Byelections: The CPC And The Damage Done

On Oxford, Winnipeg, And What It Means

I mean, are we really surprised?

The last time we saw a Federal Conservative leadership in this country influenced and advised by Jenni Byrne we saw one of the worst run campaigns in modern Canadian history. The 2015 Tory campaign – remember, that long campaign was a Tory tactical choice – had little to fill the void of an 11 week campaign, and the one thing they did announce in that campaign was the horrifically offensive Barbaric Cultural Practices hotline, which killed the Tories in ethnic communities and was one of, if not the worst, single policy announcement in recent history.

The Byrne campaign of 2015 was lifeless, it was useless, and it felt at times like a campaign more about saving the furniture than actually winning. They went into that campaign clearly expecting the Liberals to shit the bed, and when that didn’t happen, they didn’t have a pivot. They couldn’t find a message to knock the Liberals off with, and the most memorable thing Harper said or did during that campaign was compliment Trudeau in the Monk Debate for ably defending the Harper government’s anti-terror law.

Now, Byrne is back after spending 2021 backseat driving the O’Toole campaign from the cheap seats on the Podcast That Shall Not Be Named, as a firm member of Poilievre’s inner circle. And now, she’s failed in three byelections – the Tories had a swing against them in Mississauga-Lakeshore, they came away with a pathetic performance in Oxford, and they’re going backwards in Winnipeg South-Centre. And at some point, I’m wondering – are we that surprised that the architect of 2015’s failure is failing again?

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I don’t usually blame political staff for the decisions made by political actors, but I’m going to remind everyone of one thing. In 2020, pre-pandemic, when he was considering running for the leadership to replace Scheer, Poilievre, don’t forget, scampered to La Presse to talk about his support for gay marriage and how he won’t allow legislation to be passed on abortion. When Poilievre thought that the political wind in this country was for a more moderate Tory Party, he went to a French outlet to call gay marriage a success, to disavow his vote 15 years prior against it and to say that he’s learned.

I’m not doubting those beliefs, but I am saying that politics is about priorities and emphasis and when he thought that moderation was required he prioritized moderate credentials and now that the wind has shifted in the Conservative world he promises to introduce a Private Member’s Bill to ban all vaccine mandates – again, not all COVID mandates, all vaccine mandates period.

Part of the reason Poilievre is as willing to do so? Byrne, who spent the entirety of 2021 sniping that O’Toole’s moderation attempts would cost the party, and then claimed victory afterwards. Now, she’s right in the sense that Jean Charest would not be a General Election salve to the Conservatives’ problems, but we now have three byelections that don’t exactly suggest her message is resonating.

I’m almost more interested in Winnipeg for extrapolation than Oxford, given that some amount of the Oxford swing is just straight up Conservative HQ meddling going unwanted by parachuting in a candidate, and the news is a disaster. It’s a seat that shouldn’t flip, but it’s a seat that tells us a lot about the state of the broader suburban fight, where the Conservatives still need to win some seats to win office. They need to Port Moody Coquitlam and two Kitcheners and Kanata and St. Kitts to win if they aren’t getting a Mississauga or a Brampton or an Oakville, and while South-Centre is more left wing than any of those, it’s an inner suburban seat that should be swinging if the Liberals are as unpopular as people claim they are. And they’re losing vote share, somehow.

This isn’t about the Tories needing to replicate the massive swings of the Trudeau Liberals in the Harper majority or various international comparisons, because the Liberals needed something like a 30 point swing nationally to win majority government from 2011 to 2015. That said, they got results broadly in line with the idea that their time at 20% was a fluke, from coming close in Calgary Centre to nearly winning Brandon Souris. The byelections, in aggregate, agreed with the broad story of that Parliament, which was Conservative decline and uncertainty who would win the progressive primary.

Now? The Tories are going the wrong way, even with a healthy amount of the Oxford result handwaved away with local factors. They’re nowhere to be seen in Winnipeg, they’re going backwards in Oxford even against my benchmark. This strategy of the Tories is seeming to work in the polls, but it is clearly not working when voters get faced with the actual prospect of voting CPC and not just the potential for it.

Yes, they clearly annihilated the PPC and have wounded Bernier, if not killed him off. But it came at a cost, and that cost is clear. In the seats where the Liberals are the target, they’re going backwards, three straight fucking times.

I wrote a similar thing in November about the Medicine Hat byelection that got Danielle Smith into the Alberta Legislature – the swing to the NDP there was fine, but not overwhelmingly like the polls at the time said. I am as big a believer in polling as anybody, and trust me, I think a lot of the dumb and bad narratives about the industry are shit. But I’m looking at a data set that says the Tories are going the wrong way when voters actually get to vote, and as much as they’d like to, CPC partisans can’t just hand wave it away because Angus Reid says otherwise.

The Tories whole strategy right now should be in tatters, because either this government is as unpopular as everyone says it is and the Tories still can’t fucking do anything against them or the government isn’t nearly as unpopular as everyone thinks, which suggests that the Opposition might be failing to make them unpopular. I heavily suspect it’s the former, mostly because since about 2017 that’s been this country’s relationship with the Liberals – they’re kinda shit but they’re still the best option. That’s not a good thing, but it’s true. And the Tories have to do what the Poilievre leadership hasn’t been able to do and that’s find new fucking pitch, cause this ain’t working.

And the best way to do that? Get rid of Byrne, find someone who actually has recent experience running a winning campaign, and stop pretending that someone whose last substantive contribution to public life in this country was the disasterclass that was 2015 was ever going to put Poilievre into office.