Apart from the NDP, which has learned to love moral victories, there is no party that loves to lose. For half a century, almost all leaders who have lost an election have also lost their position soon after.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
But in the Conservative Party, defeat almost always comes with a swerve to the right. And the one that will follow the dismissal of Erin O’Toole is likely to be more pronounced than usual.
In his last message to his troops before being ousted, Mr. O’Toole warned his MPs that they should avoid indulging themselves by becoming “a right-wing NDP”. But given the looming leadership race, it’s a risk that many conservatives are willing to take.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, it’s been going on for 40 years. In 1984, Brian Mulroney conquered the Conservative Party by promising it Quebec. After 15 years of unchallenged Liberal power, he understood that Quebecers were ready to try something else.
But the coalition he had formed between western conservatives and Quebec nationalists was not to survive his second term. And in the rubble stood the Reform Party. A populist party, proponents of law and order, capital punishment, the elimination of deficits and more room for the West in Canadian affairs.
But this party did not have the strength to establish itself across Canada, even though it changed its name and did everything to win seats in Ontario and further east.
Meanwhile, the old Conservative Party was struggling as best it could and everyone concluded that salvation for all lay in a merger. But there was clearly a major partner and a minor partner in the new Conservative Party of Canada and Stephen Harper was elected leader on the first ballot, signaling a right turn.
Harper was elected after a first defeat, mainly because of the sponsorship scandal which had become the symbol of an arrogant and tired Liberal government.
The Harper government has made a massive shift to the right starting with a whole series of law and order measures, such as tougher penalties for minor offenses as well as major ones.
Under Harper, Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Accord, nearly doubled its production of oil from the tar sands, and generally lowered the level of environmental constraints. He abolished the court challenges program that funded cases involving the Charter of Rights, as well as the gun registry. And it has gradually withdrawn from social housing subsidies. The list is not exhaustive…
Defeated after three terms under Harper, the Conservatives chose former Speaker of the House of Commons, Andrew Scheer, who was elected thanks to the votes of the religious right. Personally against gay marriage and the right to abortion, he promised however not to legislate on these issues. But his legacy is a religious right that has increased his influence in the Conservative Party.
Enter Erin O’Toole, elected because he presented himself as “a real rookie” and who was ousted because he wanted to bring the party to the center during the election campaign, before revealing himself to be a weak and a little weathervane.
We will have to see how much the legacy of the last Conservative leaders will weigh heavily in the election of their next successor. But it is certain that several conservatives are watching what is happening south of the border in a Republican Party still subservient to Donald Trump.
For many Conservatives, after a third term in opposition, the cycle of defeats must be broken by drawing inspiration from a kind of Canadian-style Trumpism. A candidate who would be a strong leader, with little focus on political correctness, and who believes that we must seek the voices that are even more lacking on the right – in particular on the religious right – rather than in the center.
It is not for nothing that the name that is on everyone’s lips in the first moments of this new leadership race is that of the MP for Nepean-Carleton, Pierre Poilievre. A representative of the uninhibited right, who does not hate to attack what he considers to be the sacred cows of the left, such as cutting funding for CBC/Radio-Canada.
On Wednesday, after the resignation of its leader, the MP for Portneuf–Jacques-Cartier, Joël Godin, said that he still defined himself as a “progressive conservative”. He is likely to be very cramped in the party that will emerge from the next leadership race. And if it is true for him, it could also be true for many Quebec voters.