Chris Selley: Pierre Poilievre lost the election to Donald Trump

OTTAWA — The air was sucked out of the bizarrely freezing-cold Canada Room at the Rogers Convention Centre in downtown Ottawa at 10:07 p.m. local time, when CTV News made its call for a Liberal government. A relatively rowdy crowd near the stage, surrounded by photographers and cameras, had been leading chants of “bring it home!” as positive Conservative results trickled in from Atlantic Canada. Things quickly ran out of steam once results started coming in from Quebec and Ontario.

The last “bring it home” with a Conservative majority government still on the table came from one lonely woman trying and failing to get the crowd riled up, even as most slumped further and further into their chairs. (Picture that one superfan who constantly tries to get the wave going at a baseball game.)

By 10:30 p.m., the crowd wasn’t even applauding ridings being called for the Conservatives — though Mark Carney’s win in Nepean did get a healthy round of boos. At least one person was in tears. Another buried her face in a Canadian flag.

Things perked up briefly later, when Tories started looking on the bright side: At time of this writing, the Conservatives are elected or leading in 41 more seats than they won in 2021; nationwide, considerably more Canadians in raw numbers and as a percentage voted Conservative — 42 per cent, the best score since Brian Mulroney’s victories in the ’80s, and with voters younger than ever to boot.

Around 1 a.m., Poilievre took the stage with his wife Anaida to a rapturous reception — albeit from a much diminished crowd — and confirmed he doesn’t plan to step down as leader. “The promise that was made to me and to all of you is that anybody from anywhere could achieve anything — that through hard work you could get a great life, you could have a nice affordable home on a safe street.

“My purpose is and will continue to be to restore that promise,” he said to cheers.

Of course, none of this was remotely the Conservatives’ goal. This year’s election was supposed to deliver them a whopping majority, and it’s certainly not that. Moreover, as he spoke, Poilievre was in serious danger of losing his own riding of Carleton — trailing Liberal rival Bruce Fanjoy 51 per cent to 45.5 per cent, with two-thirds of polls reporting.

Inevitably, now comes the airing of grievances. In fact the airing started weeks ago, led by the Tories at Queen’s Park — especially Premier Doug Ford and his campaign manager Kory Teneycke, both of whom savaged the federal campaign led by Jenni Byrne — but also by various disgruntled candidates who put in work during nomination contests only to be gazumped by the central campaign.

Just over three months ago, after then prime minister Justin Trudeau finally packed up his socks, the Conservatives had a whopping 25-point lead, according to 338Canada’s rolling average of opinion polls. Certain columnists (ahem) prefaced remarks about Poilievre’s chances with phrases like “unless something almost inconceivable happens” — even pundits (ahem) who had factored in the possibility of Donald Trump retaking the White House. And now: Wallop.

“What the hell happened?” has been a live question for weeks already. Allegations of campaign malpractice aside, in hindsight, it doesn’t seem super-complicated. As Abacus Data reported a few months into Poilievre’s leadership, he was much more of a known quantity among Canadians than either party leaders Erin O’Toole or Andrew Scheer before him — and much of that baked-in public opinion was negative.

Perhaps Poilievre won some people over with his various rebranding efforts: The contact lenses, the muscle tees, start-and-stop efforts to show a softer side. But his central “Canada is broken” message only seemed to gain credence as time went on.

Millennials and gen-Zers are giving up on home-ownership, and there is no immediate prospect of relief there: In the midst of a universally acknowledged housing crisis, housing starts in some parts of the country have actually slowed. Drug-fuelled misery and chaos on city streets — and by no means just big cities — turned public opinion against drug harm-reduction efforts with which most Conservatives have never been comfortable. Then it turned out “safer-supply” opioids were being diverted en masse onto the street, where they were often traded for fentanyl.

A Toronto Police officer advised residents to leave their car keys by the front door in plain sights so burglars wouldn’t have to rough them up before stealing their car — which the police might or might not have any interest in trying to track down. Carjackings became a regular news item. When police did make arrests, there was a decent chance the cases would fall apart in court for want of resources — resources as basic as appointing judges! — to ensure a suitably speedy trial.

On that front we’re not just talking about car theft, but about sexual assault cases, gun charges, human trafficking charges. Canada’s justice system, at the very least, is broken. Canadians have heard story after story about flamboyantly recidivist violent criminals offending while out on bail or parole, then being bailed or paroled again, and then reoffending again, over and over and over again. Protesters targeting Jewish neighbourhoods and businesses were met as often with police assistance as with pushback.

When polls found out 70 per cent of Canadians agreed with Poilievre about the country being busted, despite the horror it caused among the Laurentian Elite class, it suddenly broke into the mainstream.

But then Trump came along … and suddenly there seemed to be a huge rally-‘round-the-flag effect among voters — the same way Canadians rewarded governments during the pandemic for decidedly mixed efforts and results against COVID-19. Suddenly “Canada is broken” was unpatriotic, not the cri de coeur it had been. And then the NDP collapsed, and decades of electoral arithmetic suddenly went out the window.

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