Erin O’Toole’s reign as leader of the Conservative Party only lasted less than a year and a half. The leader lost the vote of confidence held by his deputies, in caucus, Wednesday noon.
This is the first time that an elected caucus has taken advantage of a new law, adopted in 2015, which gives party MPs the power to decide the fate of their leader. To remain in office, the leader must count on the support of at least 50% of his deputies.
The pressure to unseat Mr. O’Toole was mounting internally. A third of his MPs signed a letter demanding that the caucus take advantage of this law and hold a vote of confidence in the leader.
Twenty-one former elected officials also wrote their own letter this week, also demanding his departure.
Erin O’Toole tried somehow to hang on. But the appeals made by the leader and members of his entourage, in the hope of garnering enough support to survive the vote of confidence, proved disappointing. Even longtime allies had abandoned him.
Growing dissatisfaction
Elected leader of the Conservatives in August 2020, in the shadow of the pandemic, Mr. O’Toole quickly drew criticism. After campaigning for leadership by presenting himself as a “true blue”, more conservative than his rival and former Progressive Conservative leader Peter MacKay, Erin O’Toole quickly reoriented himself closer to these Progressive Conservative values than he had spent weeks disavowing.
His environmental plan, unveiled in the spring of 2021 ahead of the election campaign, surprised — and outraged some conservatives — by proposing to retain some form of carbon pricing when the Tories had just spent years denouncing and promise to scrap the Liberal carbon tax.
The leader’s positions also caused him trouble during the last election: his promise to abolish the ban on assault weapons, only to then renege on it and commit to keeping the Liberal measure; that of protecting the conscience rights of health care workers who would object to physician-assisted dying, which he eventually also reneged on to promise that these physicians would nevertheless be obliged to refer their patients.
Erin O’Toole has also been criticized for having offered the unanimous support of the Conservative caucus to the Liberal bill banning conversion therapy, which was thus adopted without debate before Christmas.
The whole debate surrounding the truck convoy in Ottawa was finally the straw that broke the camel’s back. The leader had initially refused to support the movement. A few days later, he promised to meet with them and endorsed their cause in a more determined way.
A handful of riding associations had called for the party to bring forward the vote of confidence this spring, which was originally scheduled for members at the next convention in Quebec City next year. Saskatchewan Senator Denise Batters did the same by launching a petition to this effect this fall which has since garnered more than 8,700 signatures.