O’Toole is chasing Kenney and Ford in a race to the bottom

How many dead horses can Canada’s conservative movement flog before it makes itself irrelevant to mainstream voters?

On Parliament Hill, Erin O’Toole’s Conservative party might as well be on a mission to kill in the bud any early buyers’ remorse Canadians may feel about handing Justin Trudeau a third term.

It was not enough that the Conservatives took hits from both sides of the vaccination mandate debate by sitting on the fence during the federal election campaign.

Now O’Toole’s caucus — or at least some of its vocal elements — would engage in a losing battle over the mandatory vaccination protocol to be put in place in time for the reopening of the House of Commons next month.

The decision to bar anyone who is not fully vaccinated from entering the parliamentary precinct as of Nov. 22 was made behind closed doors by the small group of MPs who represent the main parties — including the Conservatives — on the board of internal economy.

On that basis, the Official Opposition can try — as some of its members would — to make the issue a matter of parliamentary privilege and bring it to the floor of the House at the first opportunity next month. But even on that battlefield, the ultimate outcome is not in doubt.

Should it ever come to a vote of the full House, the only question will be whether some Conservative MPs choose to break ranks and join their New Democratic, Green, Bloc and Liberal colleagues in supporting the mandatory vaccination protocol.

At week’s end, it is unclear whether O’Toole — who has said his party would respect the rules — has the moral authority to convince his caucus to take a pass on a lose-lose fight.

He can always take solace in the notion that there will come a time when the pandemic and the party’s mixed messages on vaccinations will fade from the radar. Come the next election, the issue is unlikely to come back to bite the Conservatives.

But the same cannot be said about the economy. And here again, the Conservative team seems bent on making Trudeau and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland look like the adults in the room, for partly lost in the controversy over the Conservatives’ reluctance to comply with mandatory vaccinations was their amateurish approach to the inflation debate.

As my colleague Heather Scoffield noted in a column, it is ridiculous for the Conservatives to pretend that Trudeau is responsible for rising inflation rates.

If that is what O’Toole and his shadow cabinet really believe, then they are out to lunch. If it is not, then they are taking voters for fools.

The allegation only serves to diminish the Official Opposition’s credibility. The fact that the Conservative attacks are backed by conspiracy theories peddled by MP Pierre Poilievre about the Bank of Canada compounds the damage

At this rate, it will not take long for the party to squander its economic management credentials.

Before laying the blame for inflation on Trudeau, O’Toole might have considered how poorly the same approach has worked out for his Alberta ally.

This week, a report commissioned by Jason Kenney’s government debunked some of the premier’s favourite canards.

Two years and $3.5 million later, the province’s inquiry into anti-Alberta energy activities found no evidence of a sketchy global conspiracy led by an environmental fifth column to undermine the province’s oil and gas industry. Where the premier argued malfeasance was at work, the report found only the rightful exercise of free speech.

As for Kenney’s oft-repeated assertions that Trudeau’s climate change policies are designed to destroy the livelihood of the province, they apparently did not make much of an impression on the inquiry. Its most caustic criticisms are directed at the Alberta government itself.

Not that this necessarily matters to Kenney as he leads a charge against yet another federal windmill, this time in the shape of the equalization policy.

In previous lean times, federal Conservatives tended to look to strong premiers in Ontario and Alberta to fill a leadership vacuum.

Peter Lougheed and William Davis were dominant Tory figures during the reign of Pierre Trudeau.

Ralph Klein and Mike Harris similarly acted as counterweights to the federal Liberals during Jean Chrétien’s tenure.

But Kenney’s star has fallen to precipitous depths in his own province, and Doug Ford’s government has essentially taken itself out of some of the most existential policy debates of the times. The throne speech read out in the Ontario legislature earlier this month even managed to not mention climate change a single time.

While the federal Conservatives look increasingly rudderless, Canada’s leading Conservative premiers in Alberta and Ontario are more likely to drag down the conservative movement than to anchor it.

At both levels, it is as if the tail is leading the dog.