One of the great failures of Canada’s parliamentary democracy, wrote Hugh Segal, “is the speed with which we discard leaders.”
asserted
we → write → leaders
Losing leaders who lose elections, the respected scholar/staffer/senator wrote, means forgoing their “experience, judgement, constituency, and more textured understanding of the province, country, and body-politic.”
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senator → lose → province
Nobody better represented this tragedy for Segal than Robert Stanfield — “the best prime minister we never had” — who ran thrice against Pierre Elliott Trudeau and came up short each time.
“His conservatism was one of ideals and foundations,” Segal wrote, “not ideology and the politics of wedging Canadians apart by their differences.
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Segal → represent → differences
The biggest difference is that Canada lost something by Stanfield’s departure.
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Canada → lose → departure
Today, we are missing out because Poilievre won’t go away.
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Poilievre → miss → ?
Still smarting from last year’s loss and more unpopular than ever, the Conservatives seem resigned to another three years of Poilievre’s brand of wedge politics.
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Conservatives → smart → politics
They should ditch the fatalism, I say.
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I → ditch → fatalism
Better is, in fact, possible — and the Tories should consult their wastebin of discarded leaders for inspiration.
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Tories → consult → inspiration
I’ve long had a bone to pick with the Poilievre style of paranoia politics.
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I → have → politics
He piloted a nasty kind of conspiracism with spooky warnings about “global financial elites” and the World Economic Forum; he endorsed a particularly virulent sort of anti-government anger in the Freedom Convoy; and he contributed to social fragmentation by railing against journalists and favouring weirdo social media influencers.
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he → pilot → influencers
All this is particularly frustrating because Poilievre has consistently offered stark assessments of the causes of Canada’s real problems.
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Poilievre → offer → problems
He yelped about reckless spending, anemic housing construction, mismanagement in the immigration system, and feel-good policies that accomplish little.
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that → yelp → little
It’s not fair, I suppose, that he was never rewarded for correctly diagnosing the root of Canada’s malaise.
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he → ’ → malaise
Mark Carney ate Poilievre’s lunch in 2025 by identifying those same problems and proffering robust ideas as to how they might be solved.
uncertain
they → eat → ideas
He did this while offering a unifying message, not one cloaked in bitter recriminations about a nefarious deep state.
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He → do → state
Things, we know, got worse.
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we → know → ?
Four Conservatives have crossed the floor since late last year, a fifth was appointed to the Senate and three others are on their way out.
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others → cross → way
Few of them have much good to say about Poilievre’s leadership.
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Few → have → leadership
In Brantford–Brand South, Poilievre refused to hold a nomination contest and hand-picked a candidate instead.
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Poilievre → refuse → candidate
Now, Poilievre’s choice is running against an independent candidate who’s been endorsed by two former Conservative MPs from the riding.
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who → run → riding
That candidate, Dave Carrol, is running on a platform that amounts to an implicit rejection of Poilievre: Carrol has cast himself as a grassroots conservative who puts community before party, calling himself “Captain Kindness.”
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who → run → himself
This summer, I surveyed some Conservative strategists and staffers and tried to diagnose the rot in the state of Toryland.
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I → survey → Toryland
There was a path ahead for Poilievre, I argued, but it would require him to show a bit of humility about his lot.
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it → be → lot
He would need to accept that he would be relegated to the opposition benches for the next three years and start figuring out how to widen his appeal rather than to take the government out at the knees.
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he → need → knees
He’s done the opposite, and to little effect.
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He → do → effect
Today’s Conservatives are an amorphous blob of a party, existing only in rejection of everything the Carney government is doing.
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government → exist → everything
“After a year and a half of Mark Carney, everything’s worse,” Poilievre declared earlier this month.
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Poilievre → ’ → Carney
Polls show that Canadians disagree.
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Canadians → show → ?
When Poilievre rose to debate the government’s budget, he spoke as if he were robbing a stagecoach: “First, our demands.”
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he → rise → stagecoach
The government is spending too much, he insists, but also cutting too deeply.
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he → spend → much
That’s why it needs to axe fuel taxes and waive the GST on million-dollar home sales.
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it → ’ → sales
Poilievre has both backed Ottawa for walking away from trade talks with the United States and castigated it for not reaching a deal.
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Poilievre → back → deal
He has also, for some reason, made repeated trips to Detroit to pitch his plan for a “Tariff-Free Auto Pact” that is indistinguishable from what Canada has been proposing for years.
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Canada → make → years
Poilievre has reserved particular vitriol for Canada’s new immigration targets.
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Poilievre → reserve → targets
The government’s plan will add 380,000 new permanent residents and bring in 370,000 temporary residents per year, although Ottawa is also racing to un-bungle current backlogs by giving permanent residency to hundreds of thousands of people already in Canada this year.
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Ottawa → add → Canada
All told, our population is set to increase by 0.6 per cent at year’s end.
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population → tell → end
Poilievre immediately began ranting about the Liberals’ “bonkers” plan for “mass migration,” drawn up at the behest of a shadowy cabal of “corporate powerbrokers.”
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Poilievre → begin → powerbrokers
It’s tough out there for an opposition party — just ask the NDP.
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It → ’ → NDP
His knee-jerk policymaking is more populist than conservative, and Poilievre spends more time selling a vision of a dystopian Canadian hellscape than he does using his position in Parliament to propose actual solutions.
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he → spend → solutions
There are many ways to be an effective opposition leader that do not involve being a cheerleader for the government.
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that → be → government
…and 28 more, not listed.
The Aporia
