John Ivison: The loss of Scott Aitchison is a grim warning for Conservatives - National Post

Scott Aitchison will become the eighth Conservative MP to leave the caucus in the last year. Photo by Hyungcheol Park/PostmediaArticle contentThe Conservatives will try to spin the departure of Scott Aitchison, the popular MP for Parry Sound–Muskoka, as being of negligible importance. Here’s a guy in his early 50s who has spent more than 30 years in municipal and federal politics, and who has decided to move on to another stage in life.

Fair enough. Aitchison’s reasons for leaving at the end of the fall session remain vague. He said on social media that it is “time for a new chapter to explore new opportunities.”

But he will become the eighth Conservative MP to leave the caucus in the last year. Losing one might be deemed unfortunate; losing eight looks like a serious exodus.

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Aitchison, a former leadership candidate, is a smart man who can read the runes, and he clearly doesn’t fancy spending his autumn years sitting in Opposition — and that’s if he is re-elected.

He won his northern Ontario riding by 10 points last year, but that was when the Pierre Poilievre-led Conservative party won 41 per cent of the vote nationally. It is much lower in the public esteem these days and the 338 Canada website rates Parry Sound–Muskoka as “Liberal-leaning” if a vote were held tomorrow.

Aitchison was always an uncomfortable fit inside Poilievre’s caucus. He is (as he noted in his letter to his constituents this week announcing his plan to leave) a consensus builder.

When the current leader was championing the Freedom Convoy in 2022, Aitchison was standing up in the House of Commons, pointing out that he and his colleagues weren’t sent to Ottawa to represent only those people who put up their lawn signs. “We weren’t sent here to represent the lowest common denominator. We were sent here to raise it,” he said.

He ran for leader that April but found it hard to raise money and support on a platform aimed at the “exhausted majority,” who he said were sick of “partisan gridlock and ideological entrenchment.”