DOES SCHEER HAVE REINS?
Maxime Bernier grabbed the spotlight last week by quitting the Conservative Party of Canada and vowing to start a new right-wing movement. But following the Conservative policy convention last weekend, it appears that it won’t be the maverick MP who poses the biggest threat to a Conservative election victory in 2019.
Card-carrying Conservatives themselves will play the role of election spoiler, namely the grassroots members who pushed several resolutions on divisive issues into the limelight at the convention. While the Conservative party bills itself as a big-tent coalition of libertarians, Red Tories and social conservatives, it’s the party’s outspoken and politically active right wing which dominated the conversation at the CPC gathering last weekend.
The convention saw heated debates on controversial policies regarding abortion, climatechange policy, irregular migration, euthanasia and gender identity. The most high-profile proposal could have reopened the abortion debate in Canada. The resolution called for removing a line in party policy stipulating that a Conservative government would not introduce new legislation regulating abortion.
The proposal was narrowly defeated but the fact that 47 per cent of delegates supported it sends a message to Canadians about how much sway social conservatives hold in the party.
Although Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer is not required to adopt the policy resolutions that were endorsed into his election platform, they are indicators of the rank-and-file’s priorities. Canadians now know that, should the Conservatives form government, its base favours dumping a federally imposed carbon tax and abandoning any say in provincial climatechange policy; getting tough on irregular migration; imposing restrictions on medically aided dying, pulling abortion funding from foreign aid and ending birthright citizenship.
Scheer has promised not to reopen debate on abortion or any other divisive social issue, but there’s no sign yet that Scheer possesses the same leadership acumen and iron grip over the CPC which United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney wields over his provincial party.
Kenney declared, “I hold the pen on the platform” when delegates at the UCP’S founding policy conference voted in May to have parents told when their child is involved in a gay-straight alliance.
It’s unclear who would drive a future federal Conservative government, the leader or his socially conservative base — and that uncertainty might be enough to scare away voters.