Memo to CPC: Forget Talking Climate. It's The Lockdowns, Stupid

You can always tell a Canadian Conservative. You just can’t tell them much. (Not that Liberals and their media pals ever stop trying.) Their redemption is at hand, but they’re doomed to ignore it.

The CPC death grip on conventionality was on vivid display last weekend at its annual convention of the party. With the pitiless cameras of CBC bearing down on them, the assembled delegates did their version of sucking and blowing at the same time. In the process the CPC establishment once again let others define them. 

The issue was the CPC rejection of the Liberals’ climate-change alarmism, which was defeated by over 50 percent of the delegates. Naturally the media Usual Suspects lost their minds. Any party worth its salt would have told the media that 99.9 percent of the delegates believe climate change is real. What they don’t believe is the Doomsday Cult of climate change being forced down the throats of school children, Karens and the corporate sector by a feckless media. 

They’d have pointed out that the apostles of climate change are the same type of social engineers who concocted Covid-19 wisdom, turning the nation into a detention camp to save the 10 percent of the population at serious risk of the virus. They’d show how the carbon tax is a government fiasco that neither helps the ecology nor the economy. 

But no, the face they showed was Conservatives, desperate to be Liberals, in a boring suit coat. Again.

The geniuses who lead the CPC sought to placate that part of Woke nation which will never vote for them, tugging at their forelock for the amusement of Rosie Barton’s diverse panel of Same Thinkers. They point to polls that show young people— the shock troops of climate indoctrination— are not enthusiastic about the party’s policy on climate.

They see that 46 percent of Canadians could choose the CPC in the next election but only 23 percent say that will actually vote for them. In young people under 30 the Tories are fourth, behind the Greens, in preference. “Fights over abortion and a perception the party doesn’t care about climate change won’t help,” says Abacus polling.

Certainly the leadership of the Invisible Man Erin O’Toole will not help break this cycle of futility. His conventionality is rock solid, seeking to blend Stephen Harper’s charisma with Andrew Scheer’s policy wonkiness. The new Canadians that Harper recruited? Meh.

They’re not helped that the two most conservative premiers in the nation (Doug Ford in Ontario and Jason Kenney in Alberta) allowed themselves to be captured by their health bureaucrats, mumbling drivel about “following the science” instead of leading their provinces in balancing the costs of Covid and lockdowns (see Ron DeSantis in Florida).

To paraphrase football coach Dennis Green, “They are who we thought they are”.

But if Tories care to break their chains, there is a ready comparison at hand. The 2016 Republican Party was in a similar bind. The party establishment was behind Jeb Bush, a gooey blend of capitulation and the neo-conservative pap produced by his brother George in eight years as president. 

The GOP establishment thought it could win the White House following Barack Obama by sorta’ adapting itself to Obama’s identity politics. As we now know that recipe was trashed by the brash TV host Donald Trump. Trump did something revolutionary for a GOP candidate. He adopted the positions on immigration, trade and culture that the Jeb Buch faction was petrified to adopt. 

But something very interesting happened with Trump, something the enervated Canadian intelligentsia did not or could not grasp. One in three Trump 2016 voters had voted for Obama— twice. This defied all the bien pensants of CNN and MSNBC, dispensing wisdom from their airless studios in NYC and DC. 

How could allegedly progressive Obama voters go in such a radically different direction? The reason was simple. Many recognized that Trump, whatever his side show, was for policies that the nation— not the networks— wanted. Those outside the Martha’s Vineyard reality. Or, as the Starkist Tuna ads said, they wanted tunas that taste good, not tunas with good taste. 

Likewise Trump’s outsider stance appealed to Bernie Sanders voters (whose candidate had been screwed by the Hillary Clinton DNC), another constituency kicked to the sidewalk by progressive elites and their media megaphone. Trump’s notion of shaking up the establishment was their mantra too.

Trump asked blacks and Latinos, long exploited by the Democratic Party’s fake empathy, “Why not?” No GOP candidate had ever dared breaching this DNC stronghold with such a simple approach. By the 2020 election Trump’s outreach to these demographic groups showed Trump up from 13 percent in 2016 to 18 percent with black men, and 8 percent of black women, doubling his percentage from four years before

He also increased his support among Latino Americans, capturing 36 percent of Latino men and 32 percent of Latino women. These historic shifts were produced by appealing to communities considered proxy votes by an entitled DNC and its corporate media. 

Finally Trump bypassed the legacy media, using social media to get an unfiltered message out. It was rude and crude at times. But it broke the monopoly of the networks and Woke media.

Naturally, the shell-shocked MSNBC/ CNN booster club ,and the authoritarian Left spent four years trying to change the subject. They demonized Trump’s foibles so they could ignore his message— a message that destroyed their carefully crafted plans for permanent rule. (Canadian media lapped it up.) Despite his 2020 loss it stands as one of the most significant shifts in American political history.

Canadian pecksniffs will insist you can’t compare Canadians and American politics. Like their American media counterparts they see their world through a conventionalist prism. They cannot admit that today’s divide created by lockdowns is not racial, it’s class. Canadian Tories will protest that Trump was simply a bully playing to the right-wing crowd. After all, that’s what CBC says, and it is omnipotent. We are made of better stuff. Like leaders who do port-a-potty videos. 

The opportunity for change lies with the many Canadians who are battered by harsh lockdowns and conflicting information from Health® experts. Watching Trudeau’s arrogance and lack of accountability they see themselves as Outsiders, denied a voice in Ottawa by a game rigged against them. Exposing the brutal lockdown is the key to engaging these people. They are waiting for someone to hear their voice.

What the CPC needs is leadership that hears those voices and can effectively harness the Outsider discontent over lockdowns and mask mandates, not a party that seeks to placate the media and culture cancellers’ opinion of how to please the In Crowd. 

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx