Greater inclusiveness urged within party
Future leadership, treatment of minorities stood out as sticking points in Vancouver
VANCOUVER— Conservative leadership candidates and hopefuls cruised convention halls here calling for a more inclusive Conservative party as grassroots members got a hard look at what went wrong.
But it was the voice of Uruzurum Heer, a 47-year-old woman from Brampton, that rang loudest, condemning the identity politics that the party practised in the last campaign.
At an election review session where party officials candidly acknowledged the past campaign was fraught with numerous strategic and tactical mistakes, Heer’s voice shook with emotion as she tore a strip off the national party’s decision-makers.
“This last election campaign was a disaster,” said Heer, a delegate who works for Brampton MP Kyle Seeback. “I’m also a Muslim and this campaign targeted us, unfairly.”
Listening in the audience were defeated immigration minister Chris Alexander, who announced a police snitch line for so-called barbaric cultural practices, and former campaign director Jenni Byrne.
“This party worked actively and aggressively against my people,” Heer said. When some in the audience objected it didn’t, she insisted, “it did, it did.”
“It went against jihadis, terrorists; it didn’t differentiate who Muslims were versus the enemies. We don’t support terrorism either.”
That negative campaign drove many of Canada’s 1.1million Muslims who might never have cast a ballot to vote against the party, she said, as she challenged the party’s claim to being inclusive.
“At this convention there are probably less than a handful of us. Think about it. Is this party really reaching out to everybody? This country belongs to everyone, including me. For the first time I felt that I didn’t belong here, and this is my country. It’s unfair. It was unfair to my people,” said Heer, who wore a bright blue head scarf and struggled to hold back tears.
“It might be eight or 10 years before this party comes back. I want you to think about how you will treat — and how you will include — everyone.”
Party executive director Dustin Van Vugt, who had given a blunt rundown of the errors made in the past campaign, struggled to reply to her. He pointed to Markham-Unionville MP Bob Saroya, of South Asian descent, who took a Liberal-held seat.
“Is there one answer I can give today? There’s no answer I can give today, other than we know we have to win and to win we need a very large tent that includes everybody.”
Reporters caught up with Byrne afterward who said the campaign had “absolutely no choice but to speak on” the wearing of a niqab, or Muslim head scarf, because of a federalcourt decision that overturned a federal policy to disallow women wearing head scarves in public citizenship ceremonies. “We had to react because of the court case,” said Byrne. “It was a long-standing policy that we made an announcement on.” She dashed into an elevator and avoided further questions.
Interim leader Rona Ambrose declared onstage here that the Conser- vatives are already the party of women and new Canadians, and policies that support them. But she said the party didn’t do a good enough job of communicating that in the last campaign.
However, Ambrose’s view doesn’t matter as much as the view of those in the race to become the full-time leader and replace Stephen Harper.
Of three declared candidates for the leadership, two are putting inclusiveness at the heart of their campaigns — Michael Chong and Kellie Leitch.
Chong’s message is clear. “The goal of my leadership campaign to attract a new generation of conservatives to the party and attract new voters to our party,” Chong said in an interview with the Star.
Leitch pointed to the party’s decision to finally debate a move to drop as party policy the traditional definition of marriage — a union of a man and woman — as evidence the party is open and inclusive.
The third declared candidate, libertarian Maxime Bernier, is selling a message of small government.
Businessman Kevin O’Leary, the former Dragons’ Den star, is touted as a possible leadership candidate, but he has not declared officially. He told CPAC television that he bought his membership card in the Conservative party in the past 48 hours, and is now “a shareholder.” He said he is motivated to take the stage as a Canadian resident and taxpayer who opposes job-killing tax policies of the federal and Ontario Liberals that “scares away jobs . . . It just pisses me off.”
Other potential leadership candidates are still in the wings, including former Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer, Lisa Raitt, Tony Clement and Michelle Rempel.
But most eyes here are on those who have not yet declared and are clearly struggling with their decisions: Jason Kenney and Peter MacKay.
Kenney told reporters here that he will make a decision by the end of the summer, that a year is too long to campaign, and that if there was another candidate who would carry the banner for values he embraces, he would not run. That may be his good friend Scheer, sources have told the Star. In an interview with the Star, MacKay sounded like the indecisive Danish prince struggling mightily with whether to enter the fray.
“The reasons I left politics are the same reasons I’m reluctant to come back. I have a very young family, I did it for 18 years, and I have to, at 50, consider what’s in the best interests of my family.”
“I know the toll that it takes and I admire people who do it with young kids, including the prime minister (Trudeau). I think it’s commendable, but it comes at a cost, as Mr. Harper spoke about last night,” said MacKay.
MacKay spoke wryly about the impact of O’Leary’s possible entry into the race, given the unilingual businessman’s remarks dismissing Conservative MPs. “I think it’s unhelpful and distracting and not really in the direction I see our party going.”