Conservatives need ‘fine tuning,’ not overhaul after election loss: MacKay
Global News
Former Conservative cabinet minister Peter MacKay isn't pointing the finger at Pierre Poilievre for the party's election loss, but he does think members of his team need to go.
Former Conservative cabinet minister Peter MacKay isn’t pointing the finger at Pierre Poilievre for the party’s loss in last week’s federal election, but he does think members of his team need to go and that the party itself needs “fine-tuning.”
MacKay, who served multiple roles under former prime minister Stephen Harper and ran against Poilievre for the party leadership in 2022, says “difficult” and sometimes “painful” conversations will be had on what went wrong for the Conservatives.
While he says tensions exist within the party and with some provinces, MacKay doesn’t believe that’s what led to a fourth Liberal mandate.
“I don’t think it’s indicative of a party in crisis — it’s indicative of a party that’s in need of some fine-tuning, perhaps some policy and communications adjustments,” he told Mercedes Stephenson in an interview that aired Sunday on The West Block.
“The results do, to a large degree, speak for themselves: increased seat count, increased overall vote total, and I think policies that were very appealing to millions of Canadians.”
The Conservatives increased their vote share to 41.3 per cent, with over eight million ballots cast, and flipped several ridings to form the largest Official Opposition in Canadian history, with a projected 144 seats.
Despite all that, the Liberals still managed to win a stronger minority government — 168 seats compared to the 160 seats won in the 2021 election, and 157 in 2019 — as well as the popular vote for the first time since 2015, when they won a majority with 184 seats.
Poilievre himself lost the Ottawa-area riding he held for 20 years, and will now have to run in a future byelection in Alberta to get back into Parliament and serve again as the Leader of the Opposition, which under procedural rules is tied to the caucus, not his role as Conservative Party leader.
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