Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives held Chicoutimi-Le Fjord with 34.1% of the vote twelve months ago. On Monday the riding voted again. They got 12.5%. Third place. Behind the Bloc. That’s not a bad night at the polls — that’s the kind of number you see when a party stops existing in a region. Twenty-two points gone in a year, and the Conservative response is to demand Carney cancel a gas tax increase.
All three byelections went Liberal with over 50% of the popular vote. Carney didn’t squeak these out. Nobody came remotely close. The Conservative share dropped in every single riding, including the two they were never going to win. The Conservative Party of Canada is becoming the Conservative Party of Alberta plus whatever Pierre can personally shout into a microphone on a given Thursday, and the math keeps confirming it.
Poilievre built an entire identity on being the guy who tells you the price of everything and whose fault it is. He told Quebec it was the carbon tax and the immigrants. Quebec looked at its grocery bill, looked at him, and gave 87.5% of its votes to literally anyone else. You can blame the riding association. You can blame the media. But 12.5% doesn’t have an excuse. 12.5% is an answer.