‘Disconnect’: GTA Tory candidate says Liberal-led polls miss something

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RICHMOND HILL, ONT. — Not helpful. That’s how one Conservative candidate and former MP describes calls from a prominent Ontario strategist for the federal Tory campaign to shift its messaging.

“I don’t dance around things,” said Costas Menegakis from his second-floor campaign office in Richmond Hill, Ont., a city of nearly 212,000 outside of Toronto.

The now five-time Conservative candidate is talking about widely publicized comments by Kory Teneycke, the campaign manager behind the recent majority victory of Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives. Teneycke publicly last week said the federal Conservatives need to pivot their campaign to focus more on tariff threats from U.S. President Donald Trump to beat the Liberals. The comments have created a distraction for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.

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“I don’t think it’s helpful that he said that,” Menegakis said. “That’s one person’s opinion on what he thinks we should be doing in a campaign. But he’s not there every day.”

In fact, Menegakis said his own input to party’s headquarters has been the opposite.

Based on what he says he’s been hearing from constituents when he shows up to canvass on their doorsteps, his message to party headquarters has been that the Conservatives’ spotlight on the cost of living is resonating. The public opinion polls showing a Liberal surge don’t match what he is hearing from voters, he said.

“This is the first election in my lifetime where there’s a disconnect” between the polls and the doorstep, he said, maintaining that Poilievre should stay the course on affordability.

And his campaign has knocked on a lot of doors: 50,000 since he was nominated last spring, Menegakis estimates. That’s a good chunk of his Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill riding, which has a population of nearly 119,000 according to 2021 census data.

Ford’s Ontario PCs have dominated this part of the GTA provincially for three elections now. It’s Toronto suburbs like these that federal Conservatives will need to win in order to beat the Liberals. But for weeks now, successive polling has reported the Liberals leading in voter support and gaining, including across Ontario, following the party’s replacement of the unpopular Justin Trudeau with new leader Mark Carney, and amid growing tariff threats from Trump.

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Menegakis knows the fight ahead. The first and only time he was sent to Parliament was back in 2011 when Conservatives last won government and swept most of the Greater Toronto Area under former prime minister Stephen Harper.

The party has been nearly all but shut out of the region since, with Menegakis losing in the 2015, 2019 and 2021 elections running in a nearby riding.

“We dropped the ball, quite frankly,” he said of the party’s past national campaigns, particularly under former leader Erin O’Toole, who shifted key party positions, which Menegakis says cost the Conservatives votes.

A campaign needs to be focused. It can’t be helter-skelter

Poilievre, on the other hand is clear, not only in his affordability message but in his convictions, Menegakis said.

“It’s important that you don’t lose sight” of the party’s key messaging, he said. “We can’t be every day, pivoting to the news of the day.”

“A campaign needs to be focused. It can’t be helter-skelter.”

Many Conservatives also point to the huge crowds Poilievre has been attracting at rallies across the country, with sizes swelling from the hundreds into the thousands, as proof he’s on the right track.

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Teneycke, who had worked as the federal party’s communications director under Harper, raised eyebrows when he told the Empire Club in Toronto last week the federal party must “get on the f-cking ballot question or you are going to lose.”

He also said that Poilievre also comes across too much like Trump.

Menegakis insists that comparison doesn’t come up often when speaking to voters. Personally, he says he finds it “insulting.” When it does come up, he said he simply explains the differences.

“Trump was a person that grew up in a life of privilege. Pierre was an adopted son to two Canadian school teachers, who grew up in a middle-class family,” he said.

“Pierre’s career has been focused on public service because he’s passionate about public service and giving back to the community, giving back to the country, and working for the country. Trump’s focus has been on business and whatever his career and his life choices have been.”

With the Tories not on track to make big gains in either Quebec or Atlantic Canada this race, Philippe Fournier of the polling aggregator 338Canada, says that leaves Ontario, and in particular the suburbs and cities around Toronto, as the Conservatives’ key path to victory.

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“The ones that are available to (them) are what Doug Ford won,” Fournier said.

Not only is Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill a diverse riding, with a particularly large population of Chinese descent, but like many ridings in the region it has endured an increase in crime and a housing squeeze, both issues at the centre of the Conservative campaign.

Michael Parsa recaptured the overlapping provincial riding here for the PCs in February’s Ontario election.

Menegakis calls Parsa a “good friend,” adding the two politicians share volunteers.

He names others in Ford’s cabinet in nearby provincial ridings as others who he said are supportive.

“Pretty much every door that we saw a sign on provincially has my sign on it now,” Menegakis said, sitting in his office where nearby boulevards are lined with signs bearing his name.

But internal polling for Ford’s Progressive Conservatives done by Campaign Research paints a tougher slog for the federal party, showing the Carney-led Liberals with major support among Ontario voters, including many provincial PC voters.

Ford has said his MPPs will be too busy working on provincial files to campaign for their federal cousins. Menegakis shrugs it off.

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But Leah Taylor Roy, the incumbent Liberal incumbent candidate (who estimates her campaign has knocked on 5,000 doors) has a different take.

She thinks the Ford-Carney connection could be significant in this region that has come out repeatedly for Ford’s PCs, particularly for those still on the fence.

“He’s spoken very highly of Mr. Carney,” she says of Ford. And that, she said, may lead Ford supporters to think “the Liberal party may be better and also better to work with the Ontario government in solving these (trade) problems.”

National Post

staylor@postmedia.com

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