It seems pretty clear now that Poilievre is so worried about the leadership vote in January that he's lost his marbles.
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Poilievre's whole October 3 interview is here, on a YouTube program called Northern Perspectives. One of the things Poilievre talks about is the importance of creating a team.
I guess he thinks the Conservatives will stay united and engaged by calling the RCMP despicable?
Say what?
"We're going into these weird, strange, fringe issues". Conservative strategist Fred Delorey reacting to Poilievre attacking the RCMP. Maybe it's because the leader is a weirdo, a strange man, who sits on the fringe of political society. #cdnpoli
— Steve Valeriote (@stevev68.bsky.social) October 17, 2025 at 4:06 PM
I think the Conservative Party powers-that-be are sending a message to Poilievre: you've had it, fella. And they're sending a message to the party members voting on Poilievre's leadership in January: we can do better.
Dale Smith calls it "Dollarama Trumpism" - what a great phrase!
Good points here:
Finally, this:
And they're also sending a message to prospective leadership candidates (Doug Ford? Leona Aglukkaq? Brad Wall?): start organizing now.
In Friday's Toronto Star, Harper's communications director Dimitri Soudas took a shot across Poilievre's bow:
The Conservative Party that was shaped by the nation-building of Sir John A. Macdonald, the moral conviction of John Diefenbaker, the bold ambition of Brian Mulroney, and the steady discipline of Stephen Harper is far greater than any one man. It is a party rooted in history, principle, and purpose, a party built to serve the country, not the ego of a single leader. No individual, no matter how loud or popular, has the right to rewrite that legacy or distort it into something it was never meant to be.Writing about the Soudas piece, Toronto Star columnist Althia Raj concludes:
Leader Pierre Poilievre is dismantling the principled, serious and credible Conservative Party Harper worked so hard to lead and bring to power, one of substance, maturity and integrity....
This week, Poilievre accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of committing what he described as the worst possible offence for a head of government, violating the Criminal Code and escaping justice. ...
In a rule-of-law democracy, no opposition leader should ever call for a prime minister or any political rival to be jailed. It undermines confidence in our justice system, our federal police and ultimately the Crown. That kind of rhetoric isn’t strength, it’s recklessness and it shows a leadership approach that remains rooted in grievance rather than governance. Months after losing the federal election, Poilievre seems not to have learned the lessons of his electoral defeat.
For all the fiery slogans and viral clips, Canadians saw through the performance. What they needed was a prime minister-in-waiting. What they got was a man addicted to opposition, stuck in partisan combat, incapable of transformation and unwilling to rise above the instincts that had always held him back.
Voters wanted maturity, reassurance and vision. He gave them grievance. He ran as the angry Question Period debater, not the steady hand of a G7 nation. The result? Swing voters waited for growth that never came.
...His latest comments show once again he has failed to make the leap from critic to leader.
Canadians are tired of the anger. The mockery. The volume. They need calm, confidence, and answers. Yet, despite warnings from advisers, polls, and “common sense,” he is still giving them attacks, blame and fury.
In the last election, Canadians didn’t reject conservative ideas. They rejected Pierre Poilievre.
Months later, there’s little evidence he has reflected, adapted, or grown. If anything, he seems more committed than ever to the very approach that cost him credibility with the voters he most needed to win.
The uprising against Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre may have officially begun....
The Conservative establishment, it appears, won’t remain silent as Poilievre tries to remake the party into a grievance movement — as Republicans were when Donald Trump turned theirs into an outlet for racist, corrupt and conspiracy-fueled authoritarianism.
Soudas’s column is the first public sign that those around Harper, long heralded as the guardian of the party, may be unhappy with the performance of Poilievre, his former parliamentary secretary....
...privately, many big Conservative names — the party’s elite, if you wish — are disappointed and discouraged by Poilievre’s antics. They muted their complaints when Poilievre was rising in the polls and it seemed certain he would become prime minister; now that he’s not, the rumblings are getting louder.
Inside the Conservative caucus, there are also many unhappy members. The more Prime Minister Mark Carney talks about pipelines and crime and rewrites the Justin Trudeau-era legacy, the more these Conservatives are reminded that they may be backing the wrong leader. ...
For nearly 10 years, these MPs looked across the aisle and thought Trudeau lacked the maturity to do the job. Now they are asked to defend a leader who muses that his former opponent should be jailed, who calls the RCMP leadership “despicable,” who wants to “restore merit” by ending diversity, equity and inclusion policies — despite his own track record of appointing Conservative candidates who could not win nomination races, and displacing an elected MP after losing his own seat last spring.
...If Conservative MPs were waiting for a white knight before showing some resolve, that person hasn’t materialized. Leadership options may not present themselves until Poilievre is out the door and with him the MAGA rhetoric that he is espousing.
What they and grassroots Conservatives have been given by Soudas now, though, is a push for moral clarity. They may not have the numbers yet to defeat Poilievre in January, but there is now a suggestion that many more feel like they do, and that if they don’t act, the legacy of their party will be reshaped in a manner they find unrecognizable.
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Dale Smith calls it "Dollarama Trumpism" - what a great phrase!
I regret to inform you that Pierre Poilieve is back on his MAGA-lite™ bullshit, and he’s going after DEI in order to “bring back merit.” It’s Dollarama Trumpism where they think that they can harness the “good parts only” energy of authoritarian populism without the overt racism—but they’re still going to wink to that racism. And it’s been pretty relentless, whether it’s deciding to target “DEI” or “wokeness,” the recent decision to go hard after immigration—sorry, “Liberal immigration policy” *wink*— or birthright citizenship. I’m not sure who they think they’re fooling, other than maybe that segment of the party’s base that Poilievre wants to keep on-side ahead of his leadership review.
...they have decided that they’d rather wink to racists and claim that they’re doing it to avoid “bloated bureaucracies” and “checkboxes” when it really just boils down to racism/misogyny/homophobia, every single time, but they insist on lying to themselves about it.
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Yes, I remember this Goodale smear that helped to tank Martin's election. But ten years later, when the Liberals returned to power, they weren't gunning for the RCMP, even though they could have been:RCMP Commish Duheme to Poilievre "So I think we've talked about SNC Lavalin quite a lot under the previous government, and I think it was clear that there's no interference." "And as far as his comment with regards to senior mgmt, I’d invite Mr. Poilievre to meet with us. ❤️🍁🇨🇦TEAM CANADA FOREVER🇨🇦🍁❤️
— 🍁🇨🇦Team Canada Forever🇨🇦🍁 (@teamcanadaforever.bsky.social) October 16, 2025 at 2:34 PM
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Canadians are outraged about what Poilievre said:Commissioner of the RCMP Giuliano Zaccardelli was pressured by Harper to cook up a charge on Ralph Goodie during the 2006 election. Zaccardelli resigned admitting he was wrong. Poilievre and Harper strong armed the RCMP. Harper won the election. A Poilievre accusation is a confession.
— caprail.bsky.social (@caprail.bsky.social) October 17, 2025 at 6:14 PM
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I agree with this completely -- the Liberals have to punch back:
Scrimshaw said this last month too:View on Threads
....The point of doing lots of media and making people available to the press and generally being kind to them is not to gain an advantage, but to not earn their contempt....Yes exactly, and then just this week Carney needlessly pissed off the press gallery by scooting off to Egypt without even taking a pool reporter along. Why? They said the Americans wouldn't allow it, but that's just stupid. I suspect Carney's staff got so busy setting up the trip at the last minute that they just forgot.
Carney and his team ... need to stop antagonizing the press for no reason, and they need to start seeding a narrative about themselves that allows them to be imperfect but seem to be fighting the good fight.
The closest we got was during the campaign, when Carney emphasized the nature of the difficulties we faced. It was a permission structure for the government to be imperfect and for results to be slow, but for that message to work the two parts of it - that there’s work going on, and that external forces are slowing results - needs to be constantly articulated. It’s not right now, as if somehow the comms work has been done so they can move past it.
The problem for the Carney government can be fixed, but it will require prioritization, and articulation of those priorities....
If the #CPC doesn’t wake up & recognise what a liability Pierre Poilievre is, they’ll never become government leaders. That said, they also need to do a serious overhaul of their beliefs/policies, which are negative & too “MAGA” in their nature.
— muse1267.bsky.social (@muse1267.bsky.social) October 18, 2025 at 12:47 AM
Granted, an actual "opposition" would be much better than "reflexive dinkishness," but who in today's Conservative Party is offering anything else? If not Mr. Poilievre, who?
— John Roscoe (@johnroscoe.bsky.social) October 17, 2025 at 9:00 PM
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It's actually really shocking that a career politician like Poilievre has literally no original ideas left. All he can do is parrot Trump's rhetoric and hope that something shifts more people into the Diagolon trailer that he stumbled out of in 2024
— Ally Boo-art 👻 (@allystewart.bsky.social) October 17, 2025 at 7:27 PM
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Finally, this:
I bet Poilievre is really like this behind closed doors! 🤣 #cdnpoli
— Lori Sirianni (@4animallife.bsky.social) October 17, 2025 at 10:07 PM
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6 comments:
PP, like his master Stephen Harper, genuinely despises "the Left." Indeed, most of his party does too, including Dim Soudas. Despite Soudas' claim to the contrary, the party has no issue with PP's tone, rhetoric, message, anger, mockery or volume. After a decade of Harper's abuse of power, the idea that they care about the rule of law is laughable.
There's only one thing the Cons hate more that the Left and that's someone who loses to them. As Soudas says, "In the last election, Canadians didn’t reject conservative ideas. They rejected Pierre Poilievre." In other words, conservatism can't fail it can only be failed. PP's toast.
Perceptive, Cap! I hadn't picked up on that interpretation. Thanks
I just wanted to add something. Like Scheer, PP's only ever been a politician and has no marketable skills. The party found him a nice safe seat to spare his family the disgrace of being tossed into the street and onto EI. But I'm sure the Cons will be under new management after January's leadership review.
"In the last election, Canadians didn’t reject conservative ideas."
Well, of course not. What ideas?
What a waste of money to have had to create a seat for PP and a waste of better candidate than PP.
Would appear the Con Party maybe waking up, well at least starting to think about their own futures. If they don't' dump PP they may loose their own seats.
PPs attack on Trudeau and the RCMP is an allegation too far. However like a spoilt child he doesn't know enough to quite while ahead.
PP is a weird man.
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