The leadership race for the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) is on track to break all records, across all political parties, for the number of members eligible to vote. According to organizers, more than 600,000 members could have to choose the next leader in the September ballot, double the number of members registered in the last race, in 2020, and more than three times the number of people who had then voted. After identity checks and electoral fraud checks, their final number will probably be a little less than 600,000. Which is still huge. No one can say that this race does not arouse the interest of Canadians. They even seem to love it.
Ontario MP Pierre Poilievre is primarily responsible for this craze. His campaign says he has registered more than 311,000 party members, including about 119,000 in Ontario, nearly 72,000 in Alberta and more than 25,000 in Quebec. His promise to make Canada the freest country in the world will have enabled him to attract to him people who distrust governments, and institutions in general, and who had previously shunned politics.
While Jean Charest says he attracted “tens of thousands” of new members to the CCP, many of them actually bought their membership cards in order to stop Mr. Poilievre. Many of them aren’t even sure they’ll vote for the Conservative Party in the next federal election. They joined the CCP in order to prevent the extreme rightwing of the party which still constitutes the official opposition in Ottawa. They want to prevent the CCP from falling into the hands of a populist whose positions are reminiscent of Donald Trump’s worst political tactics.
As in the CPC leadership races in 2017 and 2020, the road to victory will likely once again pass through Quebec. Remember that the Conservatives use a point system to choose their leader. Each of the country’s 338 constituencies will receive 100 points in the election on September 10, regardless of the number of members residing there, except in the case of constituencies with fewer than 100 members. These will only receive one point per vote.
This is a change in the rules from the last races, where all constituencies had equal weight, regardless of the number of their members. However, of the 57 ridings that had fewer than 100 members in 2020, 52 of them were in Quebec. The old rules allowed the winner, Erin O’Toole, to pick up a lot of points in Quebec without necessarily selling a lot of membership cards.
Considering the high level of interest in the race, it is expected that all Quebec ridings, or almost, will have at least 100 members this time around. Whatever happens, even with the new rules, Quebec will retain a disproportionate weight in the current race. Alberta, with its 34 ridings, many of which each have several thousand members, will be awarded 3,400 points; Quebec will have 7800 points, for far fewer members. This is precisely the reason why a victory for Mr. Charest seemed mathematically possible a few weeks ago.
However, Mr. Poilievre’s success in stocking up on membership cards in Quebec greatly complicates Mr. Charest’s task. Even if the latter wins a majority of votes in Quebec, Mr. Poilievre could collect a lot of points in La Belle Province. To counterbalance him, Mr. Charest will need to perform spectacularly in Ontario and the Atlantic provinces if he wants to win.
The six leadership candidates will receive the official list of members eligible to vote somewhere in early July. This will give each of them two months to make converts among the members enrolled by their rivals. This is why Jean Charest and Patrick Brown are calling for a third official debate to be held before the end of the race.
Pollsters have indeed detected a sharp decline in Mr. Poilievre’s popularity after the last two debates. His statements regarding cryptocurrencies and the Bank of Canada came back to haunt him and downright embarrassed him during the last debate in French. He did everything to avoid talking about it. His rivals are also banking on the disenchantment, or at least the disinterest of many of his early supporters by the date of the election.
The question now is whether the head start that Mr. Poilievre will have accumulated at the start of the race will prove sufficient to allow him to cross the finish line first. Mr. Charest will have to pick up the pace for the answer to be no.