28 election, in Ottawa on April 29, 2025. Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images

News Analysis

As if expecting the knives to come out to force Pierre Poilievre out as leader after the Conservatives failed to win the April 28 election, the Tory leader’s top lieutenants came to his defence within hours of the result.

Deputy Leader Melissa Lantsman reiterated that she looks forward to Poilievre’s continued leadership, while Conservative House Leader Andrew Scheer, who once held Poilievre’s position as party leader, said his “continued leadership will ensure we finish the job next time.”

Scheer himself was effectively ousted after losing the 2019 election, stepping down amid insider leaks to the media casting him in a negative light. His successor Erin O’Toole was similarly ousted for losing the 2021 election, in that instance by a vote in caucus.

In his speech on election night, Poilievre made it clear he was not planning on going anywhere.

“It will be an honour to continue to fight for you and to be a champion of your cause,” he said on stage at the Rogers Centre in downtown Ottawa while standing with his wife, Anaida, who played a major role in his campaign.

But the loss of Poilievre’s riding of Carleton added to the uncertainty of what the different factions in the Tories’ big-tent coalition could have in store for him in a party notorious for short-lived leaders.

As a broad coalition composed of different ideological leanings ranging from social conservatives to red Tories, libertarians, progressive conservatives, and others, the Conservative Party finds unity more an aspiration than a given.

On election night, Poilievre highlighted the gains the party made. The Conservatives increased their share of the national vote to 41 percent from 34 percent in the 2021 election—a level not seen since the 1988 election, as pointed out by Poilievre—and the party added 25 seats, though recounts in close races could change the outcome somewhat.

Charles Bird, a principal with Earnscliffe Strategies, says the increased votes and seats could support the case for Poilievre’s continued leadership in the eyes of the party faithful.

“If they were successful in limiting the Liberals to a minority—albeit a robust minority—that likely bodes well for his continued leadership,” Bird said in an interview.

On the other hand, he said, there will be those in the party pointing out that it was under his leadership that the Tories failed to win while just a few months ago they were leading in the polls by a large margin. That all changed with the Trump presidency, Justin Trudeau’s resignation as prime minister, and the emergence of Mark Carney as Liberal leader.

Tim Powers, chair of public affairs consulting firm Summa Strategies, also says that Poilievre will be facing “choppy waters” as he tries to maintain his leadership post-election.

“How he handles the accountability that’s going to be expected of him, along with navigating how he gets a seat in Parliament, are going to be two of the immediate challenges he faces that will shape whether he stays or goes,” Powers told The Epoch Times.

Seeking a Seat

There have been many cases of a new leader of a party not having a seat in the national and provincial legislatures. Carney himself was in this position after taking over from Trudeau.

But as incumbents go, the long-ruling Liberal Prime Minister MacKenzie King, who lost his seat in the 1925 election, asked his MP in the Liberal-safe riding of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, to step down so he could take that seat in a byelection, which he succeeded in doing.

And in British Columbia in 2013, Premier Christy Clark lost in her riding of Vancouver-Point Grey despite her party winning the election. However, she ran in a byelection two months later and won after MLA Ben Stewart stepped down.

“I could see somebody stepping down for [Poilievre], or if there’s a byelection, he’s very well positioned to win,” Nelson Wiseman, political science professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, said in an interview.

The question is which Conservative MP would be willing to give up his or her seat for Poilievre to run. Additionally, it would be Carney, as the prime minister, who decides when that byelection would be held, and that could take many months.

Directions

Even before the election, there were already reports of infighting between the federal Tories and the provincial Progressive Conservatives in Ontario and Nova Scotia.

During the Nova Scotia provincial election in November, PC Premier Tim Houston said he wouldn’t be inviting Poilievre to campaign with him as he (Houston) is not a member of any federal party, while anonymous sources within the parties told the media of tensions between the two parties.

When asked if he thinks the federal Tories should shift direction, Houston told reporters on April 30 that “there are many shades of blue,” and that the Conservative Party “can be an effective big tent.”

“After four consecutive losses to the Liberal Party, I think it’s time for them to do some soul searching,” he said.

In Ontario, Premier Doug Ford’s campaign manager Kory Teneycke during the election campaign publicly accused Poilievre’s team of “campaign malpractice” for blowing their lead in the polls, while Ford told the media that the Tories would have fared better if they'd had Teneycke as campaign manager. “Sometimes the truth hurts,” the premier said.

Ford himself recently won a third consecutive majority government, with his campaign focused heavily on standing up to U.S. President Donald Trump, similar to the federal Liberals. Over the years, he has in some cases moved considerably away from the right-of-centre policies he campaigned on as PC leader before becoming premier.

For example, Ford had promised to overhaul the provincial sex-education curriculum during the 2018 campaign. Once in power, as his government made attempts at revisions, it became mired in court challenges by activist groups, attracting heavy negative media coverage. In the end, his government maintained the bulk of the curriculum material that parental groups had expressed concerns about.

As well, during the pandemic, he ousted MPP Rick Nicholls from caucus for refusing to get vaccinated at a time when media was highly focused on such issues, while raising the provincial debt amid increased program spending at levels higher than the previous Kathleen Wynne Liberals when comparing the expenditure-to-GDP ratio.

But if Ford’s advice for the federal Tory leadership is to aim for the more populist policies and campaigning that may be at odds with the party’s ideological inclinations, previous leader O’Toole didn’t find that a successful strategy.

O’Toole campaigned as being “true blue” during the 2020 Conservative leadership race, but later, under criticism by the opposing parties and amid negative media coverage, introduced a form of carbon pricing and also reversed course on opposing the Liberal ban on certain types of guns.

Following the party’s loss in the 2021 election, the first public request from inside the Tory caucus for O’Toole’s removal came from Conservative Senator Denise Batters. Batters said in a petition for O’Toole’s ouster that he had reversed position on “the carbon tax, on firearms, on conscience rights,” and that winning “without principles is pointless.”

O’Toole was removed from his position as party leader in February 2022, with 73 out of 118 MPs voting in favour.

David Leis, president of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, says the real direction for the Conservatives should be presenting a “principled policy vision” for Canada. He says the recent election was “extraordinary” due to much of the NDP vote going to the Liberals and given the “psychology of the nation” in light of the Trump presidency.

“That was something that I really don’t think anyone would have anticipated,” he told The Epoch Times.

He says another significant challenge that the Conservatives need to figure out a solution for is the role of the media and the importance of balanced reporting, which influences voter decision. He says this is overshadowed by promises of government funding and the questions of “conflict of interest” it raises.

“These are important matters of healthy debate and discussion that serve democracy,” Leis said.

For his part, Teneycke says he believes Poilievre finished “strong enough” to be able to have the support needed to stay on as leader, according to The Canadian Press.

“My view is he’s not going anywhere,” said Teneycke, who was former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s director of communications before joining Ford’s team.