Canada General Discussion (2019-)

[Storr]

Erin O'Toole is officially out. 73 to 45.

Has anyone told the truckers? I'm sure O'Toole's removal will satisfy them and they'll go home peacefully once they hear the news.

[DC Al Fine]

Erin O'Toole is officially out. 73 to 45.

Discuss with maps

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

73-45? Ouch.
Have we a geographic breakdown of who voted how?

[Don Vito Corleone]

This was bound to happen... only depressed cat ladies and wine moms want covid protocols to continue

...and the majority of Canadians, when polled. Oops.

Not quite:
https://twitter.com/CanadianPolling/status/1488206488300666889

[KaiserDave]

O'Toole doesn't hold a candle to Diefenbaker, but he represented the last chance for Canadian conservatism to avoid the chasm of Americanization. He was slippery and dishonest but held onto a branch of Red Toryism. Unfortunately it was futile. Bring on Poilievre or some ghoul. I'd be supporting the NDP anyway.

[Continential]

Congrats on the Grits for winning the next election.

[Lief 🗽]

RIP Canada. Maybe in the short term the conservatives going far right helps the Liberals but no party can stay in power forever and eventually the trucker lunatic party will be in charge again.

[2952-0-0]

Great News !! Poillievre For Leader

If that's the case, he'll lose his seat.

[DC Al Fine]

73-45? Ouch.
Have we a geographic breakdown of who voted how?

It was a secret ballot, so we only have MP's public statements

Known O'Toole supporters:
Chris d'Entremont - West Nova
Eric Duncan - Stormant-Dundas-South Glengarry
Michelle Rempel - Calgary Nose Hill
Tim Uppal - Edmonton Mill Woods
Ron Liepert - Calgary Signal Hill
Karen Vecchio - Elgin Middlesex London

Known opponents
Garnett Genuis - Sherwood Park-Fort Saskatchewan (also reportedly started the coup)
Bob Benzen - Calgary Heritage

We can make some educated guesses as well. Socons hated O'Toole, there's no way Poillievre didn't vote to remove him, etc etc.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

73-45? Ouch.
Have we a geographic breakdown of who voted how?

It was a secret ballot, so we only have MP's public statements

Known O'Toole supporters:
Chris d'Entremont - West Nova
Eric Duncan - Stormant-Dundas-South Glengarry
Michelle Rempel - Calgary Nose Hill
Tim Uppal - Edmonton Mill Woods
Ron Liepert - Calgary Signal Hill
Karen Vecchio - Elgin Middlesex London

Known opponents
Garnett Genuis - Sherwood Park-Fort Saskatchewan (also reportedly started the coup)
Bob Benzen - Calgary Heritage

We can make some educated guesses as well. Socons hated O'Toole, there's no way Poillievre didn't vote to remove him, etc etc.

Fair to assume that Ontario and Atlantic Canada probably were hotbeds of O'Toole support?

[StateBoiler]

Re: the next election

The Tories got a shade under 34% last time. Say they need to pick up six points to form government (probably a bit less than that, but suppose for argument sake).

Does anyone seriously believe that the Liberals have six points worth of white collar professional types, who were put off by pro-choice, pro-carbon tax, Liberal-gun-ban-accepting O'Toole, but would embrace the Tories if they moved just a little bit more left?

A significant chunk of those six points are going to have come from the PPC, and perhaps the Bloc Quebecois,  some sort of accomodation is going to have to be reached to win those voters over. Even among current Liberal/NDP voters, the path of least resistance is probably going to be in the voters concentrated in places like Northern Ontario and rural Newfoundland, not the Andrew Coyne types. Those voters aren't going to be won over with the sorts of things pundits usually think the Tories should do.

It was kind of my take at the time of the last election - O'Toole went to the left from Scheer which is what all of the non-Conservative vote and media in Canada told the Conservatives to do if they want to form power again, and it did not result in any increase in voting support from the 2019 election to the 2021 election.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Keep this in mind : Canadian conservatives tend to do worse when they nominate moderates than they do actual conservatives. The fact is Canada is more like the US than the UK and being “American” isn’t a boogeyman to the voters as the eastern wing of the party thinks it is

[StateBoiler]

The problem here is that the residents in downtown Ottawa have suffered way beyond what's reasonable protest, and the protesters openly don't care about the consequences to other people. Freedom ends when other peoples' freedoms are damaged - in this case, the freedom to enjoy a quiet night's sleep, the freedom to earn a living at the mall, the freedom to attend school, and so on.

In your country and mine we removed the freedom to earn a living at the mall and the freedom to attend school in the last 2 years for extended periods of time.

[DC Al Fine]

73-45? Ouch.
Have we a geographic breakdown of who voted how?

It was a secret ballot, so we only have MP's public statements

Known O'Toole supporters:
Chris d'Entremont - West Nova
Eric Duncan - Stormant-Dundas-South Glengarry
Michelle Rempel - Calgary Nose Hill
Tim Uppal - Edmonton Mill Woods
Ron Liepert - Calgary Signal Hill
Karen Vecchio - Elgin Middlesex London

Known opponents
Garnett Genuis - Sherwood Park-Fort Saskatchewan (also reportedly started the coup)
Bob Benzen - Calgary Heritage

We can make some educated guesses as well. Socons hated O'Toole, there's no way Poillievre didn't vote to remove him, etc etc.

Fair to assume that Ontario and Atlantic Canada probably were hotbeds of O'Toole support?

Yeah, but it's more complicated than that. A decent chunk of the Calgary/Edmonton MP's probably backed O'Toole, and Ontario and New Brunswick have some notable socons.

[2952-0-0]

In your country and mine we removed the freedom to earn a living at the mall and the freedom to attend school in the last 2 years for extended periods of time.

"I'm tired of my freedom being taken away, so I will take away the freedom of thousands of other people until I get what I want!!"



If they want to act like adults in a democratic society, and demonstrate peacefully and sue the government in courts, it's their entitlement. But if they want to act like manchildren, then they should be treated accordingly.

[King of Kensington]

Yeah, but it's more complicated than that. A decent chunk of the Calgary/Edmonton MP's probably backed O'Toole, and Ontario and New Brunswick have some notable socons.

I think talk about an "eastern" PC vs. "western" Reform side is simplistic and a 1993 map of Canadian politics is inconceivable today.  Urban Alberta is more "PC" at this point.  Calgary is not the bastion of reactionary suburbia it was in the 1990s.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Re: the next election

The Tories got a shade under 34% last time. Say they need to pick up six points to form government (probably a bit less than that, but suppose for argument sake).

Does anyone seriously believe that the Liberals have six points worth of white collar professional types, who were put off by pro-choice, pro-carbon tax, Liberal-gun-ban-accepting O'Toole, but would embrace the Tories if they moved just a little bit more left?

A significant chunk of those six points are going to have come from the PPC, and perhaps the Bloc Quebecois,  some sort of accomodation is going to have to be reached to win those voters over. Even among current Liberal/NDP voters, the path of least resistance is probably going to be in the voters concentrated in places like Northern Ontario and rural Newfoundland, not the Andrew Coyne types. Those voters aren't going to be won over with the sorts of things pundits usually think the Tories should do.

To be really blunt, if Poillievre becomes leader, I'd be more nervous for the party if he runs on a platform of fiscal orthodoxy, than if he does the sort of cultural conservative stuff pundits wring their hands over.

I don't want to believe this, as a former Liberal who has started to lean more and more towards the CPC, I'd much rather see someone like O'Toole in power than someone like Poilievre. But you make a good point, simply "being more moderate" isn't the political masterstroke that many commentators think it is, and the numbers bear this out. The CPC shouldn't try to go more into the middle, frankly they can't, because their most recent platform was hardly even conservative.

To your point about the cultural conservatism stuff though, I think it would be a risky move for someone like Poilievre who already has an aggressive personality and fits a kind of "radical" image - combining that with culture war rhetoric, while it would supercharge the base and marginalize the PPC, it would also play into the LPC's preferred strategy of galvanizing progressive voters. The majority of Canadian voters do not culturally identify with conservatism, and the Liberals know this.

Whoever the next leader is, I think they'd be better off taking a more Harperite approach - taking more conservative stances than O'Toole did, but not starting a culture war that conservatives cannot win.

[LabourJersey]

How exactly do interim leader elections work in the Canadian Tories?

[King of Kensington]

Looking at the Prairies, the CPC saw some leakage to the PPC and Mavericks in the super-conservative rurals (not that it really mattered much), but Calgary and Edmonton saw movement to the Liberals and NDP, due to Kenney's unpopularity impacting the federal Tories, an increasingly diverse population and the decline of hyper-regionalism.

[DC Al Fine]

How exactly do interim leader elections work in the Canadian Tories?

Caucus will get together and select an interim leader in the near future.

[beesley]

Unusually, this process was not an internally sanctioned one but actually part of a bill that Conservative MPs voted in favour of.

[King of Kensington]

Re: the next election

The Tories got a shade under 34% last time. Say they need to pick up six points to form government (probably a bit less than that, but suppose for argument sake).

Does anyone seriously believe that the Liberals have six points worth of white collar professional types, who were put off by pro-choice, pro-carbon tax, Liberal-gun-ban-accepting O'Toole, but would embrace the Tories if they moved just a little bit more left?

A significant chunk of those six points are going to have come from the PPC, and perhaps the Bloc Quebecois,  some sort of accomodation is going to have to be reached to win those voters over. Even among current Liberal/NDP voters, the path of least resistance is probably going to be in the voters concentrated in places like Northern Ontario and rural Newfoundland, not the Andrew Coyne types. Those voters aren't going to be won over with the sorts of things pundits usually think the Tories should do.

To be really blunt, if Poillievre becomes leader, I'd be more nervous for the party if he runs on a platform of fiscal orthodoxy, than if he does the sort of cultural conservative stuff pundits wring their hands over.

There's a certain share of the punditocracy that want the Conservatives to be the "B" team for the Laurentian Consensus.  And a certain number of Liberals who say things like "we need a reasonable conservative party for the health of Canadian democracy etc."  But the professional class are increasingly Liberal partisans and the Liberals have a strong hold on immigrants and minorities.  

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Re: the next election

The Tories got a shade under 34% last time. Say they need to pick up six points to form government (probably a bit less than that, but suppose for argument sake).

Does anyone seriously believe that the Liberals have six points worth of white collar professional types, who were put off by pro-choice, pro-carbon tax, Liberal-gun-ban-accepting O'Toole, but would embrace the Tories if they moved just a little bit more left?

A significant chunk of those six points are going to have come from the PPC, and perhaps the Bloc Quebecois,  some sort of accomodation is going to have to be reached to win those voters over. Even among current Liberal/NDP voters, the path of least resistance is probably going to be in the voters concentrated in places like Northern Ontario and rural Newfoundland, not the Andrew Coyne types. Those voters aren't going to be won over with the sorts of things pundits usually think the Tories should do.

To be really blunt, if Poillievre becomes leader, I'd be more nervous for the party if he runs on a platform of fiscal orthodoxy, than if he does the sort of cultural conservative stuff pundits wring their hands over.

There's a certain share of the punditocracy that want the Conservatives to be the "B" team for the Laurentian Consensus.  And a certain number of Liberals who say things like "we need a reasonable conservative party for the health of Canadian democracy etc."  But the professional class are increasingly Liberal partisans and the Liberals have a strong hold on immigrants and minorities.  

To the point about immigrants and minorities, it's not an iron-clad Liberal lockbox, but the Conservatives haven't helped themselves. Doug Ford's retail politicking did wonders with many immigrant/minority demographics, the biggest pro-PC swings in 2018 happened in areas with large immigrant populations. But the federal brand seems to have been tainted by Harper's final election, and it has gotten worse. The CPC did about 6% worse in Ontario in 2021 compared to the PCPO in 2018 - but if you look at immigrant-heavy ridings, the CPC-PCPO gap is way, way bigger.

[2952-0-0]

The CPC blamed their poor performance among the Chinese Canadian community on propaganda from the other, more sinister CPC (Communist Party of China), despite the fact that the community is extremely fractious and has competing identities. The one thing that unites it is the very high level of concern about the pandemic and the much higher than average vaccination rate, and they were repulsed by Erin O'Toole's flip flopping about vaccines and other public health measures. Denial won't solve their problems.

[King of Kensington]

To the point about immigrants and minorities, it's not an iron-clad Liberal lockbox, but the Conservatives haven't helped themselves. Doug Ford's retail politicking did wonders with many immigrant/minority demographics, the biggest pro-PC swings in 2018 happened in areas with large immigrant populations. But the federal brand seems to have been tainted by Harper's final election, and it has gotten worse. The CPC did about 6% worse in Ontario in 2021 compared to the PCPO in 2018 - but if you look at immigrant-heavy ridings, the CPC-PCPO gap is way, way bigger.

...which is funny because O'Toole and Ford have a rather similar style in practice - mainstream conservatism with a populist bent (also both of their fathers were Harris MPPs).  The main difference is that Ford is in government and O'Toole is in opposition.  Also the Ontario PCs have a more moderate caucus, most of the candidates were nominated when Patrick Brown was leader.