B.C. Conservative candidate tells Poilievre to ‘unite, not divide’ after Stampede jab

OTTAWA — Former B.C. Conservative leadership candidate Caroline Elliott is pushing back at Pierre Poilievre’s recent jab about her campaign team, calling on the federal Conservative leader to work to bring people together.

Elliott posted a video on social media Thursday, reminding Poilievre she was one of his supporters in his own leadership race and saying she was disappointed in his comments.

“Your MPs, and now you personally, celebrating my defeat in the B.C. Conservative leadership race is disappointing,” she said.

“The race is over, and it’s time to unite, not divide.”

Elliott finished a close second in the B.C. Conservative party leadership contest at the end of May. Former Conservative MP Kerri-Lynne Findlay won with 51 per cent of the vote, compared to Elliott’s 49 per cent.

While speaking at the Calgary Stampede last weekend, Poilievre congratulated Findlay, saying she had won against “Liberal lobbyists from out east.”

The jab was apparently directed at Kory Teneycke, a former staffer for Stephen Harper who has run campaigns for Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Teneycke joined Elliott’s campaign along with political strategist Nick Kouvalis.

Both men were critical of Poilievre during the 2025 election campaign.

Teneycke was outspoken in his opinion that Poilievre and the Tories failed to recognize that U.S. President Donald Trump and his trade war had overtaken the issues of affordability and Justin Trudeau’s unpopularity in the race.

There was reportedly bad blood between Ford and Poilievre during the campaign, too, and last January when federal Conservative delegates were voting on whether to keep Poilievre as leader, Ford’s Progressive Conservatives were holding their own party convention in Ontario.

But as Elliott pointed out, her campaign team also included a number of Poilievre’s former staff. That includes Katy Merrifield, who left her job as Poilievre’s director of communications in April, Ben Woodfinden, who held the post before that, and Anthony Koch, who was Poilievre’s national campaign spokesperson when he ran for leader of the party in 2022.

Both Merrifield and Koch praised Elliott’s video on X on Thursday.

In it, Elliott said her leadership campaign brought in record donations and people who had not voted Conservative in the past.

She said she’s continuing to fight “our disastrous NDP government here in B.C., because I know that politics is about addition, not subtraction.”

Koch also wrote an op-ed in the National Post Thursday in which he said he’s “sick to death of being told that wanting Conservatives to win elections somehow makes me a Liberal.”

“Believe it or not, politics isn’t about racing up likes and retweets,” he wrote, taking aim at commentators and activists who “think exercising self-control is a sign of weakness” and decrying “unforced errors.”

Poilievre’s comments about the B.C. campaign have sparked intense debate online and among conservative commentators, and raised questions — yet again — about his leadership.

Those questions began when he lost his longtime Ottawa-area seat in the April 2025 election and continued through the summer when he won a byelection in a safe Conservative seat in rural Alberta.

Things seemed to settle for a time after a decisive 87 per cent of Tory delegates at the national convention in Calgary voted to keep Poilievre at the helm of the party in January. But the questions began anew last April when a fourth Conservative MP defected to the Liberal benches, securing a majority for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government.

On Monday, Carney appointed Conservative MP Richard Martel to the Senate, bringing Poilievre’s caucus down to 139 members.

Elliott ended her video message with a pointed comment for the Tory leader.

“I’ll keep fighting every day to bring people together for the future of my province and our country. I just hope you decide to do that too,” she said.

Poilievre’s spokesperson has not responded to a request for comment.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 9, 2026.

Sarah Ritchie, The Canadian Press