‘This is a new thing’: Is Pierre Poilievre’s campaign attracting a different type of Conservative?

OTTAWA—As Pierre Poilievre and his team watch thousands of people jam into his Conservative leadership campaign events, they say they are seeing a new political movement take shape.

Gesturing to all the young people at an event in North York last week, Conservative MP Adam Chambers called it proof Poilievre is reaching a different demographic.

“This is a new thing for the Conservative party,” he said.

But Poilevre’s campaign also knows that a movement alone isn’t going to win him the leadership.

To do that, he needs to turn the momentum into membership sales. That means adjusting his two-month-old campaign, making tweaks that will flow from something his team discovered:

The people making up the movement aren’t just new to the party; many are entirely new to politics.

What appears to be drawing them are his calls for freedom: from vaccine mandates, from regulations that make it hard to build affordable homes, from taxes that make it expensive to drive a car, and as a whole from a government he says has too much control over their lives.

While freedom has always been a theme for Conservatives — he uses a 1960 quote on the subject from former prime minister John Diefenbaker in his speeches — a clue surfaced recently that this was a new crowd.

When Poilievre took the stage after Chambers’ introduction, and began talking about their time working with former beloved Conservative finance minister Jim Flaherty, it barely elicited a response from the audience. Neither did Poilievre’s throwback to a 2014 line from Justin Trudeau, about the budget balancing itself.

The relative silence surprised Poilievre’s team, several told the Star, and notes were taken on freshening up his speech.

Though both lines may have landed somewhat better at a Thursday night event just 11 kilometers away from Parliament Hill.

Those in the room included some of former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper’s inner circle, and plenty of Tory MPs and their staff.

But also there: hipsters in skinny suits, construction workers in reflective gear, young families, veteran party organizers and a few individuals who told the Star it was the first rally they’d ever attended.

Mingling in the crowd were also members of “Freedom Fighters Canada,” a group that shares the same concerns with the so-called “Freedom Convoy” movement that blocked downtown Ottawa earlier this year.

Offshoots of that movement actively promote Poilievre’s events and have even tried to host them.

Poilievre’s team say they don’t always know how many people are going to show up. Not all RSVP to the email or Facebook invites, and then there are those who come because they’ve seen the posting somewhere else.

Then there’s what happens when they arrive at the venue: many people walk straight in without registering, as they did on Thursday night.

That creates a campaign data gap: if potential supporters don’t register, the campaign doesn’t have their contact information to keep reaching out.

Another issue involves Poilievre’s choice to brand his campaign as being for “prime minister.”

Those new to organized politics don’t realize there’s a step in between — he has to get elected the party leader first.

So as he wraps up a stump speech that covers everything from carbon pricing to the Magna Carta, Poilievre makes a very clear and specific pitch: if people want a Canada like the one he’s promising, they have to pony up $15 for a party membership.

“I need you,” he told the crowd on Thursday.

“We need thousands of people to buy memberships and vote.”

Ottawa’s event did feature a healthy number of card-carrying Tories; one woman enthusiastically whipped out her membership card and waved it around as Poilievre launched into his ask from her.

But the campaign doesn’t just leave it on the stage.

Every rally features a photo line, giving people a chance to get a shot with Poilievre and often his wife Ana as well.

On Thursday, people spent upwards of 45 minutes waiting for their shot.

The hope is that those photos end up online and drive further interest in the candidate, a tactic that’s become commonplace in politics.

But his campaign has seized upon another use for the line: as people wait, a crew of volunteers runs up alongside them to ask if they’ve taken out a party membership yet.

Each volunteer holds a laminated placard with a QR code, and anyone interested in taking out a card can sign up on the spot.

No mobile device? No problem. Paper membership forms sit at the table just before the makeshift photo booth, and information can be filled out there as well.

At the Ottawa event, upwards of 200 new members were added to the party’s rolls, his campaign says.

The Conservative party begins this race with about 170,000 members overall.

With Poilievre’s appeal to a new demographic, coupled with the known organizational chops of other candidates, like Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown and MP Leslyn Lewis, some party insiders say they expect the party’s rolls to top 300,000 by the time sales close.

That happens on June 3.

But insiders also caution against reading too much into the final numbers on the roster.

“The get-out-the-vote element of this is really crucial,” said Melanie Paradis, who helped with Erin O’Toole’s bid for the leadership in 2020.

The 2020 leadership race had over 269,000 eligible voters.

But only 174,000 ballots were cast.