Conservative post-election report says O'Toole was 'over-managed' during the campaign

A post-election report on the Conservative Party's 2021 campaign performance found leader Erin O'Toole had a strong start to the 36-day electoral contest but faltered at the finish because he was "over-managed" and "over-coached" by senior staff.

The report, commissioned by the party brass and compiled by former Alberta MP James Cumming, concluded O'Toole didn't connect well enough with voters because he "wasn't himself" at key moments in the campaign.

"The team should have let him be him rather than over-coaching," said a Conservative source who has been briefed on the report's findings.

O'Toole rarely ventured away from carefully crafted talking points during the campaign. Some pundits described his performance as stiff.

He also struggled to deliver direct answers to questions about his shifting positions on "assault-style" firearms and "conscience rights" for medical professionals. That prompted criticism from party members like Sen. Denise Batters, who branded O'Toole a flip-flopper.

Cumming briefed MPs and senators on his findings in a closed-door meeting of the Conservative caucus Thursday. Cumming, who supported Peter MacKay in the last leadership campaign, spent four months speaking to caucus members, candidates, staff, grassroots volunteers and electoral districting association (EDA) presidents as he compiled the post-mortem report.

"O'Toole did quite well in the first few weeks. He brought us from where we were in the polls to leading at one point and public opinion polls taken during the election back that up. He gained support and narrowed or even overtook Trudeau at times," the party source said.

The Cumming report attributes O'Toole's loss of momentum in part to his campaign schedule.

For two or three days out of the week — and sometimes more — O'Toole campaigned virtually from a makeshift broadcast studio inside a downtown Ottawa hotel. His only interactions with would-be voters and Conservative supporters were through telephone town halls.

"The leader was different in the studio than out. He needed to be out with the people more," the source said.

The Cumming report concluded that O'Toole needed to be more "authentic" and get out on the road to meet with Canadians so they can get to know him better.

A Conservative source who attended the caucus meeting said Cumming's presentation spent little time on O'Toole's own failings.

"The section on the leader was about two minutes and they really didn't lay anything at the leader's feet," the source said.

The Cumming report also zeroed in on the party's poor performance with so-called "ethnic voters." The party stumbled in the 2021 campaign in must-win areas like the Greater Toronto Area and Vancouver and its suburbs — two ethnically and racially diverse regions that have skewed Liberal in the last two election cycles.