As Canada waits to see whether Prime Minister Mark Carney can strike a trade deal with Donald Trump \u2014\u00a0or whether the U.S. president will slap 50 per cent tariffs on $20 billion worth of\u00a0our\u00a0goods Wednesday \u2014\u00a0another deadline is looming: When will the Conservative party figure out\u00a0a path back to power?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Because right now, it is going nowhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This\u00a0week’s\u00a0Nanos poll<\/a>\u00a0put the Liberals at\u00a045.7 per cent, the Conservatives at 28.5 per cent,\u00a0and\u00a0the NDP at 13.7 per cent.\u202f\u00a0Even more troubling for the Tories, Carney\u00a0is the preferred prime minister at\u00a052.6 per cent, with Poilievre at 18.1.\u00a0Fundraising<\/a>\u00a0is\u00a0reportedly\u00a0down,\u00a0as is morale, with Conservative infighting making headlines all summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n The temptation\u00a0for the party\u00a0is\u00a0to play another round of “knife the leader.”\u00a0Conservatives excel at this: since the departure of Prime Minister Stephen Harper\u00a0in 2015, they have cycled through three\u00a0of them, in a series of increasingly bitter contests.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But\u00a0there’s\u00a0a\u00a0wrench in the plan: the\u00a0lack of replacement.\u00a0Another Nanos\u00a0poll\u00a0published in July\u00a0showed\u00a0that\u00a0voters think\u00a0no\u00a0Conservative leader can\u00a0defeat Carney<\/a>. The strongest candidate would be Harper, at 16 per cent; sorry, but I doubt he wants the job. And as his former communications director noted,<\/a>\u00a0he might not even be able to get it.\u00a0<\/p>\n That’s because between Covid, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s exit and Trump’s election, Canada’s political landscape has been completely rearranged. Today’s Conservative party is no longer the party of a decade ago, or even of the last five years. It morphed into a coalition of the aggrieved: anti-vaxxers, Trudeau haters, and struggling Canadians, many of them young people, angry at not being able to afford a house and get ahead in the current economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n Problem is, the first two elements no longer have a cause. And while younger voters outnumber Boomer voters, they are still less likely to go to the polls, making them an unreliable cohort. And Boomer voters, as we know, are solidly for Carney.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Conservatives’\u00a0conundrum\u00a0is that the leader they have now was the leader for a moment that has passed.\u00a0And in\u00a0the brave new world of Trump,\u00a0the ballot question\u00a0isn’t\u00a0whether Canadians were better off than they were four years ago;\u00a0it’s\u00a0who can\u00a0best defend the country from an unpredictable American president.\u00a0<\/p>\n The\u00a0Conservative\u00a0thinking is likely: if Carney\u00a0fails to\u00a0get a deal\u00a0this week, the shine will\u00a0start\u00a0coming\u00a0off and give\u00a0them\u00a0an opening. But\u00a0I’m\u00a0starting to doubt that. Trump\u00a0has\u00a0so damaged Canadians’ view of America<\/a> that they are giving Carney a much longer honeymoon. And that makes it even harder to find a leader willing to take the reins of the official Opposition.\u00a0<\/p>\n