Honest Conservative is an Oxymoron in Canada

 Way back in the 90s, Preston Manning admonished Reform party candidates as follows:  "Don't tell voters what you really believe, get yourself elected first" (this is a paraphrase).  That has become a mantra among conservatives since then.  

Federally, the CPC under Harper had a significant "values" caucus (read: social/religious conservatives) who badly wanted to legislate against abortion, gay rights, and women's rights.  Harper would throw them the odd bit of "red meat" - allowing a private member's bill to move along for a while - until it became apparent that if it actually got passed, the political price would be too high.  Policy books were carefully curated, and unless you had a good eye for "dog whistle" language, most people would assume that the CPC was less radical than it actually was.  Since Harper's departure in 2015, that mask has dropped, and the radicalized wing of the party has become increasingly powerful.  

Provincially, the picture is similar across the country, with some truly egregious examples emerging in the western provinces.  In Alberta, the UCP has undergone two internal coups, resulting in a party that has become increasingly radical and is legislating in a manner completely at odds with the platform they ran on in 2023.  Nobody in 2023 thought they were electing a party that would spend political capital on attacking minority rights and separatism, yet here we are.  Smith to this day denies that the party is in fact a separatist party.  

Then we come to B.C., and the crumbling edifice of a "unified" conservatism under the BC Conservative banner.  Two years ago, John Rustad led the BC Conservatives to a hair's breadth of attaining power.  When he booted Dallas Brodie from caucus for comments that most people would describe as racist, that led to the formation of OneBC, and put his leadership under threat from factions of the party who apparently felt he wasn't "conservative enough".  Eventually that led to his ouster and replacement by Kerry-Lynne Findlay after a lengthy and bitter leadership fight. 

Findlay set about engaging in one of the most blatant purity purges any conservative party has ever witnessed, resulting in the collapse of her leadership in a record setting 112 days.  This isn't an accident, and it isn't an aberration - it is exactly what you would expect when a party is made up of factions that simply don't see eye to eye on much.  Sooner or later, the most radicalized faction will agitate and organize to seize control. 

Which leads us to yesterday's revelation that the B.C. Conservatives are "in talks" with OneBC.  Now, in itself, this is not surprising - parties often discuss what they might do in scenarios where together they might be able to seize power from a rival either through cooperation or even merger.  

However, B.C. Conservative leader Lorne Doerksen made the following statement which I can only describe as ominous in the context:  

Asked about the discussions Tuesday, Doerkson said there had been “nothing formal,” while reiterating his party’s commitment to embracing conservative values.

“That’s not up for conversation,” Doerkson said at the time. “We will bring conservative values, for certain, to the people of British Columbia.” (emphasis added) 

What precisely does "conservative values" mean here?  OneBC is, to put it kindly, on the extreme end of social conservatism, with distinctly racist, anti-2SLGBTQ policies permeating the party's policies.  Lorne Doerksen's own comments should make anyone who isn't themselves a social conservative incredibly nervous: 

I was supportive of the LGBTQ community. Always have been and always will be.

SOGI [Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity education resources] has been a lightning rod for division in this province. I think that SOGI has to be removed.

and ...  

I've had friends that attended residential schools, and I have heard many stories from people that have survived those schools.

I'm absolutely supportive of our First Nations in this province.

If there has been a crime committed, then there needs to be an absolute, formal, deep investigation into what has happened here because I think all Canadians need to understand that better so that we can move forward on a better path

So, in short, anti-2SLGBTQ (because let's be honest, anyone who is bitching about SOGI is doing so because it includes that community and that gives them the squickies), and nothing like a little "soft residential school denialism" to show us the underlying racism.  Does Mr. Doerksen not recall the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its final report?  We've had that investigation already.

Now we have the BC Conservatives playing footsie with OneBC?  That should make anyone nervous - because OneBC was formed out of "the BC Conservatives weren't radical enough for us" thinking.  

I'm not going to claim that the MLAs who left caucus under Findlay are the "reasonable ones" - I think they are the ones who were targeted by Findlay's purge for one reason or another, or they saw the political fallout of staying with Findlay on the wall and decided it would be better for their future prospects to depart.

Prior to the collapse of her leadership in September, there were already rumours of OneBC being invited to return to the BC Conservatives ... largely because KLF was already aligned with OneBC - and she was making that clear. 

Doerksen is trying to play "the reasonable one" here, while tacitly signalling to the hardliners that he's on their side.  That's the whole problem - conservatism in Canada is not a singular movement with a coherent set of beliefs.  It is a collection of groups, all with distinctly different beliefs and values fighting for control over the "blue flag".  The claim that there is "something in common" is a fantasy - the goal is power, and "leaders" emerge who will do everything they can to cobble together some kind of "alliance", only to have it fall apart in real time as they discover how radicalized some of the participants really are. 

I've watched this script play out so many times since the 1990s that the first question I ask when someone tells me that they are "a conservative" is "which faction do you follow?".  The least honest are always the ones with the most unelectable ideas. 

On Coded Language and Political Policy

In the last few years, coded language has become a significant factor in how political parties present themselves.  This is especially prevalent among  parties who are adopting policy positions that if they said them in plain language most people would be horrified about.  

Today's examples come to us from the BC Conservatives.  I'm not going to slice and dice all of their policies and language, but I am going to pull a few up and point out where they are clearly using coded language to mislead people about the nature of their policies. 

First, let's turn to their "Our Ideas" page. 

There is a ton of coded language in here:  "Support Parents' Choices", "Remove Ideology From the Classroom", "Protect Free Speech on Campus".  Each one of these phrases is a coded reference to policies which if they said it directly most reasonable people would look at them and say "what the hell are you thinking?".  

For example, "Support Parents' Choices" would effectively result in dismantling public education by directing resources away from public schools to a variety of "alternatives" which largely benefit those who are significantly better off in society.  Usually this gets implemented as a voucher system of some sort, where funding is "per student" and the same amount goes to the school attended regardless of whether it is public, charter, private, or homeschool.  The problem, of course is that this necessarily dilutes the resources available for public schools which have to take in all students who come to them, while the other options can pick and choose (and often have additional fees or tuition which can place them out of reach for all but the most well-off).  

The cry to "Remove Ideology" is, of course, a sop to various players who believe that anything from comprehensive sex education to critical thinking exercises represents some kind of "ideological bias".  This is reflected in the Alberta UCP's overhaul of school curriculum to reflect a "memorized 'facts'" model reminiscent of the 1950s and 60s.  We're going to focus on "facts" but not really talk about the implications of them because that's going to make someone uncomfortable (and sex education always makes a certain subset of parents get very uncomfortable for <reasons>).  

The cry to "protect free speech" is always a bit specious.  They aren't really talking about free speech per se, but rather they're talking about enabling the often most radicalized of speakers.  This is a derivative of the so-called "Chicago Principles" - which more or less argue that students protesting someone being given a platform is somehow "impeding free speech".  The Chicago Principles are basically what you get when you apply free market logic to public speaking, with the end result that whoever has the deepest pockets suddenly gets the megaphone, no matter how hateful or otherwise inappropriate their beliefs might be. 

But, it gets better, because they come along and present this little gem under "Culture and Freedom":  

The problem with this should be pretty obvious.  The argument is that various minority groups receive "preferential" treatment because of their minority status, and somehow this is wrong because it's "reverse discrimination".  What these positions inevitably mean is a return to what was the status quo before the impact of discrimination was acknowledged.  

Proponents might argue something along the lines of "when are these programs no longer needed?", and the answer to that is "when the wrongs of the past and present have been remediated".  One need only look to the United States, where BIPOC people were (theoretically) liberated during the civil rights era, and yet by no means can we say that they are treated equally in all facets of society.  Economic disadvantage continues to be pervasive, uneven treatment in the legal system has meant that far more BIPOC people are incarcerated, education opportunities are still limited even though on paper everybody is 'equal'.  Equal on paper does not mean equality in fact - that last bit takes a long time to achieve. 

Under healthcare, we find a cry for "conscience rights".  Speaking of coded language, this is almost always targeted at those who oppose abortion, 2SLGBTQ rights, transgender treatment etc.  In Alberta, we  have had one go around with this in 2019.  The problem with so-called conscience rights is they really turn out to be a means for medical practitioners to deny people needed medical care.  

"Oh, you're gay?  Well my religion tells me that you're an irredeemable sinner, so I won't treat you". I wish I was kidding.  It's a very real possibility with this kind of legislation on the books.  It also makes it very easy to deny a woman a D&C in the event of a miscarriage or other medical emergency that might require termination of a pregnancy.  

The language is cleverly obtuse - it never really says what they mean, but when you scrape away the surface layer, you very quickly learn that the intended implementation can be very, very damaging. 

When you delve into their policy declaration, things get so much worse because they start talking about how they're going to go about things.  A large proportion is probably a massive violation of Charter Rights, but with conservatives increasingly willing to shield their laws from scrutiny by invoking S33 (The Notwithstanding Clause), I think it's safe to say that we have to be much more careful to scrutinize the language being used.  However, that's a post for another day - this one is already getting a bit lengthy.