OTTAWA (Reuters) – The head of Canada’s official opposition Conservatives, underneath hearth after dropping an election to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau final 12 months, says he will resist efforts by a few of his social gathering’s legislators to oust him.
Some sad Conservatives say chief Erin O’Toole pulled the right-leaning social gathering too far into the political heart throughout the marketing campaign for the Sept. 20 election, particularly by backing the concept of a carbon tax to combat local weather change.
O’Toole stated the transfer was obligatory to appeal to extra reasonable voters away from Trudeau’s Liberals. The gambit failed, main to a 3rd consecutive election loss for the Conservatives and a second straight minority authorities for the Liberals.
“I’m not going wherever and I’m not turning again. Canada wants us to be united and critical!” O’Toole stated in a sequence of posts on Twitter late on Monday.
Some 35 legislators have signed a letter calling for an early management evaluate and the 119 Conservative members of parliament may vote on O’Toole’s destiny as early as Wednesday.
“It’s time for a reckoning. To settle this in caucus. Right right here. Right now. Once and for all,” O’Toole stated, including that if the social gathering veered too far to the proper the end result can be “offended, detrimental, and excessive.”
Dissident Conservative lawmaker Garnett Genuis stated it was “very unhappy to see Erin O’Toole launching extra false private assaults towards members of his personal crew” and referred to as on the chief to stop.
If the ructions change into too deep, the social gathering – created in 2003 by a merger of the reasonable Progressive Conservatives and the extra populist Canadian Alliance – may break up into two.
Some distinguished Conservatives have backed a protest by truckers that’s jamming up the middle of Ottawa, the nation’s capital. The protest, ostensibly towards COVID-19 vaccine mandates for truck drivers, has become an anti-government anti-Trudeau gathering.
(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Paul Simao)
