Divisive future may loom for Tory voters
OTTAWA— More than a decade after Stephen Harper reunited the right, the two main factions that make up his party are locked in acrimonious provincial battles. They could herald a divisive future for Canada’s conservative movement.
In Ontario, the campaign to replace Tory leader Tim Hudak has turned into a fight to the finish between the Progressive Conservative old guard and a Reform-style right wing. The winner will be known on May 9.
In Alberta, a resurgent Wildrose party has taken an early lead on the ruling Tories in the campaign for a May 5 provincial election.
By now both campaigns have become must-watch events for all federal Conservatives, and not just because it is a rare political junkie who doesn’t crave a horse race.
With less than six months to go to a competitive federal election, the sight of progressive conservatives and red-meat ones at each other’s throats in the two provinces that are the pillars of Harper’s coalition is hardly a welcome one.
Against the backdrop of the Duffy trial and the Conservative Senate tribulations, the last thing Harper needs is a set of battles that put more stress on party unity. And yet that is exactly what he is getting.
Every protagonist in the two fights has a direct connection to Harper’s government. Each can be seen as a proxy for one of the rival clans that have coexisted, almost always uneasily, within the conservative movement.
Brian Jean — the rookie leader of the Wildrose party — served in Harper’s caucus for a decade before resigning his Fort McMurray seat a bit more than a year ago.
Ontario leadership candidate Patrick Brown is a three-term GTA MP who, like Jean, has toiled on the backbenches of the government.
Over their time in the House of Commons, they burnished their social conservative credentials. Both opposed same-sex marriage. Their voting record on abortion has earned each of them the approval of the anti-abortion Campaign Life Coalition.
Jim Prentice, whose task it is to prolong the reign of the long-stand- ing Alberta Tory dynasty, was once a senior minister in Harper’s government. Before that, he was a leading contender for the leadership of the defunct federal Progressive Conservative party.
Christine Elliott is the widow of Harper’s most influential minister, the late Jim Flaherty. Her leadership bid enjoys the support of some of the prime minister’s leading Ontario ministers as well as from the province’s senior red Tories.
In the current Conservative pecking order, the premier of Alberta comes second only to the prime minister, just a rung or two above the leader of the Ontario Tory opposition.
It was not so long ago that federal Conservative strategists had cause to take for granted that Prentice and Elliott would be in those two positions come next fall’s election campaign.
After Prentice co-opted most of the Wildrose caucus, including its then-leader Danielle Smith, into his government late last year the expectation on Parliament Hill was that his first election as premier would be a cakewalk.
Instead, a manoeuvre calculated to neuter the provincial opposition has backfired and turned Prentice’s snap election campaign into a threeway fight between the incumbents, the Wildrose and the NDP.
In Ontario, the Tory leadership similarly seemed to be Elliott’s for the taking, until Brown came out of right field to out-organize his rival in the ground war for new members and rally the right of the party behind him.
From Harper’s perspective, the timing could not be worse. He needs the votes of moderate conservative voters, especially in Ontario, to hang on to power and a governing majority next fall.
Rubbing shoulders with Elliott and Prentice is immensely more likely to advance that goal than sharing a federal campaign stage with recent social conservative members of his own caucus. And then, win or lose, next fall’s election is widely expected to be Harper’s last.
It is not hard to construe the ongoing Alberta and Ontario battles for control of the right as a prelude to the divisive war that could attend the campaign for his succession. Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.