Leading Itself Into Temptation
Since its formation in 2003 the Conservative Party of Canada has been an uneasy alliance of regional interests and distinct ideologies. The party may not survive its current leadership race.
On Saturday the Conservative Party of Canada will elect a new leader, with the winner subsequently becoming the leader of the official opposition. Although the format for the is different to the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party leadership contest – as all candidates remain in the election and it is a knock-out process – it is effectively a race between two men; Jean Charest and Pierre Poilievre. Both hold fundamentally different perceptions of what it means to be “conservative,” and because of this, whoever wins it may create a permanent rift in a party that is less than two decades old.
Jean Charest was a man seemingly destined to be prime minister. He was Canada’s youngest ever cabinet minister at 28 years old, and he was deputy prime minister by 33. It was clearly only a matter of time before he secured the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party and moved into 24 Sussex Drive, the prime minister’s residence. Yet then something completely unforeseen occurred that not only ruined Charest’s trajectory, but completely altered the Canadian political landscape. An event that put Canadian politics ahead of the pack in our current crisis of liberal democracy.
The Progressive Conservatives had gone into the 1993 election with a comfortable majority of 156 seats in the House of Commons. The party had been in power since 1984, and their leader for this period, Brian Mulroney, had just moved aside several months prior to the election for Kim Campbell, Canada’s first (and so far only) female prime minister. Like any party that had governed for an extended period its popularity was waning, but what happened at the election was not just a loss, it was the most spectacular collapse of a political party in any Western democracy. When results were tallied they had won just two seats.
What had occurred was a fracturing of the electorate along regional lines, with the country’s western provinces voting for the new Reform Party – a party built on a perception that Ottawa was actively working against the country’s west – and Quebec outside Montreal voting for the separatist Bloc Québécois, a party with no interest in being part of Canada at all. The Liberal Party won all but one seat in populous Ontario. In a country where regional identity is often more pronounced than a national one, this result was something of a natural state for Canada. Albeit one that has previously been transcended.
As one of the two Progressive Conservative MPs to survive the massacre, Charest believed that his party’s fortunes were only temporary, that he could return the party to major party status. Charest is an enthusiastic Canadian, and would campaign heavily for the “no” side in Quebec’s referendum to separate from Canada in 1995, and so the idea of a pan-Canadian party, rooted in liberalism’s ideal of being able to manage humanity’s – and Canada’s – inherent pluralism, was important to him. Under his leadership at the 1997 election the Progressive Conservative recovered slightly to win 20 seats, but most of these were in the small Atlantic provinces, where the party’s distinct brand of “Red Toryism” was strong. Instead of resurrecting a pan-Canadian party, Charest had instead created another regional one.
Red Toryism is a political perspective that traditionally had great traction in Canada that unequal discrepancies in wealth and opportunity can be justified if those of wealth and means actively worked to improve the lives of others, rather than advocate policies that would ossify social hierarchies. It was built on the idea that those of privileged backgrounds held serious social responsibilities within their societies. It was a school of thought that was first overrun by the market fundamentalism of fusionism, which in turn led to an explosion of reactionary populism.
The collapse of the Progressive Conservative Party was indicative of this ideological shift. Sensing that Canadian politics had fundamentally altered, Charest quit the federal arena and joined the Quebec Liberal Party. He subsequently led that party to what no other had done in Quebec for the previous 50 years; winning three consecutive elections. After unsuccessfully attempting to lead the Liberals to fourth term in 2012 Charest retired from politics and became a high-priced lawyer.
Despite close to ten years as the premier of Canada’s second largest province, the desire to be the prime minister of Canada never left him. However, the problem was there was no longer a party for his particular worldview. In 2003 the Reform Party – then called the Canadian Alliance – took over the rump of the Progressive Conservatives to form the Conservative Party of Canada. This may have been sold as a merger, but the new party had little resemblance to its minority wing. This was a party of Prairie Populism – a party of agitation and regional grievances – and although Reform were happy to take over the PC’s organisational infrastructure, the restrained and managerial Red Tories were themselves deemed to be no better than the Liberal Party.
Of course, several former members of the Progressive Conservatives did join the Liberal Party, unable to stomach the new Conservative Party. Although in Charest’s case it should be noted the Quebec Liberal Party split from the federal Liberals in 1955, and was a broad coalition of people committed to Quebec’s place in Canada – with the primary political battle in Quebec being “sovereigntist vs federalist.” That was until the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) completely reframed the province’s politics in 2018.
Of course, those of us who don’t orientate ourselves by the American definition of “liberal” know that liberalism can house a great range of ideas and beliefs – it's the whole point of the philosophy. The Progressive Conservatives could be a liberal party, without being identical to the Liberal Party. Indeed the British Columbia Liberal Party – also not affiliated with the federal Liberals – is that province’s conservative party. And for Australians this understanding of liberalism is also easy to digest.
The Conservative Party could also be a liberal party, and under the leadership of Stephen Harper it still conducted itself within the bounds of liberal democracy. However, despite the party governing Canada for nine years, it was never comfortable in the role. Convincing enough voters in Ontario that their interests were tied to those to their west was one thing, but trying to govern as a regional party masquerading as a national party was more difficult. Being anti-Ottawa while holding power in the capital for close to a decade required great feats of mental gymnastics.
This unease with traditional political structures, as well as the modern world, has come to be the motivating force of conservative parties throughout the West – although our political lexicon hasn’t caught up with our current political era. There is no way that the Republican Party could currently be described as conservative in the Oakeshottian or Burkean sense of the term. It has instead become an aggressive, radical and extreme party; hostile to democracy, driven by chaotic emotionalism, paranoia, conspiracy, cultish devotion to an obvious conman, and housing a very postmodern suspicion of epistemology.
Pierre Poilievre has peered over the border at the Republican Party and instead of seeing a dangerous destabilising force has cynically sensed an opportunity. One that looks like being highly successful for himself, although less positive for Canada. The trope around Trumpism has been that Trump, and the sycophants he surrounds himself with, are too clownish and incompetent to truly be dangerous – although January 6 proved otherwise. This perspective doesn’t apply to Poilievre. Poilievre is young, smart, and eloquent. First elected to the House of Commons in 2004 as a twenty-five year old, unlike other populist leaders worldwide, Poilievre knows the mechanics of the Canadian political system extremely well.
To those with some understanding of the distinct regional political differences in Canada, Poilievre’s name, and his holding of a seat on the outskirts of Ottawa, provide a bit of misdirection about what kind of politician he actually is. Poilievre is from Alberta, both literally and ideologically – a province whose extraordinary wealth is only matched by the massive sense of grievance that it is somehow getting a raw deal.
Quebec was once the primary threat to Canada’s unity, yet separatist forces have whittled away over the past decade to be replaced by a form of cultural nationalism that seeks to exert the province's distinctive nature, but has no problem with the federal government per se, unless it steps on provincial jurisdiction – or doesn’t keep transferring considerable funds to Quebec City. It is now Alberta that has become Canada’s problem child. While Quebec may have certain tangible demands like the protection of the French language and the region’s unique cultural institutions, what Alberta wants is less clear. Its tantrums seem to be a permanent state being, rather than in aid of anything in particular.
Alberta’s worldview – or should I say that of the province’s governing United Conservative Party and the Reform wing of the federal Conservatives – and the sentiment that Poilievre has come to embody, can be best understood as a puerile form of “negative liberty” – a belief that “freedom” means freedom from scrutiny and responsibility.
The ideas of negative and positive liberty were illustrated by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, in a lecture-turned-essay titled “Two Concepts of Liberty.” Negative liberty is a freedom from interference, primarily by the state. This means that one should have the ability to move, speak, and practise one’s religion or cultural interests without impediment. Positive liberty on the other hand is having the means and resources to pursue a good life – state provisions like education and healthcare are important elements of positive liberty. One gives up certain negative liberties – the ability to keep all of one’s income, for example – to gain positive ones.
For Red Tories, and other liberal and social democratic parties, negative and positive liberty exist in balance with one another. These parties may differ on where this balance lies, but they agree that negative and positive liberty are not absolutes. Liberal societies like Canada heavily value negative liberty, but in allowing people to be mostly free from coercion they also place expectations on people that they will act with responsibility.
A rejection of this responsibility is at the core of reactionary populism. This sentiment has been emerging for a while – the fantasy of an individualism that can exist without contact with other individuals has been at the core of U.S libertarianism – but was inflamed by the Covid-19 pandemic; a once in a century event that required the public to adjust their lifestyles in order to protect others. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t without great sacrifice, and it was also much more difficult for people without the ability to work from home. This undoubtedly created great stress in people's lives.
Yet this stress manifested itself in a rejection of public health orders and a rejection of the science of how the virus spread, and when they arrived, a rejection of the need to be vaccinated to reduce the severity of the virus. It placed individual desires ahead of community needs. In Canada this culminated in the “freedom convoy” – a collective tantrum thrown by several thousand people who shut down the streets in central Ottawa for a month in January and February this year, as well as shut down major crossings into the United States, over which the vast majority of Canada’s trade flows.
Rather than use his position as an MP from the Ottawa area to call for the dispersal of the protest Poilievre instead embraced them, speaking to the crowds out the front of the Parliament building, and meeting with its organisers, many of whom were prominent figures within Canada’s far-right ecosystem, and embracing some of their more ludicrous conspiracy theories. Given that the vast majority of Canadians showed no sympathy for this disruption it was an odd tactic for Poilievre to begin his leadership campaign (Erin O’Toole lost a party confidence motion in early-February). But what it bought him was attention, and lots of it.
It also worked as a recruitment drive for the most agitated and excitable Canadians to be funnelled into the Conservative Party. As I have recently written, party leaders being elected by party memberships created perverse incentives for leadership candidates. Winning the leadership of a party like the Conservatives requires ignoring what the broader Canadian public thinks, and concentrating on what excites those who have enough commitment, fervour, and myopia to want to join a party.
Poilievre has understood that agitation is exciting and believing in conspiracy theories is a social exercise; it gives people an emotional community that bureaucratic realities cannot compete with. The mechanics of liberal democracy are by their very nature insipid and uninspiring. They were designed to cool people down, and therefore are in sharp tension with the modern online environment that is designed to rouse people up – to not just to make you angry and emotional, but to reward you for these feelings.
Harnessing this can be incredibly fruitful for politicians, particularly within party leadership elections which don’t need to consider their views of people with the good sense to keep themselves off social media. Canada’s first-past-the-post voting system makes this even more enticing, as it allows minority beliefs to win elections. This is something that Poilievre hopes to take advantage of, even though the Liberal Party has proved more adept at harnessing the democratic deficiencies of the voting system.
The danger for the Conservative Party is whether it feels the emotional and psychological rewards of Poilievre’s style of politics are greater than rewards of actually winning elections. As we’ve seen with the Republican Party, losing elections can strengthen the hostility to the political system, not encourage parties to make themselves more palatable to the wider electorate.
Polling that has asked Canadians about a Charest-led or a Poilievre-led Conservative Party has indicated that a Charest-led party would have a greater chance of winning a federal election. The Canadian psyche is very sensitive to what occurs over its border with the U.S, and is well-attuned to the current state of the Republican Party, and won’t look kindly on Poiliervre’s attempts to import this style of politics into Canada. Justin Trudeau may not be very popular at the moment, but Canadians aren’t frightened of him.
However, come Saturday it is unlikely that Charest will win the leadership contest. Poilievre’s campaign claims to have signed up 300,000 new party members, this figure alone is larger than the entire party membership when it last voted to elect a new leader in 2020. It seems mathematically impossible for Charest to compete.
Yet there remain people within the Conservative Party who understand how dangerous Poilievre could become. They will recognise him as a man who will use the position of leader of the opposite to further inflame Canadian politics, to sow agitation, grievance, paranoia, and conspiracy. Even without becoming prime minister he would have the power to create serious social instability.
Since its formation in 2003 the Conservative Party has been an uneasy alliance; a party of distinct ideological and regional differences that has been held together only because to not do so would mean a permanent Liberal Party government. However, it highly likely that under Poilievre’s leadership this may not be enough. He will tear at these already weak seams, and Canadian politics may return to how it was in the 1990s, divided into regional parties with limited investment in the country as a whole. With the added turbulence of an online environment that incentivises disputes and mocks common causes.