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As such, the sound of silence of late from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is one of the summer’s blessings.

Poilievre has many talents. In the 2025 federal election, he scored some statistical accomplishments, increasing Conservative seats and collecting more than 40 per cent of the popular vote.

It’s true also that he ran into an unlikely confluence of factors, foreign and domestic, that worked against him. Everything that could go the Liberals’ way did.

But Poilievre blew an enormous polling lead. He failed to win government in a year many Conservatives regarded as a shoo-in. He lost his own seat. He rubbed too many Canadians, especially women, the wrong way.

In howling about Canada being “broken,� in demonizing the news media to the point of banning them from his campaign tour, in stifling and silencing his own candidates, in the heavy-handedness of overruling local ridings to parachute in preferred candidates, Poilievre was too reminiscent of the attitudes of U.S. President Donald Trump.

That he was so slow to recognize that the arena in which he competed had changed utterly after the replacement of former prime minister Justin Trudeau with Mark Carney, or the danger presented by the erratic tariff regime of the Trump did not speak to alertness and nimbleness.

The sort of image-softening efforts of the Poilievre campaign were so unpersuasive they gave way in the final weeks to ads featuring former PM Stephen Harper and two old duffers golfing. Those amounted to nothing so much as an admission that the leader himself was such a liability he could no longer front the Conservative performance.

Also telling was Poilievre’s talent for alienating Conservative premiers, to . The Poilievre Conservatives, organizationally, were “very good at pushing people away, not so good at pulling people in,� Houston said.

Still, loss isn’t the worst thing that can happen in a life or career. A period of retreat, reflection, reconstruction often follows. It would be laudable if that were the sort of journey Poilievre is now on.

What he will find is that change isn’t easy, especially when seeking to alter the habits of a lifetime. It is inherently painful, especially when the change needed involves one’s own personality and behaviours.

Change requires humility and the acknowledgment and acceptance of one’s shortcomings. It requires patience. It has to seem authentic. And it has to seem durable.

Poilievre can’t change the fact that he is a career politician who has done very nicely by the public purse. There will always be a dissonance in someone who idealizes the private sector while avoiding it at all costs.

But he needs to reflect on the efficacy in continuing to warn, like some sort of emotional adolescent, that everything is awful, that it’s all someone else’s fault, that he has all the answers.

He will have to make clear that acting as a Freedom Convoy fan boy a few years back was more than a bad look.

He will have to make clear, at risk of alienating his base and new constituents, that he opposes the separatist elements in Alberta.

The logistics of returning to Parliament — while former leader Andrew Scheer holds down the fort on an interim basis — are the least of his challenges.

That’s already in motion with the resignation of MP Damien Kurek in the rock-solid Conservative riding of Battle River-Crowfoot, where Poilievre will surely win the seat in a byelection called for Aug. 18.

But much more is required. A return to business as normal won’t cut it.

The most difficult part of inner work is recognizing the need for it and being willing to do it, one difficult day at a time.

In the meantime, the sublime, if uncharacteristic, silence, a hiatus from hearing what a hellscape our country is and what wackos Poilievre’s opponents are, is as refreshing as a summer road trip.