Erin O'Toole's leadership is over

It’s official: Conservative leader Erin O’Toole is a dead man walking. At publication time, thirty-five MPs have signed a letter asking for a caucus leadership review vote, possibly as soon as this Wednesday’s caucus meeting. According to the Globe and Mail, sources claim that they have at least 63 of 119 Conservative members who will vote O’Toole out. That is, if he doesn’t pull the trigger himself, and call a vote, or just call it quits.After this weekend’s protests in Ottawa, one can’t say it’s a surprise. Conservative MPs Pierre Poilievre and Leslyn Lewis were working the crowd all weekend, giving coffee and sympathy to protesters and yammering about “freedom” until their vocal cords gave out. They were basically kickstarting their respective leadership campaigns, sticking the knives in O’Toole so fast it’s a wonder he hasn’t bled out on the floor.On Sunday, the two even got an endorsement. Organizers of the protest said O’Toole should quit and be replaced by Poilievre or Lewis. “If they were smart, they would pull Erin now. Right now. Get him out of there,” said spokesman Benjamin Dichter. “We all think that Pierre resonates with the vast majority of Canadians in his opposition to Justin Trudeau.”Talk about a poisoned chalice. Dichter is a former Conservative candidate who in 2019 spoke at the first People’s Party of Canada conference where he declared that “political Islam is rotting away at our society like syphilis.” One of the other organizers, Patrick King, has ranted about a conspiracy “to depopulate the Anglo-Saxon race because they are the ones with the strongest bloodlines” and thinks that COVID is “a man-made bioweapon that was put out to make people sick.”Read the full column on the National Post website