Pierre Poilievre should know better than to get into a public pissing match with senior members of his own party. He is a pugilist by nature. He is also a purist, which is a very dangerous combination in politics.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on July 27, 2026.

OTTAWA—Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre must be tearing his hair out.

No matter what happens, Poilievre doesn’t seem to be able to get any traction. With all the issues facing Prime Minister Mark Carney, he doesn’t seem to be suffering any political damage.

Every day, United States President Donald Trump comes up with a new “Hate Canada” reference, and most people are blaming him for the mess of our bilateral relationship.

Imagine having the gall to joke that you are going to add a “smoke” tariff to Canada while our country’s largest province is facing the worst wildfire season in history.

When California was burning, Canada sent in trained aerial firefighters to help save lives and property. So why does the American president have such a short memory?

If he thinks Americans are upset about the lack of their liquor on Canadian sales shelves, imagine how Canadians feel about the barrage of insults levelled by the president against our country on a regular basis.

Carney is not facing the ire of the voters because our anger is currently directed to the man causing all these trade problems: Trump.

After more than a year in office, Carney is still receiving popular support for his approach, even though we continue to suffer increasing tariff threats from south of the border.

Polls are consistently showing that people are willing to cut Carney some slack, which must infuriate Poilievre to no end.

Meanwhile, Poilievre is busy stoking fires internally within his own party.

Most of the flames are of his own making. In a speech at the Calgary Stampede, Poilievre lauded the victory of Kerry-Lynne Findlay in the British Columbia Conservative leadership race. He characterized her triumph as a “big win against Liberal lobbyists from out East.”

The “Liberals” he was referring to were actually Conservatives who had worked on the campaign of Findlay’s main opponent, Caroline Elliott. Her team included Kory Teneycke, former adviser to then-prime minister Stephen Harper and to Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Two other well-known Tory organizers for Elliott were Nick Kouvalis and Anthony Koch.

Poilievre fired the first salvo. And therein lies the problem. If the man truly wants to be prime minister, he needs to start turning his guns outward. He certainly cannot afford to start a fight with some of the key organizers from winning Conservative campaigns both federally and provincially.

Elliott produced a video in which she urged the leader to “unite, not divide.” Conservative columnist Brian Lilley wrote a scorching piece publicly questioning whether Poilievre actually wanted to be prime minister.

Lilley also reported that after Poilievre won the party’s leadership in 2022, he spurned multiple attempts by Ford to reach out and congratulate him. The bottom line for Lilley is that Poilievre must decide whether he wants to be right, or to be prime minister.

There is no love lost between Poilievre and Teneycke. But the leader should know better than to get into a public pissing match with a senior member of his own party. Poilievre is a pugilist by nature. He is also a purist, which is a very dangerous combination in politics. As a purist, he is not willing to bend to meet the moment. As a pugilist, he savours the knockout punch in the ring, instead of looking at the long game.

At the very least, if Poilievre wants to send a message to his internal adversaries, he should use a surrogate. Most leaders keep their negative comments about colleagues to themselves, focusing instead on being the glue that keeps different factions of a party from coming apart.

If there is a public message that needs to be delivered, it should NEVER be coming from the lips of the leader. Instead, he should be taking the high road.

Poilievre’s Stampede sortie reignited an internal party fight that started back when Teneycke and others vocally attacked the leader’s “Trumpy” approach and his perceived alignment with the MAGA factions of the Republican Party.

Poilievre has definitely softened those edges. When it comes to criticism, he is making an effort to modify his pro-Trump approach.

But if he is ever going to form government, Poilievre needs to enlist the best and the brightest in his party. Instead, his public attacks have only served to weaken his position, as even ardent supporters are frustrated with his standing in the polls.

When the Toronto Sun’s Lilley attacks Poilievre, it underscores how deep the wounds in the party really area.

Poilievre needs a tourniquet, not a knife.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

By SHEILA COPPS

First published on Monday, August 21, 2017 in The Hill Times.

OTTAWA—The northward drift of the American alt-right may have been stopped in its tracks in the aftermath of Charlottesville last week. Or it may actually be energized by the post-Charlottesville fallout.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer announced Thursday that he would no longer give interviews to self-stylized right-wing online presence, Rebel Media, after it provided positive coverage and streamed live images of neo-fascist, Nazi-chanting Virginia marchers.

In normal times, a quarter of the Conservative caucus has been interviewed by The Rebel, with a YouTube audience of 400,000. Scheer was a regular until his disavowal last week.

Rebel’s troubles began when a contributor, covering the event in Charlottesville, retweeted insinuations that the murderous white supremacist driver who is alleged to have killed one person with his car, may have been provoked because anti-racism protesters who hit the speeding vehicle before it ploughed into the crowd.

Rebel co-founder and former Sun Media journalist Brian Lilley exited the online news organization days before Scheer’s declaration, claiming the outlet suffers from a “lack of editorial and behavioural judgment that left unchecked will destroy it and those around it.”

With the departure of Lilley, and the Charlottesville fallout, Scheer had no choice but to publicly cut ties with The Rebel.

Lilley posted his leave-taking notice on Facebook, linking co-founder Ezra Levant with the alt-right movement in his comments.

“I was never enamoured by the ‘alt-right,’ never saw the appeal but I take Ezra at his word when he describes his evolution. But just as he has evolved, just as The Rebel has evolved, so have I and the uncomfortable dance that I have been doing for some time now must come to an end. … As a serious journalist with nearly 20 years’ experience at the highest levels in this country, and abroad, I cannot be a part of this.”

Lilley bluntly went much further: “I am not comfortable being associated with a group that, rightly or wrongly, is being increasingly viewed as associated with the likes of Richard Spencer. Like many of you, I had family that fought the Nazis, I never want to be in the same room as one. I am also not comfortable with the increasingly harsh tone taken on issues like immigration, or Islam. There are ways to disagree on policy without resorting to us versus them rhetoric.”

In attempting to tone down The Rebel backlash, Levant issued a statement claiming that “the alt-right is, in my mind—the mirror image of Black Lives Matter.”

His statement was eerily similar to the declaration of American President Donald Trump, who shocked the world by claiming that “very fine people” on both sides were undermined by a few bad people in both the alt-right and, in Trump’s words, the “alt-left.”

Most Tory caucus members will likely follow their leader in finally refusing to do interviews with The Rebel.

Earlier in the week, in a CBC interview, Conservative analyst Rick Anderson confirmed that 75 per cent of the caucus is already declined invitations.

But Conservative MPs who were dancing with the The Rebel, including the leader, depend on religious conservatives for their electoral base. Scheer himself courted that cohort in his successful bid to overtake libertarian Max Bernier for the Tory leadership.

Former Stephen Harper aide Hamish Marshall, who managed Scheer’s leadership campaign, served until recently as a director of Rebel News.

Scheer’s unexpected win was predicated on courting the sizeable right-wing contingent in his caucus, the group that until last week were key to Rebel messaging.

Within the Tories, a group concerned by the current right wing drift of the party has been meeting secretly to consider alternatives.

Meanwhile, emboldened racists are demonstrating across Canada too. An anti-Muslim rally in Calgary last month was to be followed by an anti-immigrant Vancouver gathering in front of city hall last Saturday.

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson decried the event but said he was powerless to stop it because of laws governing free speech. Both events were organized by anti-Muslim groups seeking a return to “European-based” immigration.

The University of Toronto is attempting to halt a similar Sept. 14 rally. University officials say the event will not be allowed on campus, but organizers are still advertising it, without citing a specific location.

During his leadership, Scheer vowed to cut funding from universities that do not permit “free speech” on campus.

When mid-September rolls around, the Tory leader may have to revisit that pledge.

Unlike Donald Trump, Scheer won’t get away with playing both sides of this story.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.