Conservative leader Erin O’Toole says the Conservative Party of Canada is not a party of climate change deniers, telling members the debate is over. True North’s Andrew Lawton points out that party leaders don’t get to direct the base, as Conservative convention delegates showed O’Toole.
Tar & feathers.
A friend recently asked what Erin O’Toole was thinking bringing forward a Conservative convention resolution that “climate change is real” instead of saying “man-made climate change” or specifying policy options. Which, though superficially very sensible, seemed to me to incorporate a major invalid assumption.
Namely that O’Toole was thinking, as you or I might use that word.
OTTAWA — Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole has made it clear he wants to move past debates about the existence of climate change, but the party’s national policy convention this weekend has shown it’s not so simple with his party’s base.
On Friday night, O’Toole gave a keynote speech to the convention promising his party will put forward a serious environment plan. “We cannot ignore the reality of climate change,” O’Toole said. “The debate is over.”
An acknowledgement of climate change exists as formal CPC policy.
Climate change isn’t really the issue however, it’s just a flashpoint and the CPC braintrust has missed that as usual.
It’s the constant kowtowing by the CPC to the lib-left media agenda across a range of issues that people hate, the evident shift to the left by the party leadership is galling to many, hated even more than having “climate change” shoved down their throat.
O’Toole and the CPC are over, they can’t even talk to their base any longer.
Erin O’Toole told Conservatives this weekend that their party must change — because if it doesn’t, he said, it won’t be able to win the votes necessary to defeat Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in the next election.
And if the Liberals do win, he added, they’ll be able to implement their own changes — changes that O’Toole cast as frightening and potentially ruinous.
But O’Toole didn’t tell Conservatives exactly how they need to change. And then delegates delivered a potentially damaging vote on climate change policy that suggests his party base might not be ready to move very far.
Canada has a Gravy Train Class fed and maintained primarily by the LPC with an outsized influence on elections.
The corporate welfare class, our lifestyle political class, large swaths of the media, NGO’s by the score, public service unions etc. etc. etc.
Ontario and Quebec are it’s primary habitat.
They have no reason to switch allegiance.
Right now the LPC controls Banana production in Bananada and that isn’t about to change.
Maybe the problem is insoluble, perhaps a national split-up is the answer.
But I don’t believe remaking the party into an ersatz LPC is the answer.
I’ll be voting PPC.
Conservative Party delegates at the party’s national convention have voted to make a key change to its leadership race rules that could substantially scale back Quebec’s disproportionate influence on the result.
While O’Toole delivered the speech effectively, there is very little underlying contrast of vision between what he is offering and what Canadians are currently getting. Mostly, he is promising to do what is being done now, with some tweaks and more competence.
Conservative Party must have ‘the courage to change,’ Erin O’Toole tells party convention
OTTAWA — In a highly-anticipated keynote speech to his party’s national convention, Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole said it isn’t enough to wait for Liberal scandals to bring down Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — the Conservatives must instead be willing to change in order to expand their voter base.
“We are never going to win over Canadians just by relying on Justin Trudeau to continue to disappoint,” O’Toole said. “His scandals, as outrageous as they often are, will never be enough to defeat him.”
No question the CPC is gonna need a higher power and it ain’t O’Toole.
After grappling with Canadians’ climate concerns in recent election cycles, Conservatives engaged in fierce debate today over a policy proposal from a Quebec riding to declare that “climate change is real.”
The Portneuf—Saint Jacques riding association’s proposed policy change would add green-friendly language to the Tory playbook.
The backer is asking delegates to affirm that the party “recognizes that climate change is real” and that “the Conservative Party is willing to act.”
They’ll never win until they learn the media will always hate them no matter how desperately they try to suck up. But like Charlie Brown and that football they just can’t resist.
OTTAWA–Erin O’Toole is preaching unity as his detractors within the Conservative Party of Canada whisper division.
Sources close to O’Toole say they are unconcerned with the spate of negative headlines and rabble rousing within the ranks as he heads into his first policy convention as leader this weekend.
Nevertheless, there is an acknowledgment among O’Toole’s inner circle that the call is coming from inside the house — that elements within their own party are seeking to undermine the new leader, even as the possibility of an election looms.
“If we were five or 10 points ahead in the polls, you wouldn’t be hearing any of it,” a senior Conservative source told the Star in an interview Wednesday.
The party has chosen to leave a great many former supporters behind. I’d vote for them even if I knew they’d lose assuming they at least tried to be conservative.
Erin O’Toole is a great admirer of Winston Churchill but he apparently does not subscribe to the Great Man’s maxim: “In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity.”
The Conservative Party is a house divided heading into its policy convention this week – and a number of senior Conservatives are pointing the finger of blame at O’Toole and his team for engaging in divisive tactics aimed at marginalizing potential rivals.
A Conservative government would not cut foreign aid, Erin O’Toole says
Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole reversed his predecessor’s position on foreign aid spending Tuesday, saying that if elected, a Conservative government wouldn’t cut that budget.
But he said he would look to mirror previous Conservative foreign aid programs that tied funds to specific, measurable outcomes.
“I want to maintain and modernize and make more accountable our development funding,” he said during a virtual event with Cooperation Canada, an umbrella organization for international development agencies.
“…What we have to do is grow in Ontario and in British Columbia in particular, and in Quebec. We have to make sure we have a million more Conservatives going to the ballot in the next election. And that’s going to mean we have to grow who we’re speaking for,” O’Toole said.
“We need to reach out … We have to enlist more people in our mission. And I’ll tell you, reaching out is working. Because Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Singh, all the parties on the left, they don’t stand up for working families anymore. They stand up for protest groups and people on Twitter more than they do the pipe fitter, or the electrician, or someone that wants to get back to work so they can save up for their kids’ education.”
“We’re going to fight relentlessly for these people.”
Beats me how supporting mass immigration to please corporate interests is “standing up for working families.”
Policy that in the real world translates to a “A smaller piece of the pie for you” doesn’t sound like it will win over hearts and minds.
Perhaps it’s just too nuanced for me to understand and the conservative brain trust can explain it all to to me.
What is there to make of Erin O’Toole?
The MP for Durham, just east of Toronto, has been leader of the Conservative party for just over six months and faces the prospect of a federal election in less time than that.
Mr. O’Toole may be a very nice man but I don’t know him personally.
He presides over a party little different from Trudeau’s Liberals.
He favours mass immigration from wherever the numbers can be had to please the corporate class.
He walks the walk of the Woke, kowtowing to Trudeau’s media believing identity politics are the key to winning over urban voters in Ontario and Quebec.
He stands for nothing that I can see. Not free speech, not small government, (and I mean real cuts to the bureaucracy) and I doubt he will do anything about the CBC as he “promised.”
What’s not to like?
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused the Conservative party of denying the existence of the COVID-19 pandemic and opposing masks, but a True North fact check found this to be false.
Since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, the Conservatives have not denied the pandemic’s existence and had actually supported mask-wearing before the federal government officially recommended it.
Rather than almost mirroring the Liberals’ agenda, the Tories should be offering more traditional, conservative policies on deficits, size of government and regulation.
