After Harper, Tories try to rebrand
Conservatives yet to reveal a grand strategy
Conservatives looked back candidly on the 2015 election campaign on Saturday at a fundraising event in Barrie, an hour north of Toronto. Ontario Tory leader Patrick Brown, in particular, politely slammed the campaign for “going too far on the niqab.”
“If we do not defend minority rights, minority communities, of every religion, of every race, then every other cultural group will say, ‘are we next?’” he warned a crowd of 350 or so supporters, hosted by local MP Alex Nuttall. “All those gains that we made in 2011 (in cultural communities), we lost.”
“It’s clear … we lost the ethnocultural communities in this country,” potential leadership candidate Michael Chong echoed, “and we need to regain their trust.”
“Our campaign was almost exclusively about the past,” said Nuttall, who eked out an 86-vote victory in October. “Our motto might as well have been ‘ look what we’ve done, keep us in power,’ where it should have been ‘look at our principles, imagine what we can achieve’. ”
And it wasn’t just the campaign, he stressed. The Conservatives had lost their reputation for “transparency and accountability.” People thought the party cared about staying in power above all. “We started a journey to Ottawa to change it and at some point we became it,” said Nuttall. Oh. Blimey. Is that all? From the outside, one might think the Tories should be in existential crisis. Their first era in power, under their first leader, ended in a very dark, very dumb place: the niqab wedge, the “barbaric cultural practices” tip line, the rally with the Ford Brothers. (Doug was scheduled to speak at Saturday’s event but pulled out — presumably to be with his brother Rob in hospital as he battles cancer.)
Even a smarter campaign would have had to defend a decade in power that unfolded in a way that would have horrified partisans in 2006: disastrous Senate appointments, staunch defence of supply management, mucking up the tax code for political gain, battles with veterans, ritualistic abuse of Parliament.
In Barrie, and at last month’s Manning Centre conference in Ottawa, prominent Tories stressed that conservative principles and a conservative world view are still widely appreciated. Values like “fiscal prudence, affordable taxes, supporting the military to fight the terrorists,” per Tony Clement.
Values like “a belief in free markets and free enterprise,” but also a willingness to “step forward and protect the most vulnerable” when markets fail, according to Chong. Also protecting “individual liberties from an overly intrusive state,” and a willingness, when necessary, to “take a hard-nosed position in international affairs.”
“You work hard, you pay your bills, you save for the future, you sacrifice for your kids and your family, and you help your neighbour,” Lisa Raitt said in Barrie. “That’s pretty much it.”
Naturally, every potential leadership candidate who spoke in Barrie — the aforementioned, plus Kellie Leitch, Erin O’Toole and Maxime Bernier — was bullish on the party’s prospects in 2019. “We can’t lose. We have to win,” said Raitt. “Quite frankly, Canada can’t afford us to lose.”
The earnest pundit’s instinct is to chide such bravado. A party in the Conservatives’ position must ruminate. It must embark on policy safaris. It must reinvent. Earnest pundits spent the better part of a decade advising the Liberals thusly. Then they found a charismatic leader, regrouped, ran a good campaign … and won.
There is certainly no “Conservative Justin Trudeau” in the current field of potential leadership candidates. But for Bernier’s economic libertarianism (no more subsidies, even for Bombardier) and Clement’s idea of defunding CBC television, there isn’t much bold policy on offer.
Chong makes a stirring case for armed defence of the vulnerable as a core Canadian value. Canadian soldiers fought for both his immigrant Dutch mother and his immigrant Hong Kong father, he noted: “I literally would not be standing here today if it wasn’t for the sacrifice of 40,000 Canadian soldiers in two theatres of war.” But that’s about it for soaring rhetoric.
Mind you, the rhetorical and policy bar is not high in this country. The Liberals recently polled their partisans to find their favourite Trudeau quote. It now adorns a T-shirt, which is yours for a $100 donation. The quote is “better is always possible.” I’m sorry, but that’s hilariously dull. And Trudeau is the flashiest PM we’ve had since his father.
Assuming the Liberals don’t screw up spectacularly, can a smaller-government/ lower-taxes party win in 2019? I think it depends on how much of the Conservatives’ public face for the past 10 years was down to Harper: the persecution complex, the hyper-partisanship, the weakness for gutter politics — and, worst of all, the little apparent faith that Canadians could be sold honestly on conservative solutions. And it depends how much of that is now baked into the Conservative party, and the conservative movement that supports it.
OUR CAMPAIGN WAS ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY ABOUT THE PAST. OUR MOTTO MIGHT AS WELL HAVE BEEN ‘LOOK WHAT WE’VE DONE, KEEP US IN POWER.’ — ALEX NUTTALL, MP