Front Burner - Where does Pierre Poilievre go from here?

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

The Conservative Party of Canada is once again the Official Opposition.Now, the Tories are grappling with the disappointing results of Monday’s election. They lost to the Liberals after leading in the polls mere months ago and their party leader, Pierre Poilievre, failed to win in his own riding. But it wasn’t a total loss. The Conservatives won 41 per cent of the popular vote, and picked up more seats than any other party, flipping both red and orange seats to blue. Top Conservative strategist, Kory Teneycke, joins the show to talk about the path forward – what the results mean for Poilievre and what kinds of challenges he will face, if he stays on as leader, in uniting Conservatives and expanding their base.

In this acclaimed new production of Anna Karenina, the National Ballet of Canada asks, what is fair in love and society? Renowned choreographer Christian Spook adapts Tolstoy's epic novel to dance in a spectacular work, complete with lush costumes, cinematic projections, and a glorious curated score, featuring the music of Rachmaninoff. On stage June 13th to 21st tickets on sale now at

national.ballet.ca This is a CBC podcast Hi everyone, I'm Jamie Poisson So yesterday on the pod we talked about the path forward for the liberals, now that they've got a minority. Today we're talking about what's next for the conservatives, who landed more seats on Monday night than pollsters had projected, but of course did not win the election. What does that mean for Poliev, a guy who did not actually keep his own seat, but at the same time, given that his parties won 41% of that popular vote, is there maybe a

strong case for keeping him on? And if he does stay on, what kinds of challenges is he going to face in uniting conservatives and expanding their base? Today's guest is a very interesting person to put all of these questions to. Cory Tanaiq is one of Canada's top conservative strategists. He's run all three of Doug Ford's winning campaigns for Ontario Premier, and he was director of communications for former Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the 2015 election. So he thought a lot about what political strategies win and lose. But we also wanted to talk to him because tonight has been making headlines

this election season for very openly tearing into Poliev and his campaign. Here he is a few weeks ago on the Curse of Politics podcast. We talk sometimes about campaign malpractice. Blowing a 25 point lead and being like 10 points down is campaign malpractice at the highest level. We wanted to know if tonight still feels that way now

and what he sees as the path forward for the federal conservatives. Corey, hey, thank you so much for coming on to Frontburner. My pleasure. Really appreciate it. In the final polls, the liberals were projected to have around a 70% chance of security, a majority government.

That was according to the CBC's poll tracker. Other pollsters had similar projections, as you know. Obviously that didn't pan out though. And one thing that I wanted to ask you about today is what do you think pollsters missed about support for the conservatives? I think it might be more what they missed with in part with support for the NDP. If you look at the liberal numbers, the polls mostly got it right and aggregators got it

pretty right in in Atlanta, Canada and in Quebec. But when it came to came to Ontario, in Atlanta, Canada, and in Quebec. But when it came to Ontario, I think everyone was showing the NDP, you know, higher than they ended up being by, you know, two, three points. And that two, three points, unlike the previous loss of support from NDP, which all went to the Liberals, you know, that final two, three points that was lower than people expected went to the Conservatives and went to the Conservatives in areas where you saw the Polio campaign really spending a lot of time and effort reaching out to traditional NDP blue collar workers. So you know, places like Windsor, you saw some very big rallies there, Southwestern Ontario generally, Niagara area.

But those are those are areas, places like Hamilton, places like Windsor, where the NDP used to have a lot of seats. Those were core areas of support for them, largely on the basis of support from private sector unions. You've seen both provincially and federally and in other places around the world, those kinds of workers gravitating increasingly towards conservative political options. And I think we just saw that happen there. And we, you know, as the NDP fell apart, not everybody thought that the liberals would be their second choice. I think a bunch of

people found the conservatives to be quite appealing. Were you surprised personally by the results in Ontario? I was a bit surprised that the NDP continued to collapse and that it happened in that way. And then in hindsight, you know, I think the explanation I just gave is, is the one that makes the most sense to me. But, you know, I also think there's something else, you know, going on, uh, you know, older, older voters who traditionally have been very strong supporters of the conservative party, like 55 plus men and 55 plus women. Those are demographics that the conservatives normally win when they're doing well in election. And while 55 plus men, they're almost always

winning whether it's doing well or not. They voted for, for Carney, but younger demographics, you know, millennials and Gen Z folks were much more focused on the affordability issues that Poliev had been campaigning on through 2024. So housing prices and cost of living increases. Older voters tend to be a little bit more insulated from those things. They probably already own a home and actually high real estate values is actually in their financial interest. And the Conservative Party used to be a party of older, wealthier people, and it's increasingly becoming a party of younger folks. Yeah. I want to talk to you a little more about that as this conversation goes on. But I want to ask you about one of the things that became a big conversation point during

this election. It was when you leveled some extraordinarily blunt criticism at the federal conservative campaign and accusing them of campaign malpractice, calling the campaign a disaster, saying Poliev was looking and sounding a lot like Trump. Of course, as we've just talked about, the conservatives did do better than expected, especially as we've just talked about in Ontario. They increased their seat count more than any other party. And as it stands, they still hold a lot of power in parliament. And I just wonder, would you stand by what you said now? Yeah, I would. And so I had two main criticisms

and I think they both stand, but I think one of them they responded to. The time that I made my initial comments, we were in the first week of the campaign and the Conservative Party had yet to, and the leader had yet to even mention the name Donald Trump. They did exercise a pivot,

which is what I was suggesting, to take on that issue more directly. You saw Pauli have gone to have some quite strong words to say about the American president and the tariff threat. So I think the criticism was valid and I think they responded to it. I would cut taxes, red tape, and approve our resource projects so that we can get our goods to market and bring home the jobs so we stand up to President Trump from a position of strength. I think that you also saw them drop some of the language that they were using and some

of the more Trump-style rhetoric. The catchy slogan, podium signs, were replaced by a podium sign with a maple leaf. And you saw Pauli in the debate take a much more prime ministerial tone than what you'd seen previous to that. In terms of campaign malpractice, you know, what I was referring to is the decision to spend 25 million dollars roughly on attack ads on Justin Trudeau in the year leading up to the election and bringing the Liberal Party down to 18 points where whereby they had no choice really but to get rid of Justin Trudeau. I think if Justin Trudeau was still on the ballot we'd have a large conservative majority right now and you know to add insult to injury we spent millions of dollars

attacking the NDP and collapsing them to the point where despite having record high levels of support, we were losing seats. So I'm glad to see the Conservatives did better than was being predicted, but I still think this is an election that we could have and should have won. Pauli have said after his loss on Monday that we are cognizant of the fact that we didn't quite get over the finish line yet. We know that change is needed, but change is hard to come by. It takes time. It takes work. And that's why we have to learn the lessons of tonight so that we can have an even better result the next time the Canadians decide the future for the

country. What lessons do you think that they are talking about? Yeah, well I'm not gonna try to guess what thoughts are going on in Polio's head, but you know, I can tell you what I think the lessons are. I think the lessons are that we do better when there's a divided left and a united right. And we saw what a divided right looked like through the 90s and the early 2000s. It was 15 years of losing elections. The worst thing that could happen to the long-term political prospects of the Conservative Party is to destroy the NDP. I think having a divided left is actually to our benefit. So I think that's something that we should be thinking about. And in terms of unity on the

right, like, you know, I think there should be a lot more outreach to other levels of government and conservatives in other parts of the country than we've seen to date by Polio. You know, it's pretty shocking that, you know, on the eve of the election, and when you've been in office for two and a half years, you're having your first conversation with the premier of Ontario who's a conservative. So I think there's a lot more work

to to unify the party that could go on and I hope we see that happen. We heard Ontario conservative MP Jamil Javani unload on Doug Ford on Monday night. This guy's a political genius because he beat Bonnie Crombie and Stephen Del Duca. And now we got to sit around getting advice from him. No, no, he has taken the provincial conservative party and turned it into something hollow, unprincipled, something that doesn't solve problems. He's glad handing with Christia Freeland having coffees and lattes with Mark Carney. He called him a hype man for the Liberal Party, accused him of sabotaging Poliev.

He just tweeted, I don't know if you've seen it, this Hulk Hogan kind of meme of Ford tearing off an Ontario PC t-shirt, and there's this Liberal t-shirt underneath. It doesn't seem like at least Giovanni's in a kind of reaching out sort of mood right now. What do you make of all of that? Well, I think it's counterproductive and Doug Ford's a conservative.

He runs as a conservative. He voted for the federal conservative party as did I, but you know, uh, the conservative party is not one dimensional. It looks a little bit different in different parts of the country. And if it didn't, it wouldn't get elected. If you look back to Stephen Harper, Stephen Harper spent a lot of time going into the 06 election that he ultimately won a minority government in,

recruiting people like Jim Flaherty from the Ontario PC party, and John Baird from the Ontario PC party, and getting prominent Atlantic Canadian conservatives like Peter McKay to join his team. And by building that coalition and making space for others in the party, they, you know, he was able to win. And I don't think you've seen similar efforts. I think you've seen, you know, folks like Giovanni spitting in the eye of other conservatives as opposed

to extending a welcoming hand. And I think that's a real mistake. What do you make though of Giovanni's accusations and other conservative accusations that you and the premier helped Poliev lose essentially by inserting yourselves into the campaign in a critical way, being critical of the campaign? Well, I give political commentary. I'm not working on the campaign. I give political commentary on what I think's going on

in the campaign and what I would be doing or what I think the conservatives should be doing. This is not unusual. I look at the campaign manager for Poliev. She did very similar things during the last couple of election campaigns in similar forums. And that's just normal. The fact that it got highlighted in the media, more than normal, I guess that is whatever it is. But the intent in that is to give smart commentary on what's going on. And, you know, I make no apologies for that. What does strike me is as unusual,

and you might disagree with this, are these splits between the conservative premiers and the federal conservatives at the moment. So I just listened to Doug Ford at a presser. I shouldn't interfere in the federal election. Last time I checked, Pierre Poliev never came out in our election. Matter of fact, him or one of his lieutenants told every one of his members, don't you dare go out and help the PCs.

Isn't that ironic? Of course, there was all of that reporting around Tim Houston, the Nova Scotia premier, that when Mr. Houston was in an election, he didn't invite Mr. Poliev to come campaign with him. And Jenny Byrne, the campaign manager of the federal conservative campaign of Poliev, called that office and said, you know, I'll never forget this when Pierre Poliev is prime minister. Can these personal relationships even be repaired here? They seem pretty bad from the outside just as an observer. I don't... Yeah, look, there's always going to be some amount of intramural

friction in political parties. I don't think that's highly unusual, but I do think it's in the interest of Polio to try to build as broad a coalition of support within the conservative movement as it can. And you get a lot further with honey than vinegar. You get a lot further with messages of welcome and friendship than you do with threats and promises of vendettas, et cetera. So look, I think there's work that can be done to make that better. I'm confident that that can happen because at the end of the day, despite what someone like Jamil might think, you know, what someone like Jamil might think, we all wanna see the Conservative Party get elected federally.

And, you know, I think, Poliev did quite well in the election in the end, and I think he has an opportunity to become prime minister if he puts his mind to it, and I think he will. In this acclaimed new production of Anna Karenina, the National Ballet of Canada asks, what is fair in love and society? Renowned choreographer Christian Spook adapts Tolstoy's epic novel to dance

in a spectacular work complete with lush costumes, cinematic projections, and a glorious curated score featuring the music of Rachmaninoff. On stage June 13th to 21st. Tickets on sale now at national.ballet.ca. Now our change will honor the Supreme Court of Canada and its role in protecting the rights and freedoms of all Canadians. Its guiding motto of justice and truth has defined its decisions since 1875.

The new one-dollar commemorative coin features a semicircle of laurels symbolising the nine judges and the court's enduring commitment to justice. Find the limited edition, 150th anniversary of the Supreme Court of Canada coined today. Just listening to you now, it certainly sounds like you think Polly is not going anywhere. And I just, um, what does it mean in your opinion for his ability to lead the party going forward without a seat, now that he's lost his seat in Carleton. Well, this is not the first time this has happened in politics. And what typically would occur is as someone in his caucus will step down

and there'll be a by-election and you'll run in it. Like that's that's what I anticipate will happen. And and I don't think he'd I don't think you'll have a lot of trouble winning a seat in most parts of the country. It's just, you know, when you look at those election results, Ottawa swung very, very hard against the conservatives in this election. And sometimes that happens. It's not a shock that that would happen to the conservatives in this election in Ottawa. Like you're talking about a platform that is really challenging the status quo and

the approach the government's taking on a whole wide range of things. And the people working in the government maybe feel that is more threatening to them and don't want to vote for it. That said, I think a lot of change does need to happen in Ottawa and I wouldn't change that platform in terms of trying to take on some of those tough issues. It's just maybe not the best place to run your leader. Is there a case for Mr. Poliev to move on? Sure, you know, but like I think it's that's a very personal question for the leader. I think the caucus, my read on the caucus is that it's quite strongly

in support of him and will only be more so after the election and that a whole bunch of people who are new members of parliament will have been recruited into the party and owe their election to his leadership. So I think he leaves the election in a stronger leadership position than he went into it. On the other hand, pollsters have often found that he seemed to be hitting walls with building out his base, right? Certain groups were turned off by his rhetoric, didn't like his message, found him personally unlikable. So I just wonder how you're thinking about this voter coalition.

Can it expand? Or do you think it's hit a wall? And how do you think he could expand it moving forward? Well, I don't think he needs to expand the number of votes he got much. Like, I think, like, frankly, it's a pretty record level of support for the Conservative Party at the federal level. So I think he's got enough votes there to do it today even. What he doesn't have is two parties on the left. We saw almost a complete collapse of the NDP. And I think part of that is a result of perhaps some of the rhetoric and the style in which the campaign was conducted that scared a lot of NDP traditional support to the point where they

abandoned their party and voted liberal. And so you need to create some more space for the NDP. You need to be a little less scary perhaps to women and older voters. And I think there are ways to tweak your messaging to do that. But it's, you know, I think, you know, if the NDP were at 15 points instead of, you know, five, then you're, you're going to be in a winning position for sure. I want to ask you if you think that he can do that and just maybe to do that. A quote from a piece that Toronto Star columnist Richard Warnica wrote recently. He wrote essentially, he argued that for all the talk of Poliev not being fast enough to pivot to the Trump question,

that fundamentally he didn't believe that Poliev had anything else to pivot to. He wrote that the affected persona Canadians have seen on the campaign trail isn't just who he is, it's all he is. He doesn't have another side to show. And he went on to say that if Poliev couldn't close the deal now against Carney, he didn't think it would be mainly because of Trump. He said it will be because too many Canadians looked at him, the real him, the one he's been showing off in all his rallies and decided, this guy's not for me. And what do you think of that analysis?

Well, I don't agree with it because I think you saw, you saw Polio have changed his style and his approach quite dramatically over the course of the campaign. They ultimately jettisoned some of the rally rhetoric that was going on. I think the presentation that he gave in the two leaders debates was very different than the style that we've seen in debates from him in the past, whether they're on the floor of the House of Commons or whether they're in the party leadership race. He was a much more aggressive version of himself in

those earlier examples than what we saw in the last week of this election campaign. So he certainly has the capacity to do it when he chooses to. I think the sharper edge style is maybe more intuitive to him and historically has been the one that he's approached. But this is somebody who is not, he has more than one key on his piano, I think. So I'm, you know, I believe by watching the campaign that he

has the ability to do that. I just think that that he was on the right track at the end of the campaign and maybe not so much on the front end. Let me just push back on that a little bit because certainly I agree with everything you just said about tonal changes during the campaign, but it wasn't consistent, right? So you would see that tonal change in the debate and then a couple of days later you might find him or a couple of days before, I don't quite remember the timeline right now, you might find him in an exchange with a reporter bragging about the size of his rallies.

How many people do you think we had last night? Thousands. Well, that's pretty obvious. I think you can be more precise than that. I don't, I mean, the party said 10,000 registered, there's reports of 15. I really can't say. One last question. When was the last time we had a rally that big in Canada?

I don't know. I've never been to one, a political rally that big, I don't think. You know a lot about politics. In exchange that people might feel off-putting. So, you know, can he play those other keys consistently? Well, time will tell, I guess. You know, no one is ever fully consistent. I think you saw some inconsistency in the other campaigns as well, especially Carney. Look, you know, everybody has a bad day. Everybody is off message sometimes.

But, you know, over time, you're more one thing or you're more another. And I think he has the capability of having a longer term shift in how he presents himself that is maybe a little more prime ministerial and maybe a little less opposition leader-y. We did this live stream on election night and Peter Mansbridge from our CBC anchor and now podcast host Peter Mansbridge joined us. And he was suggesting that he thought that Poliev might actually try to expand further

to the right, that it was possible to go full mega, right, as a strategy moving forward. And do you think that's a possibility and that there could be room for the party to grow that way? I think it'd be very challenging, and it'd be challenging for two reasons. I think he's pretty much reached the outer limits of the amount of

support you'll get with that message in Canada today. But it also runs counter to what I talked about earlier, which is trying to have some division on the left. And yeah, if it's a two-party system, you know, over time, lots of research has been done. Canada is about a 60 40 progressive to conservative country, attitudeally. And when conservatives get 40%, they're basically getting all the juice out of the orange that can be squeezed, right. And normally, that's enough to win. But it's enough to win because you know,

you're you've got other parties on the left that are splitting the vote. If you're so scary to the progressives in the country that they collapse behind one party, you're going to lose more elections than you win. And you might win one occasionally where people are just so fed up with the liberals that they will vote conservative. But it results in minority governments and fleeting victories. And to have something more enduring, I think you need to not be so frightening to progressives

that they all unite against you. And so just I don't want to hammer on this point too much, but again, is Poliev an impediment to that, right? So I just want to highlight this piece again in the star today. It's quoting a conservative source that says Poliev has to go. The source outlined a snark future for the leader, said that he should immediately resign and that the conservatives' loss is tied to his personality, not his policies. He's divisive. He's, this is a quote, he's polarizing. He's so aggressive and he drove people that would have ordinarily

voted for other political parties to the liberal party. Why would that be different next time? You know, even if he can tone it down a bit, right? Do people, I suppose, have memories? Well, the reason that he did as well in the election campaign as he did is because he did tone it down. So I think if he had run the last four weeks of the campaign the way he ran the first week of the campaign, it would not have been a very close result. I think he would have had a sizable liberal majority. I think the fact that they did back off some of that stuff, they did take the Trump issue more seriously.

They did change his tone and approach both in the debates and like, look, even by the end of the campaign, he was not even in there advertising. Like I think the ad of the two old guys playing golf, which was derided by many commentators, I think proved to be very, a very good ad for them. You know what Mark Carney says? Come on, do you really think that a fourth liberal term is going to change anything? You know, I've been thinking the same thing. Are we really going to give these clowns a fourth term?

I'm voting conservative. There you go. Yeah, for a change. Right, but isn't that an argument for why he shouldn't be the leader now, moving forward, that they had to end the campaign by removing him from their campaign ads? Well, I think it's a sign that he is able to adapt and he's able to change. And, you know, and look, their numbers got better towards the end of the campaign as a result of those things. So, you know, if the argument that, you know, is being presented is that he's just one thing in one way and can't change,

I would say the campaign would indicate that that's not true. Okay. Cory, thank you so much for this. It was really, it was a pleasure to talk to you today. Thank you. Yeah, real pleasure being on with you. All right, that's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.