Ken Boessenkool is a partner in the policy advisory firm Meredith Boessenkool and Phillips and was a senior campaign and policy adviser to Stephen Harper.

Canadian electoral politics became like Western Canadian electoral politics this week, by moving from a three-party to a two-party system.

Across Western Canada, the NDP competes for power with various centre-right parties. Those centre-right parties evolve and reconstitute themselves to remain electorally competitive across four very different provinces.

In the federal election, the NDP collapsed so thoroughly it became a two-party contest. This gave the Liberals an electoral victory approaching a majority, and a governing coalition in which the NDP is so demoralized and weak that Mark Carney has a de facto majority.

And if Pierre Poilievre continues to lead the Conservative Party – which a broad consensus of Conservatives say he earned this week – he’ll need to plan for another two-party race.

You don‘t have to agree that this situation will be permanent – although I would take that bet – to see that the next election will be a two-party battle, because Mr. Poilievre was a key architect in creating this reality.

He did so by ignoring a key insight of one the architects of conservatism, Michael Oakeshott, who said conservatism’s fundamental contribution is “to inject into the activities of already-too-passionate men an ingredient of moderation; to restrain, to deflate, to pacify and to reconcile; not to stoke the fires of desire, but to damp them down.”

Mr. Poilievre’s passionate stoking of the fires of desire drove New Democrat voters into the always-open arms of the Liberal Party. This created a two-party election he couldn‘t win. A race it’s worth pointing out that Stephen Harper wouldn‘t have won – Mr. Harper needed two viable parties to his left to win a majority in 2011.

This is not widely understood.

For starters, it means bettering the 39.6 per cent of the popular vote Mr. Harper won in 2011. The Conservative Party needs to evolve from the 40-per-cent party of Mr. Harper to a 50-per-cent party under Mr. Poilievre.

To give credit where it’s due, there is a part of the country outside of Alberta and Saskatchewan where Mr. Poilievre did a respectable job of expanding his voter coalition to meet this new two-party challenge. In manufacturing-heavy Southwestern Ontario, Conservatives won over some last-minute New Democrat switchers to sweep much of the region. All those visuals of Mr. Poilievre in a hard hat paid off.

But there is a limit to which attracting young and middle-aged working males will build a 50-per-cent party. To do that, Mr. Poilievre needs more female voters.

To narrow the gender gap, Mr. Poilievre will need to moderate and damp down the fires of desire and adopt a lot more of Mr. Harper’s incrementalism to reassure those female voters. Beyond that, there are two groups of women Mr. Poilievre should try attracting.

First, Mr. Poilievre needs an aggressive pro-family stance to attract middle-aged women who have – or would like to have – children. In part that means talking more about the centrality of family in society. But it also means addressing the affordability concerns of moms by some combination of expanding child benefits and/or bringing in a Conservative child-care plan. And how about expanding the federal school food program to help moms with school-aged kids? Mr. Poilievre could use a jujitsu move or two to show he’s changed his mind on something since he was a teenager. Mr. Harper closed the gender gap in 2011 with these kinds of appeals to mothers – and snagged some grandmothers too!

Second, Mr. Poilievre needs to bring back the younger women who fled from his voting coalition in the last few months. To do so, he needs to not just talk housing and affordability, but bring a much more credible offering on climate change. How about another jujitsu move: an industrial carbon tax has been the centrepiece of climate policy in Alberta, from Ed Stelmach to Danielle Smith. Just as it is in every other province. There is nothing Mr. Poilievre can do to end these provincial regimes, so why not just commit to “making polluters pay” and keep the federal industrial backstop?

If he stays, Mr. Poilievre will need a plan to boost his vote from 40 per cent to closer to 50 per cent. He could do that by locking in more men who shower after work instead of before, speaking to the affordability issues of moms, and having a credible “make polluters pay” climate plan.

That’s not just something he needs, it’s something Canada needs.