OTTAWA — A recent candidate and former Conservative party president says waiting for the federal New Democrats to revive themselves is not a strategy the national party can have if it wants to win future seats in his province.
Rob Batherson, also a former national councillor, ran and lost in Halifax West, a fast-growing suburban riding, which has been long held by the Liberals.
“We need to be competitive in essentially a two-party environment,” he told National Post.
His was one of the countless races where the NDP vote collapsed, with supporters flocking to the Liberals. Elsewhere, in southern Ontario and British Columbia, the federal Conservatives flipped seats at the expense of a weakened NDP.
But Nova Scotia was not one of those places.
The party lost two incumbents, Dr. Stephen Ellis and longtime party volunteer, Rick Perkins in Monday’s election, two losses which Batherson attributes to an NDP vote that “essentially evaporated”. In Perkins’ riding of South Shore—St. Margarets, no NDP candidate was on the ballot.
Conservative caucus members will meet next Tuesday to discuss the election loss, which disappointed many across the party, given it started the year with a 20-point lead over the Liberals, all but guaranteeing their chances at forming government.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre will not only have to begin to answer for that loss, but find a way to regain a seat in the House of Commons, considering he lost his Ottawa-area one, which he had held for two decades.
That means a newly elected member of his team would have to step aside in order to trigger a byelection, with another senior MP having to take over duties as leader in the House of Commons.
As next week’s meeting marks the first time caucus is gathering post-election, Conservative MPs will have to decide whether to adopt a set of rules under the Reform Act that would allow caucus to trigger a leadership review, which it did under former party leader Erin O’Toole, which he failed, leading to his exit.
With Poilievre saying he plans to stay on as leader, Conservative MPs have been publicly expressing their support for him doing so, saying he added 24 new seats to his caucus, made breakthroughs in key regions in Ontario and attracted a new voter coalition of young people and blue-collar trades workers.
Batherson is among those who believe he should stay.
“Changing leaders all the time hasn’t been the solution,” he said. “Why don’t we stick with one through a second election campaign.”
When it comes to the NDP, which has historically found support in Nova Scotia, Batherson says its weakness raises questions about what the federal party does now in the province and wider region.
“But waiting for the NDP to reverse their death spiral is not a strategy for the federal Conservatives.”
The party must build on the support it gained, “while expanding our voter pool into other groups of voters that stampeded from the NDP to the Liberals,” Batherson said.
He says his path to victory had the NDP sitting between 20 to 25 per cent, which it has in past races.
On election night, the New Democrats’ vote in the riding plummeted to hover just above five per cent.
While Batherson says he wants to keep his post-election thoughts “within the family,” one factor he saw was that for voters who were concerned about U.S. President Donald Trump, Prime Minister and Liberal Leader Mark Carney presented himself as “the answer.”
“That was a large voter segment that we could not shake loose.”
“In 2011, Stephen Harper was viewed as a safe pair of hands coming out of the economic meltdown in 2008 and 2009. And in 2025, for a lot of older voters in particular but not exclusively, for a lot of older voters Carney, in contrast to Trump, was seen as a safe pair of hands because of the experience that he brought to the table, or at least the perception of his experience.”
Going forward, Batherson says he also hopes to see bridges built between the federal party and the province’s Progressive Conservative party, led by Premier Tim Houston.
Houston recently called on the federal party to do some soul-searching, saying it
“was very good at pushing people away, not so good at pulling people in.”
Batherson, a former Progressive Conservative party staffer under former Nova Scotia premier John Hamm and past provincial candidate, says he has good relationships with those in the Houston government.
“I’m a Pierre Poilievre fan and I’m a Tim Houston fan,” he said.
“I don’t think Tim Houston did anything to help or to hurt the Conservative party. I think he stayed out of the campaign.”
Brycen Jenkins, the 26-year-old Conservative candidate who unsuccessfully ran in the riding of Central Nova hoping to defeat former cabinet minister Sean Fraser, also spoke of having good relationships with provincial progressive conservatives.
Houston was a supporter of his, Jenkins said, and the premiers wife also helped to knock doors.
“If there is any relationship that needs to be repaired, I’ll certainly always be first in line to help out with that,” said Jenkins. “I don’t see it as as a huge rift.”
Asked whether he believes Poilievre may be open to building a better relationship with Houston’s Progressive Conservatives, Batherson said, “I would hope so.”
National Post
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