Dan Robertson is an experienced conservative strategist who previously managed strategic communications for Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2009 and is a co-founder of the public relations firm ORB Advocacy.
The author, a former PMO director, attended the Feb. unveiling of Stephen Harper’s official portrait in Ottawa, describing it as a fitting occasion. Current Prime Minister Mark Carney attended and delivered gracious remarks, adhering to traditional custom.
The public images of Mark Carney and Stephen Harper show striking similarities, with focus group participants describing both with terms like robust, intelligent, and fiscally trustworthy.
Many observers also frequently note that Carney’s approach to national governance aligns closely with conservative principles.
The shifting Conservative brand
If a Liberal leader adopts the stability and economic competence once associated with Conservatives, leading more Canadians to perceive his governing style as right-of-center, it serves as a commentary on the transformation of the party established by Stephen Harper.
The modern Conservative Party of Canada has shifted, suggesting that even Harper would struggle to win its current leadership.
While a gap between party members and the electorate is historically normal, the defining change lies in the increased size of this gap and the heightened ideological temperature of the party base.
Radicalized members
COVID-19 radicalized a significant slice of the Canadian right. The convoy, vaccine skepticism, and lasting distrust of public institutions did not stay confined to the protest. They moved into the party, riding associations, and the members who vote in leadership contests and nomination battles.
This was not engineered. It was an organic reaction to government overreach during the pandemic, and conservatives were right to be angry about much of it. But anger is not a governing philosophy, and a party cannot let its angriest members set the agenda.
Consider Jason Kenney. He was a tireless foot soldier for Stephen Harper and, for years, was effectively the unofficial leader of Canada’s small-c conservative movement, building bridges between ethnic communities, Western populists, social conservatives, and free-market conservatives. None of that mattered when it collided with a radicalized United Conservative Party (UCP) membership during COVID-19.
Kenney was dumped as premier of Alberta, not by the province he governed, which still viewed him favourably, but by a membership base that had moved somewhere he could not follow. If one of the party’s most loyal and successful builders can be run out by his own base, anyone can.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre did not create this current, but he did exploit it. His flirtation with World Economic Forum conspiracy rhetoric, for instance, was not a slip. It was a calculated signal to a part of his base, and it worked, at least in the short run, by helping propel him to a resounding leadership victory.
The cost was that it legitimized framing in which political opponents are not merely wrong, but immoral. And it imposed severe constraints on his ability to appeal to the voters who actually decide election outcomes. The base is Poilievre’s greatest source of support, but he is also its prisoner.
Add the rise of a homegrown class of conservative social media influencers, operating almost entirely outside editorial structures, competing for attention rather than accuracy, and rewarded by platforms for being more extreme than the last person to go viral. They are now a bigger factor in Conservative politics than most traditional pundits and answer to no one. The result is a membership base shaped by an algorithm.
This specific segment of the membership is responsible for determining the outcome of any current leadership contest.
Such a reality is difficult for modern Conservatives to accept, and it may be easy to disregard these points as mere grievances from a past political generation. However, that is a misinterpretation, as Harper successfully secured three electoral victories by maintaining a unified coalition that succeeded precisely because he refused to allow the most furious factions to dictate party policy.
The political landscape is entirely different now, meaning Stephen Harper would face rejection if he ran to lead the contemporary Conservative Party—a shift that ought to cause far more concern within the movement than it presently does.
