Erin O'Toole is appealing to the "left behind" working class with populist messaging and saying nice things about private sector unions, championing pipelines and the resource sector as a job strategy, combined with some cultural conservatism about "wokeness", Canadian nationalism etc.
Some more orthodox conservatives are apparently calling him "Bernie O'Toole" while liberals and the left are saying he is "taking from Trump's playbook."
Will it work?
I'm not sure if it will work, but we have to try *something*.
The Tory coalition, while substantial, isn't quite big enough to put them over the top most of the time. We need to pick off an underserved group from another party's coalition. In a perfect world, that would be rural Quebecers but:
a) I don't think the Bloc is underserving them
b) We've been trying to crack that nut for over a century, with very little lasting success.
That is not really a necessity though?
Like if the Conservatives + Bloc managed to get a majority between the 2, wouldn't that be enough to get a Tory minority government through? In that scenario, the Conservatives do not need to win most of rural Quebec to get into power. They just need the Bloc to do it for them.
Or are the differences between the 2 parties impossible to bridge?
As of right now, the Bloc will just support whichever party has the plurality of seats. Quebec nationalists hate both the Liberals and Conservatives, but for different reasons--they align more with Liberals on economic and social issues, but more with the Conservatives on issues of decentralization and provincial autonomy. The Bloc side with whoever has more seats, because they don't want to be seen as either too pro-Liberal or pro-Conservative. That would undercut the whole point of the Bloc.
