The challenges facing the Conservative Party may be bigger than Erin O'Toole
CBC
Sen. Denise Batters has a point when she criticizes Erin O'Toole's leadership of the Conservative Party.
But O'Toole's leadership might also be beside the point — because the challenges facing Conservatives will be the same no matter who leads them.
That was true when Andrew Scheer was compelled to step aside and it might be even more true now.
"On [the] carbon tax, on guns, on conscience rights — he flip-flopped on our policies within the same week, the same day and even within the same sentence," Batters claims in the video she posted Monday to promote her call for a party referendum on O'Toole.
"He won the leadership race claiming to be 'true blue' but ran an election campaign nearly indistinguishable from [Justin] Trudeau's Liberals."
Batters overstates her case but she's aiming at something real. The candidate O'Toole claimed to be in this fall's federal election was different from the candidate he claimed to be in last year's Conservative leadership race. And as O'Toole tried to pivot, he turned the party in different directions.
The "true blue" leadership candidate took a harder line on government spending and a more expansive view of "conscience rights" for doctors who do not agree with abortion or medically assisted death.
O'Toole condemned "Justin Trudeau's carbon tax" but then — apparently without warning his caucus — pledged that a Conservative government led by him would introduce its own plan to price carbon emissions. He told Conservatives that he wanted to defund large parts of the CBC, then promised merely to review the Crown corporation's mandate.
This pattern made trouble for O'Toole during the election campaign. Confronted by Trudeau over a promise to repeal the Liberal government's ban on "assault-style" weapons — one O'Toole commitment from the leadership race that had made it into the Conservative Party's election platform — O'Toole abruptly and awkwardly tried to change his position.
With his confusing explanations and his inability to close the discussion, O'Toole made that issue harder for himself than it needed to be. But maybe any Conservative leader would have struggled to find a position on gun control that satisfied both his party's base and the broader electorate.
A poll released by Leger in March found that 66 per cent of Canadians agreed that "there should be stricter gun control regulations." That support ran to 71 per cent of urban dwellers and 65 per cent of suburbanites.
Among Liberal and NDP voters, support was 80 and 72 per cent. But just 47 per cent of Conservative supporters favoured stricter gun control.
Citing that and other public opinion polls, Stewart Prest, a political scientist at Simon Fraser University, recently argued that "the major fault lines" in Canadian politics "now run through the country's conservative coalitions." That, he wrote, is "preventing them from articulating stable compromises on many of the issues that matter most to Canadians."
As Prest noted, those fault lines run right through the biggest public policy issues of the day: the pandemic and climate change.
A suspended Moncton structural engineer faces more lawsuits alleging design flaws in buildings that require repair.
Sajjade Tugano has come a long way since he first set foot in Chibougamau, six hours north of Quebec City, in the depths of winter in November 2021.
A national mentor-based hockey organization that helps marginalized youth through the sport is paying tribute to one of its members and youngest coaches.
After months of asking the City of Saskatoon to do more to solve its homelessness crisis, advocate David Fineday took to the stand at city council Tuesday.
A community organization wants to breathe new life into a historic building in Regina.
Some Prince County residents are walking away with more answers after attending Tuesday night's public information session in Albany, P.E.I., on the Wejipek Wind Project.
After just a few months of using vape detectors in a couple of bathrooms, a B.C. high school principal says it's reduced vape use in those areas to basically zero.
Burlington MP Karina Gould gets boost from local young people after entering Liberal leadership race
A day after entering the Liberal leadership race, Burlington, Ont., MP and government House leader Karina Gould was cheered at a campaign launch party by local residents — including young people expressing hope the 37-year-old politician will represent their voices.
Anold Mulaisho was born intersex and wonders where they fit in, in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order for the United States to recognize only two sexes, male and female.
WARNING: This story contains references to suicide.
Subway service is down on Line 1 between Sheppard West and Lawrence West due to a broken power rail, the TTC said Wednesday morning.
A long-term care home in Toronto's Yorkville neighbourhood has cleared one more hurdle to add desperately needed beds to its property, a move that's been praised by housing advocates but opposed by locals concerned about the impact on the neighbourhood.
A Charlottetown resident is calling on the P.E.I. government to do more to protect homeowners after reading about a recent oil spill very similar to one on his Montague property 20 years ago, which he says ruined him financially.
WARNING: This story includes details of abuse.
Two years after Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly declared she was taking the unprecedented step of moving to confiscate millions of dollars from a sanctioned Russian oligarch with assets in Canada, the government has not actually begun the court process to forfeit the money, let alone to hand it over to Ukrainian reconstruction — and it may never happen.
Alberta business and oilpatch leaders are returning home from Washington this week after the U.S. presidential inauguration festivities — and gritting their teeth after a roller-coaster of emotions.
Youth workers in Toronto's Jane and Finch area are flipping the script on negative stereotypes about their communities with a new fundraising campaign that offers anti-bias training in exchange for donations to bolster their programming.
In a sudden move that came late Tuesday evening, city officials rolled out cots and temporarily opened a warm building in east London as frigid temperatures continued.