Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader, has declined an invitation to attend the Parliamentary Press Gallery dinner on Saturday night, an event that was on a three-year hiatus due to COVID-19.
It’s tradition for political party leaders of all stripes to attend the event and deliver a speech, often filling it with jokes at their own expense and getting a few digs in at their critics, too.
A spokesman for Poilievre simply said he’s “not coming” to the gala that will take place at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que., and did not give a reason why.
His former boss and Canada’s last Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, would also skip the event when he was in power but did attend when he was Opposition leader and showed off his funny bone.
Harper got in on the self-deprecating humour at his first event as leader in 2004.
Rona Ambrose, who served as the party’s interim leader after Harper, revived the tradition of Tory leaders attending.
In 2016, she took aim at the former prime minister in a bit about the party adopting a new tagline. “The Conservative Party of Canada: The bad man’s gone away.” (CP)
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