War’s still on. Gas prices are way up. So is the price of everything else. Covid’s down. Spring’s springing. Skiing’s pretty great, considering lack of new snow. But the mood’s ugly. Everyone is either pissed off, victimized, or scared silly. What to do?
John Prine once suggested we should blow up our TVs, throw away our papers, move to the country, build us a home. But we’re hooked on streaming, a comforting escape. There’s a whole generation or two who aren’t really certain what newspapers are. Much of the country is as expensive as the cities. And even if we knew how to build a home, supply-chain problems would probably mean we were building sod houses.
Whatever solace we collectively found in sourdough bread, fiction, crafts and whatever else got us through lockdowns the past two years have lost their attraction. Well, maybe not sourdough bread. What to do?
Fortunately, if you have even the remotest interest in politics—way more exciting than many Olympic™ sports—the federal Conservative Party’s Quest for Leadership is shaping up as the best entertainment going for the next six months. And if you are even slightly liberal, small or capital ‘l’, it’ll be the best entertainment going.
The Conservatives, as you may recall, have lost/won three elections in a row. The first, in 2015, excised Stephen Harper from the body politic, delivering the country from his ham-fisted attempt to take Canada back to a time existing only in his—and much of Western Canada’s—mind. Thus was the beginning of the reign of Trudeau 2.0.
In 2019 Trudeau lost the popular vote to Andrew Scheer, who forgot to stand in line when they were handing out charisma, but won enough seats to form a minority government. Once again, the West—Alberta, eastern B.C., Saskatchewan—voted en masse for the Conservatives, to no avail except to throw a couple of hundred thousand votes to Maxime Bernier’s far right People’s Party.
The election in 2021 was a rerun of the last paragraph. Except the Conservative leader, Erin O’Toole, couldn’t decide which planks in his party’s platform to waffle on quickest and the People’s Party pulled more than twice as many votes away. Its shining moment was the inability of Maxime Bernier to once again win his own riding.
After three elections lost despite having more votes cast for Conservative candidates than Liberal candidates, the party fully grasped its problem. Members lynched the Leader of the Day, Mr. O’Toole, thus setting the table for the fun just beginning.
Just kidding. Actually, the Conservatives completely fail to grasp their problem. What’s their problem? They’re trying to sell something the Canadian population isn’t interested in buying. What’s that? A mean-spirited brand of populist conservatism anathema to the 60 per cent or so of Canadians who vote for left-of-centre candidates.
Which brings us to right now. Sort of. And why this is a time to rejoice if your politics lean even slightly liberal.
The Conservative Party is leaderless. Nothing new, you say? Try to restrain your cynicism. There is an interim leader, Candice Bergen—not to be confused with the American actor of the same name—from Manitoba, the former deputy party leader. Her job is to try and keep the party from self-destructing. Her politics are considerably right of whatever Mr. O’Toole claimed to believe in at any moment. She actively supported the Freedumb Convoy, leans populist, and likely falls into the still-smouldering Harper camp. She isn’t that important.
The big winner coming out of the Trucker’s Party in Ottawa is likely to be Mr. Bernier. His brand of pitchfork-and-torch populism appeals to the yabbos who fail to grasp the difference between the U.S. constitution’s Bill of Rights and the Canadian constitution’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is very likely that his party’s vote will increase whenever the next election comes around, siphoning more votes from the Conservative Party.
It’s an even money bet whether the Conservative Party will be one party or two before or after the next election. Probably after but that’s why the next six months are going to be interesting.
Leading the charge to pull the party back into the Reform/Alliance model is Pierre Poilievre, also known in some circles as Pierre Potty-Mouth. He’s been knocking around Parliament since 2004, hectoring anyone he disagrees with. He is the candidate of the social conservative (socon) wing of the party. He was against same-sex marriage, supporting a motion to introduce legislation rolling the clock back to opposite sex-only marriage. He later recanted his opposition, calling same-sex marriage a success. He favoured suspending funding for sex reassignment surgery for transgender people. And he argued Canada wasn’t getting value for the money it spent compensating residential school survivors, arguing the need to “engender the values of hard work and independence and self-reliance...” presumably on their lazy, shiftless behalf.
He is the darling of party members not crazy enough to support Mr. Bernier’s crusade but socially conservative enough to be wistful for the days when queers, transsexuals, Indigenous people and socialists were subject to discriminatory laws and social ostracism.
That leaves old-school conservatives, formerly members of the Progressive Conservative Party before Peter “The Weasel” MacKay sold them down the river to the Canadian Alliance, née Reform Party, in the uncomfortable position of not being pure enough for the socons but too wistfully conservative for the Liberals.
Enter Jean Charest. Who?
Jean Charest was a star of the Progressive Conservative Party. He rose through the ranks faster than anyone. When Brian Mulroney—seeing a future of abject defeat—retired and Kim Campbell became Prime Minister for a Day, Jean was her deputy. He was one of only two PCs to survive the slaughter of the 1993 election, heralding the era of Chrétien the Mighty.
A longtime opponent of Quebec separation, in 1998 he left the moribund PC party to lead the Quebec Liberal Party. He became premier of Quebec in 2003 and served until 2012. He is the hope of the moderate wing of the Conservative Party going into this leadership contest.
In some ways, he’s also the hope of the Liberal party. With any luck, his rise and the machinations playing out until September’s leadership vote will once again divide the “united” right.
An argument could be made this would only level the playing field. The left-of-centre vote has been split three ways—Liberal, NDP, Green—since, well, forever. Three right-of-centre parties splitting the remaining 40 per cent of the vote only seems fair, eh?
Whatever. It’s going to be a lot more fun than focusing on Putine’s war... or Covid... or...
