Success at a political party convention depends on objectives, and for RightNow at the 2026 Conservative Party of Canada policy convention, the results were mixed. We aimed to elect a pro-membership National Council, amend the party constitution, and advance pro-life policies. We largely succeeded on governance and constitutional reform: nine of ten supported National Council candidates were elected, giving pro-membership National Councillors a slim majority, and three key nomination-process constitutional amendments passed at plenary, strengthening local riding associations and limiting centralized party control. These wins are expected to improve fairness for future nomination contests, including for pro-life candidates.

Where RightNow fell short was delegate recruitment and policy outcomes. Despite there being roughly 1,200 unfilled delegate spots, only three of forty willing pro-life members were appointed as delegates, highlighting the need to elect delegates directly through riding associations rather than relying on appointments. As a result, pro-life representation was limited to about 10% of voting delegates, constraining success in policy breakout rooms. Of seven pro-life policy proposals, most passed at the breakout level but lacked sufficient margins to advance, with only one reaching and passing the plenary, alongside the defeat of a pro-assisted-suicide proposal. Overall, we have graded our performance as “good but not great,” concluding that future success hinges on dramatically increasing elected pro-life delegates and scaling up grassroots engagement to move from incremental influence to decisive leadership within the party.

What does success look like at a political party convention?

It really depends on what you are trying to achieve, which probably sounds like a fairly obvious answer.

For Pierre Poilievre and his supporters, success at the 2026 Conservative Party of Canada policy convention probably looked like something that transpired: achieving an 87.4% endorsement from the 95% of the 2,400 voting delegates that cast a leadership review vote.

Pierre Poilievre speaks at the 2026 Conservative Convention

What does it look like for RightNow?

At each policy convention, we are trying to achieve multiple things at the same:

1. Elect a National Council that respects the democratic process
2. Amend the party constitution
3. Add good policies and delete bad policies

From this perspective, we were able to accomplish roughly 2/3 of our objectives. Good, not great.

A solid C+.

Perfectly average.

We want to be well above average, and we know how to do it…

RightNow's Scott Hayward, Jared White and Alissa Golob at the 2026 Conservative Convention

GOING THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR

In the Conservative Party of Canada, not every member is eligible to attend the party policy convention. Each riding association hosts a delegate selection meeting where the party members in the room will vote up to ten fellow party members from the riding to attend the party policy convention, in addition to the riding association president and the riding’s Conservative Member of Parliament (or the candidate of record)—both of whom are automatic delegates.

However, the delegate selection rules (which are set by National Council) for the last number of policy conventions allow for party members to be appointed as delegates in any riding across Canada if that riding did not elect a full slate of candidates.

Given that there are 343 ridings across Canada that can elect 10 delegates, in addition to the two automatic delegates (the riding association president and the Member of Parliament, or candidate of record) that is a total of 4,116 voting delegates. Given that there were 2,400 voting delegates registered at the convention in Calgary at the end of January 2026, there were roughly 1,200 open delegate spots.

RightNow had 40 pro-life members of the Conservative Party of Canada who were able and willing to pay the delegate fee (almost $1,000) and pay their way in terms of flight, hotels, and food (probably another $1,500) to attend the Convention and be appointed as delegates.

Delegate badges and voting cards at the 2026 Conservative Convention

Only three of these 40 were appointed as delegates, despite there being over 1,200 open delegate spots. Typically, the party has been more than happy to appoint these members as delegates as they are always looking for delegate fees, especially given that the Conservative Party of Canada posted its worst fourth quarter fundraising in 2025 in the last ten years (besides 2016, when there was a leadership race and 2021, right before O’Toole was removed as leader).

However, the party opted to not appoint these delegates, likely because they were concerned over the leadership review vote.

Therefore, it has become apparent to us that pro-life delegates must be elected in their respective electoral district associations (EDAs) at delegate selection meetings to ensure that enough pro-lifers are present at the party convention. It will also help with closing up many of those 1,200 open delegate spots that are used by the party to appoint party staffers as voting delegates to flood the rooms to downvote pro-membership constitutional amendments and pro-life policy proposals.

In other words, pro-lifers must enter through the front door and not sneak in through the back.

Scott Hayward with MP Sandra Cobena and her husband Matthijs at the 2026 Conservative Convention 

WHAT PASSED AND WHAT FAILED

Going back to our three overall objectives, here is what we were able to accomplish and here is where we fell short:

National Council

We were able to recruit and support eleven pro-membership National Council candidates in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Quebec competing for ten seats on National Council.

Of those ten seats, we won nine.

This in addition to the two pro-membership National Councillors who were acclaimed and did not need to compete for their seats on National Council. Of the 21 seats on National Council, at least 11 (a slim majority) are held by pro-membership National Councillors.

Therefore, we should be able to have pro-life nomination contestants who are spuriously disallowed from running to win their appeals to National Council.

Ontario National Councillor Christina Mitas has been elected President 

Constitutional amendments

The party’s constitution was in need of deep and pervasive amendments, particularly regarding its nomination process, which has been abused for years under the party. Of the 31 constitutional amendments that made it to the break out room, nine dealt with the nomination process.

Of those nine nomination process constitutional amendments, three went to the plenary floor, where all three were passed:

1. C-1: empowering the local EDA’s candidate nomination committee and distribute the membership list to all successful nomination contestants at the exact same time (this helps ensure that pro-life nomination contestants are on equal footing with their pro-abortion opponents)
   
   
2. C-16: require National Council to create and distribute a schedule of nominations for all the ridings across Canada, along with the contact information for each party staffer responsible for each riding (this helps RightNow plan for which ridings to target and when for pro-life nomination contestants)
   
   
3. C-25: the party cannot disallow a sitting Member of Parliament from running as a candidate for re-election in the same seat; the Member of Parliament can only be disallowed through (a) retirement or death, (b) being ejected from the Caucus via a Caucus vote as per the Reform Act, and (c) losing in a nomination race in the riding (this precludes a party leader from threatening to not sign the nomination papers—which is required by the Canada Elections Act—for pro-life Members of Parliament who want to run for re-election)

Scott Hayward voting at the 2026 Conservative Convention

Policy proposals

There were seven pro-life policy proposals that made it to the social policy break-out room at the convention:

• A-3: ensure the Canada Revenue Agency does not have an attestation for a charity to retain its charitable status (i.e. crisis pregnancy centres)
• A-6: stronger language for supporting those with special needs as opposed to being offered assisted suicide
• A-9: require that professional bodies do not regulate members based on personal and political opinion (i.e. the psychologist body in Ontario disciplining Dr. Jordan Peterson)
• A-12: allow for the creation of health care facilities free from participating in assisted suicide
• A-13: delete the only pro-abortion policy statement in the party’s policy document
• A-18: support life-affirming care (re: crisis pregnancy centres) and create a framework for post-abortive women
• A-20: ensure that babies born from botched abortions have access to health care treatment

There was also a policy (A-19) that we were working to defeat in the social policy break-out room that was pro-assisted suicide.

Most of these policy proposals passed in the break-out room however, they failed to have as high of a margin percentage as the other policies in the break-out room that were also passed.

As a result, only A-9 made it to the plenary session, where it passed and A-19 was defeated in the policy break-out room.

Given our experience with only 3 out of 40 possible pro-life party members being appointed as delegates for the over 1,200 empty spots after the delegate selection meetings, we were calculating that the party would have around 300 staffers upgraded to delegates to vote down the policy proposals and the constitutional amendments in the break-out sessions.

As such, we organized on the first evening of the convention to have speakers at the mic to the delete abortion policy proposal, as it would likely (and was) the only opportunity to speak to it at the convention:

Alissa Golob speaking at the "yes" mic in the policy breakout room on a proposal to "delete 86" at the 2026 Conservative Convention 

One of the two speakers at the no mic was Roman Baber, a pro-abortion Conservative Member of Parliament for York Centre.

Another example of how close some of these votes were at the Convention is that a policy that would have abandoned the conversion therapy ban was passed through the break-out room and made it to the plenary session. After heated debate, the policy passed the first majority (51% versus 49%), however a majority of delegates from only six of the eleven provinces and territories (all three territories are combined into one entity for this purpose) vote in favour of the resolution. The closest province where the resolution failed is Manitoba where 51% voted against the resolution. Given that there were 142 delegates from the province, that means that of the 1,626 people who voted on the motion at the plenary session, it lost by a total of two votes. Three more delegates from Manitoba voting on the motion would have seen it pass.

Results of the plenary vote on conversion therapy at the 2026 Conservative Convention

THE JOURNEY IS NOT ABOUT THE FRIENDS WE MADE ALONG THE WAY, ALTHOUGH WE DID DO THAT TOO

The process for the 2026 Conservative Party of Canada Policy Convention began in early September 2023 at the conclusion of the previous policy convention in Quebec City. Since September 2023, a working group mixture of social conservatives from various organizations and pro-membership local leaders within the party have worked to earn positive results at this party convention.

It has been a pleasure to work with other pro-life and social conservative organizations, along with pro-membership local leaders who may not be pro-life, to pass pro-membership constitutional amendments to clean up the party’s abused nomination process.

Our friends at Campaign Life Coalition hosted two excellent strategy sessions where we encouraged our RightNow delegates to attend to discuss how the Convention works and how to approach the Convention. Since the constitution is binding upon the party as opposed to the policy declaration, it was decided that the pro-life delegates should focus their time at the constitution break-out session to help push forward any pro-membership amendments that would clean up the nomination process.

Campaign Life Coalition's pro-life meeting (taken from CLC's Facebook page) at the 2026 Conservative Convention

Together with our team of pro-lifers and pro-membership local EDA leaders, over the last 28 months we have worked to:

1. Elect a pro-membership majority on the National Policy and National Constitution Committees. Membership to these two committees is elected by the EDA presidents from those provinces (i.e. Ontario has four National Councillors, so they have four members for each committee elected by the Conservative EDA presidents from Ontario). These committees establish the rules and timelines for the constitutional and policy amendment proposals for the next policy convention.
   
   
2. Work with EDAs on pro-membership constitutional proposals and pro-life policy amendments. For this policy convention, each EDA board could propose up to ten constitutional amendments and co-sponsor another up to another ten, and sponsor or co-sponsor up to five policy proposals. Each constitutional amendment required three other EDAs to co-sponsor (on of which had to be outside the sponsoring EDA’s province or territory) and the policy proposals required two other EDAs to co-sponsor.

After that, each EDA board could vote for up to twenty-five (25) constitutional amendments and twenty (20) policy proposals. The most popular in each province (each province was allotted as many constitutional amendments and policy proposals as they have National Councillors) went to the convention with the remainder of the allotted sixty each for constitutional amendments and policy proposals being voted on by each EDA board.

1. Recruit and run pro-life party members to be delegates to the Convention. As previously mentioned, each EDA holds a delegate selection meeting where the ten (10) party members who receive the highest number of votes from the members in the riding present at the meeting are elected as delegates to represent the riding at the policy convention. These are voting delegates that get to vote on the National Council candidates, constitutional amendments, and policy proposals.
   
   
2. Recruit and support National Council candidates. There are 21 members of National Council with the leader being a member and each province and territory having one member with the exceptions of Ontario (four members), Quebec (three members), and British Columbia and Alberta (two members each). The National Council creates the National Candidate Selection Committee (NCSC), which has the power to disallow nomination contestants. If a nomination contestant wishes to appeal the disallowance, they can do so with a simple majority of the vote of the National Councillors who are not on the NCSC.
   
   
3. Pass the pro-membership constitutional amendments and pro-life policy proposals. At the policy convention, there is a break-out room for the constitutional amendments and the policy proposals. The constitutional amendments had a single break out room to deal with all 31 amendment proposals across the country; a simple majority vote would send the amendment proposals to the plenary session the next day.

For the sixty policy proposals, they were sent to three break out rooms based on various categories (i.e. social policy, fiscal policy, government policy) and each break out room could only send ten policy proposals to the plenary session the next day. If Policy Room A has twenty (20) policy proposals and eleven (11) of them were passed, the ten (10) with the highest percentage margin would go on to the plenary session. At the plenary session the next day, all the delegates are asked to vote on the constitutional amendments and policy proposals from the break out room. Every amendment and proposal must have (a) the majority of all delegates in the room and (b) a majority of delegates from the majority of the province and territories (the territories constituting one entity, so eleven entities altogether).

Jared White (RightNow), Faytene Grasseschi (4MyCanada), Chris Pequin (EDA President) and Scott Hayward (RightNow)

HOW DID WE GRADE?

1. Elect a pro-membership majority on the National Policy and National Constitution Committees.
   
   We were able to elect a pro-membership majority on both bodies, and both bodies produced reasonable rules for the constitutional and policy proposals for the Convention.
   
   Grade: A
   
   
2. Work with EDAs on pro-membership constitutional proposals and pro-life policy amendments.
   
   Given the mood of party members, particularly those on EDA boards and volunteers in the last general federal election, it was easy to work with pro-lifers and non-pro-lifers alike at the EDA-level to propose and move forward on a number of pro-membership constitutional amendments. As for the policy proposals, the Delete Abortion policy proposal (which was to delete the only pro-abortion policy in the party’s policy platform) received the highest number of EDA votes it has ever garnered over the last number of conventions where it has been proposed.
   
   Grade: A
   
   
3. Recruit and run pro-life party members to be delegates to the Convention.
   
   Typically there is roughly one year from when the rules and timelines for the policy convention are laid out and we can begin the process of identifying and supporting pro-life party members to run for delegate spots in their various EDAs at the delegate selection meetings. Given the truncated nature of this convention (the rules were released after Labour Day for the convention in January), there was far less time to execute on this aspect of the convention. Regardless, it is apparent to us that pro-lifers need to come with 1,000+ delegates, not just a couple hundred.
   
   Grade: F
   
   
4. Recruit and support National Council candidates
   
   While we were able to elect all but one of the National Council candidates that we supported, there were seven other National Councillors who are not pro-membership and were acclaimed because no one wanted to run against these Councillors. While we approached multiple potential candidates in these provinces and territories, we failed to convince them to put their names forward.
   
   Grade: B
   
   
5. Pass the pro-membership constitutional amendments and pro-life policy proposals.

All but one of the constitutional and policy proposals we were able to get out of the break rooms passed at the plenary session. This was our experience at the policy convention in Quebec City. Clearly, this objective is closely tied into the third objective (re: elect pro-life party members as delegates) so that we have enough delegates at the constitutional and policy break out sessions to get our proposals to the plenary sessions.

Grade: D

MP Garnett Genuis and Scott Hayward at the constitutional breakout room at the 2026 Conservative Convention 

LEVELLING UP

We feel very objective in identifying what we have been doing well and where we have been failing in relation to the Conservative Party of Canada policy conventions since RightNow as founded in 2016. With each successive policy convention, we have been able to make the party more pro-life and more pro-membership.

The mood of the party members and delegates in the wake of the loss in the 45^th general federal election was to clean up the party’s constitution to further restrict the party staff from playing around with nomination timings and rules. As such, we were able to capitalize on this sentiment and get a great number of excellent constitutional amendments introduced and approved amongst the EDAs within IdeasLab (the website used for posting and voting on proposals).

However, just as at the convention in Quebec City, it was noticed that many staffers who had blue staffer badges had their status upgraded to green delegate badges, which means that staffers were able to vote in the constitutional and policy break out rooms.

Furthermore, the constitutional and social policy breakout rooms occurred at the same time in the morning, while the fiscal and government policy breakout rooms occurred simultaneously in the afternoon.

Most of the constitutional policies were being lost by roughly 500-300 margins on the counts while some of the pro-life policies were passing, but failed to win a large enough percentage of the margin to come out of the policy room. Between other pro-life organizations and RightNow, we calculate that roughly 200 pro-life delegates were present at the policy convention, which is roughly 10% of those who were voting in plenary sessions on Saturday.

While this is not nothing, it is not enough.

We need to level up.

RightNow's Alissa Golob, Doug Sharpe (National Citizen Action) and Scott Hayward

RightNow released our undercover late-term abortion videos in November 2025 and will be launching a national campaign beginning in pro-life places of worship later this month. We are working toward making this one of, if not the largest, petition to be received in the House of Commons and thus we will be able to add hundreds of thousands (hopefully more) pro-life Canadians with their contact information into our database.

The political pro-life movement in Canada has been excellent over the last ten years of being the 10% difference in numerous nominations, elections, leadership races, and party policy conventions.

We believe it is time to not just be a passenger but to be the driver.

We are going to level up.

We hope you will come along for the ride!