Conservatives stand at thorny crossroads
Canadians don’t need to be card-carrying Conservatives to hope that the party gets it right in selecting a new leader. No matter what your political leaning, there is little benefit besides a short-term burst of schadenfreude in cheering for the Tories to botch the election of their leader just as the party faces a crossroads that will set the stage for Canadian politics for years to come.
There’s been plenty of guilty-pleasure train-wreck watching already in a race that boasts too many candidates and little substance. Edmonton was the latest city to get a front-row seat for the contest, in a debate held there last week.
A clown-car surplus of 14 leadership applicants wouldn’t be a problem if it resulted in an exchange of wide-ranging ideas. Sadly, the tone of debate from this overcrowded field of lower-profile former cabinet ministers and mostly unknown MPs comes across more like rabble-rousing than roundtable discourse.
It didn’t help that Rona Ambrose, who would’ve been the best-known and arguably most capable candidate, pulled herself out of the race by becoming interim leader.
Some candidates vying for attention have resorted to populist politicking.
Kellie Leitch’s toxic preoccupation with screening immigrants and even visitors for so-called Canadian values, and Steven Blaney’s proposed ban on niqabs at citizenship ceremonies are dog-whistle overtures that wrongly seek to stoke fear of the “other.”
Political parties in Canada don’t win elections when they veer too far to the right.
Then there’s reality TV personality and tycoon Kevin O’Leary, who surprisingly sounds progressive by comparison on issues such as LGBTQ rights, abortion, immigration and trade, but boasts a streak of narcissism and rule-flouting behaviour — as evidenced by his ditching the debate in Edmonton. Lone wolves rarely make for good leaders in a parliamentary system.
The Conservative party needs to fight off a takeover by candidates who would turn the party into a northern version of Trump’s Republican party and focus on fielding a credible option in the next election.
The stakes are too high for the Conservative party to be hijacked by extreme populist elements that would lead it into irrelevance. Democracy and good government aren’t served if only one of the nation’s major parties stands a chance of ever winning.
The choice ultimately belongs to Conservative party members who participate in the one-member, one-vote contest on May 27. We hope they forget the divisive distractions.