Front Burner - Under the big tent: Conservative division in Canada

Episode Date: February 8, 2022

Just over a week ago, Conservative centrist Erin O’Toole was ousted after just 18 months as party leader. His sudden departure has triggered the third leadership race since Stephen Harper lost in 2015. This upheaval is in line with the party’s long-standing power struggles. For decades, the Conservatives have fought among themselves for the soul of the party. Between populists and elites, town and country, east and west. Today on Front Burner, we’re talking to Macleans writer Paul Wells on the complicated push-pull of the modern Canadian Conservative movement and what’s next for the party.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. The race to find a new leader of the Conservative Party is officially underway now. Just over a week ago, Conservative centrist Aaron O'Toole was ousted after just a short time in the job.

Months after their party lost the election, Conservative MPs chose to oust their leader. And it was a decisive result. 62% said he had to go. Triggering the third leadership race since Stephen Harper lost in 2015. And this upheaval, it's in line with the party's long-standing power struggles. For decades, the Conservatives have fought among themselves, for the soul of the party, between populists and elites, town and country, east and west. Today, we're going to try and unpack the complicated push-pull of the modern Canadian Conservative movement. And what's next, with Macan's writer, Paul Wells. Hey, Paul, thanks so much for making the time. Thanks for having me.

So last week, we saw Aaron O'Toole get ousted as leader of the conservatives after just 18 months. And I wanted to get your thoughts on the upheaval that we're seeing right now and what it reminds you most of in terms of the history of the party. There's a long history in the Canadian conservative movement, which is usually kind of synonymous with the conservative party, but not always, of swerving in frustration after the path they've been on spends a while not working. So, you know, we'll talk about all this in greater detail, but Conservatives spent the Pierre Trudeau years waiting for someone who could beat the Liberals. Brian Mulroney was clearly delighted as he savored the response to his landslide victory. The country as a whole has opted for the Progressive Conservative Party. So sweeping is this expression of confidence that I am genuinely torn between two feelings.

First, a deep sense of gratitude towards the Canadian electorate who have given us an historic opportunity to serve. And secondly, the recognition of the enormous responsibility with which we have been entrusted. Secondly, the recognition of the enormous responsibility with which we have been entrusted. And then when Brian Mulroney became that person, after a couple of years, they decided they didn't like him either. And so various splinter movements split off from that. Conservatives have a long history of alternating between sort of urbane, clubbable Tory leaders and much more sort of rough-hewn populist leaders. The main thing we see is that the conservative movement in Canada is plural. This is one of the simplest but hardest things I have a hard time convincing people on the political left of, which is that conservatives

aren't all, they don't all walk around being right-wingers and thinking right-wing things, and they're not homogeneous. They are internally divided, have a hard time agreeing among themselves. And the various factions in the movement take turns having the upper hand. And Aaron O'Toole's goal was to reimpose a sort of traditional Tory cast on what to his taste was a far too populist party. And he failed. Your party's got to find another million votes somewhere in the country or you can't win a majority government. But currying too much favor with social conservatives will be in the eyes of some a very difficult way to attract those million new voters. How do you walk that tightrope? I don't think it's as hard as you suggest, Steve.

You know, I grew up in the Toronto area. So let's unpack that by going through some of that history today. And maybe we could start with the relatively recent history, Stephen Harper. This new political era began at Rideau Hall. Stephen Harper took the oath of office and unveiled his cabinet. On January 23rd, Canadians voted for change. And today I'm pleased to present the team that will lead. One of the longest serving modern conservative leaders. He did manage to hammer together a conservative coalition. But I know that you alluded to this in your first answer,

but could you paint me a picture of the fractured conservative landscape that he inherited? So when Harper became the leader of the Canadian Alliance Party in 2002, it was barely pulling double digits in the polls. It was not a lot more popular than, say, Maxime Bernier's People's Party is today. There were a lot of self-identified conservatives off in a progressive conservative party. There were a lot of people who were sort of conservative by nature in the Bloc Québécois. And there were a hell of a lot of conservatives who had gotten out of the habit of voting or at least of donating to parties and organizing for parties. And so he needed to appeal to all those different factions in the movement

and offer concrete gains to all of those groups, law and order conservatives, pro-Israeli foreign policy hawks, religious conservatives, new conservatives, immigrants who were often much more predisposed to conservative policy than to more progressive policy. And he did it by, first of all, thinking of the various factions in the movement in those sort of concrete terms. And secondly, coming up with a platform that could offer something for everyone. And then there was a mix of positive attributes. He was urbane, spoke good French, presented well, you know, wore decent suits and a bit of tough love. He made it awfully clear that people who didn't get with his program were not going to be frozen out forever. And so the people on the outside

responded to the sort of appeal that he presented and the people on the inside understood he was serious about the tough love and got with the program. Can you give me an example of that, that tough love? Well, so when he joins the Canadian Alliance after Stockwell Day's term as the first leader of that new party, there are already a half dozen prominent MPs who've left the party in disgust over Stockwell Day's leadership. So a lot of this stuff is ancient history now, but MPs like Deb Gray, Chuck Strahl, Monty Solberg, Jay Hill, were flirting with rejoining the Progressive Conservative Party. Stephen Harper called them all up and said, look, you come back and it's no harm, no foul. If you don't come back, you will never be allowed to. And we will run candidates against you and salt the earth and curse your name.

And they all came back. And, you know, you need a hell of a lot of self-confidence to pull off a stunt like that. But that's one thing that Harper always had. And I want to come back to Harper later in the conversation when we talk about the present. But if we could go even further back, this idea of fracturing in the Conservative Party, obviously, as you said, it's not a modern problem. And we can go all the way back to Diefenbaker here, where we also saw a fractured party. And could you flesh that out for me? What happens with Diefenbaker? I'm so young and you're so old. This, my darling, I've been told.

For this man, politics is not a vocation. Politics is his passion, his meat and drink. His earliest ambition was to become prime minister. His present ambition is the same. To understand modern trends, I find it's helpful to take seriously the possibility that they might not be happening for the first time. And you see this sort of insider-outsider alternation, this urban-rural split in the career of John Diefenbaker, who was a country lawyer from a Saskatchewan

riding. His suits never seemed to fit. He was a mesmerizing speaker, but he wasn't a polished speaker. Every other person last night on CBC was objective. June conjured up. Sir, you're making this statement outside the chamber. Do you make it on your... I am making it here. Have you got anything to say about it? Yes, sir. I deny utterly that I attempted to defend this government. Just another example of what you've done so frequently. And his leadership career begins actually with the party massively rejecting him. After World War II, after literally the hell of World War II, the country wanted to get back to quieter times, more civilized times.

The country wanted to get back to quieter times, more civilized times. And the Conservative Party thought that the trick to winning in that environment was to hire a Toronto lawyer, Upper Canada College boy, named George Drew, longtime Premier of Ontario. After gaining a minority under George Drew in 1943, the Conservative government started planning for the post-war period. The industrial machinery of the province was still humming through the final months of the war. It was on this post-war prosperity theme that the conservatives won a majority government in 1945, followed with a repeat in 1948. Married to the daughter of the Globe and Mail's publisher, his first wife was the daughter of a prominent opera singer, right? Like this guy was really downtown. And he crushed Diefenbaker in the 48 leadership race of the conservatives. And then he spent eight years losing. And so suddenly eight years later,

the country bumpkin looked pretty good. And the party moved decisively to Diefenbaker in the 1956 leadership. So what that shows is the party is often sort of unsure which of its many instincts to indulge. And typically what it does is over time, it indulges each of them in turn, leaving various groups either on top or frozen out. Right. This sort of East-West push-pull, insider-outsider shimmy, right? Yeah. And so what happens when Diefenbaker wins? Diefenbaker executed the perfect version of what John Duffy, who's a political consultant, longtime liberal and analyst, calls the populist rush. In Canada, an upset election ousted Prime Minister Saint Laurent and his Liberal government,

and installed a conservative regime of John Diefenbaker by a narrow margin to deal with Canada's expanding economy and industry. My friends, this is a time for greatness in planning for Canada's future. Unity demands it. Freedom requires it. Vision will ensure it. Every once in a while, you get a national leader who builds a vast electoral coalition, including in surprising places where you never thought they would win. And in 1958, Stephen Baker won the largest majority in the history of Canada up until that point. There were many surprises as the results poured in,

but the biggest appears to have been in the province of Quebec, where the Conservatives took 50 seats in the traditionally liberal bastion. The Liberals took 25. The very nationalist premier of Quebec, Duplessis, basically delivered Quebec lock, stock, and barrel to the Diefenbaker Conservatives. And he won big in Ontario and in Atlantic Canada and, of course, across the West. But it didn't

last. It had already started to fall apart by the early 60s, which is how Lester Pearson's able to come in. And as a response to that disappointing performance, faction in the Conservative Party rose up. Basically, Nova Scotia centrists, led by the New Brunswicker, Dalton Camp, who organized the putsch. There was really no mechanism for getting rid of a sitting leader who didn't want to go. So they improvised one. And in the mid-60s, they booted Diefenbaker out, kicking and screaming. to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem.

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conservatives and the thing that Stephen Harper thought that he would finally be able to fix is that after every big success, they are shattered and ineffective for a long time after, leading to another period of liberal hegemony. So Diefenbaker won big and then went away for a long time. Joe Clark managed to beat Pierre Trudeau, but only for nine months, and then he lost again to Trudeau. And so Mulroney comes along, and he looks like a kind of a unity candidate. Final ballot. Votes needed to win 1,455. Joe Clark, 1,325. 325. Nothing else had to be said. Brian Mulroney had taken the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party, defeating a former prime minister by... He's small town, working class, used to sing for the American bosses in his small Quebec town for

a nickel. And he went to law school in Nova Scotia. He sort of did the circuit of the sticks before becoming a big time Quebec corporate lawyer, anti-corruption crusader, fixture at the bar at the Ritz, schmoozer of all the network anchors, everyone's pal, married to the bell of the ball, closet full of Gucci loafers, right? So whatever kind of conservative you were, if you were an outsider who thought the deck was stacked against you, if you were an insider who wanted to smooth the path for all of your buddies, Mulroney looked like your guy. And he won the next biggest majority in Canadian history after Diefenbaker, bigger than than any Liberal majority, ever. And then almost immediately starts to fall apart. The Reform Party was created in 1987, only three years,

less than three years after Mulroney's big victory. Canada's newest political party picked itself a name today. It's the Reform Party of Canada. Western Canada should have an equal chance with the rest of Canada, especially Quebec and Ontario. Hardcore Conservatives and Prairie Populists, overwhelmingly from the West, who are furious at Mulroney for things like giving a jet fighter maintenance contract to a Quebec firm over a Winnipeg firm. Those opposed.

It's no coincidence these people are meeting in Winnipeg this weekend. It was just one year ago that the controversial billion-dollar CF-18 maintenance contract was given to a Quebec company, even though Bristol Aerospace of Winnipeg was the lowest bidder. They're furious that he seems to be no better, no more attentive, and to take these Westerners no more seriously than Pierre Trudeau ever did. And he's going off to fix the constitution. This is not only not a preoccupation of Western populists, it feels like some dumb hobby the guy's got rather than fixing the country the way he promised he would.

So the Reform Party is created really almost on the heels of Mulroney's first big victory. And then only a couple of years later, the Bloc Québécois is created from conservative bleu Quebec nationalists who believe Mulroney has failed to fix the error of the Constitution's patria and bring Quebec into the Constitution with honor and enthusiasm. And in one of history's great betrayals, the Bloc Québécois ends up being led by Lucien Bouchard, who was Mulroney's closest Quebec ally. And so what you see is the Mulroney coalition, it doesn't just splinter in the sense that people have bad feelings and are mad at each other. It structurally falls apart. The Reform Party and the Bloc Québécois end up running against

conservatives in their strongholds. And after only two election victories under Mulroney, the Conservatives are reduced to two seats under Kim Campbell. And then, of course, there's a period of fracturing and then they come back together with Stephen Harper and Peter McKay, right? A lot of reformers were really impatient with Preston Manning, the founding leader of the Reform Party, because after only two elections, he's formed the official opposition. He's formed the official opposition. He's essentially buried the Progressive Conservative Party. And instead of resting on his laurels and continuing to push the Reform Party to greater glories, he starts looking around for dance partners. He starts trying to reunite with the Progressive Conservative Party that he founded a party to fight against. He starts flirting with Quebec nationalists.

He talks about Baldwin and La Fontaine building modern Canada. And he says in his tortured French, Où est mon La Fontaine? And that led to, in the late 90s, a series of sort of confused and disjointed conventions in Ottawa and elsewhere. Winds of Change, United Alternative. And that's Preston Manning trying to build a bigger, broader movement than simply the Reform Party, because he knew that you couldn't win without it. The highly flawed first iteration of that is the Canadian Alliance, which replaces the Reform Party, but doesn't replace the Progressive

Conservatives, and runs as the main opposition party in 2000. Very disappointing result, understock all day. And then, man, if it's complicated to listen to, it was really complicated to live through undercover. Peter McKay gets elected the head of the Progressive Conservative Party, the heir to Diefenbaker and Mulroney, by promising to one of his rivals that he will never consider a union with the bad, mean Canadian Alliance Party. And then within a few months, he has led a merger with the Canadian Alliance because he had no choice.

Lloyd, after a lengthy courtship, the political right is finally taking the plunge. Sealing the deal not with a kiss, but a handshake. I actually had difficulty sleeping last night, so it's like Christmas time waking up. These once bitter rivals say it's time to put the snitch... The major donors to both parties started to turn off the taps, and the political pressure to put an end to this silly, endless dance of rivals and factions was overwhelming. And what McKay soon discovered was that Stephen Harper

was a really tough negotiating partner. This effort at a political union is too serious to play games with, says Peter McKay. It's not some Hollywood love match. This is not the Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez affair. This is a very serious issue for all Canadians, not just conservatives. Okay, so then that brings us to what we talked about at the beginning of this conversation. So Harper kind of takes over and he's able to keep everybody in line, right? Essentially force this coalition and keep everybody in line. And given everything that we've talked about today, I wonder if we could come back to the present now. So I wonder if what Harper was dealing with is probably the closest to what the Conservative Party is dealing with today. His other sort of political failings aside,

O'Toole made this consistent argument that his party needs to modernize on social issues, on climate change. It's been crystal clear, the debate is over. The Conservative Party in the next election will have a very serious plan to reduce emissions. It's a priority for me. And he ended up getting tossed out. And do you think that those are the real rifts here? Or is it something else? It's really complex. Maybe one way to simplify everything I've said until now is that there's only one leader of a conservative party has beaten a liberal in the last 35 years, and that's Stephen Harper. And he did it through skill and strategy and so on, but he also got really lucky. He led this new party on the heels of the liberal sponsorship scandal. Others who prefer not to be named say they are livid and outraged by Paul

Martin's suggestion that cretin operatives were somehow responsible for the misappropriation of public funds. All I do know is that clearly there was certain, there had to be political direction. Last Thursday, Martin appeared to shift the blame for the... Which was serious corruption in the governing party, Which was serious corruption in the governing party, which his opponent, Paul Martin, had had the brilliant idea to market aggressively via a public commission of inquiry that got millions of dollars of free coverage on the nightly news. It was the most aggressive anti-liberal marketing campaign I've ever seen. And it was invented and managed out of the Liberal Prime Minister's office. It turned out it was a bad idea if you wanted liberals to win again. So Harper, I think, really is a large political talent who was keen-eyed and tough and all that stuff. But he also got incredibly lucky because no conservative leader has ever had the prospect

of victory handed to them on a platter to the extent that Harper was. Which means that no conservative leader today is at all assured of the same circumstances that Harper enjoyed. My instinct is when somebody doesn't ask or answer questions, even simple and fairly innocuous questions in a straightforward manner, there may be something else. But let me give you an example. I have found an awful lot to criticize in the Trudeau government. But the Trudeau government is not aggressively marketing liberal corruption on the evening news the way the Martin government did in the early 2000s. And there's still the increasing isolation of Conservatives in the Canadian political dynamic. There's no natural ally for today's conservatives in Parliament. The Bloc doesn't much like them. The Liberals and the NDP and the Greens think they're toxic and won't have anything to do with

them. And then the last confounding variable, I would say, that is new for today's conservative is the heritage of Donald Trump to the South. The Canadian truckers you've been reading about it who are resisting bravely these lawless mandates and we want those great Canadian truckers to know that we are with them all the way they are they've really like a lot of today's conservative base believes that the Trump presidency was the most exciting political event they've ever witnessed, believes that Trump did not lose the 2020 presidential election legitimately, believes that the pandemic and the vaccines that have been developed to combat it are not something that traditional politicians and liars like me in the media are being honest about. Can you sleep at night? How can you sleep at night with all the lights? Don't stop me. The propagandists themselves.

And it's a real puzzler for modern Canadian conservatism, how and whether to integrate or freeze out that major new faction in the party. I guess the question is, like, if you're not Stephen Harper, and you don't have this moment in history, this sort of lucky moment in history, and you have this party that has a history of this push and pull and fracturing, plus now add MAGA on top of it. How do you win? I mean, so maybe you don't. But I mean, I'm famously on the record as saying that Doug Ford would never be the leader of the Ontario Conservatives. I'm not better at making predictions than anyone else.

And one thing I've learned all the time is that surprising outcomes are possible. than anyone else. And one thing I've learned all the time is that surprising outcomes are possible. Most Canadians have no idea where they themselves fit on a left-right spectrum. Most Canadians are not students of political science because they don't need a particularly elaborate vocabulary of politics. And they're open to a general sense that a government has been in power for too long, that a new face is fresh and exciting. And so assuming that Pierre Poiliev were the next leader of the Conservative Party, I think it would be fair to say he faces a huge challenge getting that party elected. And also fair to point out that you just should never say never in politics because surprises are possible. And Polyev is a thoughtful guy with a strategic sense, a much more persuasive speaker than either of the two most recent leaders of the Conservative Party, and a guy whose

certainty seems to be infectious. He seems to be in the early going, somebody conservatives like to rally around rather than somebody they sort of guiltily feel they should rally around, which was the curse of Errol Toole. You know, he certainly, and I don't know if you would agree with this, but he certainly seems to be doubling down on this culture warrior vein, right? I saw his video, it felt like it was almost directed at the Freedom Convoy protesters. And in a way, he used the word freedom probably about 15 times. Together, we will make Canadians the freest people on earth. With freedom to build a business without red tape or heavy tax.

Freedom to keep the fruits of your labor and share them with loved ones and neighbors. Freedom from the invisible thief of inflation. Freedom to raise your kids with your values. Freedom to make your own health and vaccine choices. Freedom to speak without fear and freedom to worship God in your own way. And so what's his bet there? Part of the bet is, I mean, it's quite basic. There's a sense that you don't win by apologizing. You can't, you can't, uh, sorry your way into

power. And there's a sense that Aaron O'Toole spent way too much time apologizing to the center for the excesses of the base rather than apologizing to the base for the excesses of the center. And I also think it's a product of a too little remarked shift in the Liberal Party under Justin Trudeau. Jean Chrétien used to, he had a hundred jokes about how Liberals are in the middle of the road. You know, if you go to the left or the right, then you get run over and so on. And, you know, we're the party, the center, we're the party. And the Trudeau Liberals are consciously not the party of the Canadian center. They are consciously a party of cultural combat and steadfast opposition to what they call the extremist right.

They have been running against the right wing for so long that a kind of right wing, certainly faction that Justin Trudeau would call the right wing, has said, well, OK, you know what? We're going to show up. If you're going to beat us up all the time, we might as well fight. Polyev could disappoint and leave room for an even more extreme right of centre populace to rise. I guess what I'm saying is what we're seeing in the Conservative Party today is a new expression for today's circumstances of longstanding currents in the Conservative Party today is a new expression for today's circumstances of long standing currents in the Conservative movement in the country. Does it guarantee victory? Hell no. I don't see how anyone could live through the last five years since the summer of Trump and Brexit and tell themselves that no future weirdness is possible.

I feel like that's a really good place to end the possibility of future weirdness is possible. I feel like that's a really good place to end the possibility of future weirdness. Paul, thank you so much for this. Hey, thanks for having me on. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you tomorrow.