The Decibel - Why the Conservative path to victory just got complicated

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

For more than two years, the federal Conservatives have held a solid lead in the polls, and with the party bringing in a record-setting $41.7 million in donations last year, leader Pierre Poilievre looks poised to win the upcoming election.But with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resigning, U.S. President Donald Trump threatening tariffs and Liberal leadership candidates gaining some traction, the Conservatives are having to rethink their strategies.Stephanie Levitz is a senior reporter with the Globe. She’s spoken with a dozen Conservatives, including MPs, strategists and organizers. Today, she’ll explain the new challenges the party is facing, and how they’re repositioning themselves within the shifting political landscape.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

For more than two years, the federal conservatives have held a solid lead in the polls. The party brought in close to $42 million in donations last year. That's almost double what the liberals and NDP raised combined. The conservatives look poised to win this year's election. But there have been some big changes recently in Canadian politics, and it's forcing the Conservatives and leader Pierre Polyev to rethink their strategies. Stephanie Levitz is a senior reporter with The Globe. She's spoken with Conservative insiders, including MPs, strategists, and organizers. Today, she'll explain the new challenges the party is facing and how they're repositioning

themselves within the shifting political landscape. I'm Menaka Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from the Globe and Mail. Stephanie, thanks so much for joining us again. Thanks for having me. So the Federal Conservative Party has been polling consistently ahead of the liberals for more than two years now and the liberals have really struggled to get any movement in the polls and that is until recently though. So Stephanie could you just walk us through the recent numbers we're seeing?

Sure we're seeing a couple of different things. We're seeing one pollster I Ipsos-Reed, has a conservative sitting at about 41 percent, with the liberals sitting at 28 percent. Still a double-digit lead. But it's important to know that in this particular survey, the liberals are up eight points since the last poll Ipsos did in early January. That's a significant shift. You know, it's bigger than the margin of error on a poll, which means there is something happening in the Canadian electorate. Interesting. And do we know what that is? Like, what is going on to cause that shift?

Probably it's the Liberal leadership race and the decision by Justin Trudeau to announce he'll step down as Liberal leader when the party elects a replacement. The buzz around that, the idea who could replace him, what's that debate looking like, people are interested in that and perhaps now rethinking what they were telling pollsters previously, which is that they weren't going to vote for the liberals because of Justin Trudeau. And we've also got a new poll that looks at leaders themselves and which leader would actually handle trade negotiations with Trump the best. Of course this is a big issue now in federal Canadian politics. What did we see there?

So there we saw that Liberal leadership candidate Mark course, this is a big issue now in federal Canadian politics. What did we see there? So, there we saw that Liberal leadership candidate Mark Carney, who is the former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, trumps Poliev in this respect. He's polling, you know, 40% of those surveys suggested that Carney was best at handling negotiations with Trump compared to 26% for conservative leader Pierre Polyev. Next up was former finance minister and liberal leadership candidate Krista Freeland coming in around 12.5 percent. So this is a significant thing to look at this Nanos poll and actually see that Carney

is pulling ahead of Polyev in terms of who Canadians think would actually deal better with Trump. Considering that it's within the realm of possibility that that is the ballot box question in the next election, how we deal with Donald Trump if Canadians right now are saying we think Mark Carney is better for that that's an interesting number and certainly will give the conservatives under peer poly of some pause so let's talk about the conservatives then because I know that you recently spoke to a dozen conservative party insider Stephanie

including former and current MPs what did you learn about how the party is responding to all of this? It's interesting. I mean, the Conservatives were always aware over time, and I'm not even talking in the last, say, six weeks, that if Justin Trudeau were to step down as leader of the party before the next election and that party were to select a new leader, that it was going to change the dynamic, that Canadians, you know, a lot of what pollsters were reporting that Canadians were telling them, what conservatives were saying they were hearing at the door, what liberals were saying they were hearing at the door, is that a lot of the frustration and anger amongst Canadians was directed at Justin Trudeau.

And indeed, Pierre Poliev was directing the anger there. He was really the focal point for the conservatives were arguing that it is Justin Trudeau. And indeed, Pierre Polyov was directing the anger there. He was really the focal point for the conservatives were arguing that it is Justin Trudeau's fault. Everything that is happening in the economy right now, everything that is bad, you believe to be bad, blame it on Justin Trudeau. So they were pretty aware that if he were to leave, that would shift things in the polls.

And so the conversation though for them is how to adjust for that, right? And it's a two prong conversation because they're is how to adjust for that, right? And it's a two pronged conversation because they're not now just adjusting for that. They're adjusting for a complete change in political discourse in this country, which is a move away from an internal domestic focus on cost of living pressures and the affordability crisis and housing to Trump. And what a Trump presidency will mean for Canada on all of

those fronts. That issue set hasn't changed. Just the framing of the issue set has changed and having to deal with Donald Trump in order to manage that issue set is now going to be seen as like the key part of the job as opposed to, you know, foreign relations maybe sometimes being a little bit lower tier for a Canadian political leader. Okay. So there's two interesting things there that it seems like the conservatives know that they're up against. The first is this shift away from the focus on Trudeau and the second is this now new

focus on Trump. So let's break that down Stephanie. Let's look at the first one, the shift away from Trudeau. How are the conservatives, I guess, maybe changing their strategy with Trudeau, you know, soon to be gone? One of the things they're banking on, right, is that setting aside the Trump question, that really what we're heading into as a country is a change election, that Canadians are tired of a liberal government that will have been in power 10 years as of this fall.

They want something different. They want something new. And that's something the conservatives hope is a conservative government. And one of the ways they're trying to keep up that narrative is to paint whoever is trying to replace Mr. Trudeau as just like Justin. It's a tag phrase. They're trying to link the candidates to the nine years of the liberal record. They're pointing to times that these candidates have been, you know, walking in lockstep with

Justin Trudeau or perhaps behind some of the policies that the conservatives argue have been detrimental to Canadians in the long term. And so just trying to remind people that, you know, you might be changing the face of the Liberal Party, but it's still the Liberal Party. It is still the same government. It's an argument that can work when they're talking about Krista Freeland, who is the deputy prime minister, the former finance minister, truly in lockstep with the prime minister for many years. Mark Carney is a more challenging argument

to make to Canadians. It is true that he was brought on by the liberals to advise them on economic policy. It is true that he has been in talks with the Liberal Party for some time to run as a member of parliament, to become government, to join the government, but he never did. So it's tricky to sort of make that direct connection

between the reason we have a housing crisis in this country is because Mark Carney didn't do anything. Well, that wasn't Mark Carney's to do, whereas the reason we have a housing crisis in this country is because Krista Freeland didn't do all of these measures. You can make that argument a little more cleanly. Yeah, you can see a distinction there between those two candidates.

Let's go to that second point that you mentioned, Stephanie, about how the conservatives are having to shift now this focus from the internal affordability issues, the Trudeau issues towards what's going on with Trump. So how is Pierre Polyev, how are the conservatives responding to that? One of the things we've seen them do very markedly in the last couple of weeks is a reframing of their basic argument to Canadians and Pierre Poliev himself will say everyone who knows him will say he is nothing if not consistent he has been making the same arguments about Canada's economic policy and What he believes is good for the country for the better part of 20 years

The policy pitches that he has already put to Canadians to date, absent some that we've had in the last 48 to 72 hours, are things he's been talking about for decades. What has changed now is how he is framing them. And so the consumer price on carbon, the fuel charge is probably a really good example of that. He has been talking about a need to end what he refers to as the carbon tax for a very, very long time. The conservatives have talked about it for a very, very long time. They've

always framed it, you know, it's a tax on everything. It makes everything more expensive, does nothing to address climate change. You can quibble with that. But now he started talking about it as sort of like an anti-competitive tax. So Trump will love this tax because it means that businesses won't invest in Canada. They'll come to the U.S. That may or may not be true, but that's a complete reframing of why you should be opposed to a carbon tax. So it's things like that that we're seeing. That's really interesting because the base argument is the same against the carbon tax.

But as you said, they've shifted the focus to now make it more about about Trump and what's going on there. Yeah, to meet people where they are, right, which is, you know, sometimes the sign of great politics to be able to say, OK, you're not listening to my argument for policy acts on these grounds, but I'm going to shift it. And maybe if I frame it this way, now you're going to listen to me. And I mean, the carbon price argument is not a new one, but it's just watching them pivot in that way. And so, you know, when political leaders give these speeches at rallies or maybe a press conference, they have a plaque often on the front of their podium with their key

campaign message. And for Paulia, for the longest time, acts the tax, acts the tax, acts the tax. He would do other things depending on his announcement of the day, build the homes, stop the crime, fix the budget. Now what do we get? No matter what, Canada first. And a sort of reframing of his central overarching platform as putting Canada first in obviously a clear juxtaposition with US President Donald Trump's make America great again, America first strategy. That messaging change is a really interesting point here because it really shows what they're trying to focus on. I guess I want to ask you too how Poliev is positioning himself against Trump or kind of

opposing Trump but without maybe not coming across as an opponent of Trump. Poliev has received support from Elon Musk of course who's the owner of Tesla and X who's now quite close with President Trump and working with him. I guess how is Poliev kind of navigating that space then? Poliev has come out very strongly against the tariffs, as have Canadian political leaders across the spectrum. He doesn't think they're a good idea. He thinks they're bad for the economy.

But what he has done when it comes to Trump, as opposed to situating himself as the fighter against Donald Trump, he situates himself as the fighter against Donald Trump. He situates himself as the fighter for Canada. Trump is not really part of that equation. He likens, you know, what Mr. Trump is trying to do to somebody who is preying on weakness. And then Poliev goes into this argument about why Canada, in his view, is weak, why that's the fault of the Liberal government. So he pushes Trump out of that equation.

He's been asked multiple times, how would you deal with US President Donald Trump? He always brings the answer back to domestic things. So he's not, I guess, taking voters to a place where they can imagine him in a boardroom table, staring across the eyes of the American president and like standing up for Canada. boardroom table staring across the eyes of the American president and like standing up for Canada. He's still situating himself, the prime minister in the House of Commons, fixing your taxes, bringing down crime focused on you, not on the US president. And I think that's an interesting thing because where that comes from a bit is the tension

in his own party and what he's trying to do on this path to becoming prime minister. There is a base of that party, a faction within it, that really, really likes Donald Trump, is attracted to him politically, thinks that the things that he is doing are beneficial, overdue, would have merit in certain circumstances in the Canadian economy and the Canadian system. You know, they're not exact. Even the diehard Trump supporters know that Canada functions differently. And Poliev, of course, does not want to alienate them. Conversely, he is trying to attract a swath of new voters to the party, which surveys continually suggest are open to voting for Mr.

Poliev, but they really don't like Donald Trump. And he can't agitate those voters either because he needs this big coalition to form a majority government. I wonder, given the recent polling that we talked about off the top, those numbers of people preferring Carney dealing with Trump as opposed to Poliev,

might we see Poliev's approach change as a result of that? Because it sounds like his focus on domestic issues, maybe he needs to start shifting that towards, you know, people seeing him actually as someone who can go up against Trump. Yeah, it's an interesting question. I mean, as I alluded to before, he's not a guy who shifts. He holds on to the ideas and the strategies that he believes will work best. And inside the Conservative Party right now, there are a lot of people who say this Trump thing, you Trump thing is bad for the country.

We need to deal with it, but it still is not the ballot box question. I keep using that cliche, but when people go to vote on election day, the question might be, who do you trust to get things done? Maybe we're not talking about who do you trust to go up with Trump. This is still a change election. Like let's not forget nine years of liberal governance even with a new leader and even as some of these leadership candidates are literally ripping up liberal party policies that have been in place for years. Such as Carney and Freeland going against going back again on the carbon tax of course. Right for example, Poliev's argument I

think with Trump's not gonna to shift, he's going to have to find more strategies to attack the liberals. Because if people are sort of looking to them, well, they're much better to deal with Trump. But Poliev might have an argument that goes something like, okay, but what about all the other stuff? Like your kid still needs a home. You still can't find a family doctor. Crime rates are this, da da da da da.

Like you have to remember Canadians, you're voting for something that isn't just Donald Trump. We'll be right back. You've talked a bunch Stephanie about how the conservatives have kind of had to maybe refocus is the term and their strategies now with Trump as part of the equation. I guess I wonder have the liberals had to maybe refocus is the term in their strategies now with Trump as part of the equation. I guess I wonder have the liberals had to do the same?

How big of a shift have the liberals had to make compared to the conservatives here? I mean, the liberals are in a tricky place because of course you have one, a liberal prime minister currently running the country and trying to devise strategies to protect the economy, negotiate with Trump, you know, do a bunch of cast forward stuff.

And then you have this liberal leadership race where these people are trying to replace Justin Trudeau. And in recent leadership races, of which there have been more for the conservatives, the candidates all come in and like, you'll get to a point in the race where you'll realize that they all vaguely agree with each other. Because of course they do, they're of the same party.

The tension right now with the liberals is that you have the two, let's say, front-running candidates, Mark Carney and Krista Freeland, as we talked about a second ago, are pushing back against all of those years of liberal orthodoxy. I mean, right now you even have the finance minister, Dominic LeBlanc, out and about talking about the need to slow down government spending and cut taxes. That's not a usual liberal talking point. And so those conversations going on, they very much are a response to Trump.

They have to be, because otherwise you wonder, where have they been recently? And so they're pivoting in the sense that their language is changing. I mean, suddenly the National Resources Minister out the last couple of days musing about rebuilding a pipeline that runs from east to west in this country.

This from a government that was once accused of being so anti-pipeline that their bills were nicknamed things like No More Pipelines Act, and now we're talking about building pipelines. These are big pivots for the Liberal Party. And, you know, you can attach some degree of political cynicism to that and say, well, they just really want to win the next election. Or you can argue that the Liberals are making a calculation that at this moment in time,

bring in every file that we once said no to because we need some new ideas. Otherwise, we're in a lot of trouble. As a country, I should say, not as a party, like it's for the good of the country, not just for the good of the ballot box So that's kind of how the liberal leadership candidates may be approaching this coming election looks like we're likely having a federal election this coming spring Let's talk about how all of these situations have changed how the conservatives are actually approaching this election Stephanie I think one of the big things that Polly have of course has been saying is that he does not want to have any new measures that will increase the federal deficit. He's very focused on finances here. But with this potential trade war on the horizon with the US, the Liberal

government has talked about maybe putting forward relief programs for Canadian workers and businesses, like we saw during COVID. That's, of course, a lot of money, right? So how have the conservatives said they would support or not support this kind of program? How would how would they approach this situation? They have yet to say what they would do because they refer to it as a hypothetical. They argue that measures similar to some of the things that were done during the pandemic require legislation. Parliament is currently prorogued. There is no legislation. So they're obviously kicking this question down the road

about whether or not they would support a bailout bill. One of the things that Poliev has said is that he believes that any money that Canada would raise through a counter imposition of tariffs, for example, it should be returned back to Canadians in the context of like a tax cut, right? Like not checks into their pockets, but doing things to make the economy more competitive.

But should the situation be that more new spending is required, whether Mr. Poliev would support that or whether he would campaign on that, because the timing is such that we could be in an election at the same time as we need a bailout bill, right, which gets really tricky. There are things the government can do without legislation to spend new money or set up new programs. You know, there are things there that could be done that I would suggest Mr. Polly would probably be broadly on side with because they're not hundreds of

millions of dollars like in COVID. But it's a pressure point for him and a decision that he'll have to make because he's not exactly going to turn his backs on Canadians, but he doesn't tend to believe in this stuff. And asking a new political leader to compromise on his political beliefs, like five minutes after becoming prime minister, that'll be difficult for him. It's a difficult position, I imagine, for him, because as you say, he doesn't want to vote against something that would help Canadians in this time.

If we do see parliament come back after this prorogation, if we do see the Liberals introduce a measure of some kind that would give this relief to Canadians, do we have any sense of how Poliev might navigate that moment? I mean we can look to the past a little bit on that and how he's navigated similar challenges in the past. I guess you know I'll take as a for example the vote on the bill that legislated the existing national daycare program that we currently have, that multi-billion dollar program that aims to get daycare costs in this country to an average of $10 a day. Conservatives don't tend to like these big national government programs,

but how do you vote against childcare? You don don't. Pierre Paulia voted for that bill. I'm going to give it another example, though, capital gains. So when the liberal government introduced changes to the capital gains regime, raising the inclusion rate, meaning you paid more if you were in a situation where you had capital gains, they were framing it as generational fairness, they were framing it as supporting young people that the money was gonna go towards existing government programs.

Really framing it in such a way to almost put Polyab in a corner. Well, if you vote against this, you're voting in favor of millionaires. Well, Mr. Polyab went and he took a look at the program and he went and figured out that maybe it's not just about millionaires. It's hurting small business owners.

It's hurting families who bought a cottage 40 years ago and wanted to pass it on. It wasn't great for farmers who wanted to pass on their farms to their children. And he managed to find a political way to vote against it that didn't end up hurting him. And so let's get to the bailout bill. It's within the realm of possibility that he just shrugs and says, I can't vote against this. It's terrible.

Or he finds a way to point out all of the flaws with the bill, pressures the government on it says it's not actually going to help anyone. Here's what I would do instead. And he votes against it. And one of the things he could do with that vote, right, is then that bill and the management of the economy become the ballot box question for the election. If the government falls on that bill, which they could, I doubt they would, the NDP would probably support them, but sort of turn it into this is a terrible idea, they just want

to ruin the economy again, you know, go with that narrative and then propose his own solutions And so the challenge there becomes policy on the fly for mr. Polly up And I'm sure they have policy people now beavering away being like what would a conservative version of this solution look like yeah That's some interesting context there for sure and I will just go back to the capital gains that you were mentioning the liberals Have now said they're gonna postpone that till mid next year. So that's again, one of those things that he said that they've actually changed their position on. They've changed their position on and political pressure is the thing that got them to that.

Just very lastly here, I'm just wondering about conservative strategy going into this next election, Stephanie, around Pierre Poliev specifically, because he's been opposition leader for so long, right? Is there a shift in strategy though to make him seem more prime ministerial ahead of an election? There has to be every leader of the opposition has to at some point move from Doing their job as leader of the opposition which is oppose oppose oppose and to the propose propose propose phase So I've been holding the government to account for X number of years propose, propose, propose phase. So I've been holding the government to account for X number of years.

I think I can do better at the job. Here is why. And so that's the question. As we've seen in the last few days, Mr. Polyev has rolled out a whole bunch of policy, mostly, you know, tendentially connected to the United States. Instead of being sort of like the folksy guy on the construction site, wearing a hard hat and a reflective vest, he's in a suit. He's very cleaned up. He's trying to present himself as not to say he wasn't a leader, leader of the opposition is being a leader, but trying to move into Canadians' minds.

I made a reference earlier in our conversation about imagining Pierre Pauliev sitting across the board table with Donald Trump. Canadians have to have that vision shift for a leader, right? They have to shift them from, oh, that's like the guy who's always like yelling at the government to that guy is the government. And some of that is sartorial. It's what they wear. It's in their tone of voice.

It's how they engage in public. It's the things they choose to comment on and not choose to comment on and so yes I think that has always been the plan for the conservatives entering into the election year. You would start to see Deliberately, okay. What would a poly of government look like and we're there the challenge for them is the next election The challenge for them is that next election could be very soon, in a matter of weeks, and they will go up against an untested, potentially liberal leader. And so all of their preparation, they might not just have enough time to fully flesh out the image that he wants to present to Canadians, but the reality is the party still has this

double digit lead in the polls and are likely on the road to victory, regardless of how many suits he gets to wear in front of a camera in the meantime. Stephanie, thank you so much for your insights and for taking the time to be here. My pleasure. Thank you. you That's it for today. I'm Maynika Ramon-Wilms. Our producers are Madeleine White, Michal Stein, and Allie Graham. David Crosby edits the show.

Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. You can subscribe to The Globe and Mail at globeandmail.com slash subscribe. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.