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Conservatives Are Failing at the One Job That Matters

The party can’t hold Carney to account while it’s busy feuding with itself

In 2003, Peter MacKay stood next to Stephen Harper and said the point of merging two conservative parties—the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance—was simple: stop splitting the vote that kept handing the Liberals majority governments. “Our swords will henceforth be pointed at the Liberals,” Harper said at the press conference, “not at each other.”

Two weeks ago, opposition leader Pierre Poilievre used a Calgary Stampede barbecue to publicly attack the campaign team of a provincial Conservative leadership candidate he had just watched lose. Three of the people on that team used to work for him. His former director of communications. The director before her. His own national campaign spokesperson from his 2022 leadership race. The swords are pointed at each other again.

Look at the numbers. Prime Minister Mark Carney holds 174 seats in a 343-seat House of Commons. He crossed into majority territory in April by sweeping three by-elections and absorbing four floor crossers, all from the Conservative benches. He does not need the Conservatives for confidence votes, supply votes, or committee majorities. He can govern until 2029 without asking them for anything.

The Conservative caucus sits at 139. Five members of Parliament gone since last year’s election. Four to the Liberals. One to the Senate, appointed by the prime minister the Conservatives are supposed to be holding to account.

Here’s other numbers. On July 9, Elections Canada published the Conservative Party’s financial audit: $99 million spent in 2025, $84.6 million in revenue. A deficit of more than $14 million. Of the $99 million, $39.4 million went to advertising.

The Liberals? They spent $21.6 million on advertising. The Liberals won.

More money. More ads. More losses. A caucus bleeding to the other side, and a majority government with nothing to fear.

The strategy that produced this result was not designed in Canada. It runs on a simple engine: outrage in, money out. Find the voter who feels squeezed, young, frustrated, priced out of a house and a future, and hand them an enemy. Gatekeepers. Elites. The media. The institutions. Point them at all of them, in combat-style messaging built for a phone screen, and the clicks become donations, and the donations become the next round of outrage. Fear is the fuel. Grievance is the product. The fundraising number is the only scoreboard that matters.

That grievance machine raised nearly $100 million. It is not a Canadian political tradition. It is the American right, imported wholesale and applied here. And it does not win Canadian elections. The engine that runs on outrage produces outrage, then mistakes it for support. It fills a room, a comment section, a donor list. It does not fill the seats in the House that decide who governs. A strategy optimized to make the base angry is not optimized to make the country trust you, and those are the only votes that count on election night.

The electorate appears to want something more substantive from their elected officials than grievance, fear mongering, and culture wars. That is clearly reflected in polls from the United States. Donald Trump’s net approval sits at minus twenty-six in the Economist/YouGov poll published this month. Tied for the lowest figure his presidency has ever recorded. A separate Focaldata poll put it at minus twenty-three, also an all-time low for that pollster. Disapproval has risen for four consecutive months. Among........

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