I must admit that I've spent an undue amount of time lately thinking about the dysfunctional conservative parties of the United States and Canada. I wonder about the composition their coalitions, about how they hold them together, and I wonder who has power - or who is grasping for it. At least in Canada, we can talk about our Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) as a "big tent" party: a collection of moderates (the "Red Tories"), libertarians, and social conservatives ("socons"). In my own lifetime, Canada's conservatives bridged into other areas too: environmentalists, Francophones, visible minorities, and other, regional interests, whose prominence wax and wane with the times. Regardless, the CPC aren't the country's Natural Governing Party, like the Republicans or the Liberals, but they are always seen as the government in waiting.
This wasn't always the case. Conservatives have seldom governed Canada since the death of MacDonald in 1891,* but they've been very competitive and generally popular in the almost 33 years I've been alive. Arguably, this electoral weakness is even overstated. Division within the various conservative movements in Canada has often been blamed for the Liberal Party's 20th century dominance of the country. Looking through federal election results, it's easy to see why. Groups like Social Credit, the Creditistes,** Reform, and even the PQ and Greens all diverted votes away from their time's primary Conservative Party, and these are just some parties that actually won seats. Often, their combined popular vote exceeded 50%, something the Progressive Conservative Party was actually able to score once, on its own in 1984 - the only time in modern history any Canadian party has done so.*** It's easy to see why writers like John Ibbotson thought Canada was going through a "Blue Shift" under Harper; but maybe it already was blue...
Regardless, things went off the rails. By 1993, the record success of the PCs was in ashes: events during their reign resulted in the PCs splitting into three major parties which were subsequently blown apart by a revitalized Liberal Party running up the middle. While the Liberals would win in 1993, 1997, 2000, and 2004, they governed from a socially-left, economically right-wing manner. The size of the Federal government was reduced, the deficit solved, welfare reduced, and so too the national debt. They carried on the environmental policies of the previous PCs, which wound up with the Kyoto Protocol, interpreted by Alberta as an assault on its interests. They also legalized Gay Marriage, which was also opposed by the provincial government in Alberta, but also the majority of the Canadian population at the time. Throughout this period, the PCs, Reform and Parti Quebecois still received over 50% of the vote in each succeeding election. If they could be re-united, they could rule Canada forever. While it didn't work in 2004, it worked for the next three elections.
However, as you might be gathering, I've also lived to see a lot of this appeal fade. The Canadian Conservatives have once again gone off the rails. What was described as "missing on an empty net:" the 2019 election, was an epic failure of modern Canadian conservatism. The 50%+ support of bygone days had by then largely evaporated. Though the CPC won the popular vote in 2019, it was with a meager 34% support, 36% if you include the breakaway People's Party and other perennial right-wing offshoots - while the Liberals had 33%. Hardly dominant stuff. In fact, the Conservatives won the popular vote only because of unusually high voter turnout in Alberta coupled with unusually high support for the party there and in Saskatchewan. They won one other province (Manitoba), and barely won a tight four way race in BC, while losing every other province and territory, places where 2/3 of the Canadian population resides.
What explains their failure? So people find it easy to blame Trump, but let's look at Canada. There's something to be said for the reviving popularity of left-wing ideas, as the resurrection of the NDP and leftward shift of the LPC can attest to. Combined, they got almost 50% of the vote in the last election. However, let's look at the CPC: the environmental wing is almost fully gone, pushed out by Western oil interests. The CPC purged itself of its Muslim supporters during their electoral campaign in 2015. Another growing part of the Canadian population, the First Nations, Inuit and Metis, have never really been courted by the CPC and typically feel betrayed by them more than the other parties. Furthermore, Canada's "Red Tory" tradition, once so strong in the cities of Ontario and in Anglophone communities to its east seems to be going extinct. These are just some explanations for the CPC's current decline - so what about the other groups? Who is keeping the CPC viable?
Well, I've already mentioned them: the vestigial Tories - who have likely left the party altogether with the recent failure of MacKay; the Libertarians, at least those who have stuck around after the failure of Bernier; and the Canadian Social Conservative movement. There is also a growing Francophone base around Quebec City, though few of these voters are members, donors or volunteers (activists, in short). The CPC seems to have the Anglophone farmers of Ontario and the West, who are activists, and seemingly many people one could describe as partisans of the Oil and Gas industry. The values and way of thinking of the members of these various groups can be very different - but to some degree we can boil it down to a unity around the ideas of a smaller, less regulated Canadian state, and the need to keep the "left" out of power.
Whatever it is, I just can't shake a feeling of pessimism towards this party and its prospects. I don't know why I care; maybe because my mom worked for them; maybe because I voted for them; maybe because I, in some way, could describe myself as "conservative." Maybe its because, no matter how vacant of ideas or good sense, the CPC still seem next in line to take power... or is it because they aren't more deserving of it? Why am I spending so much time thinking about them and looking at them with dread? Is it because they have 30% voter support? Or is it only 30%? Is it because they could form government? Is it because I know that this version should not form government? Or finally, is it because I think they're turning into something worse?
This is probably a good point to leave. In the next installment, I want to look at the Libertarian wing of the party.
* In the last 130 years, Conservative parties have run Canada for a total of 44 years, more or less. 18 of these years have come since the 1984 election. Since 1891, the Liberals have run the country for the remaining 86 years, as they continue to do today.
** The Social Credit Party and Creditistes were literally just the Anglophone and Francophone division of the Social Credit movement in Canada. The Western based party couldn't tolerate a Francophone leader and split off and disappeared after 1965, its voters likely going PC.
*** This victory in 1984 came after 20 years of almost unbroken Liberal rule and the final disappearance of the Creditistes in Quebec.
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P2: It's probably not hard to argue that a lot of this trouble has to do with American influence. Just look at the Republicans: it's now hard to see them as anything other than a coterie of White Protestants flirting with fascism - a more poisonous pill in this country, which is more diverse, more Catholic (and it would it be more on point to say: far, far less Evangelical Protestant), and even more democratic. That said, Stephen Harper "united the right" and won his first two elections while George Bush was President. However, he had strong organized support who we will be focusing on later.
Trump, though blameworthy, is hardly worthy of blame for the receding support of the party. Other dynamics have been underway for years which have resulted in the Conservative Party being united in name only, a partnership more in myth than fact, and one more marginal than it would appear.