Conservatives at war with conservatism

Conservative public safety critic Tony Clement gave a very odd interview to CBC Montreal’s morning show last week. He was concerned, he said, about people crossing the border illegally from the United States. “We would like to see fewer of these,” he said.

So far, so good. But then host Mike Finnerty asked how the Conservatives’ desire might be realized. “We should apply the law,” Clement responded. But there’s no indication we aren’t. “What would you like them to do differently?” asked Finnerty. “I would like the government to come up with a plan to apply the law,” responded Clement. It went back and forth like this for a while, and then Clement hung up.

If Clement was somewhat gun-shy, it would be understandable. He knows full well the pride many Canadians take in rehousing any and all refugees who come to their attention. He knows the fearsome power of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s welcoming noises. And he knows Conservatives will drag around their mean-to-immigrants reputation — mostly undeserved, and mostly selfinflicted — for years to come.

Mind you, former Conservative public safety critic and leadership candidate Erin O’Toole had no trouble answering the question. “I’d like to see more RCMP resources (along the border),” he told me Friday, before the leaders debate at the Manning Centre Networking Conference. “(And) the government needs to send a clear signal that the border’s a border. It’s an open border; we’re proud of that. But you cannot just walk in; you will likely be returned (eventually).”

That wasn’t so hard, surely. Trudeau’s messaging has essentially encouraged people to attempt the journey. That is ill advised, and unfair to the border-crossers: most of their refugee claims will likely be rejected. The Conservative public safety critic should not struggle to articulate this.

But the Conservatives have a fraught relationship with conservative policies — one that’s complicated not just by a lurch among some of its supporters toward Trumpian populism, but also by the party’s decidedly mixed record over a decade in government.

The beauty of full-blown Liberal partisanship is there’s almost no policy your government can implement that will disappoint you on principle: pragmatism is the only virtue; ideology is haram. Conservatives, however, are supposed to stand for something other than a collection of shared grievances.

And it’s not clear whether they do anymore.

This was on display Friday at the Manning conference, where the debate crowd loudly booed candidate Michael Chong’s support for a revenue-neutral carbon tax as the most efficient and most conservative way to fight carbon emissions. Several people in the audience literally screamed “No!” Kevin O’Leary got cheers by declaring the whole idea “BS.”

It was on display Saturday at an intelligent debate on carbon pricing, where Mark Cameron, formerly Stephen Harper’s policy director, argued a carbon tax could replace all sorts of other taxes and regulations conservatives purport to hate. “The Alberta NDP government has brought in some incredibly economically destructive policies,” Cameron said, exasperated. “(But) the one policy that practically the entire faculty of the (famously conservative) University of Calgary economics department would support is the one conservatives are up in arms against.”

And it was on display later Saturday during a discussion about CBC’s future. Journalist Brian Lilley and iPolitics publisher James Baxter had plenty of complaints: notably that CBC has vastly overreached its mandate, competing with struggling private media outlets with a massive publicly funded advantage. Carleton journalism prof Dwayne Winseck was there to defend Mother Corp., which is frankly a silly thing to do. If CBC’s television and Internet offerings were a friend or relative, you would stage an intervention: its flagship news broadcast is tatty and insubstantial; it puts ostensible journalists to work compiling tweets on the prime minister’s latest shirtless escapades; its universally loathed “comedy” website is one of the worst Canadian things.

Lilley says dismantle it all; so does leadership candidate Kellie Leitch. Maxime Bernier wants a PBS/NPR-style model; Baxter suggests the ProPublica model.

Those ideas are certainly defensible on principle, but are they practical. CBC is a leviathan; any credible reform proposal has to acknowledge it will take many years and many tears. Conservatives love to hate CBC, and yet in government the party did nothing to reform it.

Now the Liberals are busy pitching more cash down the hole. It was a huge missed opportunity. Preston Manning has argued in the past that conservatives need to muster the courage to defend their solutions in areas that are generally seen as purviews of the left. The environment, immigration and public broadcasting certainly qualify.

There are some bold ideas flying around in this 14-person leadership race.

But there are also silly ones, and impractical ones, and decidedly un-conservative ones, and ones that profoundly threaten the brand. Partly this is inevitable: this is only the second leader this reformed conservative coalition has ever chosen.

But the way this race is shaping up — the campaigns, the characters, the toxic atmosphere south of the border — seems to pose as much risk to Canadian conservatism as to its party.