Front Burner - Can Pierre Poilievre stop the bleeding?

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

After a fourth Conservative MP crossed over last week, the Liberals are now only one seat shy of an official majority. And with two out of three byelections taking place today in safe Liberal ridings, it’s widely expected that Mark Carney and the Liberals will get their majority government after the results come in.Tonda MacCharles is the Toronto Star’s Ottawa bureau chief. She’s here to talk about the challenges facing Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, whether he can keep his caucus in line, and if there’s a case for pushing him out now.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

What's that noise? I don't know. I get that checked. Quickly. Yeah, good point. Point S, Tires and Auto Service. You think Point S has good deals on tires? Definitely.

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It's widely expected that by the end of the day today, Monday, Mark Carney and the Liberals will get their majority government. Three by-elections are taking place. Two of them in safe liberal ridings in Toronto and one in Terban, Quebec, which is expected to be a tight race with the Black Quebecois. The Liberals are already at 171 seats after another Conservative MP, the fourth since last fall, crossed over last week. They are just one seat shy of the official majority. Being at the helm of the Conservative Party while your opponent gets a majority that was sealed by your own MPs crossing the floor, well, this is an enormous blow for Conservative leader Pierre Pahliav, and it comes amidst a lot of drama inside the Conservative Party.

There's the floor crossing, of course, but the Toronto Star has been reporting that up to 40 conservative MPs worry that Palliev will cost them their seats. And some are reportedly considering ousting him, from the leadership. So is Pierre Polyev's leadership under real threat right now? Just how deep does the discontent within the party run? Can he keep his caucus in line? And what's the case for pushing him out now? Tonda McCharls is here with me. She is the Toronto Stars Ottawa Bureau Chief. Tonda, it's great to have you. Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for having me, Tammy. So let's start with the Sarnia MP, Marilyn Gladjew's floor crossing. She's known as kind of like a true blue Tory, she won her riding for election straight.

Gladjew says that this was the quote, best thing, unquote, for her writing and that her constituents had soured on Pollyev. Fair to say this move surprised both liberal and conservative watchers, given Gladys past positions on issues like abortion. So if a member wants to bring a bill, I personally don't believe it will be supported. 77% of Canadians want to have abortion services available. And for them to have their rights and freedoms, those have to be available. And I think if people want to bring something forward, we can discuss it.

But I just don't think it will resonate. And vaccines. And so how did this move land with conservative MPs that you have spoken to? They were as shocked as any liberals were and any journalists covering the Hill were. She's not just someone who housed some pretty traditionally right-wing conservative views on social issues and whatnot. She ran forward the conservative leadership herself. So look, this came as a bomb show on the middle of the week last week leading into the liberal convention. And there wasn't one conservative I spoke to who wasn't floored by it. This is not just a conservative.

This is a conservative member. She sat and had dinner with the truckers. She questioned COVID-19 vaccines. Campaign Life Canada is asking. about what the liberal stance on abortion is now because Marilyn Gladu is now in caucus. So to say that conservative jaws are on the floor all around this town today is an understatement.

You mentioned off the top about 40 MPs being worried about losing their seats. I doubt Marilynne Gladu was one of them, have to be honest. Marilyn Gladu scooped up a whole bunch of People's Party of Canada votes in 20, to win her seat with 53% of the votes. She's got the conservative lock on that riding. It's not that she feared losing her seat,

but to hear her tell it at the convention, it was all about this. I want to be part of a government that's doing things and building things, and that is also the talking point of the liberals. This is a moment for us to unite as Canadians, to do the work to build the nation in response to unjustified U.S. tariffs.

that takes serious leadership and a credible plan. And I know the Prime Minister Mark Carney brings both. And I'm ready to put my talents and experience towards the task as your newest Liberal MP. What does it mean for the Conservatives? If Marilyn Gladys cannot find her home in the caucus of Pierre Paulyev, it leaves open the door that many, many others that you never thought would think of going, could be thinking about that. And what we're hearing, this, you know,

there's conversations around, should they try and outst take matters in their own hands and oust Pierre Paulyev? Will that happen? I don't know. But there are, according to liberals, ongoing conversations with at least eight other conservatives who are considering coming across the floor to join Mark Kearney's government.

That's astonishing. Some of the names we've heard, you know, I would not even put them out there because honestly, sometimes I can't even believe it myself. Wow. But it's from across the country and different sides of the spectrum of the conservative caucus. Just astonishing that there are eight considering. Just to stick with Gladiu for a moment, I was listening to Fred DeLorey on Power in Politics,

conservative strategist Fred DeLore. And he said that he had been told that ultimately what set Glad you off was an email sent by Polly's office to the Shadow Cabinet. and it asked them to give examples of their best social media posts, media interviews, that kind of stuff. And the way it was written and, you know, do you still want to be in Shadow Cabinet? It was, it set a lot of people off, a lot of conservatives. And the Shadow Cabinet's huge, conservative party, it's like half. These are free rules. It's not like the government of Canada.

It's Shadow, so you can give them out their free titles, but there's about 70 of them. So 70 of them received this. And it's a bit insulted, and they were insulted by this. So I know you talked to. about her official reason for why she said that she was crossing. But what do you make about that one? And then can you talk to me a little bit more about the fallout from that email? There were many conservatives who were dismayed at that email. I mean, it's kind of creating a hunger games scenario, you know, compete for your own job. Show us that what you can do. What have you

done for us lately in terms of media interviews? A lot of them haven't been able to be doing interviews for a long time. And some of that has changed in recent months. But I think that there was already a discontent that's been expressed to people like me from people in the conservative benches with the way the opposition leader's office has run things. You know, there is a sense that people aren't being used to their true potential, that they're not given a fair shake. Glad do I suspect that's what I've been told, felt like that, felt ignored for three years, not well-treated, not had her voice heard. To what extent all of that is a part of a bigger picture? I expect there are many things going on.

It's not just perhaps a heavy-handed caucus management that some are chafing under. I think it's also, let's face it, the polls, you know, this idea that there were some 40 MPs who are concerned about losing their seats, that's not just groundless fear. I spoke to Philippe Fonnier with 338Canada.com, and he's a polling aggregator in Canada who looks at all the polls, the whole range. And his modeling has projected that 40 conservative seats, if an election were held this week under Pierre Paulyev, they would lose 40 seats.

So it's grounded in data. These fears are real. I think that's the electoral factor at play. Is it Paulyev's leadership style? That's probably a big part of it. But he has been doing the thing that his critics want him to do, speak out more, speak to media, look more prime ministerial. Don't always be, in Newfoundland we call it a cracky.

Don't be a cracky dog as someone always nipping at people's heels and bark, bark, bark. In fact, he's been proposing concrete policy changes or different approaches to, for example, the Canada-U.S. relationship, different from Mark Kearney. He's made proposals on cost of living stuff. His critics have wanted him to do all of that. But is it a day late, you know, a dollar short and a day late? I don't know. I think there is a pretty sour mood right now in the conservative ranks. And I think vis-a-vis Mark Carney and his ability to pull from the left and right of the spectrum, I think they're very frustrated by it. Well, I know there's been reporting that some MPs are discussing

whether to invoke caucus powers to force Pollyav out here. Like just how would that work exactly? And coming a couple months off, he won his leadership review, you know, with very strong numbers, 87%. Right? Yeah. Just like take me through that. Okay. Well, just very quickly on the, on the, that he got literally, you know, in January, an overwhelming vote of support from a convention held in Calgary of grassroots members. And to a certain extent, people questioned just how strong that really was because the convention was orchestrated in such a way.

that the delegates were largely weighted to the West. The Ontario PCs were having their convention at the same time. There was a, it's believed, you know, not as significant a presence of Quebec, Atlantic Canada and Ontario conservatives at that convention. His base is in the West, and that was the people that showed up, that gave him an 87%. Could he get an 87% of his caucus to step forward? You know, that's a whole other kettle of fish. So now to his caucus issue, the conservatives were the ones who championed. the power of a caucus to control the fate of a leader,

to have a say in who the party's leader is. So there's a law that, in fact, was proposed by a conservative MP, Michael Chong, that was adopted, and it requires, after each election, a caucus to adopt its rules. And so this bill will restrain the power of party leaders in terms of expelling a member from caucus or removing them as a party candidate. And I think the direct result of that will be freer voting.

in the House of Commons, where party members on a point of principle or on behalf of their constituents can break rank with their party and vote accordingly. The Conservatives have done that. It gives the caucus the power to basically gather signatures on a letter if they get 20% of the caucus to sign on for a leadership vote in caucus about ousting the leader. They can trigger a secret ballot. In this case of what Pierpoliup now has 140. MPs and he's down, he's lost four since the last election.

20% of that would require 28 MPs to sign a letter and to bring that forward on Wednesday in caucus if they were so inclined and then that would force the secret ballot. That's the trick. Now, when Aaron O'Toole, do you remember, during the Freedom Convoy, he was ousted by just such a vote. Yes. But there had been a massive organizational move against him inside. and frankly, a lot of the people who now support Pierre Pahliav were involved in that coup to get rid of Aaron O'Toole.

Aaron O'Toole has been removed as conservative leader by his own caucus. He's been ousted in a secret ballot after a third of his MPs launched a review process on Monday. The count was 73 to kick him out, 45 to keep him in place as leader. So they know what they're up against, they know how to organize for one. they probably know how to organize against one. So I expect there's a lot of work going on these days ahead of Wednesday's caucus to make sure that does not happen. And frankly, I'm not even sure that the conservative MPs who are really angry with Pierre Poliav right now,

will they go that far as to try and take steps to eject him? It's a real question I have. What's that noise? I don't know. I get that checked. Quickly. Yeah, good point. Point S, tires, and auto service.

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I'm Lisa Yuso, a digital producer at Ideas, the podcast that likes to feed your curiosity. I ask my colleagues why they think you should listen. Ideas can make you the smartest, most interesting guest at your next dinner party in less than 60 minutes. It's got the best of a storytelling podcast with the best of a great lecture. You can pretty much never predict where an episode will take you, but you can count on every episode to shift your perspective, even just a little. Find and follow ideas wherever you get your podcasts. I wonder if you could just do kind of the pros and cons to that kind of strategy for me.

Like if you are one of those very discontented MPs and you're thinking about signing that letter right now, what would be the reasons why you would want to do it right now and what would be the reasons why you would hold off? All right. Let's just go quickly to the pros of that in their view. If Carney has a majority on Monday and even if there's one or two other floor crossers, you're looking at that and you're thinking, okay, well, then there's no, now he's got a majority, now there's no election for three years, now's the time to get somebody new in place and build the party up to be able to switch voters over to your side. And the other pro, I guess, I mean, would be rip the band-aid off,

you know, get the painful thing done now. But there are lots of cons to this strategy or this play. And I think the biggest one, would be, would there be a backlash from party members, grassroots members, to what would be seen as kind of an inside the palace coup by caucus MPs? Yes, they all got elected under Pierre Pueleev's banner, but also, you know, he did grow the vote significantly in the last election. He grew the share of vote, and they got, yeah, they got the highest percentage of vote share and diversified to a certain extent.

The vote as well into, say, some of the NDP writings, They, conservatives, not the liberals, took advantage and took NDP writings away. So, you know, strong worker, bread and butter voters voting for Pierre Puelleb. So lots of cons on that side, you know, do you want to take a chance and start forcing people to take a look at the party and whether or not voters should just simply cast their lot with liberals? I think there's pros and cons for both sides. I can imagine a lot of MPs really struggling with what's the next move. The big thing in all of this, I guess, and it's also a con against this move.

There are no internal or external replacements that are obvious for Mr. Poliyev. Now, you know, sure, no one's stepping up right now and saying, I want to be the next leader, and I'm ready to carry the banner for the critics, and I'm ready to replace Poliyev. But you never know until you know kind of thing. Right. Like I think if the reality were to hit, you might soon hear other potential leadership candidates express interest inside an icon. If there was like an open road. Yeah. I know you said, you talked about ripping the Band-Aid off, but is there an argument that, you know, assuming Mark Kearney

gets this majority that everybody is expecting him to get on Monday night, that, you know, there's, there's quite a long road three years ahead of them and that maybe they do want to wait until they put somebody new up so that people don't get sick of them? Look, it would easily take that long for, I think, the party to be able to make its case, not only to sort of wait out how the liberals handle

the very real affordability crisis and concerns in this country around cost of living around the price of housing, the price of a car, all of that, to sort of see their electoral opening. But it would take that long. You know, Avi Lewis,

strangely enough, is somewhat in the same boat as any conservative leader, be it probably ever anybody else right now. They have and perhaps welcome the chance to kind of buy their time, build the party, make their case. Because right now, it sort of seems like the Carney Coalition. One liberal, senior liberal told me this weekend at the convention should best be thought of and described as an anti-Trump coalition, drawing, you know, both from the left and right, the NEPA and the conservative ranks.

they've got time to wait and see what happens to that coalition, does it hold? Right now, it seems somewhat of a force. If you look at the polls today, every pollster in the country has sort of a gap over the conservatives. The liberals having a wide lead, either of six percentage points, up to 13 percentage points, and putting Carney squarely in the range of a majority. So time, I think, would be something that anybody would well. The conservatives certainly don't want an election today or tomorrow, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, just coming back to Pali, I've here, you were talking before about how he's been making some moves lately to be more kind of conciliatory and prime ministerial in his approach. He's talked about even working together with Carney on the U.S. file.

He's putting forward these policy proposals, I think, like the elimination of the federal tax on, ass was very well received. He went on Joe Rogan. Yeah, so I'm a big kettlebell freak. I love it. And I really, I started to study what Pabels. And the diary of the CEO was Stephen Bartlett lately. And I think he had some pretty kind of human moments on both of those podcasts. It's reinforced my sense of compassion for people who can't provide for themselves. And, you know, I've talked a lot about how government should be limited. I do think there's a very real role for government to help people who genuinely cannot provide for themselves, people who suffer from with disabilities being probably the best example. And it has reinforced to me that we have to also have policies that recognize the inherent

worth of every individual. And so do you see a world in which he is able to kind of eventually turn this around or do you think that this is kind of a foregone conclusion and it's just a matter of time at this point? And that might be an unfair question to ask. Yeah, honestly, I don't have that crystal ball and I've been around this place too long to be able to make predictions. I honestly think that so much can happen. But to the point about him making the pivot in both his image and his style and substance, you know, I think he has made lots of efforts there. He's given substantive speeches, both at home and abroad. We should not declare a permanent rupture with our biggest customer and closest neighbor

in favor of a strategic partnership for a new world order with Beijing. Never make the mistake of confusing engagement with dependency. China is not a substitute for the United States of America. And yet it seems that there's very little that's piercing. Phil Fornier, the polling aggregator analyst, made a good point. He said, you know, what happens with leaders is the trajectory is rarely from, you go from a high of being light and see it come down, see your numbers come down, and then only to go back up. Usually they rise or they fall. And Pierre Poliab's trajectory has never reversed after it started going down.

So is he able to recover that kind of support, bring in more or different voters into his coalition that could overwhelm the Kearney coalition of voters that's forming? Boy, I really just don't know. I think that there are conservatives inside who think that just given time, shine will come off, the liberals, and the conservatives will get to hit the end zone there. But there were also conservatives who believe he'll never be prime minister. Yeah. So, hard to say.

He just lost his director of communications, Katie Maryfields, who was brought in last year. And I know she and Steve Outhouse. His new camping man. Yeah. They're seen as two of the most significant. kind of agents pushing for change in the way that Pahliav approaches politics. Does her departure say anything to you or signal anything to you? Could it be seen as a sign that there was disagreement over this direction that they're taking?

It's hard to get a read on that. She has said that she made the decision for her personal reasons. But, you know, to what extent there were fundamental disagreements of approach inside? That we can only guess that. It's a pretty tight ship inside there. But I do think that what's more notable and more of a factor in Paulyev's approach to politics has been the arrival of Steve Outhouse, who has been an advocate of this kind of outreach across a whole bunch more media outlets in the country and abroad. And, you know, that works for them.

Is it enough or is it too late? I really just don't know. I think that what I have heard still is, and what I'm struck by, is that despite some of those changes, what remains is a party leader and a tight inner circle who he trusts, who are prepared at times to be quite hands-on and, if not in some respects, ruthless in the way they deal with people. At least that's what conservative MPs have expressed to me. Now, some of them are willing to sit it out, and some of them are just putting their heads down.

I'm told morale is at a complete and utter low inside there. And some are just ready, just keep their head down until, you know, the next time comes along. And just fair for me to say some of them might be reticent, maybe to sign that letter because of this, right, for kind of repercussions or consequences. Just kind of to wrap this up, how would you say Polyev is responding to all of this? Does he seem like a leader who feels very under threat right now? If you watched his news conference on Thursday, the day after Marilyn Gladdeu left to join the liberals, he uses the same criticism of it as he had with the previous departures from his caucus, that is to say they should have run in a by-election. This is a dirty backroom deal by Mark Carney.

He's, you know, undercutting democracy. If you ran in an election, you went out and you said to little old ladies, to veterans, to truckers, to single moms, that you were going to stand up for the conservative platform of affordability, safety, and national sovereignty, and to do so as part of the conservative party that people voted for, then you should respect those people and honor your word. Mark Carney is saying is that your vote doesn't count that he's going to use backroom dirty deals to reverse the election result in countless ridings, robbing people of their voice and giving him the power to raise your cost of living. Which tells me that he still isn't prepared to publicly confront any of the issues that have been raised about

his leadership style. And he's not clearly doing enough privately to confront. He's not clearly doing enough privately to confront it to satisfy his critics internally. I did find he gave a very forceful defense of his own mandates. He quoted the 8.3 million people who voted for him last spring and he quoted his 87% result in the leadership review. But all of that is quite beside the point. If you can't hold the confidence of your caucus MPs, the people who were elected alongside you to carry the message

and to come out and speak up forcefully for you, you do have some issues. And so we'll see. We'll see. He's a pretty adept politician. I think his fundamental characteristic that we have seen, however, is that he, for example, a lot of his, he freely admits this. A lot of his philosophical, political, philosophical and economic ideas haven't changed since he was 17. Right? He fixes a view and carries it forward. I think he may not have absorbed perhaps the need for other kinds of changes. and maybe he's one of those people who finds changing that stuff difficult. But I would not underestimate him or his team because if time is of, you know, if they have three years to get themselves sorted, you know, it's also a strong political brand. That seems like a really good place for us to end.

Tanda, this is great. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, Jamie. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much. much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.ca slash podcasts.