O’Toole’s flaws must be part of Conservative election report: Sen. Batters

OTTAWA — The Conservative senator ousted for spearheading an effort to review Erin O’Toole’s leadership says a forthcoming report of the party’s election loss must confront its most serious flaws — including its leader’s.

Saskatchewan Sen. Denise Batters was shown the door out of the national Conservative caucus last year, after launching a petition for members to sign in hopes that it would trigger the party to hold an earlier leadership review than the one planned in 2023. 

The Conservative party has rejected that process as invalid. Concerns, however, remain simmering within O’Toole’s caucus and membership more broadly about his ability to actually lead. 

Among those are frustrations over unaddressed reversals he made on the campaign trail on promises related to gun control and conscience rights, issues which are important to many supporters. 

Following his loss, O’Toole tapped former MP James Cumming last October to review the party’s election performance — the findings of which are set to be presented to caucus next Thursday as part of its two-day retreat in Ottawa. 

“This campaign review must accurately reflect all the major problems that were raised during meetings with participants,” Batters said in a statement. 

“I have heard that questions seemed to focus on operational and process issues rather than what many participants viewed as the more significant problems of the leader, the platform and the many flip-flops that occurred during the election.”

Batters says she wasn’t invited to participate in the review, even though she says others who did told the author to get in touch with her. She noted that she didn’t reach out to Cumming directly, saying her concerns were widely known and felt “the ball was in his court.”

Cumming says he doesn’t recall that, but he spoke to more than 400 people for his report and didn’t turn down any requests to take part. 

A party spokesman confirmed this week that plans remain unchanged to keep the review for internal eyes only, which means those of senior staff as well as its caucus and national council. 

The report lands at a time when O’Toole faces pressure and criticism from his MPs, delivered both privately and publicly, over his stance around a controversial secularism law in Quebec, as well as vaccine mandates. 

British Columbia’s Mark Strahl, a former whip for the Tories, has said on previous occasions that on both of these issues, the Conservative message has been unclear. 

Most recently, he took to social media to compliment fellow MP Leslyn Lewis, a former leadership opponent of O’Toole’s, as well as finance critic Pierre Poilievre, for their “clear” and “strong” leadership. Poilievre also planned a run in the leadership race but withdrew last minute.

Calls into Strahl’s office from The Canadian Press have gone unanswered. 

O’Toole faced criticism even before his election loss, where he won two fewer seats than former leader Andrew Scheer. Sheer faced an intense campaign to step down over his socially conservative values and eventually did resign as leader. 

After running in the party’s leadership race as a “true blue” candidate, O’Toole reversed course on pledges like defunding the CBC and then introduced a carbon price proposal, following a promise to cancel the Liberal government’s carbon tax. 

O’Toole has long said his focus as the leader is to grow the party’s support, namely in and around the Greater Toronto Area and suburbs. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 21, 2022.

Stephanie Taylor, The Canadian Press