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The version of this column that went out to nearly 7,000 people quoted Christy Clark to the effect that she thinks Charest would make a fantastic "premier." Of course she said "prime minister " I can't pull the original out of everyone's inbox but I've fixed it above. The perils of filing from airports.

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Aug 12, 2022Liked by Paul Wells

The phrase “anteroom to apostasy” made my day.

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founding

I had to go look up “Triple Hair,” because I thought, “There’s no way these guys got a hair replacement company as a sponsor for their conference and then put the thank-you-to-our-sponsors sign directly behind the panel of speakers,” and, as it turns out, yeah. “Revolutionary Hair Growth Therapies.” Maybe that’s what “LET’S GROW” was referencing.

The Conservative Party is in a tough spot. Moderate conservative Canadians would like to hold power but need the support of very conservative Canadians to get enough votes — yet it’s the latter group’s presence that allows other parties to scaremonger voters into keeping the Conservatives out of power. I don’t know how you solve a problem like that — the people you need to get you elected are the ones who keep you from getting elected.

Anyway, I expect Paul is right that most of these folks will line up behind a Polievre campaign and eventual government. I seriously doubt a party split is coming — enough folks in the room must understand that having two Canadian conservative parties guarantees Liberal governments in perpetuity. So it’s interesting to ponder the purpose of the group and this conference. Maybe it’s about visibly manifesting a strong moderate-conservative bloc to influence party policy, a safe distance from the hard core that will form around the next leader? That seems like not a bad idea.

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I’m glad you don’t have an editor anymore. Fascinating column

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I hate to be "that guy", but I wonder if anyone's willing to raise the big question-namely, just what's pushed so many people to support the likes of Trump and Poilievre in the first place. The anger and resentment were building well before the pandemic-workers who couldn't see any hope of bettering themselves, rising inequality that even the likes of the World Bank was expressing worry about, young people having trouble finding housing?

Could it be that maybe, just maybe, the neoliberal/"free trade" playbook we've been following for the last 35-odd years has something to do with it? The one that everybody from Mel Hurtig to Peter Lougheed to John Ralston Saul was warning about years ago?

Could that be one reason Trump and Poilievre have found such eager audiences? It can't all be about racism, not when Trump actually increased his share of the Black and Latino votes in 2020 over his 2016 numbers...

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I encourage you to be "that guy." These are all fair questions. I was going to go on a long digression in this piece about downtown Edmonton, which is... not looking good.

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Sadly that is true. The pandemic really did a number on downtown Edmonton, accelerating the social disorder that was just starting to improve before Covid hit. It will take the rest of the decade to recover but only if all levels of government really take homelessness seriously. Otherwise it will forever remain a sketchy place.

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Thanks, Mr. Wells. It means a lot coming from you.

You were my favourite columnist at Macleans (I checked your online column every week) and I'm more than getting my money's worth from your Substack.

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We don't even have free trade between provinces. I'm inclined to say let's give neoliberalism an actual try.

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I wish i could buy more BC wine at Ontario LCBO stores.

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founding

Wine, literally the lowest hanging of fruit!

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Hurtig was criticizing the lack of provincial free trade over 30 years ago. Saul did it nearly 15 years ago. You don't have to be a neoliberal to be unhappy about it.

But we've been doing everything the neoliberal economists have been advising for decades. We've cut taxes, gutted regulations, signed trade deals...so why are so many people so angry about they and their families' prospects?

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I don't understand why I can't get my favourite BC wines at any restaurant or liquor store in Ontario.

It's absurd that the restaurants have many California wines for sale but no BC wines

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I seem to recall reading something by Barry Cooper (in a piece that was particularly stupid, even for him) that the Harper government lost the Supreme Court cases surrounding interprovincial free trade on purpose. Certainly Harper never seemed interested in using any of the potential remedies suggested by the court.

Mr. Wells, do you recall anything like this? I might be mistaken, but I could swear that's what Cooper implied and that Harper was criticized for not using any of the court's suggestions to fix the problem.

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Like I said, I might be mistaken. It's also probable that Barry Cooper was talking out of his rear end when he wrote that, as he so often does. He's as sharp as a bowling ball.

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The questions about how people could be driven to Trump and Poilievre by economic troubles with jobs and housing, immediately raises the question of why darker-skinned people that have those problems in a greater degree, and for far longer, did NOT turn to Trump and Poilievre.

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As a life long, non-partisan political-media over eater, this incessant need to mention Pollievre and Trump "side by each" really boils my potatoes, especially when you're concurrently and casually tossing words like "racism" around. You can draw a straight line from Newt Gingrich to the Trump voter. There is no straight line from what can be presumed to be a Pollievre voter back in time, not even to Preston Manning, perhaps Canada's faux-est populist politician.

Leave Trump out of any critical analysis of Canadian politics. He's from another country, and Pollievre only plays a populist on YouTube.

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As a fellow lifelong, non-partisan political-media overeater, I've noticed that the upsurge in support for both men came in large part from their condemning "elites", not just cultural but economic, and finding a ready audience whose motivations include feeling like they have no possible way of getting ahead.

We can probably all recall Trump's denounciations of NAFTA and its effects on American jobs. Meanwhile, Stephen Harper's former communications director Andrew MacDougall is talking about how Poilievre is leaning towards a radical overhaul of capitalism:

https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/macdougall-what-pierre-poilievre-is-arguing-for-is-an-overhaul-of-capitalism

Amd MacDougall agrees with my initial point that the current neoliberal model is running out of ideas. So Poilievre and Trump are tapping into the same frustrations. There's more to their appeal, of course, but the economic frustrations many people feel are a big part of it.

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Trump tapped into nothing at all except self regard. If anyone tapped into the frustrations of ordinary Americans (and exploited same) it was Steve Bannon, who then fed his poll tested resentments and grievances on to bad orange man. I'm sure Trump had all kinds of intuitions about what played with his audience - as a huckster surely has to - but the only thing that mattered to him were his Neilsen ratings, and how often he could lie about them.

Attributing any other motivation or rationale to this guy was utterly pointless 30 years ago. That people still try to today just boggles.

Pollievre of course is expressing aspirations on the tail end of a brutal succession of political controls, social panic, widespread illness, politicized medicine, and messages from a bizarrely compliant media (ask Paul Wells about Andrew Coyne's participation in *that*). There simply is no comparison historically. Which is why I took special umbrage when you threw "racism" into the mix like it's the same as bad manners. That's a word which really should be used with more care, if that's the correct way to couch it.

And MacDougall didn't say that Pollievre is leaning towards overhauling capitalism (this misinterpretation on top of the casual racism bit makes me suspicious), MacDougall himself said it might be needed. In any event, Canada has been walking back neoliberal economics for a while now only to have it hijacked by Trudeau's Modern Monetary Theory, more utter nonsense from the Democrats in America.

Pro tip: next time you see a column by a former "communications director," skip it. And if you don't know why I say that, listen to one or two Herle Burly podcasts and you'll get the idea.

In any event, pairing up Trump and Pollievre gets us nowhere. This is not 2015, we aren't inward looking Americans, we never suffered through a Newt Gingrich, we did well after 2008/9, we're not constantly waging foreign wars, and we don't have a lot on the line in terms of international status.

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Not such a close follower, but the Trump similarities leaped out at me from the start. The focus, not on proposing programs and projects, but upon *people* being the problem, so that the problems could be solved by just saying "You're Fired" to various of these rarely-named "Gatekeepers", starting with the governor of the Bank of Canada, as anodyne and milquetoast an organization as we've got.

The vagueness is a Trump similarity. "Gatekeepers", like "Elites" are easy to pick upon, because the reader substitutes their own hate-figure. But the Gatekeepers to jobs in Alberta were the oil executives to whom Kenney handed a ton of government money, only to watch as they laid off tens of thousands anyway. The Shaw and Rogers families are the Gatekeepers to Canada having the highest telecom costs. The Irvings are the Gatekeepers to any commercial success in New Brunswick.

So Poilievre almost never puts a name to a "Gatekeeper", or names members of the "Laurentian Consensus", which I now see has become a much-used term, with another vague definition. If you named the people, analysts would soon be telling you they had very little power compared to the head of GM or Telus, and offering other substitutes like mine, here. So, they'll always be unnamed.

I don't need to tell you what kind of theories of politics involve shadowy, unnamed conspiracists among our elites, stalking the halls of High Finance?

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50 years of the insanity of deficit financing has finally caught up with reality. The balance of services versus tax costs has hit "Catch 22".... a "Hobson's Choice" for a government.

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To link your question to Paul’s article: I think there is a real resentment among “grassroots” Conservatives for the Red Tory/Centre Ice wing of the old party. One major reason for Jason Kenney’s demise was his inability to distance himself from Trudeau when it mattered (re: Covid & Equalization). The base of the party doesn’t really want compromise with Liberals or most of the Liberal agenda

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Ironically, those COVID measures were much more popular among 'ordinary' Canadians than many of the grassroots Conservatives want to admit. If they weren't, then the Rachel Notley NDP wouldn't be outpacing the UCP in fundraising and matching them in poll after poll. Public support for the Ottawa protesters was also much lower than you might assume from listening to the grassroots Tories too, even here in Alberta.

I wonder what Preston Manning is thinking these days. He's harangued his fellow Conservatives for decades that they need to take a stronger stance on environmental issues and stop ceding them to the left. He also wrote in his book "The New Canada" about the efforts he made to debunk the notion that the Reform Alliance wanted to dismantle public healthcare, and the efforts he had to make to discourage the grassroots in one B.C. riding from nominating a particularly nasty shock jock. You can be sure the Liberals will dust off their 1990s playbook of using the statements of a few candidates to try and smear Poilievre and the whole CPC with them. That's what the Liberals did to the Reformers, and Manning had to spend a lot of his time doing damage control.

Now it seems like everything old might be new again if Poilievre isn't careful.

As for equalization, I agree that it's badly designed and really needs an overhaul. What Kenney doesn't want to admit is that it was the Stephen Harper government he was a part of that designed the current equalization formula. So that one is technically on Harper, not Trudeau.

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I agree with both your points. I should clarify: I’m not saying Kenney was afoul of public opinion, but he lost the big picture somehow. On Covid his crucial mistake was proclaiming “open for summer/open for business” then reinstating a lockdown. The same goes for his stance on equalization & even pipelines.

My point is that the mood of the country (and the Western world in general) is: “Where’s the beef?” We need leaders who are capable of delivering on some of their promises. For the record, I fully expect Poilievre to fail on many of these promises he is making.

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The Center Ice gathering to discuss current political issues is noble enough, but seems to be a reactionary venture intended to strike a death blow into the Poilievre leadership campaign.

Fair enough, but let’s not kid ourselves here. Most of the marquee participants as speakers or panelists are all on the record as horrified that Pierre Poilievre will win the leadership but be unelectable in the next election. Panels on economics and health care is a handy smokescreen.

A point is often made that “hard right” Conservatives are too rigid in ideology and uncompromising to be able to attract swing voters. In the current political malaise, I think it’s the Center Ice types who are trapped in ideological silos and refusing to see the shifting sands on the ground. Polling information shows that there is a substantial number of young voters who are indicating that they will vote Conservative. What is attracting their attention? Why is the support from unionized blue collar workers starting to drift toward Conservatives?

All of the CPC leadership candidates have been working hard to attract new members and voters. Good for them, but if anyone has their political antenna tuned into the grassroots needs and anxieties of ordinary Canadians, it’s Pierre Poilievre. He is reaching out to them to build a big tent movement, and maybe the Center Ice types need to reassess their view of the situation and be prepared to roll their sleeves up and help elect a Conservative Government that can salvage our public institutions before they collapse.

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I’m adding to my comment above that should Poilievre go on to win the nomination he needs to offer a sincere olive branch to Center Ice participants to join the battle, including offering a place at the policy table to produce a election campaign that resonates with Canadians.

Enough of the scored earth stuff already.

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A lot of centrist Liberals go along with Trudeau's leftward shift because he won, won again and again. If Poilievre wins then I imagine people in his party will do what the Cubans recommend and simply relax and cooperate.

At the end of the day, Poilievre's policy vagueness is about as opaque as Justin Trudeau's and I doubt the only thing that would really change is the rhetoric attached to the status quo.

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That assumes that Trudeau has no allegiance to his current policies. I think he is a Green NDPer at heart , and they (him plus Butts and his acolytes) hijacked the Liberal party with policy goals in mind. If the conservatives split and he has no need of NDP support, then I don't see why that would make him change his policies.

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Apart from the serious stuff, some great zingers in here. That's just as important - I think we're going to need all the humour we can get.

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Follow up questions:

"I plan to travel more frequently, and more ambitiously, to cover other stories. You know what comes next, don’t you." World-wide Wells?

Crowley: “There’s got to be something wrong with our politics when politicians are afraid of a cheap-food policy.” Precisely what does he mean by 'wrong'?

"This is because Coyne says real stuff out loud and with panache, a double rarity." When will Coyne be bringing his panache to Substack?

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On questions 1 and 3: Coyne has a gig -- two, with At Issue; three, with speaker appearances -- and though he flirted with Substack-like projects 15 years ago, would probably wonder what he can get outside the Globe that he can't get there. (I could provide some answers, but to each his own.)

World-wide Wells is going to happen at some point. For now, the main obstacle to me travelling is time management more than budgets. I'm busier than my output here makes me seem, but at some point, I'm getting on a plane and travelling over water.

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I travelled over water to get to beer - spending the Summer in Prague.

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I’m more intrigued by the idea of him bringing his panache to politics.

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If he's anything like his father ( Listen to my conversation with Andrew about James here: https://thebibliofile.ca/extraordinary-canadians-andrew-coyne-on-his-father-james-elliott-coyne) I'd vote for him in a second. In fact I'd campaign for him.

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The use of the term "Centrism" has rather lost its meaning - seems to me that the currently defined Centre Ice line is about 6 inches to the right of the Left blue line....

It is all very well to talk about economic growth as Coyne does, but unless the terms of the debate change (climate change, equity, diversity and the ever widening grasp of the regulatory state), I don't see how this will lead to change, and how it differs from liberal policies in general. As per your post last week, a Conservative government led by Charest (just for the sake of argument, not going to happen) might ditch the more stupid policies but the overall drift will continue.

Poilievre is trying - probably in vain - to shake that discussion up. You are right to pick up on his hypocrisy about agricultural supply side management - I assume he trying to avoid Bernier's mistake and not piss off the farmers in Ontario and Quebec, but he may be fatally damaging his own policy arguments thereby.

As for the raging right wing mobs, not much here to interest them...

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I am curious as to why this latest attempt to create a middle ground in Canadian Politics must pre-suppose that it can only be accomplished from the centre right, requiring a CPC split. This immediate assumption then leads to a debate over whether this is wise, possible and likely to have a successful outcome.

Founding personnel aside, a vibrant, new moderate movement should understand the reality that many, many Liberal voters do so reluctantly at best and would welcome an option that provided competent leadership, sane fiscal management, innovative and courageous policy options driven by a compassionate and progressive (yes!) social outlook without the worst of the woke-ist, virtue signaling. I am watching this movement with great interest (and hope) but IMO the tent is not yet big enough.

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I must go and intend to return later. Louise D.

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I'm happy to have learned about this. Time to start polishing my resume for the Coyne Campaign.

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I wonder if centrism is an absolute fixed point on the spectrum or if it the relative mid-point between far left and far right. The US Republicans have shifted further right while the Democrats have remained stable (https://voteview.com/articles/party_polarization), so a relative center would be pushed further right by default.

Introduce a Poilievre as leader of the right, and and a relative centrism becomes what the Progressive Conservatives used to be.

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This I can truly get behind. "“Procurement should be about procurement,” i.e. about buying useful kit at good prices, rather than using such purchases to launder regional-development subsidies."

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I was at the Conference. I had to fly from Vancouver and take a room in a hotel. I’m not overly political (by most standards). I was certainly “out of my league”. But it was worth every penny and the time it took me to go. I learned so much and so much of my thinking was ‘shifted’ by the conversations. Mr. Peterson (who; full disclosure - I worked at the same firm with years ago and was a great help to me), is a passionate Canadian. I am so thankful he has both the courage and tenacity to launch this initiative. It was excellent. Heck I even bought the hat (and I don’t wear hats)!

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