Conservative Saskatchewan Sen. Denise Batters has launched a petition to oust Erin O’Toole as party leader — a high-profile effort by a caucus member who said she lost faith in O’Toole after the Conservative Party suffered “significant losses” in the last campaign.
In announcing her petition, Batters said that on O’Toole’s watch, the party has flip-flopped on major issues such as carbon pricing, firearms and conscience rights and has lost once-Conservative seats in urban and suburban ridings in Alberta, B.C. and the Greater Toronto Area.
While O’Toole campaigned as a “true blue” Conservative in the party’s leadership race, Batters said he subsequently ran a federal election campaign “nearly indistinguishable from Trudeau’s Liberals.”
She said these developments demand a leadership review well before the planned vote at the 2023 Conservative convention. As per the party rules, there’s an automatic leadership review at the first national convention following a failed federal election campaign — but Batters instead wants that vote to happen in the next six months.
“Mr. O’Toole flip-flopped on policies core to our party within the same week, the same day, and even within the same sentence. The members didn’t have a say on that, but we must have one on his leadership,” Batters said in a media statement.
“We can’t afford to see our party ripped apart again. When we’re divided, the Liberals win.”
Under the party’s constitution, a referendum on any matter can be launched if five per cent of Conservative members sign a petition calling on the party to poll the membership on the topic.
Batters, who supported former federal cabinet minister Peter MacKay over O’Toole in the 2020 Conservative leadership race, now has 90 days to collect enough signatures on her petition to force the party to hold a referendum. The referendum on O’Toole’s leadership would be binding if a third of all members actually cast a ballot.
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