Paul Tuns
The Conservative Party’s 2026 national convention, scheduled to be held in Ottawa, has been moved to Calgary following a vote by the party’s national council. The convention, to be held Jan. 29-31 will also serve as the location for a party constitution-required leadership review.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who lost his own seat despite improving the party’s seat and vote totals in the federal election in April, must face a mandatory leadership review within 12 months of the federal election. There had been speculation that the leadership review might be held this fall or put off until March before the national council finally settled on January, after Poilievre runs in a by-election in Battle River-Crowfoot, the safest Conservative riding in the country.
After pro-life Conservative MP Damien Kurek resigned his seat representing Battle River-Crowfoot he had won with 82 per cent of the vote, Prime Minister Mark Carney offered an olive branch to the Conservatives by quickly calling a by-election for August 18. Poilievre is expected to easily win the by-election, after which he will focus on retaining his leadership of the party.
According to the Conservative Party’s constitution, when a leader does not resign following a general election loss, he bership who decides if he be allowed to stay to run again. Andrew Scheer resigned in 2019 before facing such a vote and Erin O’Toole was effectively booted out of the leadership by caucus following the 2021 election defeat.
In the meantime, the party is not undergoing a traditional post-mortem in which senior party officials examine what went wrong for the campaign. The Hill Times reported that Poilievre will conduct the post-mortem himself, reaching out to losing candidates to see what the central campaign could do better.
When the Conservative caucus met in early May, it voted to adopt the Reform Act rules which grants caucus the power to call for a leadership review of Poilievre. The National Post reported that more than two-third of the caucus voted to retain the ability to call into question the party’s leader. The Liberal caucus did not vote itself the ability to remove its leader despite its ordeal in 2024 to remove its unpopular leader, Justin Trudeau.
Campaign Life Coalition is encouraging its Conservative-leaning supporters to become delegates for the Conservative policy convention to vote for pro-life and pro-family policies, noting “Our movement has seen remarkable successes through this process” in the past, including making it official party policy to oppose sex-selective abortions (2016) and for a ban on puberty blockers and sex-change operations for minors (2023).
CLC national president Jeff Gunnarson said, “And we have ambitious goals of working with socially-conservative, grassroots CPC members to make the Conservative Party more pro-life and pro-family at its 2026 convention.” Gunnarson explained, “In turn this will put pressure on the party leader, his team, and caucus, to offer socially conservative policies in the next election platform.”
CLC has not yet taken a position on whether it will encourage its supporters to support or oppose Poilievre in the leadership review.
Local riding associations will begin selecting delegates this summer.
