Tuesday is the deadline for entries in the Conservative Party of Canada leadership race, version 2022, and a realist, casting a beady eye over the field, might well opine that, regardless of which candidate is declared leader when the preferential ballots are counted on Sept. 10, the real winner will be Justin Trudeau, the Liberal Party and its sidekick on the centre-left, the New Democratic Party.
With the race skewed so heavily to the right, our realist would conclude that Canada’s next prime minister will not be one of: Pierre Poilievre, the frontrunning Ontario MP, who sounds less and less like a Conservative and more like a hybrid, part radical right populist from the Donald Trump School of Political Deception, part aspiring libertarian from the Maxime Bernier Order for the Abolition of Government; Jean Charest, Tory leader of old and Liberal premier of Quebec who is persona non grata to party’s right as a turncoat Liberal, committed moderate, and no friend of Stephen Harper; Patrick Brown, the quixotic mayor of Brampton who has never seen a job he did not want to run for, and is seeking this one from Charest’s back pocket; Ontario MPs and ambitious right fielders Leslyn Lewis, who may have some momentum but can’t beat Poilievre, and Scott Atkinson, who has none and won’t come close to competing; Leona Alleslev, former deputy opposition leader (appointed by Andrew Scheer, after she defected from the Liberals); or Roman Baber, Ontario MPP (an independent since Premier Doug Ford booted him from the government caucus for his anti-vaccine views).
Nor will be any last-minute hopeful who comes out the woodwork before the entry deadline. Hopeful, and reckless enough to incur an incapacitating debt (as Peter MacKay did in 2020) by spending up to $7 million for the slimmest of chances to steer a shell of a party that seems intent on going down a dead-end alley to political oblivion.
The only outcome that would discombobulate the Liberals would a clear victory by Jean Charest – a convincing enough win to cause the CPC turn away from its movement toward its hard right base on the Prairies and back to the centre-right where it belongs. Back to a place where it can challenge the Liberals’ hold on Quebec and compete with the Grits for the support of moderate voters in the big cities and suburbs of English Canada. A CPC with sensible policies to appeal to males under 50 and to women voters of all ages.
Parliamentary democracy flourishes when it has a strong, responsible opposition to hold government to account. Canada has not had that kind of opposition since the Trudeau Liberals came to power in 2015. In opposition, the Conservatives have let themselves become angry, bitter and negative, increasingly so as they cycle through multiple leadership changes. Where a strong and responsible opposition would present reasonable alternatives to government policies, these frustrated Conservatives offer delay and obstruction.
There is no reason to expect improvement with a new leader. Poilievre got a head start, took an early lead, has campaigned harder than his opponents, draws much larger crowds and is the only candidate to generate actual excitement. He does it by spreading the extremist poppycock of the trucker convoy, that Canadians have lost their rights and freedoms – stolen, principally, by Justin Trudeau and the Liberals. It’s nonsense but many people, feeling ignored by their governors and left behind by society’s changes, are ready, as the Occupation of Ottawa demonstrated, to buy the snake oil Poilievre is selling.
Canadian voters are traditionally centrists, a shade to the right or tad to the left, depending on the times. They stay away from parties on the extremes, left or right. Although a hard right CPC, led by Pierre Poilievre might not seem to pose a serious threat to the centre-left Liberal-NDP alliance, our realist might observe that it will be three years before the next election, three years for a radical populist to transform his leadership following into a political cult, just as Donald Trump has done. The prospect of a Trump-style cult in Canada could be all it would take for Trudeau to persuade himself that he will need to run again in 2025.
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens is a former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail. His new book, Flora! A Woman in a Man’s World, co-authored with the late Flora MacDonald, is short-listed for the 2022 Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com