Don Newman

March 18, 2022

Right after the 2015 federal election, I was a guest at a gala dinner at the Albany Club in Toronto. The club bills itself as the “premier private club for leaders in Canada’s business and Conservative political spheres,” and my assumption was that the dinner would be a pretty dull affair, with Stephen Harper’s Conservative government newly defeated by Justin Trudeau and the Liberals.

But I was wrong. There was a buoyant, ebullient mood at the Royal York Hotel that night. Many of the Toronto Conservatives present were seeing the Harper defeat after nine years in government as “a chance to get our party back.” They didn’t see the government just sent packing by the Canadian electorate as “their government.” Rather, it was the government of the Reform Party/Canadian Alliance that the Progressive Conservative Party they belonged to had been tethered to in a shotgun wedding in 2003.

The talk that evening was not unlike previous conversations I had had with members of what had been the PC Party. They believed — or at least wanted to believe — that after Harper was through, the leadership of the hybrid Conservative Party would revert back to someone more of their liking and they “would have their party back.”

I was dubious. I was equally dubious when I heard the same thing at the Albany Club. The demographics just didn’t work that way, even though in the negotiations creating the party, Progressive Conservative Leader Peter MacKay tried to blunt the huge combined party membership in Western Canada by having leaders elected by a points system where each riding was numerically equal in terms of leadership delegates.

But in everything else, the weight of numbers was what carried the day. On the party platform, the party executive, the culture and soul of the party.

I thought at the Albany Club as I had before, the joining of the Progressive Conservatives with the Reform/Alliance was not a merger of the two parties. In reality, it was a takeover of the Progressive Conservatives by Reform/Alliance because the latter had been able to virtually obliterate the former in electoral support, money raised and party members.

With that upper hand, the alliance wing of the party located primarily in western Canada was not about to give up its advantage. And that is what happened. In the leadership race to replace Harper, the party selected lacklustre Regina MP Andrew Scheer as leader, then unceremoniously dumped him when he failed to win the subsequent election. Next, they selected Erin O’Toole, an MP from Ontario who campaigned to win the leadership as a “true blue” Conservative like the western base of the party. But he ran into trouble when he tried to move the party to the centre in the election campaign, lost and was unceremoniously given the “bum’s rush” out the door as party leader.

The great hope of the PCs this time is, of course, Jean Charest. He is, by far, the best of that wing of the party that has contested any of the leaderships since Stephen Harper was chosen in 2003.

Now, there is another leadership race, which will culminate September 10 when the new leader is announced. Once more, the Progressive Conservatives see the leadership opening as an opportunity to “get our party back.” This time, they are serious. And they had better be. This time, they have a quality candidate who has been both a federal cabinet minister and a provincial premier. This time, if they don’t win the leadership of the party, the Red Tories are probably gone for good.

The great hope of the PCs this time is, of course, Jean Charest. He is, by far, the best of that wing of the party that has contested any of the leaderships since Stephen Harper was chosen in 2003. In fact, he has the best experience and credentials of just about any politician in Canada. One drawback is that he hasn’t actually been a politician for a decade. Another is that, in what has clearly (in Canada) for now, become a young man’s game, he is 63.

But Charest wears his years well, and doesn’t seem to be rusty on the campaign trail. He is also not afraid to challenge what has become Conservative orthodoxy. In his first week on the leadership trail, he has rejected changing current gun laws enacted by the Liberals that promise banning “assault style” weapons. Getting rid of assault weapons is anathema to most Conservatives. Opposing the gun laws is one of the litmus tests of the current Conservative Party.

Charest and his team obviously know this. That is why their strategy is to go all out on a campaign to sell party memberships to people who have not had them before. In effect, they plan to change the party base  by expanding it from the more western, more rural, older and whiter Canadians that comprise it now into something that resembles Canada as it actually is.

Can it be done? The final results in September will answer that question. But if the strategy fails, the Conservative Party will probably be led by Pierre Poilievre, the darling of the current, so-con party base, and a long-time House of Commons member with a vicious attack style much better suited to being in opposition than in government. If that happens, opposition is likely where the Conservatives will spend most of their time.

And those Albany Club Progressive Conservatives will have lost their dream “to get our party back.”

Contributing writer and columnist Don Newman, an Officer of the Order of Canada and Lifetime Member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, is Executive Vice President of Rubicon Strategy, based in Ottawa.