Conservatives cry over Bernier’s spilled milk
Party faithful outraged at crime of telling the truth
To my knowledge the facts are not in dispute. Andrew Scheer won the Conservative leadership race last year by the narrowest of margins, less than one per cent of the available “points” under the party’s system of equal weighting of ridings. The difference was supplied by several ridings in Quebec, and specifically by the votes of thousands of dairy farmers.
It wasn’t that these Quebec dairy farmers had any great personal enthusiasm for Scheer; I imagine they’d be hard pressed to pick him out of a crowd. Neither would most of them have had any attachment to the party, before or since. They joined for one day, and for one purpose — to vote for Scheer, or rather to vote against Maxime Bernier, his nearest rival — and, having completed that task, most of them were never seen again.
Why did they want to stop Bernier? Because he had campaigned to abolish supply management, the official euphemism for what would otherwise be known as a state-sanctioned price-fixing scheme in force in several agricultural industries, dairy among them.
And why did they vote for Scheer? Because he stood the best chance of beating Bernier. And because, in return for the support of the dairy cartel’s thousands of instant voters, he promised to maintain the status quo.
You would think this would be something of a scandal. The leadership race was hijacked by members of a vested interest who not only had no prior involvement with the party, but most likely wished it ill: what in civilized countries are called “entryists.” The winner of the race, the party’s current leader, sold himself and the party, not just to the highest bidder, but to a particularly venal bidder at that, with a direct financial interest in the outcome.
The result was to leave the party hitched to what is widely acknowledged as an indefensible policy, one that takes food off the table of the country’s poorest families for the benefit of a dwindling number of wealthy quota owners. That the policy — combining internal supply quotas, sky-high external tariffs, and heavy doses of government regulation — makes a mockery of every principle for which the party allegedly stands is probably worth mentioning as well.
So naturally the response of party supporters, on being lately reminded of all this, was fury … at the guy who pointed it out.
That would be Bernier. In his forthcoming book, the plangently titled Doing Politics Differently: My Vision for Canada, a chapter of which was released this week, the former industry minister recalls how Scheer’s campaign courted the dairy industry’s “fake Conservatives,” who were “only interested in blocking my candidacy and protecting their privileges.” He notes the ballooning of party membership in Quebec just before the vote, from 6,000 to 16,000, and its collapse back to 6,000 shortly afterward.
And that’s about it. He does not attribute his defeat solely to his stand on supply management: indeed he thinks he won more votes than he lost over it. Neither does he question the legitimacy of Scheer’s victory — indeed he acknowledges that Scheer’s tactic is “fair game in a democratic system.” He merely points out that this sort of squalid trading of votes for favours is “why so many people are so cynical about politics.”
If the process was flawed, moreover, the policy is abhorrent, the Corn Laws of our times. As Bernier writes, “it’s the total opposite of a free market, and a conservative party should not be supporting it.”
As I say, I don’t think anyone in the party seriously disputes any of this. Scheer even joked about it at the annual press gallery dinner shortly after his leadership win, pointedly drinking from a carton of milk after protesting he “made deals with nobody” and didn’t owe his victory “to anybody in the Conservative (Party).” Ha ha. Yet for the crime of speaking the truth it is Bernier, not Scheer, who is on trial.
A fellow MP sternly admonished him that this sort of “freelancing” — taking a public position on a matter of public policy — is “an unacceptable challenge to the caucus, to the leader.” Another decried the “timing” as “unfortunate.” Conservative pundits were especially savage. Bernier was accused, variously, of naivete, hypocrisy, vanity, divisiveness and sour grapes. He knew the rules going in. He signed up his share of new members. This is the way it’s always been. Etc.
All of which may be true, but none of which makes anything Bernier said untrue. Rather than shooting the messenger, I’d have thought people who truly had the party’s interests in mind would be taking his criticisms to heart. Spare me the worldly sighs that all parties choose their leaders in this way: should they? Never mind the knowing smirks about how candidates have always prostituted themselves to special interests: are you comfortable with that?
And as for the policy itself: unless you are prepared to make the case for supply management on its merits — to defend forcing consumers to pay two and three times the market price for basic food items as a good and just use of state power — then it is you who should explain why that should continue to be party policy, not Bernier who should be charged with threatening party “unity.”
If the policy is wrong, it should be changed. If the process that produced the policy was wrong, it, too, should be changed. And if the leader sold both party and principle to win his position, well, that’s at least worth pointing out.