Importing Fear and Hatred into Canadian Poli
The Implications of a Conservative government
Andrew Scheer and the Conservative party appropriated France’s “yellow vest” movement, and brought it to Canada as a pipeline promoting, anti-immigrant extremist movement whose sole purpose was to rile up angry, right-of-centre Canadian voters.
In considering whether the Liberals or Conservatives will form a minority government, Canadians need only to look south to Donald Trump’s Ukraine scandal and the formal House impeachment hearings, to Britain and Boris Johnson’s anti-democratic parliamentary manoeuvering to crash Great Britain out of the European Union without a workable deal, or to Doug Ford’s wildly unpopular, regressive government in the province of Ontario.
The reason Canadians need to look closely at the present state of affairs in the United States, Great Britain and Ontario is that each jurisdiction is run by a right wing, populist government, with mirror image policies to those espoused by Andrew Scheer and the Conservative Party of Canada.
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Andrew Scheer opposes the proposed Liberal party ban of assault weapons such as the AK-47, the weapon used in mass shootings in the U.S. and the Christchurch, New Zealand mosque shootings on March 15th of this year, killing 51 innocent citizens, severely injuring 49 more.
Andrew Scheer also opposes giving city mayors the right to introduce legislation that would ban handguns;
- Andrew Scheer opposes abortion, and women’s body autonomy and reproductive rights — although he has said an Andrew Scheer government would not seek to ban abortion in Canada. Still, come Monday evening, the Conservatives will elect 50 members to their caucus who are staunch pro-life advocates, who have stated that they will introduce legislation that will limit women’s reproductive rights;
- Andrew Scheer has, over the years of his political life, worked to oppose LGBTQ rights, opposed the same sex marriage bill when it was introduced into Parliament in 2004, and in 2019 was the only leader of a major Canadian political party who chose not to march in a Pride parade to support members of the LGBTQ community.
What a right wing Conservative government means for Canada.
Tory leader Andrew Scheer appearing on Faith Goldy’s far-right Rebel Media show.
In recent years, Canada has seen the emergence of two blocks of voters.
“One block consists of people rooted in a specific place or community, socially conservative, often less educated, mainly male, mainly but not necessarily exclusively older and white,” says respected Canadian journalist, essayist and academic Michael Valpy. “This is Canada’s right-wing populist voting block, who make up 34% of the voting populace, whether in Canada, the United States or Great Britain.”
“The other, much larger block of Canadians voters consists of socially liberal, often university educated Canadians, who more often than not live in Canada’s urban areas, as well as visible minority populations, including immigrants and refugees, and members of the LGBTQ community.”
Michael Valpy sees Canada’s political parties orienting themselves around these two distinct blocks of divergent voters, with the Conservative Party attracting the vast majority of right wing populist voters, as well as far right extremists, and the three other major political parties splitting the more socially liberal, visible minority and LGBTQ / gender variant voting block.
The polarization between these two distinct groups of voters have created two irreconcilable polities in western politics, two irreconcilable Great Britains, two irreconcilable U.S. citizen groups, and now, two Canadas.
Mr. Valpy points out that the number of Canadians being drawn into the right-wing populist camp are not noticeably increasing. While that may be the case, he also cautions that:
“It’s not the populist numbers — about 34% per cent of the adult population in Canada, around he same as that in the United States — it’s the extreme polarization exhibited by those swept into the populist vortex: the depth of their feeling, their anger and their passion. Plus, in the last few years they’ve become politicized, drawn almost entirely into one political party, a new, far right-of-centre Conservative party.”
In a study reported by New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall, academic researchers and political scientists Michael Bang Petersen, Mathias Osmundsen and Kevin Arceneaux reported that …
“In response to three statements related to a preference for chaos in politics the results were staggering: 24% agreed that society should be burned to the ground; 40% concurred with the statement that, ‘When it comes to our political and social institutions, I cannot help thinking ‘just let them all burn’; and 40% also agreed that ‘we cannot fix the problems in our social institutions, we need to tear them down and start over.'”
The two studies analyzed the values of the right-wing, populist voting block in slightly different ways, but there is no question that they are talking about the political values of the same large block of voters.
In a similar, recent Canadian academic study, the same populist, right wing Canadian voters who were identified in the United States and Great Britain were seen as sharing similar nihilist values, and who overwhelmingly stated their support for Andrew Scheer’s Conservative Party — which, as you might well imagine, has critically important implications should the Conservatives form a government after the October 21st federal election.
At the root of the problem is that while the majority of Canadians may reject the right-wing populism now represented by Scheer’s Conservatives, the progressive vote is spread across four centre-left political parties, while the right-wing populist vote falls almost entirely within the ranks of the Conservatives. That is why their political influence is so pronounced during this election — they are keeping the Scheer Conservatives in the race.
Like the populist base of Donald Trump’s Republican Party and that of Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, the right wing, populist base supporting the Conservative Party of Canada is mistrustful of the “mainstream” media, facts, science, experts (including the civil service), and actively opposes any notion of our current climate emergency.
Most importantly, the right wing voting block — whether in the U.S., Britain or Canada — prefer to base their policy preferences more on a policy’s gut appeal than on evidence. These voters also reflect the values and cultural norms of Stephen Harper’s “old stock Canadians“, and are fearful respecting the growth of visible minorities in urban areas across Canada.
Right-wing billionaires Charles and (the late) David Koch fund the Atlas Network, which works against environment groups in Canada, and supports of the oil industry, as well as funds right-of-centre extremist groups who support Andrew Scheer’s Conservative party.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the Conservatives are also almost universally supported by Canada’s wealthy, often self-defined upper class.
Michael Valpy and pollster Frank Graves report that Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives have a huge lead among wealthy Canadians, who support the Conservatives because they strongly believe that a Conservative party government’s actual, implemented policies will serve their class interests.
Canada’s rich and powerful elite (who are extremely knowledgeable about the specific policies of the main political parties) are swinging strongly behind Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives because they support a policy agenda consisting of cuts to social programmes that serve the interests of the vast majority of Canadians, while they also offer support to a Conservative regime that would reduce corporate taxes for business and the wealthy, strip down the size of government, implement a deregulation regime, weaken unions, allow privatization, and seek to keep wages low.
The central argument of today’s VanRamblings’ column is this: the Conservative Party of Canada and Doug Ford’s Ontario Progressive Conservative Party are not anything like the Liberals, NDP or Greens.
The Conservative Party is different not because it is more market oriented, would kill the carbon tax or because it supports the traditional conservative, small government policy agenda. Whether one agrees with such policies or not, they constitute a legitimate programme for a right-of-centre party.
Rather, what separates the Conservative Party from the other mainstream parties is that they are captive to a minority, populist voting block that distrusts expertise and hard facts, is viscerally afraid of change, and tends to be homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic and racist, as expressed through their profound discomfort with immigration, with allowing refugees into Canada, and the growth of our visible minority Canadian population.
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Andrew Scheer plans to spend $100 billion on a national energy corridor that, like Trump’s wall, will never get built. Author Margaret Atwood weighs in on the sheer stupidity and wrongfulness of a project that will be in the courts for years, and would defeat any notion of responding to our current climate emergency;
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Andrew Scheer plans to cut $35.4 billion in infrastructure spending, which means provinces and Canadians mayors can forget about having a partner to build bridges, light rail transit, or affordable housing. Little wonder that Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart weighed in the other day on what a disaster an Andrew Scheer-led Conservative government would mean not just for the environment, but for harm reduction, our current opioid crisis, and transit projects about to get underway;
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Andrew Scheer has stated that he rejects the science behind the new Canada food guide, which no longer places an influence on the consumption of meat, milk and bread as staples of the Canadian diet, indicating that like his Conservative predecessor, his government would reject science if it doesn’t adhere to his voter constituency orthodoxy.
But what is most disturbing about this right-wing, populist voting block is its indifference to the health of our democratic institutions and practices. Again as described in the study cited above, this voting block has a “preference for chaos in politics” (e.g. 40% of the respondents in the study support the statement that “When it comes to our political and social institutions, I cannot help thinking ‘just let them all burn'”). The implications of this “preference for chaos” are on full display in the United States and Great Britain, where Trump and Johnson are playing to this base, as Andrew Scheer has done since the outset of the election.
What can’t be emphasized enough is that this far right, extremist voting block of Canadians is — as is the case in Donald Trump’s U.S. — fearful and angry, with a tendency towards violence, hate and destructive acting out, and that Canada’s Conservative Party is increasingly beholden to them.
Even more concerning is the fact that it is in the Conservative Party’s interest for this voting block to become even angrier and more fearful because the angrier and more fearful this segment of the population becomes, the more likely they are to vote this upcoming Monday, on October 21st. The Conservatives need a high turn-out from these voters, and a low turnout of dispirited progressive voters and young voters 18 – 34, if they are going to succeed in assuming government post election.
The twisted irony of all this is that while conservative political parties created the right-wing, populist voting block described in today’s VanRamblings’ post, they have now become prisoners of it. As Donald Trump has made clear these past three years, right-wing, extremist populist leaders will do and say anything to energize their minority base.
Donald Trump’s supporters (like the supporters of Ontario Premier Doug Ford, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Andrew Scheer himself) see Trump as someone who raises a middle finger to propriety, to elites and to the establishment. They like him because they see his populist conservativism as his being “one of us, taking on the elites on our behalf.”
Of course, these right wing, populist political leaders are not “one of us”.
If Trump’s Republican Party in the United States and the Conservative Party in Britain (e.g. Boris Johnson’s anti-democratic Brexit antics, etc.) are any indication, this will mean that the practice of the Conservative party’s right-wing populism in Canada will become more and more extreme. Remember, we are now talking about a Conservative government in control of the full machinery of the Canadian state — not just an opposition party limited to rhetorically whipping up its base. Make no mistake: a vote for Andrew Scheer is a vote for Donald Trump, and all the harm Donald Trump brings.
When fear, opportunism or miscalculation leads established parties to bring extremists into the mainstream, democracy is imperiled.
Once a would-be right-wing populist makes it to power, democracies face a second critical test: will the autocratic leader subvert democratic institutions or be constrained by them?
Institutions alone are not enough to rein in elected autocrats. Constitutions must be defended — by political parties and organized citizens but also by democratic norms. Without robust norms, constitutional checks and balances do not serve as the bulwarks of democracy we imagine them to be. Institutions become political weapons, wielded forcefully by those who control them against those who do not.
This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy — attacking the press, the courts and the opposition, as Stephen Harper did during his 10 years in power, and weaponizing our democracy while rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents.
The tragic paradox of this electoral route to authoritarianism and despotism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy — gradually, subtly, and even legally — to kill it.
Click here for the latest publication of Eric Grenier’s polling aggregate CBC Poll Tracker, which will continue to be updated over the weekend.
Current polling suggests that the 2019 federal election is heading towards the formation of either a hung Parliament or an unworkable and unstable minority government, in which the Liberals or the Conservatives will have to come to some sort of agreement with one or more of the smaller parties, in order to form government. The potential for a Conservative Party-Bloc Québécois co-operative agreement is, unfortunately, great, tragic and unthinkable for what it portends for the majority of Canadians who support progressive values, and who are committed to fighting climate change.
Should the results of next Monday’s election result in a hung Parliament, the Liberals, NDP, Greens and the Bloc need to talk honestly about what the next government of Canada will look like if no party wins the 170 seats needed for a majority. There is just too much on the line not to do so.
And they’ll need to begin that discussion first thing on Tuesday morning.
Decision Canada coverage from earlier in the week …
Reflections on a Shit Election, Part 1, The 2019 federal election turns around in its final week, leaving the door open to the hoary prospect of an Andrew Scheer-led regressive Conservative government;
Reflections on a Shit Election, Part 2, A defense of Justin Trudeau as a progressive, and electing him to a second term of office, in a minority government, propped up by Jagmeet Singh’s NDP and Elizabeth May’s Greens (which would be the best of all possible election outcomes);
Reflections on a Shit Election, Part 3, The increasing popularity of New Democratic Party leader, Jagmeet Singh, and the prospects that the NDP may hold the balance of power come late Monday evening, October 21st.
Campaign and longtime senior political activists David Herle, Scott Reid and Jenni Byrne, in their final pre-election day podcast weigh in on the 2019 federal election campaign, with Mr. Herle and Mr. Reid predicting a (heartening) progressive outcome come late night Monday, October 21st.
