Looks like Poilievre has a job that no one else wants. 

CTV News reports on a new Nanos poll:

There is “no obvious challenger” among Conservative politicians in Canada to Prime Minister Mark Carney, according to a new Nanos Research poll commissioned by CTV News.
The poll, which surveyed Canadians randomly by phone and online between July 28 to 30, provided a list of Conservative politicians and asked which would have a chance to defeat Carney if they were leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.
According to the poll, 16 per cent said former prime minister Stephen Harper, while current Official Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre received 15 per cent of the vote. Ontario Premier Doug Ford, meanwhile, sits at 11 per cent.
But 33 per cent of Canadians surveyed said “none can defeat” Carney.
Other notable Conservatives, including Peter MacKay, Rona Ambrose, Danielle Smith, Jean Charest and Lisa Raitt, each received less than 10 of the votes respectively, while Jason Kenney, Mark Mulroney, Erin O’Toole, Andrew Scheer, Leslyn Lewis, Tim Houston, Jamil Jivani and Caroline Elliott each received five per cent or less.
Speaking to CTV News, Nanos Research founder and chief data scientist Nik Nanos says there is both “good news and bad news” in the polling for Poilievre.
“Only 15 per cent of Canadians think that he (does) have a chance to defeat Mark Carney, so he’s not seen as a prime minister or a close challenger. That’s the bad news,” Nanos said. “The good news is (there) doesn’t seem to be anyone in the bushes, the shadows, in the wings that people identify as a real alternative to Pierre Poilievre.”…

Evan Scrimshaw analyses what conservatives are going through:

… let’s go through the 5 Stages Of “Does My Party Have To Fire Its Leader” Polling Grief.
Denial
This is the easiest one – it was how every Conservative was in the two months before the 2025 election and how Liberals were in 2023,…
Anger
This is where the pollsters and/or the media companies sponsoring the polls are getting yelled at. Today’s example is people being mad that CTV – the firm that paid Nanos to conduct their poll – wrote up an article about that poll and not the broader polling landscape….
Bargaining
This is the most mentally fun stage, where you have on some level accepted that your party is in a bad position, but you have a lot of theories about how it could get better. This is where you seee a lot of When and Once statements – “When the campaign starts and the media focuses on our leader, we’ll surge,” “Once we start running ads,” and what not. They’re almost never true, but at least you’ve accepted the fact that the satiation as it currently applies is untenable.
Depression
What I like to call the “if we’re gonna lose anyways, why even bother?” stage….right now it appears that the majority of Conservatives know that things aren’t working, but aren’t prepared to get to the logical conclusion. Every line of copium about “who would do better?” is firmly in this box.
Acceptance
It will be interesting to see how quick Conservatives get here, because objectively their polling is atrocious and the fundraising data released this weekend suggests that Poilievre’s greatest strength as a leader is now fading. The fact that Conservatives have already hit Depression in the 5 Stages Of Political Grief shows just how bad their plight is. The question is less whether Poilievre can win the next election, and honestly more whether he can survive the year. At some point, the pressure’ll mount, if only out of desperation.

Yet Monday’s Hill Times article by Jesse Cnockaert doesn’t show that many conservatives have accepted reality just yet.

… [former Conservative strategist Tim] Powers argued that Poilievre needs to “demonstrate his ability to win,” and “show a path and show a plan.”
“He needs Chicoutimi. He needs to maybe pull an MP over to his side. He just needs to demonstrate some wins, first of all, because in politics, ultimately … it’s about the party and that leader’s ability to win. Pierre Poilevre hasn’t won anything other than his leadership vote in a very long time, and his MPs—who are starting to think about their own futures—are going to be wondering what he can do.”
…Unlike Powers, [Conservative strategist Cole] Hogan argued that Poilievre’s leadership doesn’t face any real threat, in part because he won his leadership review back in January with 87.4 per cent of the vote.
“There’s also the additional impact of there really being no one waiting in the wings, and with Carney’s levels of popularity where they’re at, does anyone else even want the job right now?” Hogan said.
“You have someone like Poilievre who’s made an impact, I would say, on issues of inflation, cost of living, [and] immigration. Without even being prime minister, he certainly set the political policy conversation matrix for the last two to three years.”
…Dan Robertson, co-founder of ORB Advocacy and former chief strategist for the Conservative Party during the 2021 federal election campaign, told The Hill Times that it doesn’t matter who’s in the right in the current conflict amongst Conservatives.
“I’m sure that everybody who’s involved in this thinks that they’re in the right. I have an ultra-pragmatic attitude towards this: that doesn’t really matter,” he said.
“Parties like the Conservative Party of Canada exist to win elections. That is the only thing that matters. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Who started it? It’s not important. The onus for cohesion and unity falls to the leader. The leader can’t be a participant in this kind of internal combat.”
…When it comes to Poilievre, Robertson said his position as leader is “very secure.”
“He just won a resounding confidence vote from the membership at the last convention. He’s very popular among a large quarter of the grassroots of the party,” he said.
… Dan Mader, a partner at Loyalist Public Affairs and a former director of policy and scripting for the 2021 federal Conservative campaign, told The Hill Times that Poilievre’s leadership is secure, “and I think what he and other conservatives need to do is put their heads down and concentrate on being the opposition.”
“Having been involved in a bunch of campaigns, there are always going to be people on the outside saying that you’re doing it wrong, and that’s just the nature of politics,” Mader said.
“Conservatives have to accept the fact that we did a great job convincing Canadians that Justin Trudeau needed to go, and now, for the movement to succeed and for the party to be elected, Conservatives are going to have to convince Canadians that, again, another change is needed, and that Mark Carney is not getting the job done, and that will take time.”…

But I don’t think Poilievre will be able to beat these Carney success stories:

Dean Blundell writes:

Here’s a fun exercise. Open two browser tabs.
In tab one: the White House, where the President of the United States spent yesterday melting down in the Oval Office, telling reporters they should never speak again, while gas hits $4.10 a gallon, oil kisses $100 a barrel, and his own Q4 GDP number came in at a limp 0.7%.
In tab two: Brampton, Ontario, where International Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu stood up last Thursday and calmly announced that Canada is done waiting for America to get its act together. He launched the country’s first-ever Strategic Exports Office — and he did it with a receipt already stapled to it: more than $28 billion in international sales secured for Canadian companies in the last year alone….

More Trump Fantasy Stories
After my American Fantasia post last week, I thought I should continue collecting examples of the fantasy stories that Trump and his MAGA Republicans continue to tell every day.

It’s a mystery

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— Pat Bagley (@bagleycartoons.bsky.social) August 4, 2026 at 7:43 AM

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— Pat Bagley (@bagleycartoons.bsky.social) August 4, 2026 at 4:20 AM

“The Trump administration admitted that it terminated nearly 300 federal research grants ‘solely because’ the projects were connected to states that voted against Donald Trump in 2024 and had two Democratic senators in office, according to court filings.” www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru…

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— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur.bsky.social) August 3, 2026 at 2:15 PM

Wildfires Update