Political Hack: How Conservatives might win by breaking up with Quebec
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The National Post’s politics bureau chief Stuart Thomson takes you into the source code of the Canadian political scene, diving into what’s really going on behind the headlines.
This week in Political Hack:
- A radical solution to Conservative struggles in Quebec
- A week of non sequiturs on Parliament Hill
- “None of these options” has momentum in the NDP leadership race
- What’s the opposite of an immigration crackdown?
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A HOUSE DIVIDED
By Stuart Thomson
There’s no bigger slam dunk in Canadian conservative politics than praising former CBC hockey broadcaster Don Cherry.
The tough-talking everyman patriot is the subject of a Conservative campaign to be nominated for the Order of Canada. It’s the kind of thing an opposition MP can promote for easy headlines that will endear him to the party’s base. (Andrew Lawton is the MP in question.)
But the petition sparked a furious debate within the Conservative party. Quebec Conservatives quickly distanced themselves from the campaign, calling it a “bad idea” and noting some of Cherry’s controversial comments about Quebecers.
It’s not the only issue where Quebec Conservatives find themselves at odds with their anglo colleagues. Western Tories like Conservative MP Garnett Genuis have been vocal critics of Quebec’s secularism law — which is being challenged this week at the Supreme Court — that is widely supported by conservatives in Quebec.
The recent controversy around the CEO of Air Canada, who is under fire because he issued an English-only message of condolence over the deaths of two pilots this week, was another moment that divided anglos and francos on the right .
If it wasn’t already clear, conservatism is a very different thing in the language of Molière.
It’s not just Canada that has two solitudes: the Conservative party does too, and the past month has made that hard to ignore. And some anglo Conservatives wonder if it’s still worth trying to square that electoral circle.
“For the Conservatives to appeal to these (Quebec soft nationalist) voters, they would have to engage in a zero-sum triangulation move that would ultimately end up costing them elsewhere,” wrote former Conservative strategist Ben Woodfinden, in an opinion piece published in 2020 .
The nuclear option, Woodfinden had argued, is for Conservatives to entirely withdraw from Quebec and allow the creation of a separate conservative party in the province.
Once in power, the two parties could form a governing coalition that works towards their shared goals and mostly puts aside their disagreements.
The two-party alliance would have the dual benefit of allowing the Quebec-only conservative party to sculpt its appeal to centre-right voters in the province, possibly picking up conservative Quebecers who are voting for the Bloc Québécois as their “least-worst” option. It could also deny the Liberals some seats they pick up in the province through the vote-splitting that often occurs between the Bloc and Conservatives.
To succeed, Woodfinden explained that it would have to be an organic movement, rather than something directed by the national party.
“This would have to be done from the ground up, not by the Conservative party, but by conservatives in Québec deciding this was in their interest,” he wrote.
There is a precedent for Canadian conservatives to follow on this. In Germany, the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) run as separate parties but harmonize their decision-making and support a common candidate for chancellor.
The CSU only contests elections in Bavaria, while the CDU runs candidates in the rest of the country. You can’t argue with its success: The centre-right coalition has been in power in Germany for most of the last four decades , with only three short spells in opposition.
But six years after making that argument — and after a stint in politics as Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s director of communications — Woodfinden says he’s now having second thoughts about his idea.
The biggest issue he said, in an interview with Political Hack this week, is that not running candidates across the whole country would make the Conservatives seem less like a national operation and more like a Western rump party. That’s a criticism the party has been trying to shake since it was created in 2003.
It’s a fair concern, said Daniel Béland, a political sociologist and the director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, especially in a moment when the trade war with the U.S. has raised the importance of being a national party.
But he said it’s also true that many conservatives in Quebec don’t see a federal party that reflects their values.
“Looking at public opinion data, many people who vote for, say, the CAQ (provincial Coalition Avenir Québec), and even who support now the PQ (provincial Parti Québécois), they embrace certain conservative values or principles,” said Béland. But these voters don’t see their values in the classical liberal policies of the Conservative party.
Writing in 2020, Woodfinden saw Quebec Premier François Legault’s coalition as a stronghold of cultural conservatives, with most of its voters leaning towards the Bloc federally because of its strong nationalist bona fides. It’s possible those voters, especially the ones who don’t necessarily agree with the Bloc’s social-democratic ideals, are still there for the taking.
But there are huge risks creating a new party from scratch.
It’s just as likely, Béland said, that the Conservatives would give up their 11 seats in Quebec as a sacrifice, only to watch the new franco-conservative party blow them.
“There is always a risk that this new party, the Quebec conservative party, whatever you call it, might actually do worse,” said Béland.
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BRIEFING NOTES
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The Don’t Call Me Shirley Award for Non Sequiturs
By Stuart Thomson
It was a week of non sequiturs on Parliament Hill this week. It’s a reminder that every now and then our political discussions go so deep down a rabbit hole that it would be utterly bewildering to the average Canadian.
Take this, from Heritage Minister Marc Miller:
“Speaker, I got into politics because I love my country, Canada. The opposition member got into politics because he had tendinitis,” said Miller, during question period on Tuesday .
Any idea what he’s talking about? If not, we can reliably inform you that it’s a reference to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast . Poilievre lamented that his high-school wrestling career was cut short by tendinitis, which sparked his enthusiasm for politics.
Now, take this line from Liberal MP Nathalie Provost:
“I don’t feel I am a duck or a gopher or a pop can,” said Provost, at a press conference on Tuesday.
To the uninitiated, it’s a statement of a fairly obvious fact. Provost, pictured above, is clearly not a gopher. But if you’ve followed the debate around the Liberal government’s gun confiscation program, you’ll know that the Conservatives have argued that the program takes gopher guns away from farmers, rather than focusing on hardened criminals.
Provost, a survivor of the 1989 École Polytechnique shooting, was colourfully reminding the opposition about the massacre.
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Poll Dancing: NDP leadership edition
By Stuart Thomson
This weekend the federal NDP will select a new leader. And if you weren’t aware of that, don’t worry, you’re certainly not the only one.
In fact, even when previous NDP voters were asked this month who should win the party’s top job, 44 per cent of them said they didn’t recognize any of the leadership candidates’ names, according to the Angus Reid Institute . A further 21 per cent said they weren’t sure who should win.
So, when it comes to the party’s crucial leadership vote, which could be an existential moment for the NDP, about two-thirds of its sympathizers are clueless. Five per cent of respondents said they didn’t like any of the leadership hopefuls, which was enough to beat out three of the five candidates in the poll’s ranking.
The poll found that broadcaster and activist Avi Lewis is in first place among recognized candidates, with 13 per cent support, while NDP MP Heather McPherson is in second place with nine per cent.
Abacus Data pollster David Coletto came to the defence of the beleaguered NDP, noting that in January of last year, only a quarter of Canadians knew who Mark Carney was.
But whoever wins, the biggest challenge might be making sure Canadians know who they are. The party only has six seats in the House of Commons and has been struggling to keep its head above water in national opinion polls.
This week, Liberal House Leader Steven MacKinnon was asked by a reporter if his party is nervous about a challenge on its left flank, given the NDP’s current momentum.
“Um … Momentum?” said MacKinnon, with a chuckle, before heading off to his party’s caucus meeting .
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TREND LINES
Trending Up ▲
Language wars. Prime Minister Mark Carney couldn’t resist an opportunity to take a swing at embattled Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau, who attracted ire from Quebecers for his English-only video offering his condolences for the loss of two pilots who were killed in Sunday’s crash at the LaGuardia airport. Rousseau was also summoned to appear at a House of Commons committee before May 1 and Carney said he would be watching closely.
Trending Down ▼
Immigration compliance. Out of a total of 153,000 cases of potential non-compliance in Canada’s international student program, the Immigration Department only conducted 4,057 investigations in 2023 and 2024. Don’t worry, we did the math for you. That’s only 2.5 per cent of these cases being investigated. Prime Minister Mark Carney defended his government against the damning auditor report, saying they’re “taking back control” of immigration.
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