It's been a while since we've seen any leadership race nastiness in federal politics, but it seems to be making a comeback. During the last NDP leadership race, we were treated to much "violent agreement" among the participants, both out of a sense of unified positions on key issues and the so-so-solidarity mentality of the party, and as a result, there was almost no drama to be had. Likewise, the Liberals were very conscious during their last leadership race of the way in which clips from their prior race were used against them recall Michael Ignatieff telling Stéphane Dion in debate that "we didn't get it done" on climate change and they were circumspect in what was said for the most part. The current Conservative race, however, is shaping up very differently.
As the number of declared and interested candidates grows, we have been witnessing a kind of internecine warfare that has spilled out into the open as some of the lower-tier candidates are attacking their own to make names for themselves, and none more blatantly so than both Kellie Leitch and Brad Trost. Both are on a war against the "elites" in the party, the media and the public discourse, and they're taking no prisoners.
For Leitch to rail against "elites" is something of a hilarious exercise, given that few people are more elite than she is, with her being a top pediatric orthopedic surgeon, former professor at the Ivey School of Business, and full cabinet minister. It's hard to find someone more elite than that with full ivory tower credentials to boot and yet Leitch and her campaign manager, Nick Kouvalis, have been going full-bore on their "Canadian values" pitch and casting their detractors as elites who just can't handle the truths that Leitch is unleashing on the public.
Trost, meanwhile, is making a full-out play to a socially conservative base that has felt alienated under the Harper years when mere lip service was paid to their issues, and he's running with it, no matter who gets in his way. This led immediately to a public clash with former Harper PMO Chief of Staff Guy Giorno, as Trost tried to bully him into repaying perfectly legitimate moving expenses in order to score points on the ongoing nonsense around current PMO staffers Katie Telford and Gerald Butts' own (perfectly legitimate) moving expenses. That clash got ugly fast, and a scheduled public debate between the two scheduled for Power & Politics collapsed when Trost refused to agree not to sue Giorno for anything he said on television, while Trost could say anything he wanted about Giorno using his parliamentary privilege in the House of Commons. Trost, meanwhile, has promised to re-open the debates on abortion, same-sex marriage and medical assistance in dying, so he has clearly staked out some turf there.
Why candidates like Trost and Leitch are taking these tactics, however, has everything to do with the way that leadership contests in Canadian politics have become increasingly debased under the false rubric of making them "more democratic." Because we've insisted on giving party members or "supporters" in the case of Liberals the choice in who gets to be party leader instead of the caucus, it no longer becomes incumbent to get support of the caucus to get that leadership position, and the eventual leaders can become bullies to their colleagues on the merit of the "democratic legitimacy" that they gained from the membership/supporter base that exists outside of caucus.
Aside from just making leaders increasingly unaccountable and they are perfectly aware that the larger the membership/supporter base that elected them, the less accountable they are it sets up a particularly toxic dynamic between the leader and his or her own caucus. We've been seeing increasing examples of this in recent years, with Alison Redford in Alberta, Greg Selinger in Manitoba, and most especially Jeremy Corbyn leading the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, where they were made leader (or in Selinger's case, re-elected as leader) with little to no caucus support, and yet the same MPs or MLAs who are bound to that leader's whims are left with few options to push back, no matter how disastrous those whims and edicts may be.
It's no longer just the case that leadership hopefuls have to engage the membership/supporter base, but we appear to have reached an age where bombast is encouraged and expected. Leitch is demonstrating this with her "anti-Canadian Values" screening proposal, despite it being utterly unworkable. That doesn't actually matter because she's creating a wedge for herself to contrast herself against, and her railing against the "elites" especially those within her own party is merely about creating that wedge. Remember that her campaign manager is Kouvalis, a man who made millionaire Rob Ford look like just another member of the working class like his voter base and his railing against the "gravy train" in city hall. Kouvlais is looking to recreate that magic with Leitch, and hopes that he's found the right wedge in the values conversation.
As for Trost, he's got a segment of the membership base that has lost its influence but he hopes to revive to (somehow) get him to the top. That his particular bugaboo issues are ones where Canadian law and society have moved on from (seriously, he would have to start invoking the Notwithstanding Clause on a regular basis to return to an era of legislative bans that have been declared unconstitutional) is of little importance he's got a base to energise.
We've seen the ways in which the political ascendency of Donald Trump has turned Republican Party members against common sense to vote for personality, bombast and outright nastiness south of the border, and it seems to be inspiring some of the Conservative candidates up here, and like the States, it may yet fracture the Conservative party. We need to return to a system of caucus selection. Enough is enough.
