The future of the Conservative Party of Canada will be decided this week when Pierre Poilievre faces a leadership review in Calgary, which one political scientist said is a pivotal moment for shaping the direction of the party.
Dr. Chris Kukicha, a political science professor at the University of Lethbridge, said the party must decide whether to continue on its current path or recalibrate toward a more traditional approach that emphasizes stability and negotiation.
“If they stay with Pierre Poilievre, it’s going to be a similar path again — a very populist message, a very confrontational message,” Kukicha said. “That appeals to a lot of Canadians, just like the MAGA movement appeals to a lot of Americans, because of the frustration people have with their day-to-day existence in most Western capitalist countries.”
He said many Canadians feel they are worse off than the previous generation, pointing to declining living standards as a key driver of frustration and concern that their children will face even fewer opportunities.
“We’ve had this luxury over the last 50 or 60 years — the most upward economic mobility for the middle class in Western capitalist democracies — and that has come to a crashing halt over the last decade or so,” he said. “The fact of the matter is people don’t have the same standard of living as their previous generation did.”
Kukicha said while economic shifts have been decades in the making, political parties now must respond to the consequences.
“The party has to decide what it’s going to do,” he said. “How is it going to deal with the frustration that voters have?”
Kukicha said voters during the last federal campaign seemed to lean toward stability, citing broader national trends that benefited the governing Liberals.
“They didn’t want to pick a fight. They wanted a strong leader who would negotiate and think rationally.”
Kukicha, however, cautioned that the political environment may have shifted since then, as affordability pressures and economic anxiety continue to intensify. He said he is unsure if the country is in the same place now and that members of the Conservative Party will have to weigh whether to prioritise stability or turn more decisively toward populist messaging.
Poilievre is scheduled to address the Conservative Party on Friday night at the party convention in Calgary, and his leadership review will take place afterwards. The party’s rules call for a mandatory review of the leader when it has recently lost an election.
