Conservatives can’t win by being the party of angry old men.
If the federal Liberals are to be, for the foreseeable future, a party of the centre-left, then what are the implications for Conservatives? As old- guard Tories, Prairie conservatives, classical liberals and libertarians converge on Ottawa this week for their annual Manning Centre confab, it seems a timely question.
There will, of course, be a great deal of pussyfooting around this weekend about what most Conservatives understand to be true, in the wake of last October’s drubbing.
Immutable truth No. 1: Granddad, it’s time for you to take a step back. Conservatives can’t win by being the party of angry old men who shake their fists at reporters, endearing though such cantankerousness may be.
Immutable truth No. 2: Lynton Crosbie’s niqab gambit, if indeed that was the Australian consultant’s brainchild, was an unmitigated disaster. The party can’t win without support from new Canadians and ethnic and linguistic minorities, by the hundreds of thousands.
Immutable truth No. 3: The Harper Conservatives were always more Harper than conservative. The party can’t win unless it stands for principles that are coherent and consistent, distinct from its competitors’ and popular enough to push its vote share from 30 per cent, its rocksolid base, to 40 per cent or more, assuming a continuation of Canada’s first-past-thepost electoral system.
Here’s the good news, for Conservative supporters: There is a way forward that addresses each of these points, and is in fact being eased by the Liberal and New Democratic parties’ own strategic shifts. And the bad news: It requires candid selfexamination and a transformation in mindset, something for which Conservatives have in the recent past shown no appetite.
The backdrop, as I wrote about last time, is that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau now leads a de facto coalition of the Canadian centre-left that has absorbed all the electoral gains made by New Democrats in the Jack Layton era, while drawing in several million new voters, with support across all age ranges. Trudeau triangulates the electorate in a way few others could: Left- leaning Baby Boomers remember his dad, while Left- leaning millennials appreciate his youthful vibe. It remains to be seen how long this will last — but for now, he is a political force to be reckoned with.
One consequence of the new Liberal coalition, though, is that it prevents this PM from confidently straddling the centre-right as Grits such as Jean Chretien, Paul Martin, John Manley and Frank McKenna once did. Former leadership candidate Martha Hall Findlay and, paradox- ically, former New Democrat and Liberal interim leader Bob Rae, were the last remaining standard-bearers for the Liberal party’s conservative wing. Both have left politics.
This opens up the great opportunity for the Conservative party, which is to do what Trudeau once seemed inclined to do but has not done: That is to embrace moderate libertarianism, cutting right and left simultaneously, in the process reclaiming the “progressive” mantle set aside following the Mulroney years from 1984 to 1993, and appropriating the fiscal street cred of Chretien Liberalism.
This is not a Frankenstein monster: It’s classical liberalism. There’s evidence the party is already moving in this direction, in Parliament anyhow. The foundation is there. What’s needed is a push.
Such a party would be unabashedly pro- free- trade, as the Conservatives have long been, to their credit. It would add the next logical step, strong advocacy for free competition and consumer protection, which Conservatives have not yet done. This would mean pressing for an end to supply management in milk and dairy, which raises the cost of living across the board and is particularly harmful to those on fixed and low incomes.
Such a party would be firmly pro- Canadian military and pro-veteran, advocating for an independent, robust foreign policy backed up by a small, expertly trained and superbly equipped army, air force and navy, funded at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization standard of two per cent of GDP, rather than the current one per cent. As the Conservative party is already now doing, such a party would advocate for a comprehensive role, which includes combat, in the global war against radical Islamism.
Such a party would advocate for responsible, effective, pragmatic environmental policy, leading with a push to develop safe new sources of carbon- free mass energy, especially nuclear, that could among other things reduce the carbon footprint of extracting bitumen from the oilsands. Such a party would advocate for pipelines unequivocally, seeking to build popular support rather than remaining neutral, based on the voluminous evidence that alternative modes of transport are dirtier and riskier.
Such a party would be enthusiastically pluralistic, embracing the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the values enshrined in it, which have bipartisan roots in John G. Diefenbaker’s 1960 Bill of Rights, and a compassionate refugee policy. Here too the foundation already exists, in the Conservative response thus far to the Trudeau government’s Syrian refugee initiative, which has been constructive.
TRUDEAU TRIANGULATES THE ELECTORATE.