The federal Conservatives are but a shadow of their former selves. I would know because I was once one myself, at least one of the progressive conservative variety.
But we were labelled “Red Tories,” as if that was something to be ashamed of, and all but chased out of the party after all the anger and grievance of the Reform Party came to town, resulting in a merger with what was left of Canada’s traditional Conservatives. From those days forward, the new amalgamation of hard-right western (read mostly Alberta, the province that most stirs the angry drink) bitterness has resulted in a party that has tasted power for nine of the last 31 years, and only four as a majority.
There is no party more responsible for the cavalcade of perpetual Liberal governments than this one. So if you hate Trudeau, these are the ones to blame. Year after year after year, and election after election, more people vote against the Conservatives than for them, and the Liberals are the chief beneficiaries of this. The number of people who vote Liberal to keep the Conservatives away from the levers of power is staggering, again something I would know of as I’m one of them.
So why do most Canadians choose the Liberals over the Conservatives?
More than anything it’s a matter of tone. The Liberals are nowhere near perfect but at least they periodically strike a tone of hope and happiness, are willing to accept climate change with perhaps imperfect solutions, and generally come across as being the adults in the room. The Conservatives, on the other hand, are finger-pointing obstructionists, critical of everything, fuelled by anger and grievance. They have an avoidance-denial relationship with climate change and methods put forward to help alleviate it. Like their American cousins the Republicans to the south, they have a vested interest in sowing a lack of confidence in democratic institutions, and of making sure that little gets done in parliament, then citing that as a reason why government doesn’t work.
Government doesn’t work because there is a party dedicated towards not making it work so that they can present themselves as a solution. But news flash: You don’t get to be the saviour of a problem of your own making.
The Conservatives have, over time, slid farther and farther to the political right, so much so that they tinkle their toes in waters occupied by the far, and even extremist, right. Waters that most Canadians are loathe to swim in.
Erin O’Toole was, honestly a decent guy, but he was viewed as a traitor because he ran for the leadership on the right then tried to drag the party kicking and screaming to the centre to stop the vote-shedding to the Liberals. So they turfed him and replaced him with a dull razor blade of a man, Pierre Poilievre, who never met an insult he didn’t want to use on another human being. Unlike O’Toole, Poilievre has never had a job other than being a parliamentarian, a trait he shares with another deposed Tory leader, Andrew Scheer. Two hate-filled Catholics who conduct themselves in the mud at every opportunity. Scheer failed miserably against Trudeau, and it appears Poilievre will do the same.
Taking a chance on receiving ill-informed scorn, the Conservative movement has not had a mature government in power since the back-to-back majorities of Progressive Conservative Brian Mulroney, whose main weaknesses were his flawless bilingualism, incessant pre-occupation with image, his chiselled good looks, and his penchant for singing Irish ballads with American presidents. His attempts at constitutional change didn’t go over well either, did they? But in retrospect, we still have a trade deal with the United States, Donald Trump notwithstanding, and the GST, universally hated at the time, is with us still, even as Stephen Harper’s Tories were in power. So, as far as political legacies go, it seems Mulroney is hanging in there in the passage of time. People like Scheer and Poilievre can only dream of such historical retention.
People like Brian Mulroney, for better or worse, live on in the history books of the nation. People like Poilievre and Scheer don’t get a mention. Nor should they. You have to be something more than a rabid political dog to be included in the index.
Any idiot can jump up and down and complain and criticize and insult and obstruct. It takes something more than that to govern, something the Conservatives will find challenging to achieve so long as they continue to pander to the viewpoints of disrupters, far-right extremists, and any other repugnant populations out there.
I’m angry that my party, the one I joined back in 1977 when I turned 18, the one I worked for during political campaigns, and the one that introduced me to Joe Clark, ran me and others like me out of town and forced us to be Liberals in all but name, not for the love of Liberals, but as a counterpoint to the angry, us-versus-them mentality espoused by this new, ugly, often reprehensible, breed.
This country needs a legitimate centre-right party of tolerance and policy maturity as a counter-weight to the Liberals. In their current incarnation, the federal Conservatives are not it. The Progressive Conservatives were.
Preston Manning, Stephen Harper, Stockwell Day, Tom Long, Mike Harris, et al are the faces of change that turned a relatively moderate party into a crowd of baying obstructionist, disruptive voices.
They have taken a party of Confederation and turned it into a western rump of grievance politics and bitterness. And as such, our democracy is decidedly less healthy and less robust as a result.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 