The recent ousting of Erin O’Toole as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada is a matter of concern for all Canadians interested in good governance, regardless of political stripe.
The main complaint about O’Toole is that he flip-flopped on key issues through the election campaign. But how could he be expected to do otherwise as the head of a party representing so diverse an array of views on issues such as vaccine mandates, gun control, women’s reproductive rights and climate change?
If you want a great leader, you have to be willing to be a great follower. But this . . .
does not seem to be possible in a party with a right flank barely discernable from Maxine Bernier’s PPC. Having to pander to their world view while trying to project an image of a party that can be taken seriously by the country’s moderate voters is an impossible and, clearly, thankless task.
A party so divided not only undermines its own prospects of being elected. By failing to pose a credible threat to the Liberals during elections, or provide coherent opposition between elections, they fail to put the Liberals on their best game, and this helps keep them in power no matter how feeble they may be. It is unfortunate not just for the Conservatives but for the whole country that they are currently floundering, with a much less robust and less principled national debate to show for it.
Despite all this, the fact is that the O’Toole Conservatives won more votes than did the Trudeau Liberals. If the Conservatives want to be angry about something, they should be angry about the electoral system that denies them power even when they receive more votes. Now there’s a conspiracy theory with legs.
Unfortunately, the Conservatives, almost by definition, seem less concerned about how they would like to change things for the future than they are about restoring things to how they were in the past. This makes them unlikely to lead the way on changing the electoral system from how it was set up back in the day of Sir John A.
Meanwhile, the kind of flip-flopping that did in O’Toole seems to dog the party’s new interim leader. In her first week on the job, Candice Bergen supported the truckers’ call for freedom from vaccines and, in her second, gave voice to the business community’s call for an end to the occupation.
The rapid succession of leaders of the Conservative Party of Canada in the post-Harper period conjures up memories of the post-Breznev years of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Andropov and Chernenko came and went in the space of just over two years, about half the time it took the Conservatives to chew up and spit out Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole. In the case of the Soviet Union, the two men were quite old and the story is they died of natural causes, clearing the way for Gorbachev to assume the leadership of the party.
We can only wish the Conservatives godspeed in finding their Gorbachev. And, when they do, that she or he will have better luck holding together so diverse an empire.
Charles Dickson
