The CPC Went Full SoCon

The brief summary of yesterday’s policy votes at the CPC 2023 convention was published by CBC. Go there first, and read it - but I really think they missed more than a few things, so this is going to be a bit more of a deep dive into the policies they passed and how much worse for women and minorities it really is.

We’ll start with a lovely thread that was published on Twitter by MichelleTypoQ that summarizes the motions that were put to the plenary session on Saturday afternoon. You don’t have to go read all of it, I’m going to go through all of the SoCon policies here, but the screen caps I’m going to use are from that thread.

Of thirty policy proposals that made it to the plenary session on Saturday afternoon, a solid 1/3 of them were driven by social conservatives or were topics that social conservatives would happily adopt. Unsurprisingly, most of these will ultimately adversely impact women, gender and sexual minorities, and those experiencing homelessness and addiction.

As I have pointed out in prior posts, context matters and the wording used can often be very slippery.

Let’s go on a deeper dive, shall we?

I’m not going to go in precisely the order that these motions are presented in the twitter thread, instead I’m going to go through them as they escalate towards particular goals.

Up first, we have this one, which is ostensibly about ending “diversity hiring” practices in federally funded research programs.  Conservatives love to wave “merit” around because it allows them to imply that *gasp* white people aren’t being hired … or more precisely white MEN aren’t being hired.  It’s patently false, of course - white men remain the most privileged group in our society in terms of jobs, pay, and opportunities.  A “merit” approach is theoretically “colour blind” and pays no regard to race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity.  In theory.  Only that isn’t how the system has ever worked.  Hiring managers always have their biases, and when there’s no monitoring of whether traditionally disadvantaged groups are being hired, well … things start to look awfully white and male quite quickly. 

What I find particularly offensive about this position is the double implication that “minority hires” are never as well qualified or capable as their white male counterparts.  This is objectively false.  

Social conservatives love this policy for a number of reasons though:  

1 - It fits in with the biblical notion of the man as head of the household,

2 - By definition it fits in with the idea that women (in particular) should be secondary - after all, they should be at home producing babies 

3 - Well - if it’s all by “merit”, then those icky minorities must be just not as well qualified as their white male counterparts, right? - in other words, it reinforces the pre-existing conservative biases against minorities. 

This one is interesting and subtle.  First, is that it's aimed at new mothers.  No desire is expressed here to address things like the "tampon tax" of GST on feminine hygiene products, but somehow we're supposed to look at new mothers as a special case?  

Second is the use of the language.  The motion itself contains the vague term "so-called necessities", as if the definition is off-putting to the author of the motion.  Odd to say the least.  

Of course, this fits in loosely with the Social Conservative fetishization of motherhood - "tax relief" (such as it is) on diapers and other things, but nothing if you have a period - apparently because that's wasting your eggs or something? 

Ah yes, the inevitable “free speech as an absolute” clause.  This one appears more or less innocuous enough until you dig a little deeper.  Superficially, it’s a more libertarian perspective, but Social Conservatives have spent decades learning how to twist libertarians around their thumb.  It contains several signals in it that we need to talk about.  

First it implicitly signals a refusal on the part of conservatives to acknowledge the spread of hate speech and disinformation through social media. More or less, they are arguing that “all speech is equal”, and centuries of experience going back to the slave era and before shows us that is not the case at all. The libertarian will argue that it’s all “just opinions”, and therefore that all perspectives deserve to be heard. 

The examples of why this is false are multiple, ranging from how slavers dehumanized their slaves to justify treating them as property rather than persons; to Nazi Germany’s mythologized lies aimed at demonizing the Jewish communities; and the utterly ridiculous lies made about 2SLGBTQ people throughout the last 60 years - everything from alleging that they are pedophiles coming for your children to the “disease ridden predator” of the AIDS era.  All false, and all used to deliberately deny people full access to life in society. 

All of that is hate speech, and none of it deserves “equal standing” - it never did, and it is always used to justify the most horrific of acts. 

Social Conservatives see this as a win because it justifies their ongoing use of religious arguments to justify marginalizing 2SLGBTQ people, and in particular to agitate for laws to push transgender people out of society. 

By sheer coincidence, we come to the “ode to Jordan Peterson” part of things. Again, this is more libertarian than it is specifically Social Conservative.  It postulates that no "corrective" action can be taken against someone who expresses "opinions(tm)". 

However, Jordan Peterson is the darling of both libertarians and Social Conservatives because he speaks loudly against transgender people in particular.  The irony, to me, perhaps is that JP has been very vocal that anyone who provides affirming treatment to transgender people should be sent to prison ... and yet, he's "just expressing opinions", no matter how harmful they might be.  

Of course the Social Conservative set loves this idea - because it fits in with their demands for so-called "conscience rights" legislation that would exempt anyone who denies treatment on "conscience matters" (abortion, gender affirming treatment, etc) from scrutiny by the various regulating bodies.  It should come as no surprise that they like this idea - as it also enables them to go after the regulating bodies and change their mandates.  

Here we return to more classical conservative "tough on crime" stuff.  It's easy "red meat for the base", of course.  Nobody wants to be seen as "going easy" on sexual predators of any sort.  But that's where the problems arise too.  In the rhetoric of the last couple of years, conservatives have been all too willing to include transgender people (and others) in the category of "pedophile" or "predator".  We should not be making the mistake of thinking that they have in mind the same definitions of these words that is used in more objective settings.  It would be all too easy for this to turn into "let's go after trans people" by modifying the definition of "sexual predator" in the criminal code to include transgender identified people as a matter of course. 

Moving along, we come to a policy that is somewhat of an irony moment in all of this.  Here they are arguing for "bodily autonomy" when it comes to medical treatments.  On the surface, it's kind of a "what?" - a policy seemingly aimed at making the Convoy protestor types happy, but of little or no significance.  

Yet, as we will see later on, they very much want to limit your bodily autonomy on matters such as gender dysphoria and abortion. 

On the topic of autonomy, this particular one is insidious.  We only have to look at Alberta where the government is openly musing about forcing addicts into treatment programs to understand how fucked up this can get.  The language here talks about addressing things like mental illness or homelessness, but when you start from a position that fundamentally asserts that addiction is a personal moral failing, chances are that the resulting program(s) you come up with will be coercive, and ultimately ineffective. 

Ultimately, this policy reeks of "addicts are icky, make sure I don't see them" thinking.  Addiction is hard problem to solve, but until you centre the addict in your program design, all you're likely doing is shoving the problem somewhere that it can't be seen.  Pretty classic Con / SoCon policy, and like the 80s era "war on drugs" - simply won't work. 

I must admit, this one surprised me, but in retrospect it shouldn't.  Ever since stem cell based research took off in the late 90s, the anti-abortion crowd has been freaking out about it - leading to the US severely restricting that research under GWB. The far right spun quite the fantastical tales about the development of mRNA vaccines to fight COVID-19 the last couple of years before they went off the deep end and decided that there were also microchips embedded in the vaccine. 

Of course, some of the loudest critics of COVID related restrictions were ... religious leaders ... so, it's not too hard to understand the thinking behind the idea that somehow the development of a vaccine might somehow "offend" someone's religious beliefs.  (and no, the Bible, the Q'Ran, nor any other ancient religious text has nothing to say about vaccines - claiming it does is simply nonsense).

However, putting "religious beliefs" into a policy about the development of healthcare technologies is hugely worrying.  

Ah, here we go.  We're going to restrict MAiD is what this is.  SoCons have been opposed to MAiD as much as they are opposed to abortion.  

IF this policy were to concurrently address matters such as how current long term disability programs condemn their clients to poverty, then perhaps I might see it as being "good faith".  It doesn't - it just talks about limiting MAiD for people without even making a gesture in the direction of addressing underlying societal problems. 

MAiD should not be an "exit from grinding poverty", the fact that it is seen by some as that says more about the systems and programs currently in our society than it does MAiD itself. 

Now we come to the three ugliest proposals passed on Saturday, September 9.  I discussed all 3 in detail back here.  They were passed unamended in the plenary session on Saturday afternoon - by large margins. 

These last 3 are by far the most reprehensible motions, and the fact that the party delegates passed them with 2/3 or better majorities tells me everything I need to know about today's CPC.  They are very much in the thrall of their SoCon base, and that base is becoming increasingly radicalized.  Add to that the radicalized "Convoy Crowd" that they are also genuflecting towards, and it's one very ugly picture. 

This is a party well on its way to becoming authoritarian and fascist.  The fact that they are singling out a minority for direct discrimination is the most troubling sign I have seen since I wrote this piece examining how close the Harper-era conservatives were getting to fascism - a decade ago.  Any party that gets behind attacking a minority is a danger to all.  Even if they were to successfully erase trans people from society tomorrow, they will need another target to direct anger at - sooner or later, you're next.