Samuel Duncan: Toward a conservative counter-elite

Canadian renewal depends on a compelling, competent, and nationalist alternative to the Liberal order.

(Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.)

Samuel Duncan is a vice president at Wellington Advocacy.

Canadian conservatism, despite earning its highest share of the popular vote in more than 30 years in the last federal election, continues to struggle to translate populist momentum into both electoral victories nationally and meaningful policy reform once in power. With the party’s convention in Calgary now concluded with a resounding vote of confidence in leader Pierre Poilievre, the Conservatives have bigger questions to answer.

Despite the managed decline of our institutions, economy, and culture by Canada’s ruling class, conservatives have yet to experience the populist success at the federal level that other right-wing parties have achieved globally. The movement has failed to cultivate a counter-elite capable of channelling populist frustration, criticism, and disillusionment into institutional change.

In the face of unforeseen and existential challenges, such as the trade disputes and threats posed by President Trump, it is not liberalism that offers the tools to strengthen Canada, but conservatism. The liberalism of Canada’s ruling class has played an outsized role in weakening the nation to the point where it can be exploited by figures like Trump. For all the failures of the Trump administration, it identified the professional managerial class as a driver behind the liberalisation of elite influence and power.

The American approach to fixing this will not work in Canada, but the critique applies equally to Canada’s ruling elite. If conservatism is to lead Canada once more, it must give rise to a New Right, one capable of repairing what is broken in our country and embodying the True North, strong and free.

Canadian conservatives must cultivate a new elite capable of effective self-governance, to bridge the populist–elite divide. Being merely anti-elite is insufficient; governing requires capable leadership, and the strengthening of institutions, such as the family and civil society, that can balance the power of Canada’s ruling liberal elite.

Elites inevitably exist. The question is not whether we have elites, but how they are formed, constrained, and empowered. Conservatives must build an elite rooted in a virtuous understanding of created order, good governance, and state capacity, one that resists imposing radical social engineering. This new elite must unwind the denationalisation and deculturalisation fostered by liberal elites, while offering an alternative vision of Canadian nationalism and culture from first principles.

Canada’s ruling class, like all ruling classes, is not an accidental byproduct of markets or civil society. It is recruited, selected, trained, and reproduced through institutions, rather than “spontaneously emerging”. Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau understood this, and made it his project to deliberately form a state-made elite to lead Canada out of the national identity gap that emerged with the fall of the British Empire and the emerging postwar world order.

If the modern state is the chief architect of national identity, shaping what is taught, funded, celebrated, and discouraged, then Pierre Trudeau’s central achievement was using that machinery to “refound” Canada around a rights-first, post-national identity, and to entrench it through constitutional and institutional design. He constitutionalised this worldview through the 1982 Charter, and surrounded it with an ecosystem of courts, public-law litigation, bureaucracy, media, and elite-forming universities trained to speak in its moral language, effectively creating a selection mechanism for what counts as “respectable” leadership in Canada.

The fact that Canada in 2025 broadly reflects Trudeau’s vision demonstrates, first, that it is possible to form an elite capable of changing the nature of a state, and second, that Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s project was politically and practically successful. That is why, as Anthony Koch has argued, conservatives cannot outcompete “Charter liberalism” with incremental tools like tax credits.

The problem is upstream, in the elite-making architecture of the state itself, which must be contested directly if a counter-elite is to emerge.

Canadian conservatives need to engage directly with Canadian culture and its key institutions. Sitting on the sidelines, criticising, or threatening to abolish the CBC or the Canada Council for the Arts, has proven to be a losing strategy. These are the institutions, whether conservatives like it or not, that define what it means to be Canadian, and while they have failed in that role, abandoning them only makes things worse. If conservatives hope to offer an alternative vision of Canadian identity and culture, they must participate in these institutions and reform them from within. Destroying them would only weaken our ability to shape the national conversation, as new liberal institutions would inevitably rise to fill the void.

Canada needs competition in the cultural sector, just as we do in the private sector. Canada should have both liberal and conservative cultural institutions competing for audiences, funding, and influence. Conservatives must move past the reflexive anti-elitism that has led them to abandon the cultural sphere, and instead embark on our own “long march through the institutions”, not to tear them down, but to reclaim and renew them. A challenge will be finding enough conservatives who are both skilled and willing to work in the cultural sector, but this should not be thought of as a project within a specific mandate, or tied to a specific leader. It must be a broader, decades-long strategy of cultural engagement and reform that learns from, and mimics, the success of the ruling liberal elite.

Markets remain the best vehicle for creating wealth and growth, yet they are not infallible. Populist energy in Canada is, in part, a response to market failures. A renewed conservative elite must recognise that families and communities need empowerment to check state power, and that government itself sometimes has a role in strengthening civil society. We must adapt our economic approach to shift emphasis away from consumption, and towards production.

This starts with recognising that Canada’s competitive advantage lies in our vast natural resources.

We must be willing to build the national infrastructure, through railways, ports, energy, and digital infrastructure, required to strengthen Canada. We must also acknowledge the challenge facing our manufacturing sector from President Trump, and retool our manufacturing base should the auto sector permanently move to the United States. We cannot afford to lose the process knowledge contained in our manufacturing workforce. This will mean that conservatives need to become more comfortable using state resources to build, and that an entirely free-market approach will lead to further absorption into foreign control over our economic destiny.

It also means strengthening the family through pro-family policies at the federal level. It also means being willing to threaten to tie federal funding, through the Canada Social Transfer, to support for parental rights and independent schools in areas of provincial jurisdiction in education. Like the use of state resources for the economy, conservatives must be willing to intervene in education, or suffer a continued loss of parental liberty in education to the ruling liberal elite.

Canadian conservatives must therefore present a team of respected and capable elites who reflect the interests and values of a self-governing Canada, one with an identity deeper than simply living north of America. They must be willing to battle the cultural homogeneity that exists in our society, and has left many younger generations searching for meaning and identity outside of the current dominant culture. Conservatives must also recognise that they have largely ceded government, elites, and the academy to liberals and progressives. Rather than merely opposing or defunding these institutions, they must seek to reform them, acknowledging their cultural power and influence. Populist backlash against elites should be redirected into a reform movement that reorients these institutions to serve all Canadians, not just the liberal-dominated professional managerial class.

Such reform must be rooted in a uniquely Canadian conservatism, pro-market, but also pro-family and pro-community. It must account for regional differences, and for Canada’s founding duality of English and French cultures, recognising the need to preserve both if Canadian nationalism is to be politically sustainable.

Too often, when conservatives do win elections, they hesitate to challenge the liberal monopoly on elite culture, and fall back on narrow individualism and smaller government as their guiding framework. While this has worked in the past, it no longer provides the political solution to Canada’s challenges. The first step is acknowledging that the liberal monopoly over our elites and culture has undermined not only conservative electability, but also the viability of a new, regionally diverse conservative agenda.

What can be done?

Conservatives must present themselves as the party of opportunity and competence, and embrace cultivating a uniquely Canadian identity and culture that is distinct and separate from the anti-American “elbows up” that is on offer from the Liberals. Conservatives must focus on what unites us as a people, such as our geography and climate, including the resourcefulness of a people who have created a large economy in a cold, wild, and diverse land, a more collectivist attitude to social problems, our competitive sports accomplishments, a shared sense of the importance of faith in our communities, and our desire for justice and fairness.

Conservatives need to make a clear case to voters that Canada’s managed decline is not accidental, but the result of deliberate choices by elites in business, academia, and government to protect their own influence and interests at the expense of a dynamic, regionally diverse, self-governing society. Every day, decisions are made that prioritise the professional managerial class over working-class Canadians, older Canadians over younger Canadians, and Laurentian Canadians over Western and Eastern Canadians.

To counter this, conservatives must offer a positive, solutions-oriented vision grounded in competence and real plans to solve real problems, including on cultural issues conservatives have largely ignored, guided by what is right and true rather than what is easy. This should not be a grievance-based narrative, but one of hope and practicality. Conservatives must define a Canadian identity in our pluralistic society that does not conform to the liberal elite’s pull of globalism and multiculturalism.

The homogenising tendencies of the professional managerial class should be challenged, but not as an end in itself. Criticism must be paired with a compelling alternative model of self-governance that empowers citizens, demonstrating that reform and growth, not destruction, are the goal. Conservatives also need to demonstrate to Canadians that they have the team of elites capable of delivering on this agenda.

After adopting this new framing, conservatives must be willing to build coalitions that extend beyond their traditional party base, without alienating it. Activists, independents, and disaffected citizens who share this vision should be welcomed, and encouraged to see engagement with a conservative party as a meaningful path to reform. For too long, cynicism about politics has pushed away those who want to make a difference, while political gatekeepers in the consultant class have often felt threatened by fresh voices advocating for change. This must end. Conservatives need to break the internal monopoly on power, influence, and risk aversion that limits the conservative movement’s growth and adaptability.

Pierre Poilievre’s open letter telling corporate Canada to fire their lobbyists was a good step in identifying the problem, but it contained a negative call to action. An alternative approach would have been to issue a positive call to action, inviting business leaders and others to become part of the solution by joining a broader coalition committed to reform. Rather than attacking those who must be persuaded, and who are necessary to the renewal of a stronger, more sovereign Canada, conservatives should frame this moment as an opportunity to build something better together.

Conservatives must also recognise that today’s elites are shaped in universities. These institutions, heavily influenced by the homogenising tendencies of the progressive state, serve as training grounds for future leaders. Conservatives must begin building a counter-network of elite-forming institutions, universities, colleges, think tanks, and institutes, that develop alternative expertise and values. That way, when conservatives win elections, they will have a bench of capable, mission-aligned professionals ready to govern. They must also continue to engage directly with students at universities through outreach, events, and deliberate strategies to ensure that ideological balance can be improved on university campuses.

Reforming the post-secondary sector should be a top priority. Conservatives, when in power, should redirect granting council funds away from diversity, equity, and inclusion programmes, and toward evidence-based and merit-based research and innovation. There should be a return to teaching the classics and accurate Canadian history in liberal arts programmes, and in our secondary school education systems. Institutions that refuse to eliminate progressive ideology from their governance, hiring practices, and academic programmes should no longer qualify for funding.

Canada should also consider establishing independent, politically insulated endowments to fund new post-secondary institutions and research centres, not to build partisan schools, but to foster competition and intellectual diversity. Models like the Claremont Institute, Hillsdale College, American Compass, and Grove City College offer inspiration, though Canada will need to rely on one-time government endowments in the absence of equivalent private-sector resources.

When conservatives do form government, they must also reform the senior public service. This includes appointing new deputy ministers, drawn from both the private and public sectors, who share a broad commitment to a return to a self-governing Canadian identity, and to translating populist sentiment into practical policy. These individuals must be experienced and capable of leading large, complex organisations. They must be competent, and not resemble the polarising “conservative influencer” model seen in the United States. However, care must be taken to avoid excessive disruption to the professional civil service, which is vital to implementing government priorities. Unlike the United States, Canada offers fewer appointed roles, so every appointment must be strategic.

Finally, conservatives must be deliberate in appointing individuals to boards, agencies, and commissions. They should look beyond the traditional Laurentian corridor, often dominated by the Laurentian elite, and prioritise merit and true diversity of background, life experience, and education, while not compromising on competence. While regional representation remains important, appointments must favour individuals committed to growth, innovation, and resisting the encroachment of progressive orthodoxy. This is also a chance to pivot away from the diversity, equity, and inclusion framework, and towards a results-driven culture focused on excellence and national renewal.

The foundation of renewal

In reclaiming Canada’s capacity for self-governance, conservatives must do more than critique the present; they must build the future. Famously, George Grant warned of a nation drifting into the technocratic fog of a universal and homogeneous state, where governance becomes management, and meaning is sacrificed for efficiency. Now even that much-lauded goal of efficiency has been replaced with managed decline.

The challenge now is to create a new counter-elite to offer a compelling, competent, and nationalistic alternative, a conservatism that is rooted in family, community, national identity, and economic growth. This will require competence and courage to challenge entrenched elites, to reform institutions, and to build new ones when necessary. It will also require leadership, a confident, optimistic belief that Canada can still choose a different path from both the United States and the Liberals, one that honours our history while preparing for the future. By cultivating new elites, reforming academia and governance, and restoring the authority of civil society, conservatives can lay the foundation for a Canadian renewal.

The task ahead is not easy, but it is essential, for without it, Canada risks becoming not just ungoverned, but unrecognisable.

Samuel Duncan is a vice president at Wellington Advocacy. He formerly worked for the Ontario provincial government, and for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.