Conservative senator launches petition to oust Erin O'Toole as leader

Conservative Saskatchewan Sen. Denise Batters has launched a petition to oust Erin O'Toole as party leader — a high-profile effort by a caucus member who said she lost faith in O'Toole after the Conservative Party suffered "significant losses" in the last campaign.

In announcing her petition, Batters said that on O'Toole's watch, the party has flip-flopped on major issues such as carbon pricing, firearms and conscience rights and has lost once-Conservative seats in urban and suburban ridings in Alberta, B.C. and the Greater Toronto Area.

While O'Toole campaigned as a "true blue" Conservative in the party's leadership race, Batters said he subsequently ran a federal election campaign "nearly indistinguishable from Trudeau's Liberals."

She said these developments demand a leadership review well before the planned vote at the 2023 Conservative convention. As per the party rules, there's an automatic leadership review at the first national convention following a failed federal election campaign — but Batters instead wants that vote to happen in the next six months.

"Mr. O'Toole flip-flopped on policies core to our party within the same week, the same day, and even within the same sentence. The members didn't have a say on that, but we must have one on his leadership," Batters said in a media statement.

"We can't afford to see our party ripped apart again. When we're divided, the Liberals win."

Under the party's constitution, a referendum on any matter can be launched if five per cent of Conservative members sign a petition calling on the party to poll the membership on the topic.

Batters, who supported former federal cabinet minister Peter MacKay over O'Toole in the 2020 Conservative leadership race, now has 90 days to collect enough signatures on her petition to force the party to hold a referendum. The referendum on O'Toole's leadership would be binding if a third of all members cast ballots.

Batters has launched a website — membersvote.ca — to promote the petition.

She said O'Toole has "not learned any lessons" from the party's "devastating loss" in September and must now be shown the door if the party is to have any hope of toppling the Liberals in the next election — which could come at any time in a minority Parliament.

"It's business as usual. His strategy failed and he refuses to change it. He is surrounded by the same old team with the same old ideas," the membersvote.ca website says.

"His polling numbers keep dropping. His flip-flops and weakness mean that he can never regain the trust from the Canadian people that he lost in the election. Because he refuses to learn from his mistakes, he can't win."

To sign the petition, a Conservative must have been a party member for at least 21 days.

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner, the party's natural resources critic, said Monday she was "profoundly disappointed" in Batters for launching the petition. She called it an unwanted distraction that will divert attention from more pressing concerns.