Last week saw the first debate between the aspiring leaders of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC). In light of the particularly acrimonious exchanges between Pierre Poilievre and Jean Charest, not to mention Patrick Brown’s lack of principle at this event, we can expect a real political spectacle in the coming months, the next act of which will take place this same evening in Edmonton. However, it is anything but certain that the Conservatives will come out of this stronger and more united than under the shaky leadership of Erin O’Toole.
Posted at 9:00 a.m.
The Conservative Party(ies) of Canada
Conservatism in Canada has many faces. Today’s CCP is a compromise between, on the one hand, so-called reformist forces (which advocate social and Christian conservatism, with a dose of populism) concentrated in the west of the country and, on the other hand, the red tories (the Progressive Conservatives who defend a balance between a strong state and a free market), well established in central and eastern Canada.
The conservative coalition that former Prime Minister Stephen Harper managed to hold together seems to be hanging by a thread. Many even wonder if the marriage of convenience could potentially end in divorce, as the party is divided. Harper had nevertheless managed to find a certain balance between ideological convictions and pragmatic search for power.
But at present, one wonders if the CCP is anything other than a heterogeneous electoral apparatus, kept alive artificially by the sole ambition of regaining power.
Since his departure in 2015, Harper’s successors have certainly preserved the fragile ties that bind the two main wings of the CCP. However, warming up the opposition benches since 2015 has created a lot of tension. This makes many of the compromises made with the red tories.
We may be witnessing a last-ditch attempt to keep the family together under one roof.
Of conviction and responsibility
In The scholar and the politician, Max Weber distinguishes between the ethics of conviction and responsibility. According to the German sociologist, these are two different approaches that guide the action to be taken in the face of the challenges facing us. In short, the ethics of conviction is a form of deontology which imposes to act according to fixed moral principles. For its part, the ethics of responsibility reverses the logic: we seek the most effective means to achieve a given goal.
The main dilemma facing CCP activists is choosing a candidate who can strike the right balance between these approaches, offering a political discourse that satisfies the troops and a credible strategy for winning the elections. As Weber himself recognized, genuine politics necessarily involves a careful balance between these two ethics.
The Poilievre-Charest duel
All other things being equal, the real race for leadership should be between Pierre Poilievre and Jean Charest. For the moment, the first seems to respond only to the ethics of conviction, and this is precisely what excites its partisan base, to whom it is proposed to follow its inclinations… while distancing it from a real chance to take power. For his part, Charest encourages the members to draw conclusions from the failures of 2019 and 2021, this time to choose a leader and a moderate speech, which can lead the PCC to form the government.
However, if there can be no doubt that Poilievre is a man of convictions, are his positions genuinely conservative? This is what the leadership candidate associated with the most social and religious wing of the CCP, Leslyn Lewis, wondered during the debate.
Poilievre may point out that he hails from the reformist stronghold of the West, but he is first and foremost a libertarian, rather than a defender of the values of social conservatism.
Like his former colleague Maxime Bernier, his main objective is to make Canada “the freest nation in the world”. By doing so, he essentially wants to limit the capacity for action of the State to regulate economic and political life, in favor of a logic of individual responsibility.
Jean Charest also has his work cut out for him. His record as a former Quebec premier and former leader of the Liberal Party of Quebec, his ambiguous position on the development of fossil fuels and the fight against climate change and, of course, the perception that he led a government corrupt will leave many lukewarm.
Also an outstanding speaker, Charest chose to bet essentially on an ethic of responsibility, guided first and foremost by pragmatism and by the ambition to become Prime Minister of Canada.
To win the next election, however, he must first win the leadership race. To do this, he must not only convince current activists – a good part of whom seem to have acquired Poilievre – that his approach is the right one, but above all he must attract new members, closer to his positions.
As for Poilievre, if he has a very good chance of imposing himself in the conservative microcosm, he will once again discover the lesson of the lost elections of 2004, 2019 and 2021: the vast majority of the Canadian electorate lives somewhere in the center of the political spectrum.
In the meantime, Justin Trudeau must be rubbing his hands. The spectacle of the division among the conservatives gives him several ammunition for the rest of things.