By Fahed Alsalem Saqer

Political Analyst and writer in International political economy.

Political allegiances and voting behaviour in Canada have developed over the past 100 years and settled along the lines of a divergent three-pronged formula, Liberals-NDP-Conservatives. An introductory course in Canadian politics 101 would simply expound this formula as follows: the Liberals hard-core voter support stands at 30%, Conservatives hard-core support at 30%, New Democratic Party at 20%, with the remaining 20% being the swing vote or the uncommitted or “others”.

This formula had held true for the better part of the twentieth century, and still holds today except that the Conservative-right core support has shattered and no longer constitute a unified mass.   The outcome of the 1993 general election has changed the Canadian political landscape dynamics and disrupted this formula indefinitely, or so it seems. The “Grand Blue Coalition” of the Conservative Right used so shrewdly in the 1980’s by former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to win two back to back majorities against a formidable opponent in 1984 & 1988 is no longer in existence.

Now the big blue conservative tint where Right wing conservatives from all over Canada used to rally to win power is in tatters. Thanks in no small part to Mr. Stephen Harper and the Reform Party elements within the current Conservative Party. In a First Past the Post electoral system, any small realignment of vote on the Right presents a serious obstacle to any conservative leader, hoping to win and form a government on a plain level field.

Prior to 1993, the right wing western conservatives protest movement (i.e., the Reform) constituted a junior faction, or a small regional sub group within the Grand Blue Coalition. Their grievances and political views although recognized and reconciled by the Progressive Conservative party establishment to a certain degree, did not dominate the broader conservative narrative for the pan Canadian movement. Not least because it was seen as too socially conservative, too regional in nature and too far right to the liking of most mainstream voters in Canada, especially in the Eastern and central part of the country.

Unfortunately, this alignment of convenience with the Grand Blue Coalition has changed after the “political earthquake” of 1993 when – in a fit of absence of history- the hitherto obscure Reform Party replaced the Progressive Conservatives on the national stage as the sole representative of Canadian conservatism.  This abrupt replacement had caused a lopsided ideological alignment of sort in which the Progressives have come to accept belatedly, albeit grudgingly.

After 10 years of grief, soul searching and three election losses, the Progressive Conservatives, not without opposition from within their ranks, accepted a merger with the then-Canadian Alliance Party and folded within the newly created Conservative Party of Canada in 2003. In so doing, the Progressives accepted a de facto provisional back seat position within Conservative Party of Canada.

These far-reaching inadvertent structural and ideological changes within the Canadian conservative movement brought about by the unexpected outcome of the 1993 election was the result of a deadly error of judgment on the part of Prime Minister Kim Campbell and her campaign team.  Although the previous (incumbent at the time) Mulroney government -which Ms. Campbell inherited- had taken some unpopular policies such as the introduction of the Goods and services tax (the GST), a series of controversial policies and the dramatic failure of the Meech Lake Constitutional Accord of 1987.  Neither one of these policies or all of them combined would have justified such a shocking outcome.

An unpopular governing party in a Western democracy would typically lose power and move to the opposition or in a worst-case scenario be reduced to a third party status. But to be wiped out of the electoral map altogether is totally bizarre and unprecedented. The 1993 Kim Campbell conservative campaign entrusted in the hands of inexperienced kids who not only “crashed the airplane” as it were, but also did a historic and lasting damage to the PC brand, from which it has never recovered.

The stupid ads towards the end of the campaign mocking Mr. Chretien speech impediment, even though quickly taken off the air, caused an uproar and has disgusted people and turned off voters in droves. It has betrayed a serious error in judgment on the part of the officials running the campaign, and was so un-Canadian, and I may add, so inhuman.

Coincidently, and quite unfortunately for the Kim Campbell government, the party’s staunch diehard conservative base who would otherwise bail out the party, found an alternative “right-wing outlet” in which to channel its anger and cast a punishing vote.  They voted for Reform not because the Reform platform was by any stretch of the imagination an interesting or palatable platform for the majority of conservative voters. It was not.  On the contrary, their vote was simply a vote – against the Kim Campbell Progressive Conservatives and not a vote for the Reform, to be sure. A governing party with 156-seat majority reduced to two seats! A first time in the history of any Western Democracies.

 The 1993 election’s dreadful outcome catapulted the Reform Party overnight to national stage, supplanting a major party with more than 100 years of history. For its populist leader Mr. Preston Manning this was nothing short of winning the lottery, no less. The Party has come within a two seats of forming the official opposition, going from one seat to 52 seats. The separatist Bloc Quebecois with 54 seats formed the official opposition.  The Reform Party had prior to 1993 contested the 1988 election and got zero seats.

The next two elections of 1997 and 2000 would be most agonizing for the Conservative movement with two right-wing parties vying for the same conservative support base, causing widespread vote splitting. Finally, in 2003 the Progressive Conservatives, theoretically and morally the adults in the movement, have bitten the bullet and opted for a merger with the Reform ( then Canadian Alliance) and the newly Conservative Party of Canada was formed.

It was evidently clear after three election losses in a row that the Conservatives needed some sort of a unified Conservative front fend off liberal governments in perpetuity, owing to Conservative-right vote splitting. While the liberal’s core base remained intact and augmented, the conservative core base split three ways, with the far right voting for Reform (Canadian Alliance), the moderate traditional small-c conservatives voting for the Progressive Conservative Party and the right of center red conservative voters going for the liberals.

Mr. Stephen Harper now seems inconsiderately oblivious to the fact that had it not been for Mr. Peter MacKay and the adults in the Progressive Conservative Party he would have never become a Prime Minister. The issue at stake in 2003 for the Conservatives was not who would be the junior partner and who would be the senior partner in the merger, and whether this is a hostile or a friendly takeover.  Rather the fundamental issue was to end the Conservative’s political wilderness and get out of the electoral deadlock.

Because, logically speaking, through free democratic processes, mechanisms and long established political party traditions, grassroots feedback and participation, an automatic correction in ideology will be inevitable within the Party, by default. Naturally, after two or three party leadership conventions, compromises, conciliations and fair elections would diluted hard ideology and a new party would inevitably emerge.

Political processes, if free and democratic, would trigger by its own devices an ideological alignment to the default position of the Progressive Conservative brand or something hybrid and bridge the ideological rift within, hence, become appealing to a larger voter audience. However, so far, to the detriment of the Conservative Movement the opposite of that is happening in reality. After two leadership conventions, there is no evidence to support a free democratic selection process.  The mentality prevailing within the Reform faction of the Conservative Party today is similar to that of a tenant who rented a house, but after a few years as a renter felt comfortable and started acting as the rightful owner of the house and refuses to leave.

After Mr. Harper’s resignation following his defeat in 2015 by the Trudeau liberals, Mr. Jean Charest called him as a courtesy to sound his opinion for running for the leadership of the Conservative Party. The answer came negatively bluntly from Mr. Harper who reportedly told him: this is not the same party.   Who would have been a better candidate to rebuild the Conservative Party more than a former Premier of Quebec and a former deputy Prime Minster to Kim Campbell and a former Mulroney cabinet minister and one of only two Progressive Conservative MPs elected in the disastrous 1993 election?

Furthermore, When Mr. Harper’s successor Mr. Andrew Scheer resigned in 2020, Stephen Harper was also responsible for blocking a win by the front-runner former Progressive Conservative leader and co-author of the merger Mr. Peter MacKay in favour of Mr. Erin O’Toole.

Apparently, the Reform faction, as demonstrated by Mr. Harper’s behaviour is hell bent on hijacking the Conservative movement for good by hooks or crooks.  The Reform faction is determined to bolster its vision and retain a dominant position within the Conservative Party.

Mr. Harper still holds a sway over the Conservative party and it seems he is enjoying the power and influence from behind the scenes. He is doing what ex Party leaders and former Prime Ministers traditionally abstain from doing, interfering in the internal affairs of their party or government after leaving office.  In doing so, he is not acting in the best interest of the country nor is he acting in the best interest of the Party. For the Pan-Canadian Conservative movement Mr. Harper is now part of the problem not part of the solution.

The majority of Canadians do not exactly embrace Reform Party values nor see eye to eye with the Harper inner group loyalists, the likes of Jason Kenney, Doug Ford, Michelle Rempel, Pierre Poilievre, Andrew Scheer, Candice Bergen, Michael Cooper and others. Those people appeal only to a relatively small segment of conservatives among the population whether they admit it or not.

The social and cultural changes brought about by the increasingly changing demographics and rapidly developing communications technologies in the past 20 years and still going on today are moving in opposite direction leaving the Reform Party vision behind.

Moreover, you cannot run a pan-Canadian political movement solely on the Slogan “The West wants in”! Nor, can you run a country as widely diverse as Canada while acquiescing to the whims of the Calgary oil corporate elites, with all due respect to all western Canadians and the oil elites.

A close scrutiny of the Harper’s government 9 years in office reveals that Canadians were actually ready to dump them as early as 2008.  In fact, to some Canadians, Mr. Harper’s tenure was 9 years too many.  Mr. Harper’s famous statement “you will not recognize Canada when I am done with it” cannot be more condescending and egotistical. The majority of Canadians do not identify with Mr. Harper’s far right vision and object to his statement.

In the election of 2008, the liberals under Mr. Stephane Dion leadership almost toppled the Harper government from power.  The Harper Conservatives and their friends in the right wing media resorted to dirty tricks, ambushes and character assassination tactics that the Harper Conservatives have come to employ all too well to an over-kill levels.

They tried to go down the same path of dirty tricks and character assassination with Mr. Justin Trudeau but failed. They employed character assassination tactic in 2011 against Mr. Michael Ignatief with ravaging effects.  Nevertheless, the liberals have learned the lesson, that is, to respond forcefully and immediately to any negative ad, and not leave it until it sticks. The entire empty talk in 2015 of Mr. Trudeau having no experience but good hair and good looks was silly and pathetic, as if Mr. Harper had any experience in government when he took over in 2006.

The right-wing conservative media in Canada has been busy lately trying to create a convenient, self-serving narrative about PM Justin Trudeau. In spite of the fact that every single poll they produced during the 2021 election proved to be wrong and manipulated.

 Now, they are spreading rumours and fabricating a false narrative about Mr. Justin Trudeau resigning before the next election. Actually, they already started speculating about potential leadership hopefuls. Their narrative is laughable at best, and reprehensible. They are foolishly suggesting, that Mr. Trudeau had “failed”! Unbelievably, the verb and jargon they use is “failed”. Therefore, he should resign. What exactly Justin failed to do? They say he “failed” to win a majority! Oh my Lord. I have never seen a Prime Minister resigns for failing to win a majority. Did Harper resign in 2006 and 2008?

In fact, the Canadian electorate has handed Mr. Trudeau a resounding victory in 2021, increasing his seat count by half a dozen and coming only nine seats short of an outright majority. Is this a failure? Is going from a majority to a minority to another stronger minority in three consecutive elections a failure? Likewise, the media was asking Mr. Trudeau malicious questions during the campaign such as when he will resign, and if this would be his last election? Why on earth would you ask a 49-year old successful Prime Minister who has only been in office for 6 years, if he is going to resign? Why? Was he too old? Was he in power for too long? Was he a failed Prime Minister by any standard?  Just why? Unless you want to create a narrative and influence the political debate in such a way that it focuses on the person rather than the policies, and create an atmosphere of doubt and fake voters fatigue against the Prime Minister.

Historically, it is quite common for Canadian Prime Ministers to serve ten, fifteen and eighteen years. Sir Wilfrid Laurier served 15 years, William Mackenzie King served 22 years, Pierre Trudeau served for 15 years, and Jean Chretien served for 10 years.  As far as Justin Trudeau is concerned, I personally see an imaginary stamp written on his forehead: Best before October 2030.  For most Canadians, Justin Trudeau has been doing a superb job and the liberal Party should allow him to serve for as long as he is willing to serve, and it will. It is high time for the Conservatives movement to shift their paradigm and stop their obsessive personal attacks on Justin Trudeau and instead start formulating policies of their own, do their own soul-research and look for political grounds on which to occupy and rejuvenate. Hint: take a page of Mr. Brian Mulroney’s book.

Unfortunately, the CP have borrowed too much from the American neo-Conservative right and the Republican Party, so it is time they start looking inwards for ideas. Watching the mediocre performance of Pierre Poilievre Michelle Rempel, Erin O’Toole and Andrew Scheer (before their resignations), you cannot help but remember Donald Trump with his total loss of reason and reality. You cannot reimagine your own reality and hope that everyone else will join in. Remember the adage; you can deceive some people some of the time but you cannot deceive all people all the time.

For example, Mr. Pierre Poilievre, former official opposition finance critic, and now self-proclaimed finance and Conservative Party leadership hopeful keeps attacking the government for some of the atypical measures it had taken during the Covid-19 pandemic, trumpeting the rising inflation and chiding the government for printing money during the crisis. Even though Mr. Poilievre knows these same measures were undertaken by almost every western government in the G7 group including the Boris Johnson Conservative government of Great Britain with whom Mr. Poilievre share the same values and political leanings.

That is not to say that printing money is a sound economic policy, for even some liberals have criticized it, most notably former Prime Minister Jean Chretien. However, governments were forced to resort to it as an emergency measure to alleviate the suffering and economic hardship of millions of people who lost their jobs, and to help the economy recover faster when it is over. You cannot blame the government for a global economic problem anymore than blaming the Prime Minster for inclement weather. More importantly, government cannot sit idle and do nothing in the face of global pandemic that has devastated the World. Thank God, we did not have a Donald Trump in Canada during the pandemic.

Instead of criticizing and attacking the government actions right or wrong please be honest and use the resources available to you from taxpayers’ money to formulate an alternative policy and present it to Canadians. Stop the cynicism that is been characteristic of conservatives since 2015.

Last but not least, any future conservative leader must do two things; firstly, rebuild and rejuvenate the conservative movement to make it more responsive to the wider Canadian population and truly representative of the Canadian conservative movement from coast to coast to coast. Secondly, formulate a viable alternative to the liberals with open and clear platform with no hidden agenda, which should mirror the majority’s wishes not the minority’s short-sighted wishful thinking.

There can only be one government and one Prime Minister at a time and the mission of a political party leader is not exclusively to become a Prime Minister or else he is gone. That is wrong and too presumptuous.  Mr. Robert Stanfield, the Progressive Conservative leader from 1967 to 1976 ran three elections and lost, but he was a great leader. He was the best Prime Minster Canada has never had. Now there is a major airport named after him, Robert Stanfield International airport in Halifax.

The Conservative Party of 2022 needs to wake up smell the coffee and live up to reality. Period.