Erin O’Toole Is The First Politician To Fall To The Truckers

Erin O’Toole’s political career is dead, he just hasn’t admitted it yet.  

After 35 MPs publicly signed a letter to oust him from leadership, Erin O’Toole grabbed his phone and took to social media at midnight to attack the Conservative base one last time.  The best metaphor for what is below would be the violent twitching of a freshly decapitated chicken.

Here is how the math works for O’Toole. Conservative caucus is at 119 members, 20% of which are needed to trigger a secret ballot vote on his leadership which is surpassed by the 35 public signatures (approximately 30%), and the vote is won with a simple majority making 60 votes the magic number to end him.

At this point, O’Toole’s “best” case scenario is only the 35 MPs that publicly went against him vote in the secret ballot leaving him as leader forced to eject a third of his caucus and the majority of the base that hasn’t jumped ship yet. Translation: the fat lady has sung, it is still over for O’Toole.

This makes Erin O’Toole the first, but probably not the last, politician to get booted from office due to the convoy of truckers.  There had been growing discontent within the party over O’Toole, who marketed himself as a “True Blue” Conservative to win the leadership race only to take a hard left turn on every issue Conservatives to care about. 

The writing may have been on the wall after O’Toole’s disastrous performance in the last election losing electoral ground at the same time Trudeau was at the height of his unpopularity.  Not to mention the heart of the O’Toole Philosophy of winning GTA votes by marketing himself as a diet Trudeau actually lost votes in the key area.

If O’Toole has been clinging to the edge of the cliff since then, the truckers are the ones who gave him the final push.  In the letter penned by MP Bob Benzen and signed by the 35 MP, it lists “failure to clearly stand up for the Charter rights of Canadians during the pandemic” as a reason they are jumping ship. 

Politicians are cowards by nature, and for a while O’Toole was able to keep the caucus in line by ejecting any MP who voiced minor descent from his platform, which itself barely differed from Trudeau’s platform, creating a less than optimal environment for the CPC to grow. Now that the convoy has rolled into the capital and new polling shows that 54% of Canadians are done with all the lockdowns, mandates, and the rest of the “for your safety” authoritarianism, the political calculus has changed.  

Enough Conservative MPs have realized that continuing the O’Toole doctrine of Liberal light policies and putting lobbyists above the people leaves them vulnerable from the vocally anti-lockdown Maxime Bernier and the PPC on their right flak while the promised flood of support from the centre O’Toole promised never manifested.

For members and supporters of the convoy, this is a significant victory removing a major pro-lockdown political figure.  With more convoys set to go internationally in the US, Australia, and multiple European countries this movement is a long way from over. For now, the truckers can grab some popcorn and enjoy the death rattles of Erin O’Toole’s career.