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That 15 percentage point lead for the Liberals over the Tories in Ontario is more than double the 6.6 percentage advantage that Carney’s party enjoys in the Signal, the Star’s polling aggregator, which has the Grits at 48.1 per cent and the Conservatives 41.5 per cent here.

Kory Teneycke, Ford’s campaign manager in the premier’s successful re-election on Feb. 27, provided the Star with the detailed internal polling, which is rarely made public.

In an Empire Club of Canada panel Wednesday night in Toronto, Teneycke expressed grave concern at the direction of Poilievre’s campaign, which remains fixated on tax cuts while Carney is focused on the threat of U.S. President Donald Trump’s 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods.

“For the Conservatives ... in the campaign cockpit, every buzzer and alarm is going off and the plane is like going ‘bzzzzz’ and it’s like, ‘Pull up, pull up, pull up,’” he told the 200 attendees at the event.

“You’ve got to have a pivot that’s taking some of the momentum of that issue shift and direct it towards things that are yours. It’s not going to happen if you’re talking about the World Economic Forum or the Century Initiative or God knows whatever other thing that is ... of little or no relevance to voters.”

That was a reference to Poilievre’s preoccupation linking Carney, a former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor, with “globalist” elites.

Teneycke, who also guided Ford’s majority victories in 2018 and 2022, warned that unless the Tories “get on it quick, they are going to get obliterated” on April 28.

But any strategic shift would be challenging due to “the basic unlikability of Poilievre right now,” the veteran Tory told an Empire Club audience that included some visibly rattled federal Conservatives.

“He looks too much like Trump. He sounds too much like Trump. He uses the lexicon of Trump,” he said, noting the CPC campaign slogan “Canada First for a Change” mirrors the president’s “America First.”

Campaigning in Coquitlam, B.C., the Tory leader would not specifically answer a question on Teneycke’s comments and played down public-opinion polls that show his party trailing Carney’s Liberals.

“We’ll wait for Canadians to make their choice on election day,” Poilievre told reporters.

Asked about Teneycke’s criticism, CPC campaign spokesman Sam Lilly said, “Pierre Poilievre has been talking about his plan to put Canada First and make Canada stronger in order to stand up to Trump, and will continue to do so.”

Campaign Research surveyed 1,902 Ontarians from Monday through Wednesday using the Maru/Blue online panel. While opt-in polls cannot be assigned a margin of error, for comparison purposes, a random sample of this size would have one of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

The firm found the key vote drivers of the campaign in this province are: who is the proven leader; who can best stand up to Trump’s tariffs; who can best protect Canada’s economy from the president’s levies; who can manage government finances; who is most honest; who can rebuild the economy; and who can work best with other levels of government.

At the bottom of the list of what is driving votes right now: carbon taxes; immigration; getting tough on crime; supporting seniors and the disabled; cutting taxes; and building pipelines.

“It’s like everyone in Canada has gotten together and said, ‘Where are we going to go for dinner tonight?’ And everyone agreed, ‘Let’s go for Italian,’ and what Pierre is offering is a trip to the Mandarin buffet,” said Teneycke.

“His pitch is, well, there’s some sad pizza over in the corner, and we’ve got spaghetti and meatballs, also a little sad, but we’ve got sushi and we’ve got General Tso’s chicken and we’ve got chicken fingers and fries and soft serve ice cream,” he said.

“And everyone’s like, ‘but I want f—-ing Italian.’”

The poll found Ford’s provincial Tories at 46 per cent support, Bonnie Crombie’s Ontario Liberals at 24 per cent, Marit Stiles’s NDP at 18 per cent and Mike Schreiner’s Greens at eight per cent.

Campaign Research, which polls weekly for the Ontario PCs, also found 32 per cent of respondents who would vote for Ford’s Tories provincially would also cast ballots for Carney’s Liberals federally.

The Star revealed last Thursday that Poilievre finally reached out to Ford for their first-ever conversation on March 17, two and a half years after he became CPC leader.

Days after that stilted and awkward half-hour phone call, the premier reminded provincial Tories they will be too ”absolutely swamped” with their day jobs to help the federal party on the hustings.

Campaign Research principal Nick Kouvalis, Ford’s long-time pollster, echoed Teneycke’s “disappointment” in how the federal campaign is being executed.

“We’ve worked very hard to try to get Pierre and his team on board with a different strategy and get along with the Doug Ford Progressive Conservatives,” Kouvalis said Thursday.

“My hope and my efforts were to see Conservatives working together better,” he said.

“But they’re doing the opposite of what Doug Ford did in the weeks before the Feb. 27 election and it’s plainly obvious that the results will also be the opposite of what happened here.”

The Campaign Research poll is significant because 122 of the 343 seats up for grabs next month are in Ontario.