Front Burner - Who wants to lead the Conservative Party of Canada?

Episode Date: January 15, 2020

The race to become the next leader of the Conservative Party of Canada has officially started. There have been a lot of questions about who might run ever since Andrew Scheer quit last December. Today on Front Burner, host Jayme Poisson talks to Maclean's senior writer Paul Wells about how this isn't just about the leader the Conservative party wants — but also what kind of party it wants to be.

This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. The race to become the next leader of the Conservative Party of Canada officially began this week. Ever since Andrew Scheer quit as leader last month, there's been a ton of speculation about who might replace him. I will obviously take the time necessary and speak with a lot of people, first and foremost with my family. We need someone who's capable of piercing the fog of war with laser-like focus. I think Canada needs more doers in politics and less lifers.

I'm ready to lead. I can bring the party together. I can bring a winning strategy. And that's what we need. Today, we break down the conservative leadership race so far with Maclean senior writer Paul Wells. And we'll talk about how this isn't just about the leader the party wants, but also what kind of party it wants to be. This is From Bernard. Paul Wells, hi. How are you? Good, thank you. How are you doing? You know, busy. Yes, I bet. I'm hoping that we can talk today about the conservative leadership race that started this week. I know it did start this week, though it felt like it unofficially began the night of the election,

then ramped up when Andrew Scheer quit as leader back in December. And of course, he said he quit because he wanted to spend more time with family. In order to chart the course ahead, this party, this movement needs someone who can give 100%. But we also know he was facing a ton of criticism about his performance in the last election and questions about party money used to send his kids to private school. And so what kind of shadow do you think Andrew Scheer and his performance in the last election casts on this race? I think the Conservative Party finds itself in kind of an awkward place, so full of hope after Justin Trudeau turned out to be a defeatable opponent,

and so unsure about how to go about beating him. I heard from other Conservatives as soon as Scheer became the leader in 2017, that he was essentially a sacrificial lamb, that Justin Trudeau had way too much momentum. That's actually the way people were talking, I mean, two years before the election he just lost. Right. People thought Trudeau was like a two-term majority PM. Yeah.

And it's a little unfair in retrospect to say, well, why the hell didn't Andrew Scheer win? But a couple of things happened. First of all, Trudeau turned out to be an imperfect champion of his own re-election, right? He turned out to be a deeply flawed leader. And the blackface incident during the campaign was only the latest of several examples of that. A convicted Khalistani terrorist had been invited to the Canadian High Commissioner's dinner for Justin Trudeau in Delhi this evening. The Prime Minister asked me to help out, to find a solution here for SNC. Exactly how many times have you darkened your skin with makeup?

I shared the moments that I recollected. And so it looked like the Conservatives should be able to beat him. And so it looked like the Conservatives should be able to beat him. And then there were elements of Scheer's campaign that were identifiably poorly executed. The attack on carbon taxes. I mean, the Conservatives ended up essentially playing defensive on carbon taxes. They were not expecting that. And then all the value stuff.

And the simply weird answers you would get whenever you would ask Scheer about his position on showing up for pride parades. There's just lots of different ways to show support to a community, and I show my support by, for example, participating in the historic apology for public servants who were persecuted because of their sexual orientation. And so the Conservatives, you know, they spent two

years telling themselves, we can't win and it won't be Scheer's fault if he doesn't win. Right. And now they're saying in respect, boy, we spent two years telling themselves, we can't win and it won't be sure's fault if he doesn't win. And now they're saying in retrospect, boy, we sure should have won and we had better win next time, which is very germane to this leadership race, because now they're looking for the person who can win. Right. And who could be the next prime minister. I want to ask you, there's some news that came out today, this post-mortem that former Foreign Minister John Baird has been working on, apparently it's done. Speaking to sources who have spoken with Mr. Baird about this report,

we're talking about problems with the party's platform, problems with the party's communication, problems with the party's candidate screening. Notably, John Baird also identified the fact that there were too few experienced staffers working on Andrew Scheer's campaign and too much control centralized in the hands of campaign manager Hamish Marshall. But we're hearing reports that the document is essentially being kept secret, kept internal as an internal strategy document. What does that tell you?

Well, such things normally are. So, for instance, after the 2004 federal election ended very similarly with a reduced liberal mandate, but with the Liberals re-elected under Paul Martin. We as Liberals have lost votes. We have lost good members of Parliament. Canadians expected and expect more from us. Both the Liberal campaign and the Conservative campaign went back to the drawing boards and did these sort of post-mortem exercises. Not only were the results never released, the fact of that process was never released. Most parties don't parade around

discussing their strategy. I'm almost more surprised that the existence of this process was announced than that the results are being held back. Oh, interesting. Yeah, and I think the reason it was announced was because that was when Andrew Scheer was still trying to defend his job. Nobody is more disappointed in the results than me. And nobody is more eager to get it right the next time. I just want to talk to you a bit about the logistics here.

So I know there's not very much time. The Conservatives will vote for their next leader at the end of June, but they have to declare by February 27th. And they need to raise enough money, so $300,000 to be able to run and then submit thousands of signatures from seven provinces to show they have the support. And so is this a hard thing to pull off? And what does it mean for who's able to step up here? It's essentially insurmountable if you don't have a kind of an institutional presence in the party already.

Or if you're not Jean Charest, because he has very close to no presence in the party, but he's Jean Charest. He's a bit of a special case. The Conservatives believe they had way too many candidates in 2017, and they want a field that looks like four, not like 14. Okay, let's talk about the candidates. I mean, let's start with Jean Charest, who you just mentioned. This is the former Quebec premier. The federal government now has a counterpart whose leadership will contribute to improve the Canadian Federation. He hasn't confirmed his candidacy publicly, but he's expected to announce later this month.

He is, of course, a veteran of politics, a former leader of the Federal Progressive Conservative Party also. And so is that an advantage for him here? Well, it's huge. He looks like the kind of person who could win elections and form governments because he's done that in Quebec, which is not the federal level, but it's one of the biggest of the junior leagues. The first time in almost a decade,

a federalist government will be in charge. There's going to be a lot of work for the whole team. He's still only 62. I'm getting to an age where I get to say things like only 62. But he's got a wealth of experience, including he's lost elections, so he knows what that feels like, and he knows the mistakes you make that can lose elections for you. The party was in ruins, almost wiped out by Jean Chrétien's liberals. And that, too, he spun as an opportunity. An opportunity for us to rebuild a great national political party

from the ground up. And he's won. And he's had to learn hard the lessons of government. He was not familiar with Quebec provincial politics when he left the federal progressive conservative leadership to go to Quebec in 1998. You know, that being said, he's got two big problems. First of all, culturally, the modern conservative party is deeply influenced by Alberta reform politics of a kind that the progressive Conservatives disdained when Charest was in the federal party. Regional fractions are

huge, both in the Federation right now and in the Conservative Party. There's an awful lot of Conservatives who will not consider a Quebecer for the leader of the party. And there's an awful lot of Conservatives who will say it's retrograde thinking like that that has doomed us for now nearly a decade in opposition and could doom us forever if we let it. Secondly, governing Quebec wasn't all a bed of roses. There was an awful lot of political corruption which has been established in the courts

and which was the result of public commissions and special police investigations and trials and convictions. Testimony suggests that all the major provincial parties received illegal contributions from engineering firms but the commission appears to be building a case that ministers in the former Chateau government were especially vulnerable because of the pressure they were under to raise money for the Liberal Party. As recently as 2016, Quebec's anti-corruption squad, UPAC, was looking into whether Jean Charest broke election financing rules. And that will all be counted as part of Jean Charest's legacy. Right, the idea that he comes with political baggage here. Yeah, so a lot of Conservatives will say he's not their kind of Conservative, and a lot of Conservatives will say he's not their kind of Conservative,

and a lot of Conservatives will say, I don't care what kind of Conservative he is, we don't want to spend an entire writ period answering questions about the last government that he led. Okay. All right, let's move on to Peter McKay, former leader of the Progressive Conservative Party before the merger with the Canadian Alliance, resulting in the President Conservative Party. This agreement ends vote splitting. It means that two plus two can equal more than four. It means winning. McKay was a prominent cabinet minister under Harper. And how different of a choice would he be to Charest? Both were leaders of the progressive conservatives at one time.

Here's where the race starts to seem like an episode of the HBO series Succession. Oh, amazing. Because the conservative leader who recruited Peter McKay into federal politics in 1997 was Jean Charest. And Charest was McKay's first leader. McKay was a Charest protege. Any remaining shred of credibility that government and parliament might have in this country is on the chopping block.

Charest appointed him Tory house leader, and like his father before him, he became a justice critic. And there's every chance that they'll both go in. There's been a little bit of chest beating on the part of supporters of both candidates to the effect that only one of them can run as the progressive conservative standard bearer. That's not necessarily guaranteed. And then you would have open competition between them for support. And McKay would be likelier to rally people who think that Sharae is just simply not a really cultural conservative anymore. And Sharae would tend to, or at least try to, get the support of

people who are just looking for a winner. And Sharae still looks like more of that than Peter McKay. Why? Why does Sh Charest look like more of a winner? Because he's run a government. You know, he's been to Davos. He's been in meetings with U.S. state governors. But McKay's got better continuity in the party. Like, there's not a lot of federal conservatives who say McKay's not one of them because he served in Harper's government,

and Harper had nice things to say about him when he left. A remarkably warm personal even funny tribute. I met the young Peter McKay sexiest male MP and all that it didn't it didn't bother me. Anyway but so the dynamic between Shirei and McKay, if both ran, would be tense and fascinating to watch. Because Shirei would, at some level, see a McKay candidacy as a bit of a betrayal. Right, a mentee running against his mentor. Yeah, like Luke running against Yoda. If you end your training now, you will become an agent of evil. Patience. then free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections.

Another Harper cabinet minister is also expected to enter the race, Pierre Polliver. What I do know is we need someone to run who can stand up and fight back and win. So what kind of conservative politician is he? So liberals tend to discount Paul over because they hate him. He's like an attack dog. Yeah, absolutely.

He's a provocateur in the House of Commons. He likes to get under liberal skin. Well, isn't it funny to listen to a trust fund baby lecturing Canadians about being too rich? He is very disciplined and very controlled on message and likes to simplify and demagogue. He came pretty close to ruining Bill Morneau politically. I asked when the Minister of Finance sold his 680,000 shares in Morneau Chappelle. Would he commit that if I go out and repeat my question in the lobby at this moment, that the finance minister will meet me there and answer the question?

But I always remind partisans of any political party that you're usually going to lose to somebody who you can hardly imagine that somebody that awful would be in politics. It's almost Paul Evers' selling point that he is so bad for liberals' blood pressure. He is a conservative who would make conservatives feel good in their id, in their deepest sense of wanting to be as little like liberals as possible. That being said, the kind of sloganeering, hectoring persona that Polliver has developed in public...

I asked the finance minister to bring in an action plan. He said no again. We wanted more yes, and we got more no. Mr. Speaker, when will the finance minister... It is also an obstacle for him among conservatives, because some conservatives, including, like there's gradations, right, including some very conservative Western conservatives that I've spoken to, say, look, this is great, it's great that Pierre is a bit of a loudmouth and so on,

but we're looking for somebody who could rally Canadians and somebody that could serve as prime minister. And it's not clear that he's shown the seriousness and the forbearance that a good leader has to have. Bolivar is the kind of guy you go looking for if you kind of like the idea of a Canadian Trump. And not every conservative does. Okay. Although I can't help but noting the Toronto Star is reporting he's got some real heavy hitters behind him.

Jenny Bairn, Stephen Harper's former campaign minister, John Baird, former foreign affairs minister. What does that tell you? Well, I should just say, issue a blanket statement that I don't believe any of the candidates we're discussing is a shoe-in, and I don't believe any of them is doomed to lose. They've all got a serious chance. And Polliver gets to the heart of what was essentially the Harper argument,

which is that moderates don't always win. That you don't always win by shaving off the rough edges and minimizing your differences with your opponent. That sometimes you win by entrench minimizing your differences with your opponent. That sometimes you win by entrenching your differences with your opponent and trying to pull them into territory in the debate that they're uncomfortable in. That's how Harper beat Paul Martin. Mr. Martin, in his business career, paid his taxes often outside of the country at lower tax rates. Mr. Martin operated his business under the flags of foreign countries. I'm just pointing out that somebody in a glass house shouldn't throw stones.

It makes sense that a lot of people with serious history sort of prosecuting that culture war on Stephen Harper's behalf, like Jenny Byrne, are said to be sympathetic to a Paulover candidacy. And I should also say about Paulover that in private, he's thoughtful, very articulate, widely read. It's just, I find it interesting that he does not ever let that side of him out in public. He thinks that it doesn't pay for him politically. Okay. And, you know, last big player I want to talk to you about, a potential big player, is Ronna Ambrose. And she has not said that she's not running. This is the former interim leader. We became the best opposition to liberal arrogance this country has ever seen.

What kind of impact could she have on this race if she threw her hat into the ring? could she have on this race if she threw her hat into the ring? So I think Ronna Ambrose is unlikely to run. This is not a shtick when she says that I'm happy in my new life. I'm quite content to be out of politics. These are things that she means. But even more than Paulover, she manages to confound some of these divisions within the party that we've been discussing. So she's from, she's not just from the West,

she's from ground zero, she's from Calgary, and yet she's seen to be palatable to urban voters and Eastern voters. She has no problem with marching in pride parades, and yet the sort of rock-ribbed, social conservative constituency doesn't seem to hold it against her. She's a woman, so it'd be real hard to argue

that she's anti-feminist. People who dare to criticize her within the party, what they will tend to say is, you needed to pay closer attention to her when she was a cabinet minister, because she was not a rock star cabinet minister in environment or intergovernmental affairs or anything else. And she was interim leader at a time when everyone was exhausted from a historic election and nobody had much fight in them. I just believe that we have such a strong message to tell and I look forward to sharing that optimistic message with Canadians. And that's very different from being a campaigning leader in a campaign. But, you know, everyone's got pros and cons and everyone's got someone to express that. And it's not too surprising that people are willing to be critical of Ronna Ambrose.

She would be I would not want to be campaigning against her if she decides to run. I also wanted to ask you when this this leadership race really gets up and running? You mentioned at the beginning of this conversation the social issues that created problems for the conservatives in the last campaign, LGBTQ rights, the abortion question, the lack of climate policies. And so how do you think these are going to play in the leadership race? So to some extent, a leadership campaign is an imperfect vehicle for testing a potential prime minister. To become prime minister, you have to attract people who didn't vote for your party the last time. And those people don't show up at leadership debates. People who show up at

leadership debates have voted for your party all their lives and can't imagine voting for anyone else. The dynamic in a debate, in a campaign rally, in the meetings in small rooms with individual delegates, the campaign is always about essentially flattering the preconceptions of the party. You know, no carbon taxes for me. And why do those social groups have to agitate so much for recognition? You know, that kind of discourse is what gets rewarded in a leadership race. And it's that kind of discourse that crushed Andrew Scheer three months ago. There's always the danger of a party sleepwalking to the wrong choice.

There's always the danger of a party sleepwalking to the wrong choice. There's always the danger of a party papering over important differences that then get exploited by their opponents at the next election. And I actually think that the conservatives I've spoken to are relatively aware of that. And they're relatively intent on having a leadership process that's a real debate about real questions. on having a leadership process that's a real debate about real questions. But the race has its own dynamic. And the race rewards insincere diplomacy, things like that. And so, you know, we'll see. So is what you're saying that it's possible that the conservative leadership race could produce a leader who isn't necessarily the right candidate to win an election?

isn't necessarily the right candidate to win an election. And I'm pleased to be on the record saying that even before Andrew Scheer was deposed as leader. Being disappointed in the result you just got is no guarantee of getting a better result the next time. The Liberals found that out between 2000 and 2011. The Liberals lost 80% of their MPs. out, between 2000 and 2011, the Liberals lost 80% of their MPs. And the NDP, since 2011, since the orange wave, the nearly 100 seats that Jack Layton won in 2011, the NDP have lost about three quarters of their MPs since then. It's not clear in retrospect that getting rid of Tom Mulcair was the most brilliant thing the NDP ever did. And similarly, finding Andrew Scheer to be a deeply flawed leader is no guarantee of finding a better one. And I thought the Conservatives should have thought harder about that before they ditched Scheer, and they should keep it in mind now.

Okay, Paul Wells, thank you so much. Thank you. So before we go today, Andrew Scheer on Tuesday tweeted about the downing of Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752. He said the responsibility for the crash lies solely with Iran. This is also the stance that House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy took today, who insisted that America was not at fault for what happened. This was in response to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saying that he believed that if there was no escalation recently between Iran and the United States, then Canadians would be at home with their families. This is something that happens when you have conflict and war.

Innocents bear the brunt of it, and it is a reminder why all of us need to work so hard on de-escalation. In the meantime, a couple more developments on this story to tell you about. The RCMP has been assigned to help identify the remains of the Canadians killed in the crash. And the New York Times was the first to report that not one, but two missiles struck the Ukrainian plane. This is according to a newly released video. That's it for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner and talk to you tomorrow.

For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.