Canada’s Conservative Party removes Erin O’Toole as leader
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The leader of Canada’s opposition Conservative Party, Erin O’Toole , has been removed from his post after a majority vote by Conservative legislators.
Seventy-three Conservative MPs voted on Wednesday to remove O’Toole as the head of the party, the chair of the Conservative caucus, Scott Reid, said in a brief statement, while 45 voted to keep him on.
O’Toole, who has led the Conservatives since 2020, had angered some politicians by trying to move the party closer to the centre and disavowing some policies that its voter base holds dear, including on guns and climate change.
That internal party pressure increased after the Conservatives lost the most recent federal election in September to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, who have been in government since 2015.
“It was an honour of a lifetime” to lead the Conservatives, O’Toole said in a video posted on Facebook on Wednesday afternoon, pledging his “support and unwavering loyalty” to the next leader.
“And I urge everyone in our party to come together and do the same,” he said, adding that he would remain in parliament, where he represents an electoral riding east of Toronto, Canada’s largest city.
O’Toole will be replaced by an interim leader later on Wednesday after another Conservative caucus vote, Canadian broadcaster CBC News reported.
The development is potentially good news for Trudeau, who has now seen off four Conservative leaders and can govern while his main rivals are focused on succession issues. No date for a leadership convention has been set.
“The lack of contrition and humility from Mr O’Toole and how he conducted himself after the election … is ultimately what did him in. There was no plan for how they were going to do things better,” said Jamie Ellerton, a conservative strategist and principal at Conaptus, a public relations firm.
After news broke earlier this week that dozens of Conservative MPs had signed a letter asking for a vote on O’Toole’s leadership, he tweeted late on Monday that “there are two roads open to the Conservative Party of Canada”.
The party could either be “angry, negative, and extreme”, O’Toole wrote, or “better reflect the Canada of 2022”.
“I’m not going anywhere and I’m not turning back. Canada needs us to be united and serious! It’s time for a reckoning. To settle this in caucus. Right here. Right now. Once and for all. Anger vs. Optimism. That is the choice in simple terms,” he wrote.
The vote came as a divisive protest continued in the Canadian capital, Ottawa, where a group of anti-vaccine truckers and their supporters have been railing against a vaccine mandate for cross-border travel to the US, as well as other coronavirus restrictions in Canada.
O’Toole defended his decision to meet with the leaders of the so-called “Freedom Convoy”, while denouncing “anybody promoting violence” within the group. Experts had pointed out that known, far-right activists were among the convoy organisers .
“The thousands of people coming here in the next few days – the trucker convoy – is a symbol of the fatigue in our country right now,” O’Toole told reporters last Thursday. He later disavowed some protest participants who had desecrated memorials in Ottawa during the weekend.
It remains unclear who the next likely leader of the federal Conservatives will be.
Pierre Poilievre , an Ottawa-area member of parliament, is among several names that have been floated as possibly being in the running to take over from O’Toole. Poilievre, a favourite of the right-wing, strongly backed the truckers’ protest.
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Conservatives eating their own ... another Covid side affect.
Personally, I'd prefer if Harper would come back.
Showing my age ... I would prefer Stanfield was resurrected.
Showing my age, I go back as far as William Lyon Mackenzie King and I sure as hell wouldn't want HIM resurrected. Of course Stanfield was never PM. Although I have in my later years voted mostly Conservative, my favourite PM was Justin's old man, who I think was the most brilliant, best PM Canada ever had during my lifetime. I will never forget watching his funeral where Jimmy Carter and Fidel Castro fought over which one of them would sit at the end of the pew. Castro won.
Closer to the center? I didn't think the Conservatives were that far to the right. I know that Canada allows hunting rifles and shotguns but I thought hand guns were illegal?
No, they're not illegal, but it's nowhere near as easy as in the USA to get a permit for one. In all my years in Canada I only knew two people who had a handgun. The first one was a client who did not have a permit and was found guilty of illegal possession, but I was able to get him probation only, so he walked away from the court. The other was an actor, the one who played Marty the camp director in Meatballs, who was a close long-time family friend and client, who did have a permit, but I never saw his pistol. In fact the only time I have ever seen a handgun in the hands of an ordinary citizen was my next door neighbour in Florida when my brother and I shared ownership of golf condo there, who, without my requesting it, brought his pistol in to show me, he was so proud of it, and asked me if I wanted to hold it. I wouldn't TOUCH it.
So far the new leader seems ok. I wish for her a lot of success.