Outbidding Comes to Canada

 I don't know the deep history of Canadian politics as I only started paying attention once I moved here and not even then for a while as I was too busy adjusting to Quebec and to the cold and to the big move.  So, I can't speak to how right-wing politics worked way back when.  What I was going to say before news broke out that Erin O'Toole is facing a leadership fight is that outbidding is really hard for even strong, united parties.  And now?  Oy.  

I have been blasting the CPC lately because a number of its members, including its deputy leader, have been giving full-throated support for the far right extremists who are blockading a hunk of downtown Ottawa.  This reddit page lists not only the events but also the politicians who have stood with the supposed truckers' convoy.  O'Toole tried to have it both ways--meeting with some of those in the convoy before it hit Ottawa and then condemning those within the group that danced on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, defaced the Terry Fox statue, and used swastikas and the like.  This did not go over well with the fanatics and opportunists in his party, so he could be done.

In the recent election, O'Toole had a difficult problem--there is a new far right-wing party--the People's Party--led by a former Conservative, and so he faced pressures to play to the far right folks who remained in his party now that they have an exit option.  The problem is that the votes needed to get the party into power are not on the right but in the center.  So, O'Toole could pander to the far right and probably lose or play to the middle but risk breaking his party in half.  He chose to do both.  His stance that vaccines are good but mandates are bad did not play well, and helped him lose the election.  

In the winter, O'Toole faced another challenge--a bill to ban gay conversion therapy.  The public overwhelmingly supported this bill as did the other parties, but not the social conservatives in his party.  So, he tried to just get unanimous consent so that way he wouldn't have a significant chunk of negative votes that the opposition could run on.  Well, apparently that pissed off these folks.  

There is probably other stuff going on as well. But the key to O'Toole's dilemma is that he faces outbidding both outside his party and within it.  He didn't go full far right nutso, but he also tried to keep those folks on board.  His successors are likely to be further to the right, which will consign the party into the wilderness at the national level.  They can't win national elections by moving further to the right.  They don't have the power to suppress votes or redraw lines like their American friends have.

Isn't this a good thing?  That the right is breaking apart?  Um, not so much.  Democracies require competition and accountability to work.  The Liberal Party, which tends to be smug and arrogant, leading to stupid, unnecessary shit (WE scandal, SNC-Lavalin, etc), needs to be penalized when they do that stuff.  The New Democratic Party can't do that on its own for a variety of reasons.  Partly because they can only criticize the Liberals for not being sufficiently left wing, partly because they have their own divides.  Canadian politics would be better off if there was a solid, reasonable center-right party that centrists could vote for, that could challenge the Liberals to perform better.

That is now what Canada has, and, soon, it will have something worse than that: a right-wing party that not only caters to extremists but is led by them.  We have seen this play out in the UK and in the US, and neither political system is better off for it.