So ... where are federal Conservatives in Canada? What is the state of Canadian conservatism? How have conservatives responded to Covid-19? Will they try to draw on a soft alt.right basis of support, the politics of discontented exaggeration that I noted in my last blog? What are the Conservative's options?
In this blog I want to argue that the Conservatives (and their intellectual allies) have done things wrong. To be sure, they had a tough road to hoe. I will address that. But, they are also missing an opportunity to redefine conservatism in Canada and a potentially vital political program that offers an alternative to liberalism. The NDP is actually working hard on this from the left-wing of the political spectrum. They may succeed, or they may fail, but they are, at least, working to redefine what a progressive left-wing politics means as a political program that can be implemented. So far the Conservatives seem to have done little more than squander their opportunities. Let me start by asking why this matters and then turn to some first steps conservatives need to take.
Why Conservatism Matters
I often feel compelled to note somewhere in blogs I write that I am not a liberal nor a member of the Liberal Party. I do that because conservatively minded people I know periodically say I am one and that, in their minds, provides a way to dismiss my comments. I think it is fairly evident that I'm not a conservative and I have little interest in nor support for the trajectory of the Conservative Party of Canada. I have also been deeply troubled by the New Brunswick PCs and their adoption of a soft anti-bilingualism as well as their support for hydro-fracking and I find some of the comments made, over the years, by Jason Kenney and Doug Ford, among others, odious. The decision of Kenney and Scott Moe, for instance, to double down on fossil fuel is, in my view, not just bad policy but shockingly short sighted. In even the short term, this approach -- and effort to force the feds to support a dying industry and coerce other provinces to do the same -- even hurts their own provinces. It looks to squeeze that last few dollars it can out of an industry that is past its best before date, as opposed to providing sound leadership to take their provinces into the future. Let me make this clear: I don't like these people and I don't like them -- much less Stephen Harper -- for a bunch of reasons that relates to what I will argue are clear and manifest policy failures.
I still want to argue that conservatism matters both as an ideology and a political force and that is, I fully recognize, a tough argument to make. It is a tough argument to make because conservatives have not made it easy to argue that they should matter. I don't want to engage in nostalgia, but there was a time when politically and ideologically conservatism meant something in Canada and, most particularly, it meant a different way of seeing the country. There were a lot of problems with that way. Canadian conservatism and the Conservative Party (which went by a number of names) was deeply implicated in colonialism. Its members were often xenophobic and it dragged its heals on a host of measure from LGBTQi+ equality, to women's right to control their bodies, to bilingualism. We cannot neglect these considerations because they are part of the history of Canadian conservatism and they part of the shadow from which Canadian conservatism needs to emerge.
And, this is my key point. Conservatism cannot be simply the defense of the way things used to be. Whether it was a success or a failure, the kind of thinking that historically people like George Grant or Joe Clark did about conservatism and what it entails has been lacking. One might end up disagreeing with, say, Clark's "community of communities" or Grant's "public good" and rural organic society, but the important point is that they signified something other than opposition to the liberal policies of their day and a desire to freeze time. What does, for instance, social conservatism mean? It has come to mean opposition to LGBTQi+ equality and women's control over their bodies. Quite frankly, this is not social conservatism in the sense that it does not offer a vision of what a socially conservative society looks like other than rejecting the rights of different Canadians to control their lives, be equal in employment, make decisions about their own bodies, and not have to hide who they are. This type of perspective makes conservatism a small tent: it begins its entry into public discourse by rejecting the rights of others and this is a point on which it will not win ground because it is (a) wrong and intensely problematic from an ethical perspective and (b) stakes out a political and social space that the vast majority of Canadians cannot accept. What it means is that to win election, conservatives have to convince Canadians that they, in fact, are not who they are claiming to me be or that other issues (say, the economy) outweigh the negative aspects of their politics.
This matters not because I want conservatives to win or even agree with what they say. It matters for two reasons. First, on a simple level, because it shrinks the Canadian political spectrum. There may be good reason for this and that can be a discussion for another day, but the failure of alternative political perspectives ultimately means that what we have as Canadians is a more limited choice of political futures. In effect, what the CPC offers Canadians is not a different vision of the future, but a less equal, less generous, less humane version of what the Liberals are putting on the table. Second, and following from that, the morass into which Canadian conservatism has fallen legitimizes perspectives that never should have been legitimized. For instance, it tells people who oppose equality that they are not opposing equality (that is, being, quite frankly, bigoted) but guardians of an important ideology: social conservatism. With regard to, say, opposition to Indigenous rights, it tells people that there is *no* conservative way to build positive relations between First Peoples and Canadians and that Canadians are legitimate in rejecting reconciliation as a meaningful goal for their country. Are these really messages we want to send?
The Tough Road
Canadian conservatism entered this year in a mess. It was in a mess before Covid-19 and the pandemic has not been kind to it. CPC leadership contender Peter MacKay called the 2019 election loss the equivalent of taking a shot on an empty net and missing. That is not 100% accurate but the metaphor captures some of the situation. In 2019, the CPC seemed to have the cards set in its favour. It had experienced candidates, they were facing a weak PM who had back-tracked on key issues, broad provincial discontent with the federal Liberals, disaffection among a significant section of the Canadian population, and what appeared to be little competition for Canadian votes form the NDP and BQ. Said in other words, the CPC could have done what opposition parties want to do: gain power by providing an alternative to the government that speaks to Canadians.
This perception disguised a deeper level of malaise. Canadians never warmed to Sheer, the first past the post political system worked in the Liberals favour (and there is some irony in this in that CPC fought so hard to maintain it), and the CPC's association with some provincial conservatives became a liability. Canadian conservatism appeared internally divided, hypocritical, and reactionary. Sheer and his supporters seemed to have little direction and seemed to be trapped in their own base of support. They offered Canadians not a different future but a recycled version of a past that most Canadians had already rejected.
For Canadian conservatives, there were other warning signs that they should have read and these are some of the things that conservatives will need to jettison if they want to provide a real alternative to the governing Liberals. First, disaffection with Trudeau was odd and gendered. The anti-Trudeau cohort and symbolism (particularly but not exclusively the gun lobby, big oil, and the carbon copy "yellow vests"), were the kind of votes the CPC felt they needed but also the kind of voices that sound good only in an echo chamber. The idea that the solution to Canada's problems lay in a dying carbon-based energy industry was simply difficult for Canadians outside Alberta and Saskatchewan to believe and should have been difficult for conservatives in those provinces to believe as well.
Second, conservative parties have been colonized by the very industries that they have to regulate if they are in government. In particular, the Saskatchewan Party and the United Conservative Party often appear as little more than fanboys for the oil and gas industry. What if you have legitimate environmental concerns? The conservative answer is that the economy is more important and so you need to hold your nose and vote for them. When pressed on this issue on the news one day, I listened to a conservative commentator trot out Brian Mulroney era policies to explain since the feds had once done something for Quebec, they needed now to support oil and gas in Alberta and Saskatchewan come what may. Hard feelings die hard. It is true, but as I listened to him I wondered how many people in the audience actually knew about something that happened 25 or 30 years ago? What is more, this commentator missed a chance to do something profound. Instead of fanning regional discontent (which was what he did), he could have offered alternatives to address the economic problems of those provinces. For whatever reason, he chose not to.
Finally, the conservatives need to get recognize that they need more than an election issue to win. In the absence of doing the hard work of figuring out what conservatism means in 21st-century Canada, conservative commentators and political figures have moved through Covid-19 as if they were ready to form a government. They might be, but it won't be a good government. They have desperately searched for an issue and settled on the idea that their route to electoral victory rests in trying to portray Justin Trudeau as "unaccountable." I expect this line of attack will continue and perhaps even accelerate with some comments built in about the need to control budget deficits. Why do conservatives need to ditch this line of attack? Because it is sound bite politics that cannot provide the basis for reasoned public discourse.
The Bad News
The bad news for conservatives is that their intense dislike of Justin Trudeau keeps them focused on slagging him. Trudeau symbolizes everything conservatives hate, much in the manner that Hillary Clinton symbolized everything the American alt.right despised. But they need to get their attention off him. Will they? I honestly don't know but if I were advising CPC leadership contenders, this is what I would be telling them.
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