`We are building towards victory', O'toole promises
Launches review after failing to shift vote in GTA
• The federal election battle may be over for Conservative Leader Erin O'toole, but the next fight is just beginning: defending his leadership against those in his party upset that the Liberals emerged with another minority government on Monday.
At a Tuesday news conference in Ottawa, O'toole argued the Conservatives made important gains in the election, even though their seat count (currently at 119 to the Liberals' 158) is nearly identical to the last election.
“In about 30 ridings we came within 2,000 votes of the Liberals,” O'toole said. “We are building towards victory next time. I am disappointed that we've lost some members and I've already initiated a post-election review to examine what went right, what went wrong, and what we can do better to win in 18 months.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, the Conservatives had gained four seats in Atlantic Canada and one in Ontario, while losing four in B.C. and three in Alberta. Those numbers could still change slightly this week as all the mail-in ballots are counted.
But despite the gains in Atlantic Canada, O'toole lost ground in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), B.C.'S Lower Mainland, and in Edmonton — a troubling result for a leader who pitched himself as someone who could help the party win in suburban battlegrounds. For the third straight election, the Liberals are on track to nearly sweep the populous GTA, a feat that makes it nearly impossible for the Conservatives to form government.
O'toole argued that his election platform — which was substantially more centrist than the “True Blue” platform he ran on in the leadership race — helped the party make gains “in some parts of the country.”
“But we also didn't win the trust (of Canadians) to a level we needed in parts of the GTA, some parts of the country that we have to do better in,” he acknowledged.
A huge question for the party to sort through in the aftermath is how much of their vote share was lost to the People's Party of Canada, the hard-right populist party started by former Conservative leadership contender Maxime Bernier.
O'toole argued the PPC benefited from voter backlash to pandemic measures, likely referring to vaccine mandates and lockdowns. He said Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau had “divided the country and actually made health a wedge issue.”
“There were two people that used health in this pandemic for political gain, Mr. Trudeau and the PPC,” O'toole said.
Asked whether the PPC drained enough votes from the Conservatives to cause them to lose close races, O'toole again said that the PPC took advantage of voter frustration.
“People are frustrated that we were in a pandemic election, that Mr. Trudeau was using the pandemic to divide people,” O'toole said. “Some people expressed their frustration in that way. That's part of our exercise on how we make sure we can learn, and make sure that we can close those small gaps that you mentioned, and win in those seats where we were close, where we had gains in many cases, but didn't close the deal.”
There is significant disagreement both inside and outside the Conservative party about how much of the PPC vote is carved out of the Conservative vote share. Some pollsters who have done deep dives on the PPC believe that about a third to a half of the PPC vote is coming from voters who would have otherwise voted Conservative.
But there are other longtime party operatives, such as former Stephen Harper campaign manager Jenni Byrne, who are convinced — and saying so publicly — that the Conservatives lost many more votes to the PPC because of O'toole's leftward pivot after the leadership race.
The PPC ended up at just five per cent of the vote nationally, far below what some polling firms such as EKOS and Mainstreet had been estimating before the election. But even at that lower level, there are numerous close races where the PPC may have played spoiler for the Conservative candidate, including the southern Ontario ridings of Kitchener South— Hespeler and Niagara Centre, the Alberta riding of Edmonton Griesbach, and the B.C. riding of Cloverdale—langley City. (These vote margins may still change as mail-in ballots are counted.)
For now, the future of O'toole's leadership will be in the hands of the Conservative caucus. When its MPS next meet, they will vote on whether to invoke a Reform Act provision that would empower the caucus to oust O'toole as leader if a majority of MPS want him gone.
However, following the 2019 election, the Conservative caucus voted against giving itself this power. That effectively meant that if a leadership review were to happen, it would happen at a national convention of party members. As it turned out, Andrew Scheer never made it that far; he resigned two months after the election, facing fierce internal opposition to his leadership.