Conservative Senator Denise Batters Launches Leadership Review Petition For Erin O’Toole

Saskatchewan Conservative Senator Denise Batters shook up Canadian politics today by launching another petition calling for a leadership review of Erin O’Toole within the next six months.

This comes not long after Conservative Party National Councillor Bert Chen launched a petition on Change.org which received over 5,552 signatures calling for O’Toole to be recalled. Chen has since been viciously attacked by party insiders and put on an indefinite suspension despite the CPC party base mostly agreeing that O’Toole’s leadership has been a disaster. 

Although nobody expected Senator Batters to take this bold step to remove O’Toole, it does make sense seeing as Batters is, unlike O’Toole, a real Blue conservative who would have been personally alienated due to the leftward shift the CPC underwent going into the 2021 federal election.

Batters is also attempting not just to organize general dislike for O’Toole among all Canadians like Chen was doing with his public petition. Batters’ petition is meant to be signed only by Conservative Party members as if to prove the point that the grassroots of the CPC have no confidence in their leader’s ability to beat Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in another election, or even hold a consistent position on policy. 

During O’Toole’s leadership of the Conservative Party, he has become well known for flip-flopping constantly on policy, especially related to firearms, conscience rights, carbon taxes, and most recently, mandatory vaccines in Parliament. 

O’Toole also recently snubbed two popular female Conservative MPs, Marilyn Gladu and Leslyn Lewis, when assigning Shadow Cabinet roles, likely due to their advocacy against vaccine mandates. 

There was a vote in the Conservative caucus on whether or not to force a leadership review at the next CPC convention, as O’Toole already underwent one in early 2021 which put off an automatic leadership review for a few years. The result of that vote is not known, and it seems as if O’Toole and his insider allies are putting pressure on MPs to keep them quiet. 

If any other Conservative Senators or MPs begin to speak out it could signal the end of O’Toole’s leadership, as it will likely end the culture of silence inside the party and allow for people to name and shame bad actors enabling O’Toole.