Is Pierre Poilievre poised to be the Comeback Kid or yesterday's pancake breakfast?

Chat on the Stampede BBQ circuit among Conservatives is ominous for the leader's fortunes.

CALGARY - Pierre Poilievre’s progress through downtown Calgary in last year’s Stampede parade was like a Roman triumph, celebrating a victorious general’s return to the heart of the empire. The crowd yahoo’d him with enthusiasm as he rode on horseback through packed streets, waving his cowboy hat in acknowledgement.

The Conservative leader was 15 points ahead of Justin Trudeau in polls that asked Canadians who they preferred as prime minister. Eight out of 10 voters said they wanted a change in Ottawa and there was a sense of inevitability about Poilievre’s journey across the aisle to the government side of the House of Commons.

A year later, he is 30 points behind Mark Carney in the latest Nanos Research poll on the question of preferred prime minister and he cut a rather hapless figure in this year’s parade, all but ignored by the large crowds. Last year, there was a buzz of anticipation as he and his wife, Anaida, hove into view; this year, he’d passed me before I noticed him.

There’s not much room for sentiment in politics any more - a debasement for which Poilievre is more responsible than most. At the moment, he is leader in name only - at least until he wins a seat in the House in the Battle River-Crowfoot by-election in August.

He could yet prove to be the ultimate Comeback Kid.

“We don’t back down and we don’t run away when things get hard - we dust ourselves and get back in the saddle,” he told a packed crowd at a BBQ at Heritage Park. He received two standing ovations but that is a low bar for a Conservative leader in Calgary.

His supporters point out that he added 25 seats to the Conservative caucus and took support for the party over 40 percent in April’s election. But more recent polls suggest 10 points of that support has already melted away, and that his personal numbers are at the lowest ebb since he became leader.

It it possible Canadians have tired of Poilievre’s hyper-partisan schtick?

Many people I spoke to in Calgary, referred to him like yesterday’s pancake breakfast.

Poilievre faces a leadership review in January in Calgary and the chat on the Stampede BBQ circuit is ominous. MPs say privately they are resisting efforts to draw them closer into the leader’s orbit. Outgoing staff say that while Jenni Byrne is being blamed for an election strategy that snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, the real architect was Poilievre himself, who micromanaged every aspect of the campaign. One former employee said Conservatives are openly laughing at efforts by chief of staff, Ian Todd, to re-staff the Opposition Leader’s Office. Some of Poilievre’s closest supporters don’t sound convinced the leader will make it through January’s review.

On Saturday night, the leader offered his BBQ audience a boilerplate campaign speech, claiming that Carney “couldn’t figure out whether his elbows were up or down” when it came to dealing with U.S. President Donald Trump on the digital service tax on American tech giants.

But that invites the comparison between Poilievre and Carney, which does not work to the Conservative leader’s advantage.

I have spoken with a number of ardent Conservatives in Calgary this week and most have been grudging in their respect for the job the new prime minister is doing. Not one suggested they’d prefer Poilievre to be sitting on the other side of the table from Trump. I don’t think that person exists in Canada right now.

The shift from antagonism to ambivalence in Alberta is likely to accelerate if Carney follows through on his claim that it is “highly likely” an oil pipeline will be on Ottawa’s major project list. In his BBQ speech at Heritage Park last year, Poilievre said all the potential replacements for Trudeau, including Carney, were “just like Justin”. That is a dog that won’t hunt any more. Carney not only killed Trudeau’s carbon tax, he axed the capital gains tax hike that Poilievre promised to merely review.

Is it possible that trade war-induced stagflation could end the Carney honeymoon and revive Conservative fortunes? Of course. But it is harder to envisage a circumstance in which Poilievre is seen as the solution to whatever ails the country. Due to the confluence of events that were beyond his control, he increasingly seems to be a man out of time - an old hat on a new frontier.