History, Politics and Policy in the Conservative Leadership Race
Cloudfront.net
Charles McMillan
May 20, 2022
Since the passing of Sir John A. Macdonald in 1891, the Conservative Party, under all the official titles through which it has cycled, has been, with the Liberal Party, one of two dominating Canada’s political landscape. Since Macdonald, only one Conservative prime minister, Brian Mulroney, has won two consecutive majorities. What lessons might be drawn from this for the Conservative leadership race to be settled in September?
By the turn of the 21st century, the dawn of the internet had transformed politics everywhere, including in Canada; not only in the way parties choose their leaders but the communications tools to help assure electability and re-electability. Unlike the Conservatives, for whom multiple leaders — John Bracken, George Drew, Robert Stanfield, Kim Campbell, Jean Charest, Peter MacKay, Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole — failed to win national elections or, in the case of Arthur Meighen, Joe Clark, and Stephen Harper, to win second majorities. The only Liberal leader to not win a national election was Edward Blake, a former Ontario premier, and the only Liberal leader who did defeat Macdonald, Alexander Mackenzie, served a single mandate from 1873-1878. So, Liberals often date their first national leader to the record 15-year, unbroken tenure of Sir Wilfrid Laurier from 1896 to 1911, and his sunny ways as the benchmark for electoral success.
Politicians live or die by the life cycle of events, and the flow of public opinion. Personality and political judgment count as much as policy. Historically, politicians vary widely in their capacity to embody empathy, warmth, humour, sangfroid, boldness and a feel for the moment. In the past two decades, personality and power conflicts within parties reached new heights with the Jean Chrétien-Paul Martin rivalry, dividing caucus and cabinet. Bob Rae faced this phenomenon as a one-term NDP premier of Ontario. In Alberta, Premier Jason Kenney, formerly a cabinet minister in Harper’s federal Conservative government, is only the latest example showing how internal conflicts and misjudged statements can plummet popularity and therefore electability.
Politicians live or die by the life cycle of events, and the flow of public opinion. Personality and political judgment count as much as policy
In fact, over the nearly 30 years since Campbell won the party leadership in June 1993, the Liberal party has been in power with three PMs — Chrétien, Martin, and Trudeau — save for nine years of Conservative rule by Harper. There have been 14 leaders of the Opposition from six parties (the Bloc Québécois, the Reform Party, the Canadian Alliance, the Liberals, the post-merger Conservatives, and the NDP). Party fragmentation and cleavage do have electoral consequences. Of the 15 people holding the position of opposition leader – Lucien Bouchard, Michel Gauthier, Gilles Duceppe, Preston Manning, Stockwell Day, Bill Graham, Harper, Michael Ignatieff, Stéphane Dion, Jack Layton, Nicole Turmel, Thomas Mulcair, Rona Ambrose, Scheer and O’Toole — only one, Harper, has become prime minister.
As was made apparent by Donald Trump, social media is a new and potentially dangerous tool to enhance the partisan divide. In leadership races, candidates fall victim to this perilous tactic with consequences for electoral success. Pierre Poilievre’s comments about his fondness for “Anglo-Saxon words” were deeply offensive by dog-whistle implication to many non-white Canadians and by association to many white Canadians. Such cleavage is hardly a new phenomenon. The media is often leveraged to highlight party cleavages, and even Pierre Trudeau once faced direct confrontation in the Liberal a caucus in 1979 to resign. About a dozen MPs asked for his resignation and he responded with equal force, noting he would never do anything to hurt the party, but never again would he sit in caucus and be so humiliated.
Most political experts concur that the Conservatives are well positioned now to win an upcoming election, with the current Prime Minister Trudeau looking at 10 years in power by October 2025, and unlikely wanting to match his father’s four terms and 15 total years in office. In fact, when Justin Trudeau became leader, he followed the campaign textbook of Brian Mulroney, rebuilding the party riding by riding, designing forward-looking policies that represented “time for a change” and put great effort into uniting his parliamentary caucus. Today, many of the Conservative (leadership?) candidates have little history of the party or know much about the unique character of small towns beyond Ottawa.
In the current race, Charest, superficially, has many advantages to be the front runner, even though Poilievre has generated more coverage. If Charest became PM, he would be the first since two 19th century Nova Scotians — Sir John Thomson and Sir Charles Tupper — who’d also served as premier. His federal credentials from the Mulroney government and as Progressive Conservative leader, and his near-decade as Liberal premier of Quebec, brought valuable experience and knowledge on a range of policy issues, including trade, northern development, Arctic sovereignty and climate change, and offer possibilities to show his fiscal rectitude, such as an undated program review of each ministry in Ottawa, perhaps only one or two each year.
Charest was a linchpin of the Canada-European Union trade deal, working with Roy McLaren, former High Commissioner in London and International Trade Minister in Chrétien’s government. Curiously, boldness is not a feature of Charest’s policy proposals, just as G7 leaders are rethinking bold ideas such as food security and food shortages in a post-pandemic, war-in-Ukraine-besieged world. Perhaps as the policy element of crisis management becomes more apparent over the summer, his experience and sagacity will draw more attention ahead of the September vote.
Poilievre’s attack on the Bank of Canada and his promise to fire its governor take on a different stripe. As a G7 member, Canada has gained an international reputation in global finance circles, thanks to some outstanding ministers of Finance. This threat is simply indefensible.
Meanwhile, Poilievre is an alleged front-runner whose ability to appeal to sufficient Canadians beyond his base to win a national election remains a major question. His personal attacks on other candidates go beyond policy differences, on which there is no national consensus, such as abortion and gun control. Fluently bilingual, Poilievrerepresents the Carleton riding in Ottawa, but like some members of the old Reform Party, his main work experience comes from political life. He served two roles in opposition, shadow minister of both Finance and Industry, and two short stints as a junior minister in the Harper cabinet.
Curiously, as a leadership hopeful, his personal views could have many nuances, from the populist views of John Diefenbaker, the transformational instincts of Brian Mulroney, or even the libertarian views of many conservatives, who detest the idea of state-sponsored laws and edicts on social policy issues like marriage and abortion. Clearly, he is more attracted to the extreme right-wing views of US political life, illustrated by his opposition to the public health restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic, and conspiracy-theory echoes from Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson, and the climate change deniers. Poilievre’s attacks on subsidies for CBC funding echo attacks in Britain on BBC’s funding model from Brexit cabinet ministers in Boris Johnson’s cabinet.
Such positions may make for social media fodder, fundraising bait, membership sales and delegate recruitment among a certain opinion profile held by voters unhappy with the incumbent government. However, Poilievre’s attack on the Bank of Canada and his promise to fire its governor take on a different stripe. As a G7 member, Canada has gained an international reputation in global finance circles, thanks to some outstanding ministers of Finance – Michael Wilson, Paul Martin, Jim Flaherty, and Chrystia Freeland. This threat is simply indefensible.
Successful political leaders who win elections in Canada actually win because of disorder in the incumbent governing party (Diefenbaker in 1957, Pearson in 1963, Clark in 1979, Trudeau in 1980, Chrétien in 1993, Harper in 2006, and Trudeau in 2015), but they last only if they make a competent and effective transition from campaigning to governing. Successful leadership candidates also formulate serious policy positions as campaign promises that will be implemented in government. Politics is the ultimate team sport. Actions that alienate other leadership rivals and their supporters also eat into the party base, where the Conservatives have huge electoral disadvantages in a country largely urbanized, well educated, and in the political mainstream.
Leadership campaigns are run, in part, to debate and litigate all these factors. For the Party’s sake, may the best candidate win.