PPC Rising And The World Turning Away
What's Behind The PPC Surge?
My home riding of Kanata-Carleton is, as my readers know, a riding of two ends - a Red Tory swing riding with a ton of wealthy suburban homeowners, a ton of new money and families, and then a very parochial, rural annex to the seat. The Tories won it from 2004 to 2015 because they could rely on large margins in the rurals, and even in 2004, they won the two rich neighbourhoods, Kanata Lakes and Bridlewood. These places were reliable bastions of Tory support, because their occupants were financially well off and voted for the Tories. Now, they don’t. The reason the Liberals have won the seat the last two times is because the Tories are now losing Kanata Lakes and Bridlewood, because of course they are. (Do I need to do the Global Realignment rant again? No? Good.)
The other half of the seat is rural, an area with a strong Reform allegiance back in the 90s split, and it’s worth remembering it did elect a Canadian Alliance MP in 2000. The western half of the seat is the heir to that tradition of Toryism, and so in many ways it’s unsurprising Erin O’Toole found himself in Carp with one week out making what David Cochrane of the CBC described as a “relentless barrage on Justin Trudeau’s character”. And yet, it’s much more than just an attack on a Prime Minister, it’s an admission of something serious and substantial - the PPC rise is real, and the Tories are terrified of it.
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“The world is turning/I hope it don’t turn away” is the first two lines of Neil Young’s On The Beach, arguably his greatest song ever. It’s playing as I write this, and it’s unwittingly apt as a metaphor for the PPC, and the people who support it. On The Beach was the end of his Ditch Trilogy, the trio of albums made after Young got overwhelmed by the success of Harvest, and its number one hit, Heart Of Gold. You hear it all throughout the title track, and even other songs on the album, how it is a reflective work of someone who’s a bit off-centre, a bit odd. “All those people, they think they got it made/But I wouldn't buy, sell, borrow or trade/Anything I have to be like one of them/I'd rather start all over again”, from the next track on the album, is instructive here - it’s in many ways an embrace of the oddity, a rallying cry not of rebellion but of acceptance.
Think about what the PPC is, at its core - it’s not about vaccines, or masks, or COVID, even if those have been the manifestations that have led to their prominence. It’s about people not understanding the world they live in anymore. It’s a sentiment that is often expressed dismissively by those of us who support left wing causes and parties, but there is a disorienting nature to thinking you know how the world works, and having that taken away from you. Trust me, I know - I thought I was straight, and now I have spent the last 13 years desperately trying to figure out how I fit into a world where I’m gay. It is disorienting, and for many people, it’s not just a political question or a religious one, but a shock to their very basic conception of how the world works. Be it the increased prevalence of public affection that LGBT people will show their partners in public, to the jokes that can no longer be made in public, to the very nature of masculinity and what it means to be a man, the world is a very different place than what it was the day I was born 24 years ago. And some people cannot get past that fact.
The PPC, and other reactionary political parties across the globe, are exercises in nostalgia, for a time they understand and a work that makes sense to them. Pauline Hanson runs a political party in Australia that yearns for the return of the White Australia Policy, which is exactly as racist as the name suggests. Hanson is as close to a metaphor for Max Bernier as you can find - a politician who will never find widespread love, but who has managed to carve out a career and a place in the politics of the nation. What we know from the experience of One Nation is that this is a politics of grievance, of anger, of wanting a return to the past that was better for those who have lost control as the world around them has moved away from them.
The PPC surge is about these people not wanting to support Erin O’Toole, but it’s mainly about not being able to trust anybody. They see the world turning against them, and they’re reacting to it, and being convinced by the person who is selling them something different than what they’ve heard before. It might not work, but if you’re of the view that the status quo is unacceptable, then what’s the risk of throwing a dart at the wall and seeing if this does something different? It won’t work, of course it won’t work, but this is a worldview of people who aren’t interested in strategically optimal decisions. They’re mad, and it’s unsurprising that the people trying to appeal to Kanata Lakes would face a problem in Carp.
Yes, the Conservative presser today in Carp was an admission they won’t win the election, as I tweeted, of course it is - the guy getting recklessly negative and personal with a week left is the guy who’s up shit’s creek without a paddle. But the venue is also notable, and O’Toole going to Carp to do this tells me who he was trying to speak to with this Hail Mary. He has no interest in the suburbs anymore, he’s running a PPC squeeze campaign at this point, because if you want to flip Liberals in Kanata-Carleton, you hold this event at the Kanata Lakes golf course, or one of the many baseball diamonds all over Kanata. He didn’t do that, he chose to go to Carp because he’s trying, desperately, to win back the votes of those attracted to Bernier’s party. Maybe it works, and maybe he manages to hold together his fragile coalition at both ends. What’s much more likely is it fails at both ends, and the PPC surge in the rurals of the seat, and the Liberals do well in Kanata. But obviously, this isn’t about one riding in suburban Ottawa, it’s about something more than that.
I have no idea how many seats the PPC might cost the Tories - my prior up to now has been that the number will be small, since the PPC vote is likely to be largest in rural seats where the Tories will win easily. I still maintain that’s the case, but then again Erin O’Toole just put up a flashing neon sign saying the PPC are a real threat to his prospects in a week, and at some point we have to accept that these people are here to stay. This isn’t to say we have to listen to them in some Sorkin-ass “if only we talk enough we can convince them to the righteousness of our ideas” bullshit, because there is no detente to be found. The PPC are full of people who want to return to the world where I would never feel comfortable being with the man I love, and me, and millions of LGBT Canadians, non-white Canadians, and women are just plainly not going to accept the limitations the past imposed on us. There is no way to marry the past that so many have a fond nostalgia for with the future so many others will never accept less than, and it means division is inevitable. They’re worried the world is turning away from them, and they’re right to be worried about it, because it is turning away.
Excellent piece, Evan. You write like someone much wiser than your twenty-four years on earth. I thought of Max and the PPC as Canada's equivalent to Farage and UKIP but you're right, Pauline Pantsdown's racist party might be an even better comparison. There is no defining single "issue" like Brexit for them to rally around. There's a cult of personality and an anger that the world is changing and they don't see the mainstream right-wing party as being aggressively effective enough to forestall it.
I suspect the PPC will be like the Tea Party movement was to the GOP, if they envelop the main Tory party after the next leader (Poilievre?) aims to push them to the right. I get the sense that they like Skippy, but he's not the Trumpish demagogue they find affinity with. He's an obnoxious weasel, an Internet troll play-acting as a nebbish accountant. Ben Shapiro of the north has his fan base but doesn't "excite" followers like MAGA Max himself.
From a purely partisan perspective, Liberals love to see the Tories have to face the same fear of vote-splitting and chasing a populist "flank" as Grits have suffered for decades with the NDP. From a long-term perspective of the health of Canada, however, it should raise countless alarms that Pandora's box has been opened and you're right, these people aren't going anywhere soon. We don't know what'll happen to the party itself. They could go defunct like the SoCreds or they could become as much of a populist force as the Bloc. They're "social separatists," only in the sense that they want to separate from modern society.
But of course, according to the MSM, their sudden wave of popularity is Justin Trudeau's fault. I mean... no? Maybe it's more like this is what you get when the main CPC has spent the past six years being nothing but a grievance party against one guy, only to splinter off when the people they've incited to hate that one guy get the sense that the reason Trudeau is still there is because the CPC haven't hated him enough? The GOP has been nothing but a Clinton/Obama hate machine for twenty years but MSM blamed Hillary for calling Trump followers deplorables. Rinse, repeat, SSDD. Canadian MSM are as clueless as their cousins in the USA.
A very good piece indeed. There has been this parallel "fin-de-siecle" clutching at the loss of "traditional values" and also the "neoliberal consensus" that has run parallel to the rise of authoritarian populism throughout much of the world. And it's quite real: there are 3 PPC lawn signs in my neighbourhood in St. Catharines!