The Tories and the PPC Must Reconcile
Loss of trust in political institutions of the kind that Western populists are today exploiting is a threat to the liberal-democratic order.
Photo: Liam Richards, CP
Canada is fragmented politically. This is not an inherent problem. As long as all viable parties agree on the basic tenets of rights-based liberalism, the real anti-democratic threat of polarization is largely blunted.
Yet, the recent electoral success of the People’s Party of Canada (PPC) illuminates just how deep the fractures go. Despite the fact that the PPC failed to win a single seat, its popular-vote tally was perhaps the most notable outcome of an otherwise lacklustre election. The party eclipsed the Greens, for example, and by a wide margin. If PPC voters had been concentrated geographically, they might well have enjoyed influence over the balance of power in a minority parliament.
I’m certainly not inclined to support strategic voting. But for Erin O’Toole’s Conservative Party, every vote counts. The turmoil since Stephen Harper’s departure has yet to wane. The Tories might again miss the opportunity to unseat the ever-weakening Trudeau Liberals unless they can deal with the thorn on their right flank.
We have been here before. The Canadian right is no stranger to fragmentation. The Reform splinter in the late 1980s had very similar characteristics, at least on the surface. It fragmented Canadian conservatism along roughly the same ideological fault lines, namely “true blue” conservatives versus “red Tories.” Certainly this is what Maxime Bernier and the PPC would want Canadian voters to believe—that they are usurping the mantle of the True Blues because Erin O'Toole has lost his way, pandering shamelessly to Red Tory centrism.
Yet, the PPC has more in common with boilerplate populism than anything resembling traditional conservatism. It represents a Canadian variation on a trend occurring in North America and throughout the Western world more generally, namely the turn towards authoritarian, hardline parties. Nothing, of course, is set in stone. Germany’s recent election, for instance, saw the disintegration of the upstart populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), demonstrating the resilience of the liberal order in a country with an outsized interest in thwarting voters’ embrace of the far right.
Even so, there is a lesson to be learned from Canada’s recent history of centre-right fragmentation.
Feeling dissatisfied and unrepresented in the “mushy middle” of Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative (PC) government, Preston Manning and Stephen Harper launched their Reform Party on a foundation of limited-government, fiscally prudent social conservatism. The ensuing partisan rift would persist for over a decade, reliably splitting the vote and ensuring the Chrétien Liberals’ durable majorities. Not until Manning and Harper agreed to throw their lot in with Peter Mackay’s PCs, in 2003, were Canadian voters given a plausible centre-right alternative to the Liberals. The newly merged conservative alliance proved remarkably successful. Harper went on to govern Canada for a decade, leaving the Liberals in the wilderness until the advent of Justin Trudeau.
So where does this leave the Tories today?
Erin O’Toole, despite running a “true blue” leadership campaign in 2020, quickly pivoted to the left after winning the Tory leadership, evincing an obvious desperation to attract the coveted swing voters in the vast Canadian centre. For many liberal-minded Canadians, this calculated strategic shift was by no means a bad thing. Stemming angry radicalism is a net-positive for the vitality of the Canadian liberal order. Little wonder, then, that the election was, with the exception of the rise of the PPC, mostly a repeat of the last one. Conservatives stewing about two consecutive Liberal victories might be the contemporary equivalent of the Tories after Campbell’s historic electoral rout in 1993—and a much-needed kick-start to reconciliation between the O’Toole and Bernier camps.
All of this raises important questions. Should the Tories and the PPC reconcile? Can they? Do they even want to?
Certainly, ending vote-splitting is in both parties’ interests, given that Justin Trudeau is their common nemesis. The PPC has had the good fortune to ride a wave of vaccine suspicion, disgruntlement over mask mandates, and a generalized hostility among right-leaning voters towards the Trudeau Liberals. Yet Bernier, once a prominent Conservative minister, failed even to win his own riding. The Tories, meanwhile, have endeavored to convince Canadians that they are ready to jettison the baggage of the Harper and Scheer years. The PPC’s more populist approach is a marked departure from the cautious, “electable” conservatism characteristic of O’Toole’s Conservative “big tent.” Is endless vote-splitting the price of remaining—or at least appearing to remain—“principled,” in the manner of the Reform Party? Is the PPC the true heir to Harper-era conservatism?
The division hasn’t yet reached its fever pitch. Despite sharp rhetoric from the national commentariat painting the O’Toole Tories as Liberal-lite and Bernier as a failed populist, the divide threatens to polarize Canadian conservatism even further, rather than the reverse.
The growing rift between conservatives and right-wing populists is by no means exclusive to Canada. Conventional wisdom has it that right-wing populism is enjoying a renaissance in Europe, for example, the evidence for which is Boris Johnson’s (and Brexit’s) success in the UK, Viktor Orbán’s consolidation of power in Hungary, and Andrzej Duda’s E.U.-challenging success in Poland. American Republicans, currently in disarray after Joe Biden’s defeat of Donald Trump, must decide whether to embrace Trumpism or return to their more traditional position on the moderate right. The latter would require the GOP to tap an old-school establishment type to run opposite Biden or his successor in 2024.
The liberal order characterizing the Western world will survive and thrive as long as voters’ bedrock faith in democratic institutions persists. To the degree that populism empowers genuine autocrats and subverts civic confidence, it is a threat to democracy. Undermining public-health measures and channelling public rage, in the case of the PPC, does Canadian democracy no good. This is not a partisan point. Instability and loss of confidence in the basic architecture of parliamentary democracy is bad for everyone. While some Canadians may see parties like the PPC as righteous and courageous for challenging centre-left bromides, evidence that such enthusiasms are on the rise should worry anyone happy to enjoy the stability liberal democracy provides.
Loss of trust in political institutions of the kind that the PPC is today exploiting should be mitigated as thoroughly as possible, and from all quarters. For the O’Toole Tories this can mean only one thing. Emulate the Manning/ Harper strategy. Appeal to the better angels of voters’ nature. Above all, cannibalize the PPC.