Questions swirl about where Poilievre will run, as Conservatives prepare for a possible spring election

OTTAWA — With federal Conservatives preparing to be ready for an election as soon as this spring, one outstanding question the party must answer is where party leader Pierre Poilievre will run. 

The party has said it is launching its candidate nomination process and calls have also begun to past candidates, with a view to being ready by April or May. Recent public polling suggests support growing for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals and threats from U.S. President Donald Trump are in the forefront of Canadians’ minds, which has raised the possibility of an early election.

Conservatives, who are hoping to avoid going to the polls by working with the Liberals to pass key pieces of the government’s legislative agenda, have yet to announce where Poilievre will run.

That question has nevertheless begun to swirl in party circles.

Here’s a look at some of the ridings that Conservatives anticipate Poilievre may choose from.

Longtime Conservative MP Cathay Wagantall, who was first elected back in 2015, announced back in July that she would not be reoffering.

The staunchly Conservative riding located in Saskatchewan’s southeast is currently the safest seat the party has open in Western Canada, a region where federal Conservatives win by wide double-digit margins.

Those features make it an attractive seat for a leader who lost his longtime Ottawa-area seat in last year’s federal election, the first race since Poilievre had captured it back in 2004 that he was not campaigning locally.

The thinking goes that running in such a safe seat would not create a drain on resources for a national campaign, where a leader must crisscross the country targeting seats to flip and defending others.

However, a local Conservative involved with the Saskatchewan riding dismissed the likelihood of that happening, saying some local interest has been showed by individuals about seeking the nomination.

While raised in Alberta and having spent his adult life on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Poilievre enjoys a connection to Saskatchewan by way of his parents.

His Fransaskois father hails from Leoville, a small village located in northern Saskatchewan, with his mother from Saskatoon. While visiting the province in the past, Poilievre has at times recounted to supporters his memories about spending time there as a child.

Under new nomination rules, Poilievre can appoint up to eight candidates before the writ drops.

A party spokeswoman says no decision has been made about appointing candidates to any riding, “including Yorkton-Melville.”

If Poilievre wants to run close to Ottawa, no seat is more safe than Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, a rural riding outside the city. 

Cheryl Gallant, the party’s longest serving member of Parliament, has represented it since 2000, before the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives merged to form the modern day party.

Gallant would have to either decide to not run again, or step aside to make room for Poilievre.

Reached for comment, a spokesman in her office pointed to remarks she made before the House of Commons back in December when Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux raised the possibility that Poilievre might be looking to run in Ontario and whether she would be willing to step aside.

“ I will be back,” Gallant said at the time. 

Besides Gallant, Scott Reid, the party’s current caucus chair who is another of the Conservatives’ longest serving members, represents Lanark-Frontenac, another safe rural riding near Ottawa.

Queries to his MP office about whether he plans to seek reelection have yet to be returned.

Philippe Fournier of the website 338Canada, which maps statistical models of electoral projections based on polling, demographics and elections history, said the most safe seats in Ontario would be rural ones that Conservatives currently hold from Oxford and Haldimand—Norfolk, to Chatham-Kent—Leamington and Sarnia—Lambton. 

With MPs soon able to declare whether they intend to stand for reelection as incumbents, that creates an opening that some representatives in Alberta-held ridings may not reoffer.

Should some choose to retire, that could create an opening for Poilievre to stay in the province he grew up in and currently represents after winning a summer byelection in the rural riding of Battle River—Crowfoot, when Damien Kurek, the area’s former MP, stepped aside to open a seat for the Conservative leader under the agreement that Kurek would return.

The party currently holds 34 seats in the solidly blue province. Of those, roughly half of its MPs have served for a decade or longer.

One seat expected to open up for a new candidate sometime this year will be in Edmonton, after Matt Jeneroux announced last year that he would resign, after having represented Edmonton Riverbend since 2015.

In his departing statement, Jeneroux pointed to the spring as the timeline for when he will formally leave.

Fournier at 338Canada suggested that riding would be a toss up for either Conservatives or Liberals and would be a bold move for Poilievre.

Another riding that has emerged as one some Conservatives believes he ought to consider is Cumberland—Colchester.

The rural Nova Scotia seat is currently held by Liberal MP Alana Hirtle, who defeated former Conservative MP Stephen Ellis by roughly 1,200 votes in the last election.

The Conservatives currently have no representatives in Nova Scotia after Chris d’Entremont, who represents Acadie—Annapolis, crossed the floor to join the Liberals, which now hold all 11 seats in the province. 

As a riding, voters in Cumberland-Colchester have elected Conservatives more often than not in the years prior to 2015, with the party recapturing it from the Liberals during the 2021 campaign.

With the Conservatives having only seven seats in Atlantic Canada, four in New Brunswick and three in Newfoundland and Labrador, having Poilievre there would be a plus for Tories hoping for the party to make gains in the region.

While Poilievre could decide to stage a rematch with Liberal MP Bruce Fanjoy, who comfortably captured the seat from the Conservative leader in the last election, some Conservatives believe that would be ill-advised.

Jenny Byrne, who ran the last Conservative campaign, said in a podcast interview after that election that she had wished the party would have seen what was happening sooner and suggested at the time the only solution would have been to find Poilievre a new seat.

National Post

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our politics newsletter, First Reading, here.