Why Are Canada’s Conservatives Opposed to Everything Good?

Canada used to be known worldwide as a nation of nice people. Canadians were thought of as polite, cheerful, compassionate, caring, respectful, honest, and helpful. We said please and thank you. We opened doors for people. We opened our homes and took in people in trouble. We gave aid to others. We were so well respected worldwide that American travellers sewed Canadian flags on their backpacks so people would not think they were actually Americans. But all that has changed. And I blame the conservatives — who, since they merged with the far-right Reform Party in 2003, became the party of the authoritarian Stephen Harper and his proteges.

Front and centre of this change from nice, please-and-thank-you folk to angry, violent, rightwing nutso is the rage-farming, gaslighting, and lying-whenever-his-mouth-is-open Conservative Party’s leader, Pierre PoiLIEvre. Not far behind him in the lineup for political nastiness and conspiratorial wingnuttery is Albertabama’s Texas-and-Trump-loving Premier Danielle Smith. Then comes Ontario’s Corrupt-Politician-of-the-Decade, Doug “Makin’ My Friends Rich at Taxpayer Expense” Ford. Behind all of them is a growing mob of their Brown-Shirt-wannabes pushing an increasing wave of violence, intolerance, misogyny, racism, and insurrection.

Throw in some pseudo-Christian American-style bible thumping and you have today’s CONservatives. Any moment now I expect these party leaders to start selling their own bibles, following the lead of their hero, the pseudo-Christian uber-grifter Trump.

Among other things, PoiLIEvre’s CONservatives voted against Bill C-57 (Free Trade Agreement between Canada and Ukraine), Bill C-322 (establish a school food program), Bill C-19 (the $10 National Child Care agreement), Bill C-35 ($10-a-day daycare), Bill C-50 (create sustainable jobs for workers and economic growth in a net-zero economy), Bill C-67 (the 2024 budget, also against previous budgets), Bill C-29 (create a national council for reconciliation), Bill C-62, (amend the Criminal Code re: medical assistance in dying), Bill C-355 (prohibit the export by air of horses for slaughter), Bill C-219 (Canadian Environmental Bill of Rights), Bill C-18 (online communications platforms that make news content available to Canadians), Bill S-8 (amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act), 14th report of the Standing Committee on Health, Bill S-5 (amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, make related amendments to the Food and Drugs Act and to repeal the Perfluorooctane Sulfonate Virtual Elimination Act), Bill C-21 (amendments re: firearms), Bill C-245 (amendments to the infrastructure bank), Bill C-27,(Consumer Privacy Protection Act, the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act, and the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act), Bill C-226 (development of a national strategy to assess, prevent and address environmental racism and to advance environmental justice), Bill S-209 (Pandemic Observance Day), Bill C-293 (pandemic prevention and preparedness), Bill C-29 (establishment of a national council for reconciliation), Bill C-31 (cost of living relief measures related to dental care and rental housing), Bill C-252 (amend the Food and Drugs Act for prohibition of food and beverage marketing directed at children), Bill C-210 (amend the Canada Elections Act re: voting age), Bill C-235 (building of a green economy in the Prairies), Bill C-216 (amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to enact the Expungement of Certain Drug-related Convictions Act and the National Strategy on Substance Use Act), Bill C-13 (amend the Official Languages Act, to enact the Use of French in Federally Regulated Private Businesses Act), Government Business No. 7 (amend the Old Age Security Act re: Guaranteed Income Supplement), M-103 (Systemic racism and religious discrimination), Bill C-2 (provide further support in response to COVID-19), the national dental care program for seniors and youths under 18, the carbon levy, pharmacare, the Child Health Protection Act, the National Housing Strategy, and more…

Basically, if it’s good for Canadians, if it helps people, if it makes life easier or better, if it even hints of support, compassion or empathy, they vote against it. Their party motto might better be “Off with their heads!”

And you know that, if PoiLIEvre ever gets in as Prime Minister, one of the first acts the party does will be to ban abortions across Canada and restrict women’s rights. They have a history of trying to do it already, but have not been able only because they are not in power. But it’s high on their agenda.*

As noted in the National Observer, “Pierre Poilievre’s freedom isn’t very free…”

[I]t’s become increasingly clear that Poilievre’s vision of freedom is much narrower than he first let on. He has already signalled he plans to intrude on the jurisdiction of provincial governments and the freedom of municipal ones when it comes to homebuilding, while his supposed support for freedom of the press seems to be heavily informed by the partisan affiliations of said journalists.
But these are mere appetizers to the main course — Poilievre’s unwillingness to grant people the freedom to choose what to do with their own bodies… Poilievre has already said he would restrict access to MAID to those with “irremediable health conditions, physical health conditions,” even though that would prevent those suffering from long-term mental illness from having the same freedoms as other Canadians. It’s fair to wonder what other fetters he would put on our personal freedoms in the name of his own political priorities. And yes, that does include access to abortion.

Conservatives call their ideology of repression “ordered liberty” — an Orwellian oxymoron that means “pushing state intrusion in citizens’ lives” while loudly proclaiming that more authority and surveillance really makes citizens more free. Theirs is a “do as I say, not as I do” mentality. Which, as noted in The Tyee, is at its heart a “culture war as the right attempts to reclaim a lost time…at the heart of “common sense” culture war are fear and prejudice and a consequent commitment to stop the world from changing…” CONservatives, however, want to give a free hand to businesses and corporations to do as they please to make money regardless of the human cost: “…in a free market, businesses should charge what they can and remain free from state regulations that prevent them from maximizing output and profit.”

Meanwhile, PoiLIEvre has been tramping around the country on the trailer-park campaign trail — although there’s no federal election in sight — cozying up to every far-right extremist and Maple MAGA cultist he can get a photo-op with. And doing it on the taxpayers’ dime. And who are the people he’s cheering and supporting? Extremist/racist groups like Diagolon, which is “intent on accelerating or fomenting a civil war, overturning what they see as the current corrupt, illegitimate order.” In other words: proto-fascists doing Putin’s work to destabilize our democracy. And he courts them.

And please, don’t tell me PoiLIEvre didn’t see the Diagolon logo on the trailer door, or recognize its significance. Everyone in the media and on social media saw it and knew exactly what it meant. Everyone knew what the trailer-park and sleeping-in-mah-car protestors were about, what they believed, and who they followed. They’ve made hundreds of podcasts making it clear.

PoiLIEvre also used the opportunity to lie, insult Trudeau, and spread Putinesque disinformation. As he always does.

Do we really want an extremist cheerleader as our next prime minister? He’s been rage-farming, lying, spreading disinformation, and encouraging groups with the worst, most toxic ideologies. And, like his hero, Trump, he’s also selling tacky merchandise, like T-shirts with his logo, “Axe Tax The.” Bumper-sticker slogans are cheap jingoism; not a platform or policy, but along with puerile ad hominem attacks, are all he can come up with.

Thanks to him and his CONservative MAGA wannabes empowering the extremists, we are now seen by many outsiders as becoming neo-Trumpist “Maple MAGA”: a nation of angry, rage-fuelled rednecks — mostly males — driving pickup trucks with F*ck Trudeau flags, flipping the bird at one another, holding our capital hostage and disrupting the city while insurrectionists fly Nazi and traitorous Confederate flags. demanding the democratically-elected Prime Minister resign or be hanged.

We have been shown in international media as pseudoscience-spreading vaccine deniers, climate change deniers, insurrectionist convoy thugs, Talibangelists, and pastel Trump-wannabes who are doing their best to show we won’t be outdone by Americans in undoing our own democracy. We are often seen as Americans with healthcare, but healthcare that’s rapidly failing in Conservative-run provinces as their governments scramble to privatize healthcare to match the American for-profit model (Ontario and Alberta lead the pack in destroying their provincial public healthcare services).

In a very rare example of honesty from a rightwing commentator, Andrew Coyne published an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail in late 2023 titled, An affinity for contrarianism has driven a lot of conservatives crazy. Exhibit A: Danielle Smith. In it, he tries to answer the question that has bothered many political watchers: why have conservatives become so obsessed with conspiracy claptrap? Or more bluntly: why are today’s conservatives so batshit, wackadoodle, wingnutty, out-of-their-fucking-minds, Moscow-Marjorie-Taylor-Greene-stupid, MAGA-loving, anti-science, anti-expert crazy?

Coyne louchely shrugs it off as mere contrariness.

Contrarian. How cute. It’s like when your old grannie was being contrarian about taking her medications. Or your four-year-old was being contrarian about eating his broccoli. Your crazy uncle was being contrarian about not drinking too much at the family Thanksgiving dinner. It makes conservatives seem like charming, quirky-but-loveable characters in an Andy-of-Mayberry TV show.

They’re not. They’ve become violently antisocial, pro-fasicts, and anti-Canadian, adopting deeply anti-democratic libertarian views that our autocratic former PM, Stephen Harper, tried to impose on Canadians. These days, Harper heads the IDU, an international organization dedicated to replacing democracies with authoritarian, rightwing regimes. As noted in the Tyee, the IDU is “a global organization run by former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper that is dedicated to electing right-wing governments around the world. Membership extends to the extremely right-wing. Last year Harper met and fawned over Hungary’s Orbán, who pronounced Harper “a great ally.” If you want to see what sort of global club Canada will join if governed by a Poilievre-led Conservative party, a look at IDU’s membership — including the recently scrubbed — can be informative.”

Our CONservatives have become an infection on the body politic. Several appear to be openly proto-fascists, embracing an extremist rightwing agenda and they’re getting louder and more aggressive, like the Brownshirts did. And if you can’t see the parallels, you’re not looking. In 2023, far-right extremists in Canada gave the German neo-Nazi politician Christine Anderson a “hero’s welcome” during her tour of Canada. She wined and dined with several CONservatives MPs including Colin Carrie, Leslyn Lewis**, and Dean Allison, as well as meeting insurrectionist convoy leader Tamara Lich and Maxime Bernier, leader of the far-right People’s Party of Canada. Anderson also posed with a Diagolon flag when she visited Calgary.

PoiLIEvre’s response to this public display of solidarity with a neo-Nazi? He disingenuously claimed neither he nor his MPs were aware of her political views: “We were not aware of the views or associations of her and her political party.” But Anderson was “dismissive of Poilievre’s claim.”

“I found it kind of peculiar that he would claim they were not aware of my political views,” since the internet was “full of videos” about those views, said Anderson. Indeed, a simple Google search would have told them exactly with whom they were lunching.

Anderson also said she had spoken to the Conservative leader “a couple of times.” PoiLIEvre’s office scrambled to deny her statement but never explained why she would make such a claim. I, for one, remain skeptical about PoiLIEvre’s denial. After all, he allowed his MPs to remain in caucus without any form of discipline or rebuke for sharing smiling photo-ops with an avowed fascist.

Calling these people contrarian makes conservatives seem as if they haven’t been aggressively opposed to science, social programs, facts, helping others, environmental protection, consumer protections, labour laws, gun control, separation of state and church, equality, women’s rights, international aid, public healthcare, public education, supporting Ukraine, our UN and WHO membership**… all while they’ve been actively trying to defund and destroy Canadian institutions. And who benefits from this? Right: Putin.

Calling them contrarian makes them seem like their leaders don’t openly and blatantly lie to Canadians about everything, from the carbon tax to missing indigenous women. Contrarians don’t produce a firehouse of disinformation and gaslighting, attack after attack on every policy and platform they didn’t initiate while refusing to produce any viable policy, platform, or even ideas. Conservative leaders — PoiLIEvre most of all — spew vapid, ever-changing bumper-sticker slogans that have nothing behind them except anger.

Why have Canadian conservatives so eagerly and actively embraced the polarized, angry, anti-science, and fact-avoiding tactics of the American Repugnican party? Why do Canadian conservatives rage farm and rage tweet and protest over inconsequential issues or simply make stuff up to whinge about? Why do they openly espouse violence against political opponents? Why do their leaders lie, gaslight, accuse, insult, and spread disinformation so eagerly and so much and often? Why don’t those leaders have actual plans, policies, solutions or even ideas that benefit the electorate, not merely entitle themselves and their elite friends? And why have so many conservatives embraced extremism, fascism, and pseudo-Christian nationalism (aka the Talibangelists and Christofascists)?

Coyne wrote,

It’s this detachment from reality that sets today’s conservatives apart. The left has its share of fanatics, but they do not give the same impression of having suffered a complete psychotic break; they are doctrinaire, not deranged.

Coyne’s prime example of CONservative looniness is Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who admittedly exposes an increasing distance from even a basic grasp of reality every day. While arguably the looniest and most anti-Canadian of an increasingly, violently crazy lot, the other CONservative premiers are walking in her footsteps.

One only needs to look south of the border to former-president-now-convicted-criminal, Donald Trump as their role model: the king of wackadoodle notions, barefaced dishonesty, abhorrent corruption, and spin-doctoring. At the federal level, using his playbook to rage-farm through conspiracy claptrap, gaslighting, insults, attacks, and outright lies is the CPC leader, Pierre PoiLIEvre who has singlehandedly taken his party to such new depths in ethics, morality, and behaviour that it is no longer recognizable as the Conservative Party to anyone who remembers John Diefenbaker, Joe Clark, Kim Campbell, or Robert Stanfield. Even the reprehensible Reaganite Brian Mulroney looks like a sterling model worthy of righteousness in comparison to PoiLIEvre. (Stephen Harper, of course, still looks like the evil anti-democratic Sauron he always was).

I grew up listening to and watching the debates between mature, civil political leaders like Lester Pearson and John Diefenbaker, Pierre Trudeau and Joe Clark (and Ed Broadbent when the NDP became a contender), Kim Campbell and Jean Chretien, even in the USA between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy. I expected the political debate to be sharp, challenging, even witty, but always civil. And smart; about issues and policies, about ideas and solutions, not mudslinging, disinformation, cheap jingoism, and lies. Not grandstanding and insulting opponents while selling knock-off bibles, T-shirts, and tacky gold running shoes. Today, PoiLIEvre’s hate rallies merely spew low-IQ bumper sticker slogans, lies, rage-baiting, and cheap, personal insults; an echo chamber for the hard-of-thinking, not models of erudite rhetoric.

I have been disappointed in my political expectations these past few years, especially since Stephen Harper brought into Canada the ugly, tawdry regime of US-style attack politics. I have watched in stunned silence while our rightwing politicians screamed and accused, lied, and spewed wingnut conspiracies, without even the pretense of having any actual solutions, policies, or plans. And they continue to do so. Just watch question period in the House of Commons any day.

Among the attributes Coyne identifies as where conservatives derailed from a party with values to the catchall for all sorts of extremist and radical wingnuttery, he lists tribalism, and resentment towards culture and knowledge, both fermented and accelerated by social media:

Add the baleful effects of social media, with its facility both for spreading lies and emboldening those who believe in them; throw in a couple of complex, easily muddied issues like climate change and the pandemic and you have a recipe for mass confusion, not to say delusion.

I’ve long argued that social media, in fact the entire internet, is a wide-open cesspool where pseudoscience, conspiracy twaddle, bigotry, racism, misogyny, self-inflicted stupidity, and general ignorance run wild like a breeding colony of infectious feral cats. Entire realms of previously-debunked piffle have created their own, newly-minted populations of gullible believers for time-wasters like homeopathy, reflexology, reiki, anti-vaxxer sentiments, creationism, flat-earthers, UFO abductions, Atlantis, anti-climate change, New World Order, reptilian aliens masquerading as humans, chemtrails, anti-fluoride, fad diets, anything from Gwenyth Paltrow, magic crystals, ghosts, angels, and many more. But it has also allowed colonies of bacteria-like extremism to grow and spread: racism, fascism, nationalism, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, and misogyny have also gained stronger footholds, especially among conservatives.

CONservatives, psychologists tell us, are most vulnerable to being caught up in these conspiracies, and more likely to believe the egregious ideological codswallop spewed out by propaganda sources like Fox Newz or the National Post. True, it’s hard to find media that is balanced, objective, and credible these days, given that most outlets are owned and controlled by a small number of conservative corporations intent on spreading their ideological miasma and our own national broadcaster continues to deteriorate. While many Canadian media outlets aspire to become Rebel-Media-wannabes, some have plunged to the depths of Der-Sturmer-wannabes.

Coyne says that,

But there’s an additional element that I think warrants special mention. It is a distinctive feature of the conservative psyche: an ingrained oppositional mentality, a habitual, almost reflexive mistrust of whatever is conventional wisdom, a fatal weakness for the contrarian take…
And therein lies the danger. Over time the narcotic wears off: the high requires stronger and stronger doses to sustain it. Thus, the conservative spiral of the last decade. What starts out as an enlightened skepticism of this or that shopworn liberal nostrum becomes a dogmatic insistence that all liberal nostrums must be wrong.

CONservatives, Coyne says, soon reject “anything on which there is a consensus. The more widespread a belief, and the more eminent the scholarship behind it, the more this becomes proof of its falsity.” This, as we’ve seen, includes vaccines, protecting the environment, and climate change. They increasingly sound and act like a cult rather than a political party. What other party does that remind you of? Right: the conspiracy-addled, MAGA-obsessed Repugnican cult. And as lawyers ask, cui bono (who benefits) from this destabilization of our democracy? Right: Vladimir Putin.

Coyne concludes that CONs have been in a “spiral of the last decade” in which they reject all science, scholarship, and expert opinion. Political observers have long recognized this, but we seldom have a staunch conservative defender-of-the-faith doing so. For that, at least, we should pay attention. It’s only getting worse.

Perhaps Coyne’s notion does explain some of the madness that has infected conservatives. But it ignores the underlying reality of the rise of rightwing fascism worldwide and the move into libertarian extremism by many conservative parties including America’s Repugnicans and Canada’s CONservatives. PoiLIEvre is at the forefront of that eager shift to the far, far right:

The extremist right is the accelerant to which so many conservatives are so irresistibly drawn. The fire was started by racist and pseudo-religious tinder. And it will spread unless Canadians stand up for our nation and resist the rightwing and libertarian ideologies they espouse, we run a serious risk of becoming a repressive, authoritarian regime under PoiLIEvre and his CONServatives.

Notes:

* The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) keeps a list of anti-choice Members of Parliament and has always rated PoiLIEvre as anti-choice. All 118 CONservatives MP’s are listed as anti-choice. Here are some of the bills brought forward by the CPC in its various guises to ban or restrict abortion rights for women in Canada. ARCC lists more: 48 attempts by CONservatives to repress women’s rights.

1. M-37 June 2, 1987. Gus Mitges, PC MP Motion to amend Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to include “unborn persons.” Defeated 89-62.
2. M-268 Nov. 20, 1997, Garry Breitkreuz, Reform MP, Reintroduction of Motion calling for binding national referendum on government funding for “medically unnecessary” abortions. (M-91)
3. C-461 Dec. 2, 1998, Maurice Vellacott, Reform MP Bill to prohibit healthcare providers from being forced to participate against their will in procedures such as abortion or euthanasia. (Similar to Haidasz’s conscience clause Bill S-7, 1997).
4. M-360 1999 Garry Breitkreuz, Reform MP Motion to enact a law to define a human being as a “human fetus or embryo from the moment of conception, whether in the womb of the mother or not and whether conceived naturally or otherwise.”
5. C-515 June 2, 1999, Jim Pankiw, Reform MP Bill to “provide for a referendum to determine whether Canadians wish medically unnecessary abortions to be insured services under the Canada Health Act and to amend the Referendum Act.” If a majority said No to funding, the government would have to financially penalize provinces that continued to pay for abortion.
6. C-207 Oct. 1999, Maurice Vellacott, Reform MP Re-introduction of conscience clause Bill C-461 (Dec 1998) and Bill S-7 (Nov 1997).
7. C-422 Dec. 1999, Maurice Vellacott, Reform MP Re-introduction of conscience clause Bill C-461 (Dec 1998) and Bill S-7 (Nov 1997).
8. M-228 Feb. 2, 2001, Garry Breitkreuz, Reform MP Reintroduction of Motion to enact law to define a human being as fetus or embryo from the moment of conception (C-360).
9. C-246 Feb. 2, 2001, Maurice Vellacott, Reform MP Re-introduction of conscience clause Bill C-461 (Dec 1998) and Bill S-7 (Nov 1997).
10. M-392 April 18, 2002, Garry Breitkreuz, Alliance MP Motion asking Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights to examine the current definition of “human being” in the Criminal Code to see if law needs to be amended to provide protection to fetuses and to designate a fetus/embryo as a human being.
11. M-523 June 17, 2002, Garry Breitkreuz, Alliance MP Motion asking Standing Committee on Health to evaluate whether abortions are “medically necessary,” and to compare health risks for women undergoing abortions
12. C-246 Oct. 30, 2002, Maurice Vellacott, Reform MP Re-introduction of conscience clause Bill C-461 (Dec 1998) and Bill S-7 (Nov 1997).
13. C-452 May 1, 2002, Jim Pankiw, Reform MP Reintroduction of bill (C-515) to allow a referendum on tax funding of “medically unnecessary” abortions.
14. M-83 March 2003, Garry Breitkreuz, Alliance MP Motion asking Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights to examine whether abortions are “medically necessary,” and to compare health risks for women undergoing abortions compared to women carrying their babies to full term. Voted on Oct 1, 2003, defeated 139-66.
15. C-537 April 16, 2008, Maurice Vellacott, Conservative MP Bill to prevent coercion of medical personnel. Conscience clause protection similar to his previous bills C-246, C-422, C-207, and C-461.
16. C-510 April 16, 2010, Rod Bruinooge, CPC MP Bill to make it a crime to coerce or attempt to coerce a woman to have an abortion, also called “Roxanne’s law”. Defeated Dec 15, 2010, by a vote of 178 to 97.
17. C-537 April 16, 2008 Maurice Vellacott, Conservative MP Bill to prevent coercion of medical personnel. Conscience clause protection similar to his previous bills C-246, C-422, C-207, and C-461.
18. M-312 March 13, 2012, Stephen Woodworth, Conservative MP Motion to have Parliamentary committee examine if Criminal Code definition of “human beings” should include fetuses, and to look at medical evidence, legal impact and consequences. Motion 312 was defeated Sep 26, 2012, by a vote of 203-91.
19. M-408 Sept. 27, 2012, Mark Warawa, Conservative MP Motion to “condemn discrimination against females occurring through sex-selective pregnancy termination.”
20. C-225 Feb. 23, 2016, Cathay Wagantall, Conservative MP Bill to protect fetuses from third-party attacks: “Protection of Pregnant Women and Their Preborn Children Act (Cassie and Molly’s Law).” (similar to C-484 of Nov 2007, M-560 of March 2004, and C-291 of May 2004). Contains an “aggravating circumstances” clause. Bill C-225 was defeated Oct 19, 2016, by a vote of 209-76.
21. C-233 Feb 26, 2020, Cathay Wagantall, Conservative MP Bill to amend the Criminal Code (sex-selective abortion), to criminalize sex selective abortion if that is the only reason for an abortion, and sentence providers to up to five years in jail. Bill C-233 was defeated on June 2, 2021 by a vote of 248 to 82.
22. C-311 Jan 31, 2023, Cathay Wagantall, Conservative MP Bill to amend the Criminal Code (Paragraph 718.2(a)) to create an “aggravating circumstance” clause to allow for greater penalties when a pregnant person is attacked. Second reading was scheduled for May 2023.

It’s clear that PoiLIEvre and the CPC are always pandering to their Talibangelist base and will restrict a woman’s right to choose if they are elected into power. #NeverVoteConservative.

** Lewis also presented to Parliament a far-right petition for Canada to withdraw from the UN and the WHO; having nations withdraw from these organizations (as well as from NATO) has always been a major goal of Putin, whose interests such petitions serve. The PMO’s press secretary, Mohammad Hussain, wondered, “What is it about the UN that Conservatives don’t like? Is it the work they do for children around the world, is it their programs to support women’s rights and human rights?” Lewis is “avowedly anti-abortion” and seems she would happily restrict women’s reproductive rights. CBC noted: “Lewis has said she wants a ban on “sex-selective” abortions and criminal penalties for “coercive” abortions.”

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