From the Editor / L. Ian MacDonald

Welcome to our issue on the Conservative leadership race, now a summer campaign whose result will be announced on September 10 in Toronto.

Our cover package focuses on the three leading contenders—Pierre Poilievre, Jean Charest and Patrick Brown, the candidates who signed up the most party members. They also happen to be the three functionally or fluently bilingual candidates in the race.

We begin with an extensive Q&A with Jean Charest across a host of major Issues. Charest has seen it all, from national unity to federal-provincial relations, from health care to climate change, from the language issue in Quebec to international trade. He also has some thoughts on moving from Conservative Party rivalry to renewal should he win the leadership.

Geoff Norquay has seen a few transitions of his own as an adviser to successful Conservative leaders and prime ministers, from Brian Mulroney at the end of one century to Stephen Harper at the beginning of the next. “It’s clear that when the dust settles, the winner is going to have to put the party back together,” Norquay writes. “So, it’s useful to look back at how successful new leaders of the past accomplished this essential task.” 

Then, we look at how the leadership campaign has unfolded in the four regions of the country—the Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario and the West.

Lori Turnbull starts us off in the Atlantic region. From her upbringing in Cape Breton to her current post at Dalhousie University, Turnbull’s sense is that the election “of a centrist candidate could lead to a breakthrough” for the Conservatives in the region.

André Pratte, former editor of La Presse and later an independent Senator, writes that Quebecers have rarely felt so excited or involved in federal politics as during this leadership campaign. “Why?” he asks. “Quebecers know that this contest is not any ordinary leadership race, but about what kind of politics we want in Canada.” He says what they don’t want is populism, especially the Trumpism of the far right.

In Ontario, we’ve just seen the re-election of Doug Ford’s PC government. As noted in my piece, Ontario voters confirmed the checks and balances they’ve built into the ballot box, Blue at Queen’s Park and Red in Ottawa. While Ford is not expected to endorse a federal leadership candidate, he is a centrist. 

From Calgary, Lee Richardson shares his outlook on the leadership race in the West, notably in Alberta, which has seen the recent departure of Premier Jason Kenney. Richardson, who served as chief of staff to legendary Alberta premier Peter Lougheed, and later as a Tory MP under both Mulroney and Harper, writes that as “progressives have gone to the sidelines, Conservative party memberships federally and provincially are now predominantly held by the populist, social-conservative base.”

From a Liberal perspective, John Delacourt writes: “The one response to the Conservative leadership race that might be wise is for Liberals to look to their left and not to their right, if they truly want to preserve the achievements of the last seven years.”

And columnist Don Newman reminds us that the Conservative race is one in which all ridings are created equal, with 100 votes for each of the 338 ridings in Parliament, and that there are “33,800 points, with 16,900 needed to win.” All in all, a fascinating race.

In Canada and the World, our foreign affairs sage Jeremy Kinsman looks at the geopolitical strife stirred up by Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. “The world is again in a dangerous place,” Kinsman observes, “as both China and Russia exhibit aggressive hostility” towards the West.

Kevin Page notes that “Pierre Poilievre made news when he advocated for private market cryptocurrency as a hedge against inflation. News alert. Market capitalization of cryptocurrency has plummeted. “While the crypto market may become more stable as the size of the market grows,” writes Page, “it is still too small and volatile to be a confident hedge against price inflation.” Policy Associate Editor Lisa Van Dusen looks at the coming US midterms in the propaganda-rich, highly tactical environment of the ongoing battle for American democracy.  

Elizabeth Moody continues to look at the plight of Canadian veterans, what they are doing to help themselves and what others are doing to help them after leaving military service. A moving story.

And in a book excerpt, we offer a remarkable case study by Robin Sears on the failure of strategic communications during the pandemic, his chapter from the new anthology Emergency! Quarantine, Evacuation and Back Again. 

Finally, we have two book reviews from the summer reading list, Anthony Wilson-Smith on The Age of Consequence, by former Mulroney senior adviser Charles J. McMillan, and Colin Robertson on Moisé Naím’s The Revenge of Power.

Enjoy. And have a great summer.