Conservative's Phobia

Chris Nerpin

For those who prefer, the author has recorded an audio version of this article.

Of all the so-called phobias our leaders claim we need to address in this country—Islamophobia, transphobia, homophobia, etc.—none are as prevalent and socially destructive as the rampant fact-phobia seemingly becoming our politics. Of course, it would be self-destructive for our elected leaders to push a factual narrative or address falsehoods, misinterpretations, and outright lies that support the false images and narratives they benefit from.

Take the recent general election held in April of this year, which saw both the CPC and LPC grow not only seats but their respective vote shares. CPC loyalists have been celebrating their leader Pierre Poilievre since he lost not just the election, but his own riding too. This claim of Poilievre’s electoral success fails to consider many variables that contributed to the results. Conservatives celebrated an increase in seats. Going into the election, the CPC held 118 seats, while the LPC held 153, the Bloc 32, and the NDP 25. After the dust settled on the 2025 election, the CPC came out with 144 seats, while the LPC won 169, the BQ only 22, and the NDP 7. The LPC’s standing in the HoC increased by 16 seats, while the CPC increased its seat count by 25. This has been the core of the “Pierre deserves to remain leader” argument, justifying the recent special byelection held in Alberta to put him back in parliament.

However, looking at popular vote share, the CPC increased its share from 33.7% in 2021 to 41.0% in 2025, for a 7.3-point gain. The LPC increased its popular vote share by 11.2 points (32.6% to 43.8%), leading the popular vote by 2.8 points. Other metrics, like population growth from 38.2 million in 2021 to 41.2 million in 2025 added 1.3 million eligible voters and four net new ridings, inflating seat counts.

Let’s look at these four net ridings for context. Three in Alberta—Calgary Heritage, Edmonton Mill Woods, and Edmonton Southwest—were drawn from CPC strongholds, guaranteeing Conservative wins. The other, Burnaby South-Metrotown in British Columbia (NDP-leaning), was won by the CPC in 2025, poaching NDP voters frustrated with economic issues. This raises questions: what CPC policies attracted typically far-left leaning voters?

If conservatives are going to celebrate Pierre Poilievre’s so-called electoral success, then they must also congratulate Mark Carney’s obvious success. Poilievre had been campaigning to be PM for three years prior to the election. Carney, however, entered the race mere months before the writ was dropped. When that writ dropped, the CPC had been enjoying a solid lead in most national polls for months, many indicating a super majority for the CPC and a crushing defeat for the LPC. With essentially no political capital, tarnished party popularity, and the daunting shadow of Trudeau’s gross unpopularity, Carney defeated Poilievre, pushing the LPC’s seat count into near-majority territory. Canadians rejected Poilievre for PM, and his own constituents fired him. Celebrating Poilievre and justifying a costly byelection is not just willful ignorance—it’s participation medal honours at its finest. It’s fact-phobia.

There are other arguments and defences lobbed to defend this byelection and the initiative to get Poilievre back into the HoC, beyond the incorrect narrative of his electoral success. The CPC defenses for triggering the byelection hold no water. They are mostly emotional arguments ignoring rational facts. Notably, Conservatives have been screaming bloody murder over Chandra Arya’s dismissal prior to the April election. However, Poilievre’s campaign vetoed at least five local candidates to tailor a slate for suburban and diverse voters, contributing to the CPC’s 25-seat gain. Conversely, Carney vetoed only Chandra Arya in Nepean, citing CSIS concerns about his unauthorized 2024 India trip, meeting with Narendra Modi, and dismissal of French bilingualism, running as the candidate of that riding himself. This fact-phobia—ignoring Arya’s ousting for legitimate risks and Poilievre’s nomination rigging—masks how both parties engineered candidate slates to boost wins. The CPC’s hypocritical outrage over Arya’s veto, while Poilievre manipulated five nominations, exposes their selective narrative, prioritizing loyalty over facts. While Arya’s veto involved national security concerns, Poilievre’s candidate swaps were very specifically electorally strategic, yet both reflect party control over nominations, undermining CPC outrage.

Loyal conservatives also blame Donald Trump and U.S. influence for the CPC’s loss, claiming Trump’s shadow crushed Poilievre’s campaign. This argument holds little weight. Canadian elections, while not isolated from global pressures, have always been shaped by our G7 status and close economic ties with our southern neighbours. If Trump’s influence derailed Poilievre’s bid for PM, how could conservatives trust him to confront such challenges as PM? This is yet another fact-phobic excuse, rooted in emotion rather than evidence.

Less than a week after losing his seat and the general election, Poilievre accepted the resignation of Damien Kurek, who won Battle River-Crowfoot with 82.8%, increasing his vote share by 11.5 points over his 71.3% win in 2021. Kurek announced his intent to resign on May 2, just 4 days post-election, with Poilievre declaring candidacy the same day. Officially resigning on June 17, 2025, Kurek justified Poilievre’s return by stating the leader is responsible for an “unstoppable movement”, along with a personal desire for more family and farm time. Just 17 days later, on July 4, 2025, Kurek joined Upstream Strategy Group as a principal, a firm specializing in government relations and lobbying. Had Kurek spent enough time with his family? Perhaps I am jaded, but altruism isn’t a quality espoused by many Canadian politicians. Opportunism is rampant, and that’s what this looks like: billing taxpayers $1.5–2 million for a byelection in Canada’s safest Conservative riding so a candidate rejected by his constituents doesn’t have to find a new job. This engineered win underscores the fact-phobia of celebrating Poilievre’s leadership while ignoring the LPC’s 2.8-point popular vote lead (43.8% to 41.0%).

It takes only a sliver of skepticism to unravel the CPC’s narrative of Poilievre’s leadership prowess. How did Poilievre lose Carleton, a riding he held for 20 years? Loyalists blame the 2022 riding’s redistribution, effective April 2024, claiming it turned Carleton “mostly Liberal.” This is demonstrably false. The redrawn boundaries added rural, Conservative-leaning voters from Nepean and Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston, yet Liberal Bruce Fanjoy won by 4,513 votes in 2025. Poilievre’s three-year national campaign, portraying himself as Canada’s would-be savior, likely neglected his riding’s needs. Fanjoy, selected in late 2024, capitalized on this, flipping a historically Conservative riding. These are facts many are phobic of.

The Battle River-Crowfoot byelection, won by Poilievre this week in Alberta, saw a 58.8% voter turnout—well above the 30–40% average for federal byelections—suggesting strong engagement for a foregone conclusion. Yet his 80.4% vote share fell 2.4 points short of Damien Kurek’s 82.8% in April. More striking was independent Bonnie Critchley’s 10% second-place finish. In Canada’s first-past-the-post system, a 10% share for an unaffiliated, non-incumbent independent—nearly triple the typical 0.5-5% in byelections and 0.5-3% in general elections—is remarkable, especially on a record-breaking 214-candidate ballot. Only Jody Wilson-Raybould’s 32.6% win in 2019 (former Liberal post-SNC Lavalin) and Kevin Vuong’s 39.2% in 2021 (disavowed Liberal) outshine Critchley’s result; neither ran again. Liberal support collapsed from 11.7% to 4.3%, NDP from 3.2% to 2.1%, and PPC from 1.6% to 0.3%, showing Critchley drew voters across party lines. The CPC’s victory celebrations ignore this protest vote in a strong conservative area and Kurek’s swift move to a lobbying role at Upstream Strategy Group, exposing a regressing “unstoppable movement.”

Certainly, it’s worth further reflection that in this byelection an independent candidate standing apart from conventional and traditional politics took 10% of the vote. It’s a solid conservative riding in a traditionally conservative province. It was a healthy competition with strong candidates across the spectrum evidenced by turn-out and considering it’s been just 4 months since the last vote. 10% of voters cast a protest vote against the status quo. The hundreds of other candidates did not significantly influence the final outcomes. And even with the leader of the Conservative Party as the candidate, the CPC lost a bit of ground in conservative heartland.

Only the fact-phobic could cheer an “unstoppable movement” when Nanos polls show the LPC leading the CPC by 5–6 points nationally (43–44% to 38–39%), up from its 2.8-point election edge. Carney is trouncing Poilievre as preferred PM (51% to 23%). The CPC’s 2024 lead, peaking at 20 points, leaned on Trudeau’s unpopularity, not Poilievre’s appeal. It was a void filled, not momentum gained. Carney’s arrival erased that lead, as voters ditched the NDP and Bloc for the LPC, proving the CPC’s “unstoppable movement” to be moving as fast as molasses in January.

Poilievre is back in parliament now to exercise the job he would not resign from, Leader of the Official Opposition. He was fired as an MP, and rejected for PM. He’s almost back up to the starting line. Poilievre must now balance Alberta’s regionalist sentiments with his federal duties as a minister of the crown for the federal government. His time will be spent mostly in Ottawa fulfilling his role as leader of the opposition while trying to prove to Canadians he is PM-worthy. Staff will tend to the riding no doubt; no tax-payer expense will be spared to support all his efforts. He’s still running to be PM, too; he hasn’t stopped running since at least 2022. He is further from being PM now than when he first became leader of CPC, though. This byelection was triggered because Canadians rejected Poilievre’s boyhood dream of becoming the PM of Canada, not because of any “unstoppable movement”.

One has to be fact-phobic to think the CPC has any movement, momentum or even steam left. Poilievre being back in the HoC is important to CPC party members and die-hard loyalists, not to the country. They selected him as leader; the country did not when asked in a general election. His rockstar-like campaign rallies failed to launch him into higher office or even let him keep the one he had.

His time technically evicted from the HoC has shrunk the CPC’s popularity and withered the strength it enjoyed when Trudeau was PM. In that time, vying to get back into office he’s essentially only promoted the platform he lost the election campaigning on. His recent “Canada Sovereignty Act” rehashes failed 2025 campaign policies. That isn’t a sign of momentum. It’s falling over and not knowing how to get back up. The leader of the CPC is chronically fact-phobic; that’s not PM material. It wouldn’t be much different than the leadership we currently have, if you listen to those with a negative sentiment of the LPC government and Carney.

The inability of the CPC to accept, digest, and understand the facts of the past year leaves it unable to learn any lessons, adapt, or effectively repair the obvious electoral deficit it suffers from. It has propped Poilievre up as a hero of conservativism in Canada, ignoring all the facts indicating he is not. The notion he is a popular statesman to anyone other than dedicated conservative voters is akin to the Liberal dedication to Trudeau as his star crashed. Will the CPC hold onto Poilievre as long as the LPC did Trudeau? Facts matter, despite being fearful of them. The CPC is trailing in the polls and has been since the election. Poilievre has no national momentum. Carney is perceived as far better a PM in all polls. After losing a fourth election, the CPC has decided to take its stand where it fell.

That makes it an impotent opposition even before our parliament resumes. It’s a result of the party’s defiant dedication to the leader who lost his standing in the house fairly, democratically and resoundingly. Not liking those apples, it has squandered months being fact-phobic, painting a false image of a leader that has already proven unpalatable to the nation. Everything has changed since April. Under the leadership of Poilievre, the CPC has not. The re-election of Poilievre back into the HoC will not put wind back into the sails of the CPC. It’s clear the CPC is trying to change the direction of the wind rather than the direction of its sails.

Only the fact-phobic ignore the evidence: the LPC, not the CPC, is Canada’s ascendant political force. Current Nanos polls show the LPC leading the CPC by 5–6 points nationally, surpassing its 2.8-point edge in the April 2025 election. Mark Carney’s 51% preferred PM rating dwarfs Poilievre’s 23%, refuting claims of Poilievre’s broad appeal. The CPC’s 2024 polling lead, peaking at 20 points, capitalized on Trudeau’s unpopularity, not Poilievre’s charisma. Once Trudeau resigned and Carney emerged, the CPC’s support slid, even before Carney’s leadership win. The April election saw Canadians reject minor parties, favoring the LPC over the CPC by a clear margin. Poilievre’s “unstoppable movement” was a mirage—a void filled by Trudeau’s absence, not a mandate earned. Clinging to a leader rejected as PM, the CPC remains stalled, fact-phobic and driving its own decline.

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Chris Nerpin is an Independent Accounting Professional working in the Nation's capital. A politics junkie, he's watched, played, and written about politics since junior high. Never a shy observer, he doesn't hesitate to call things as he sees them. You can find more of his opinions about Canadian politics and social issues on X @chrisnerpin.