The conservatives have mutinously toppled their leader to install a more hardline politician who’ll better represent them on LGBTIQA+ issues and vaccine mandate protests.
No, it’s not a crystal ball prediction into the future of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s tenuous grasp over his fractured Coalition party — it’s the state of Canadian politics at the moment.
The Canadian Conservatives are in opposition and the party is at civil war, toppling their leader Erin O’Toole 73 to 45 last week because O’Toole had moved too far left.
O’Toole had a Trumpian quality in vying for the party leadership in 2020, promising to “Take back Canada” when he became leader of the Conservatives, who are three-time losers at the election.
After ascending to the leadership, the moderate Toronto politician showed his stripes, binning promises to put rifles back in hands and actively distancing himself on party views on abortion and LGBTIQA+ rights.
The simmering party frustration began to boil in January when O’Toole said he supported Prime Minister Justin Trudeau banning conversion therapy — angering the hard-right religious factions. O’Toole urged fellow lawmakers to consider “is the legislation going to address that harm that we all recognise in a way that helps people affected, helps the victims and prevents new victims from being created?”
It’s a statement that has more than a whiff of this week’s tussle in Canberra over the religious discrimination bill, which won partyroom support yesterday despite an amendment allowing schools to expel transgender children.
Several Coalition MPs have openly objected to the bill, but none stronger than Liberal MP Bridget Archer who was “horrified” that it may “risk lives” in mandating discrimination. The Coalition turmoil over the bill is happening against the backdrop of the Convoy to Canberra protests, now into day eight. The protest is an apparent offshoot of Canada’s Convoy to Freedom trucker protest that is demanding an end to vaccine mandates.
The Canberra protesters are still hoping to meet with Morrison, but independent Bob Katter and Queensland Senator Gerard Rennick have both sworn they’d pass on their list of demands to the PM.
Careful who you vouch for
It was Canada’s protest that was the final nail in the coffin for O’Toole — he chose not to publicly support the trucker protests, an obvious snub to his voter base, instead leaving that to his more-than-willing deputy Candice Bergen.
Bergen, who met with protesters on the Hill, says “they deserve to be heard and they deserve respect”, continuing there were “good people on both sides”, a haunting echo of former US president Donald Trump.
Comments from Bergen, who is the interim Conservative leader while they work out who’s next, didn’t age well — a state of emergency over the trucker protesters has since been declared in Ottawa, the capital, with residents fleeing their homes amid the escalating situation.
And it’s not like other Conservatives are doing the Lord’s work either — another MP was interviewed while a protest flag bearing a swastika waved in the background (he later apologised).
Soon the Canadian Conservative Party will have a new leader, for the third time in five years. It’s the type of leadership turmoil that’ll feel familiar to anyone still feeling whiplashed by the 2010 decade in Australian politics that saw Rudd-Gillard-Rudd-Shorten on one side and Turnbull-Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison on the other.
Confused how Canada, the kindly uncle of the world, can have such an aggressive conservative base? So is the party. Just like the Coalition, the Canadian Conservative Party is breaking into two: the stuffy old-school conservatives and the fiscally conservative liberal thinkers (O’Toole, like Malcolm Turnbull, was the latter).
O’Toole’s outgoing advice to his broken party rings true Down Under, particularly as News Corp begins waving its magic wand for a Liberal Party leadership challenge. “This country needs a Conservative Party that is both an intellectual force and a governing force,” O’Toole says. “Ideology without power is vanity. Seeking power without ideology is hubris.”
