Manning stock in the age of Trump-mania
Tory alarmism has replaced serious debate
THE CENTRAL CONCEIT OF THE O’LEARY CAMPAIGN: IT IS NOT REALLY ABOUT YOU, CONSERVATIVE MEMBERS, IT’S ABOUT HIM. THIS POLITICS THING IS MORE OF A HOPE THAN A COMMITMENT. — COLUMNIST JOHN IVISON
Some accused this year's Manning Centre Networking Conference of pitching itself to the rightwing populism of the moment, rather than to immutable conservative principles — hence its two sessions on Islamic extremism, one on campus censorship and another that wondered, “Down with the elites?” (I'm told the answer was yes.)
I arrived in Ottawa prepared to defend the program. It would be folly not to explore those topics at a time when some of the conservative movement has embraced a noxious brand of populism: obsessive, conspiracist, sure that whatever infuriates one's enemies must constitute good policy. Some in this camp seem ready to abandon the Conservatives altogether. Ezra Levant's Rebel Media knows what it hates, but it doesn't love any of the party leadership candidates.
In his opening speech to the conference, Preston Manning mentioned the rise of Donald Trump and his European analogues, and suggested principled conservatives need to do better than simply denouncing, decrying and disavowing.
“The answer to manifestations of Trump-o-mania is not Trump-o-phobia,” he said, “but political leadership that addresses the root causes of voter alienation and redirects negative political energy into positive ends.” He likened a populist uprising to a “rogue” oil well that blows out of control; you have to carefully dig a relief well at just the right angle to lower the pressure.
Goodness knows conservatives could use some pressure-release on the question of Islamic extremism. Ten days ago, four leadership candidates — including two former cabinet ministers — attended a rally whose premise was that a private member's motion in the House of Commons was a step toward Sharia law and an attack on free speech.
Alas, the terrorism panel released no pressure at all.
“Motion 103 … is essentially akin to the blasphemy laws,” said Raheel Raza, president of the Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow. (M-103 isn't a law of any sort, and never will be.)
She took umbrage at the suggestion by M-103's sponsor, Liberal MP Iqra Khalid, that “more than one million Canadians … suffer because of Islamophobia … on a daily basis.”
Raza: “Seriously? As though in Canada racism and bigotry, only against Muslims, is an everyday issue?” (Six parishioners were recently murdered in a Quebec City mosque. M-103 condemns “all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination.”)
Thomas Quiggin of the Terrorism and Security Experts network then rattled through a deck of slides that would have left an uninformed viewer thinking most every mosque in Canada — including the Islamic Cultural Centre in Quebec City, site of the massacre — was funnelling funds to extremist groups. He suggested the English-language media didn't report on a pig's head having been delivered to the mosque a year earlier. (They did. Why wouldn't they?)
He suggested intelligence officials should have known about the pig's head, and that the mosque was supporting extremists, and that the gunman was intending to take his revenge — Quiggin suspects — for that support.
“The cycle of violence has come to Canada as it has in France, Belgium, Germany, the Middle East, and we can no longer deny this,” said Quiggin, and that's bonkers.
The facts in evidence were the attacks in Saint-Jean-surRichelieu (one dead), Parliament Hill attack (one dead) and … Quebec City, where the victims were Muslims at prayer!
There are things being said in some Canadian mosques that would cause outrage if they were more widely reported. Why they are not more widely reported is a good question; political correctness is a very plausible answer. But Manning attendees were promised a sober look at the problem, including an effort to “define how serious (it) really is.”
What they got were two alarmists. Policy has never been the Manning conference's forte, but I swear panellists used to mildly disagree with each other now and again, and to have vastly superior resumes.
Four years ago, after Tom Flanagan's comments about child pornography and Wildrose candidate Alan Hunsperger's “lake of fire” missive, Manning warned conservatives against “intemperate and ill-considered remarks by those who hold … positions deeply but in fits of carelessness or zealousness say things that discredit the family.”
The first question from the audience at the terrorism panel was whether Raza thought it should be illegal to call Muhammad a pedophile.
She didn't. Neither do I. But this kind of nonsense has great potential to harm the Conservative Party, Michael Chong said Friday in an interview; the last place it should be happening is at Manningstock. And Chong is fairly emblematic of the mess the party now confronts.
He supported M-103, a meaningless motion. But he also supports doing away with the hate-speech section of the Criminal Code, a very meaningful restriction on free speech. He supports a simple, revenue-neutral, Economics 101 carbon tax to fight emissions, instead of command-and-control regulations.
He was roundly booed for the later during Friday's leaders debate. Mainstream Conservatives, never mind the new fringe, sneer that he ought to run for the Liberals.