The inside story of the plot to topple Erin O’Toole: ‘It’s about character’

OTTAWA – For some Conservatives, it became clear more than a year ago that Erin O’Toole was not going to survive as leader of their party.

O’Toole himself did not realize it until hours before he was ousted.

In that chasm between O’Toole and many members of his party – and the breakdown of good will and communication that created it – lie the reasons that 73 of 119 Conservative MPs voted on Wednesday to kick him out.

Some say it was O’Toole’s flip-flops that did him in, others his attempt to move the party to the center. Some say it was his stance on conversion therapy, others his failure to consult and communicate. Some say his leadership was a casualty of the pandemic.

One common thread that emerged from interviews with Conservative MPs, party staffers, organizers and others with long-standing ties to the party was perhaps best encapsulated by rookie MP Stephen Ellis:

“Democracy is a messy, messy way to do work.”

O’Toole won leadership in August 2020, beating out the presumed front-runner Peter MacKay by appealing to the right wing of the party as a “true blue” Conservative and hoovering up support from social conservatives who felt alienated by MacKay’s progressive approach.

In his victory speech, he pledged a renewed conservative movement, one that welcomed more Canadians, and many party members nodded in agreement.

In the months following that speech, however, O’Toole sidelined supporters of his rivals in the leadership contest, going so far as to kick one rival – Derek Sloan – out of the Conservative caucus altogether.

Then in March 2021, he gave a speech to the party’s policy convention – and while some of its themes echoed his victory speech in August, his “true blue” credentials had already begun to fade in the eyes of the party’s membership.

In the August speech, the grassroots heard words of optimism and renewal; in March, they heard insults as O’Toole emphasized the need for the party to have courage, and to prove to voters that it had grown and learned.

“We could get onside with moving the party, but not with being told there was something wrong with us,” said one longtime MP.

“We’re a big tent party, we always have been. But he started creating camps in that tent with that speech. ”

Next came carbon pricing. A month after the convention, without warning or briefing any of his MPs, O’Toole dropped a bombshell: the Tories were going to embrace the idea of ​​putting a consumer price on carbon.

“Look, I hate carbon taxes,” one MP told the Star this week. “Maybe he never could have convinced me it was the right approach, but he did not even give us the dignity of being part of the conversation.”

At that moment, the bonds of trust between the leader and his party’s MPs began to break.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic was also throwing up its own challenges.

The Conservative MPs elected in 2019 included many rookies who’d barely taken their seats in the House of Commons before the country closed its doors; another group followed in 2021, when pandemic restrictions remained.

Conservative MP Alex Ruff, a longtime O’Toole supporter, said the team-building necessary for new MPs under a new leader was impossible in the Zoom era.

In his view, what happened in the last week of O’Toole’s leadership was a reflection of the pandemic.

“This was about two years of being locked up, frustrated and without being able to come together in person as a team,” he said.

People close to O’Toole now acknowledge that he never had a good enough read on his MPs, often minimizing issues and problems or catching up with them too late.

At the point in last summer’s election campaign when the Conservatives were on track to potentially form a minority government, many figured that a victory would help soothe some of the ongoing tensions.

Except O’Toole did not win.

And even as he struck an optimistic tone in the days that followed, his supporters sensed that the beginning of the end could be upon them.

“It was one and done,” said a long-time Conservative organizer. “That was the precedent set for Andrew Scheer, and that’s what was going to happen to us.”

Nonetheless, his team thought they could make it to 2023, when O’Toole would face the leadership review required by the party’s constitution. With enough time, some felt they could still turn the ship around.

Deputizing defeated MP James Cumming to conduct a review of the campaign’s failings would give them time to present a plan and a path forward, O’Toole’s team believed. Maybe they could convince the caucus – and the party’s members – to give him another chance.

It seemed to help that many Conservatives believe in the right of the party’s grassroots to handle all matters of leadership.

That’s why, in their first meeting of the post-election era, the Conservative MPs were not unanimously in favor of adopting a provision of the Reform Act which gives a party’s MPs the power to call for a leadership review if 20 per cent of caucus wants one.

But the provision was adopted nonetheless. At the time, O’Toole said it was not a “sword of Damocles” hanging over his head – but that was exactly what it became.

Getting 20 per cent of caucus to sign up took time but, in the end, not as much as even the organizers anticipated.

The irritants had piled up: A snap motion to push a bill banning conversion therapy all the way to the Senate; an apparent flip-flop over mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations on Parliament Hill; a leak of a damaging story about Alberta MP Shannon Stubbs, in what was perceived as retribution for her call for an earlier leadership review.

What his MPs saw as signs of disrespect were considered by O’Toole’s team to be the necessary work of bringing a restive group to heel.

Closing out 2021 was the “bloodbath” in a December caucus meeting over Quebec’s Bill 21, which prohibits those in positions of public authority from wearing religious symbols at work.

That meeting would set the course for the final days of O’Toole’s leadership.

A motion was put up for debate at the next meeting that would see the party condemn Bill 21 in no uncertain terms – even though the party’s official policy was that Quebec lawmakers had the right to do as they liked. O’Toole’s inner circle saw it as a trap. Adopting the motion would create a new fissure in caucus between its Quebec MPs and those opposed to Bill 21.

It seemed that the leaders detractors were not going to stop until they triggered a leadership review.

Internal pressure was brought to bear on O’Toole to consider what grassroots Tories had been asking for via several competing petitions, including one from Conservative Sen. Denise Batters: move up the leadership review.

Then, a week ago Monday, O’Toole gave what many considered a disjointed news conference about the imminent arrival of a trucker convoy in Ottawa. Few knew at the time that his wife Rebecca had just come through surgery, multiple sources told the Star, while O’Toole was juggling the return of Parliament, his restive caucus and the need for a thoughtful response to the demands of the protesters.

His response did not land well, and his team knew it. For the next four days, they would fight over how to deal with the convoy.

Videos were shot and shelved, lines argued over. In the meantime, some of his MPs were loudly and proudly backing the truckers.

A caucus retreat that same week turned into a shambles.

One MP took the microphone and gave O’Toole an intense and emotional dressing drown over his handling of COVID-19 vaccination requirements for MPs; when O’Toole suggested they continue the conversation elsewhere, the MP flat-out refused.

The second day of the meeting featured Cummings’s post mortem of the 2021 election campaign – but details from it were being leaked to the media even as O’Toole’s MPs were hearing them for the first time.

The renewed sense of being disrespected, and the fact there was no obvious plan for change in the campaign report, spurred meetings that night on how to gather enough signatures to force a vote on O’Toole’s leadership.

“A letter like this does not come because of a single policy or an ideological divide,” said one MP.

“It’s about character.”

Both sides started making calls over the weekend.

By Monday, it was clear that enough signatures had been gathered to trigger the vote.

O’Toole’s team lashed out, portraying the organizers as acolytes of former leader Andrew Scheer, or members of “the conversion crew” who were still angry about the handling of the conversion therapy bill.

Later that night, O’Toole would issue a statement suggesting there were forces at work trying to drag the party down.

One long-time MP, who said they are in none of those camps, said it was O’Toole’s response that cemented his decision to vote him out.

“I had such high hopes for him as a leader,” the MP said, “but I’ve been left totally disappointed and disillusioned.”

Two MPs told the Star their colleagues lied to O’Toole when he called canvassing for their support, a move many framed as payback for the times they felt O’Toole had deceived them.

“Our support was soft,” said one O’Toole loyalist, “and we could not harden it up.”

In his last-ditch pitch to caucus to keep him on, O’Toole pointed to the party’s gains and growth on his watch.

He promised to move up the leadership review and let the members have their say.

They will now, MPs say, whenever the next leadership race is called.

As for O’Toole, he insists there’s no bad seat in the House of Commons, and says he wants to stay as the MP for Durham.

“I pledge my support and unwavering loyalty to our next leader,” he said following his ouster, “and I urge everyone in our party to come together and do the same.”