O’Toole Urges Poilievre to Ditch Culture Wars and Court the Centre

Erin O’Toole isn’t holding back. The former Conservative leader is publicly calling on Pierre Poilievre to rethink his political playbook warning that the party’s current direction is handing the Liberal Party exactly what it needs to stay in power.

Speaking to Global News, O’Toole said the Conservatives must “moderate some of the positions to reach out to more Canadians,” pointing to Mark Carney’s emergence as a centrist Liberal leader as the defining reason why the old approach no longer works.

“They have to adapt to Canada as it is now… and the opponent Conservatives have now,” O’Toole said.

The central thrust of O’Toole’s argument is simple: the political landscape has shifted, and the Conservatives haven’t shifted with it. Under Justin Trudeau, Liberals occupied a more left-leaning space ground that made a right-wing contrast easier to sell. Carney, however, has planted the Liberal flag firmly in the centre, even nudging into centre-right territory, leaving Poilievre’s party fighting for voters on terrain it no longer dominates.

O’Toole’s prescription? Drop the culture war rhetoric, stop obsessing over floor-crossers, and build a policy agenda that speaks to Canadians’ long-term economic well-being.

Perhaps O’Toole’s sharpest words were reserved for the conservative influencer ecosystem that has grown around Poilievre’s party and the role it played in squandering a 20-point polling lead before the 2025 federal election.

“Some of the influencers within the conservative movement now are the biggest gifts to the Liberal Party I’ve ever seen,” he said bluntly. “They’re going to guarantee you a loss in the next election.”

It’s a pointed critique given that the party granted media accreditation to prominent influencers during the last campaign, and extended similar access at its recent national convention. O’Toole’s suggestion? Trade the social media circus for something with a little more substance.

“Maybe he wants to have a Conservative thinkers conference not a Conservative tweeters conference and come up with some smart ideas for the future.”

O’Toole, who recently joined Prime Minister Carney’s Advisory Committee on Canada-U.S. Economic Relations, was candid in his assessment of the new Liberal leader and what his rise means for Conservative attack strategies.

“Prime Minister Carney is a smart and passionate Canadian,” O’Toole said. “The old tricks that they used to pull out on Mr. Trudeau aren’t going to work with this guy.”

It’s a remarkable admission from a former leader of the opposition an acknowledgment that the Liberals, for now, hold a stronger hand.

Despite the criticism, O’Toole isn’t writing off his successor. He believes Poilievre remains one of Parliament’s most formidable debaters, and that the stability created by Carney’s majority secured in part through Conservative and NDP floor-crossers could actually work in the opposition’s favour.

With a stable government in place, Poilievre has room to build a credible counter-agenda on trade and national unity without the chaos of a minority Parliament dominating the news cycle.

“I think Mr. Poilievre is one of the most talented parliamentarians there is in the House of Commons, and that can be very helpful for a leader of the Opposition,” O’Toole said.

The message from O’Toole is less a rebuke than a reality check from someone who knows firsthand what it costs to misread the room.