The Conservative Party Isn't Fit For Purpose

On The Crisis Destroying The Tories

One of the things that being a writer makes you acutely aware of is how words have specific meanings, and how easily you can entirely change a sentence, or a paragraph, just by changing a couple of words. It’s a very, very specific talent that you have to be very aware of when you work with words for your entire living – be it writing a book or speaking in public.

This whole country is in some ways an exercise in good faith – the founding of this country was MacDonald and George Brown putting aside their grave differences and finding a Grand Coalition at a time of grave instability in the Canadian colonies. It’s an exercise in trusting that the person beside you cares about your wellbeing as much as you care about theirs. It’s an exercise that fundamentally relies on common facts, common humanity, and a common truth – say, that words have meanings, and those meanings matter.

This week, the Conservative Party Of Canada has decided that words don’t mean what they mean, that facts don’t mean what they’ve always meant, that up is down, down is up, and that the sky is now maroon, all because they have no better response to the Liberal-NDP deal than to scream it is an anti-democratic coalition that means we have an NDP government. And, in so doing, they’ve put the final nail in their coffin as a party that can ever claim to be fit for purpose.

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What is and what isn’t a coalition government is one of those things that seems like there’s more vagueness than there is. A Coalition government has a very specific meaning – two or more parties having members in the government. Not supporting the government, not in arrangement with the Government, two or more parties having Ministers of the Crown. That’s a coalition. Unless I missed a memo (and I didn’t), Chrystia Freeland didn’t lose her role as Deputy Prime Minister this week, the Liberals didn’t give up Cabinet spots, there are no New Democrats with Ministerial pay bumps and access to cars and drivers. This isn’t a coalition.

In 2006, Stephen Harper was one seat short of being able to rely on the NDP to get laws and confidence votes through the House, so he offered David Emerson a Cabinet job – he, of course, the Liberal MP for Vancouver-Kingsway. Emerson never resigned, he never went back to the voters of Kingsway (who would have had exactly 0% in electing him as a Conservative) to ask their permission, and yet, the math changed in a way designed to help the Government.

Hell, last year the Conservatives complained about the way the Liberals called an early election in contravention of the rights of Parliament to set its own election dates (within the confines of the law and the Constitution). So, if the Prime Minister is wrong to use his ability to ask the Governor General to dissolve Parliament early, and the Liberals are anti-democratic hacks to seek stability to ensure this Parliament goes the full four year term, then you’re left to wonder what is democratic in their eyes. The problem is, the answer isn’t great.

If Liberal Prime Ministers can’t use the reserve powers afforded to their office, and they can’t seek to make arrangements with other parties in the House, then what you’re arguing – implicitly or otherwise – is that Liberal Governments aren’t legitimate and democratic in this country. On what basis is that claim made? None, really – a majority of the voters voted for the Liberals and the NDP, and a majority of the House has signed up for this pact. If you want to bellyache about the fact that the Liberals win more seats on less of the vote than the Tories, well, you’re the ones who claimed the 2016 Electoral Reform process was an attempt to rig the 2019 election for the Liberals, so live with the consequences of your own actions.

If every action of a Liberal Prime Minister is illegitimate and anti-democratic, what you come to is the idea that only Conservative Governments are legitimate – in the same way Parizeau made clear that he thought the votes of the English and the Jews were less than a Quebecois one when he spoke of losing the 1995 referendum because of “money and the ethnic vote.” When you decide that Western grievance matters more than Ontarian contentment, it is because you view the former as legitimate and the latter as not so. It is a failure to accept that, actually, in a democracy, it’s your own damn fault if you lose.

Canadian Conservatives used to get this, actually, and they used to hate the Liberals, but not think of them as illegitimate. The 2008 Coalition Crisis was met with some hyperbolic vitriol from the right, but it was also met with the complete lunacy of the left, which viewed Harper using a reserve power – prorogation – as an illegal act. The difference is, everyone calmed the fuck down once it passed. Everyone got their heads on straight, and that Parliament lasted another 2 years.

There is something fundamentally broken about a system where a mundane, non-binding agreement that doesn’t actually stop an election being called is talked about in these terms, because there can be no country after you stop thinking of the opposition as your compatriot. If the Tories win the 2025 election, I will be sad for my nation and devastated for my professional reputation, but I will not view Prime Minister-designate Poilievre as an illegitimate man, and I’ll wish him and his party the very best in governing. But this isn’t that anymore.

Actually, I’m wrong about what I just wrote – there’s something fundamentally broken about a party and a movement that views everything their opposition does as illegitimate and fraudulent, and we’re there now. Briane from Chilliwack might make us all laugh, but the notion of the Conservative Party just flagrantly making shit up to slander their opponents isn’t funny, it’s fucking terrifying. Melissa Lantsman going on fucking Fox Primetime to make shit up about the Prime Minister and the government on a show that is most known for a white woman telling LeBron James to “shut up and dribble” for talking about racism while putting on F-list celebrities to talk about how mean liberals are to them should be permanently disqualifying, and yet, we all forgot it happened.

I want a credible alternative to this government, which I have not voted for since 2015, because I know better than most the arrogance that permeates inside the walls of “Official Ottawa” when the Liberals don’t think outsiders are listening to them. They think their shit doesn’t stink which is how they have had long stretches of two years tossed out the window by ethical standards. Even if they never win, this country needs a Conservative Party at least good enough to scare the Liberals, and we don’t.

A patriotic, sensible, reasonable, and fundamentally just opposition has never been more needed, with crises abroad and at home, and the Tories just don’t care. They aren’t fit for purpose, they’re a disgrace to the legacy of John A, Borden, Dief, and Mulroney, and they’re a betrayal of this country’s founding ideals.

Please God never let them govern while they’re this way.