Roundup: The leader and the grassroots disagree on climate change

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After Erin O’Toole’s big speech at the Conservative Party’s “virtual” convention, where he said that the party needed to change if they hoped to win enough seats to form government in the future, the party apparently felt otherwise on a number of policy resolutions. The big one that will be cited for weeks to come is the fact that on a resolution to declare that climate change is real that the party needs to act on it, the grassroots voted this down – predominantly with votes from Alberta and Saskatchewan, but also from the social conservatives. It seems that Campaign Life Coalition distributed a guide to delegates, wherein they equated “climate alarmism” as a tool to justify population control and abortion, so good luck having that rational debate.

But it almost doesn’t matter because O’Toole says climate change is real, and he’s going to do something about it. What exactly is unspecified, and he also intimated that the economy comes first, so that could mean doing as little as possible using the economic recovery as cover – but it won’t be a carbon price (which is ridiculous for a supposed fiscal conservative given that it’s a transparent market-based system that allows consumers to make better choices). But this has become what happens with our political parties now that we have made them solely leader-centric thanks to our presidential primary-style leadership contests. What the leader says goes in terms of policy and election platforms, so these grassroots policy conventions have largely become theatre with little resonance to how said leader operates because his or her word is what goes. The system shouldn’t work like this, but all parties now operate in this mode, but nobody wants to address the cause of it.

To that end, Chantal Hébert weaves together O’Toole’s weakness on promising a climate plan without a carbon price, and the upcoming Supreme Court decision on it, and how those two dynamics play together. Susan Delacourt takes the “virtual” convention to heart and posits that the Conservatives have created a virtual reality for themselves if they believe that denying climate change is what will set the tone for a campaign while their leader tries to shake them out of their complacency.

Good reads:

  • Anita Anand says that AstraZeneca doses from the US could arrive this week.
  • CTV has a long tally of the government’s pandemic programmes, and updates as to what was actually delivered on and what didn’t really live up to promises.
  • Dominic LeBlanc says that the government’s response to sexual misconduct in the military will be announced “within days.”
  • The interim review of the GPHIN showed problems with standard operating procedures – but that it did alert officials about the “pneumonia” in Wuhan early.
  • The RCMP Civilian Review and Complaints Commission found that Mounties racially discriminated against Colton Boushie’s mother while investigating his death.
  • The RCMP are still using the “blood choke” neck hold, and won’t decide on whether to abandon the practice until later this year.
  • While insisting that he totally doesn’t want an election, Jagmeet Singh promised up to $20,000 in forgiveness for federal student loans (if he should form government).

Odds and ends:

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2 thoughts on “Roundup: The leader and the grassroots disagree on climate change”

  1. I really hope the Supreme Court affirms the constitutionality of the feds’ carbon tax. Then if he wants to placate the reality-averse base before they eat him alive, he’ll have to send out some tweets about the rigged deep state swamp and its “so-called Trudeau judges.”

    He’s just not ready. Nice orange hair, though.

  2. The climate change resolution demonstrated O’Toole’s weakness as a leader.
    When a party leader is going to make a speech saying something important about changing a long-standing party policy – and climate change denialism has been a significant part of the Conservative “brand” for the last two decades — he doesn’t just throw a few sentences into a speech and rely on his charismatic personality to carry the day.
    O’Toole should have been “politicking” about it for months in advance – talking to local constituencies and delegates and provincial leaders, getting “conservative” environmental leaders on-side, talking it up to the media, doing virtual speeches to the Fraser Institute, telling the party faithful how important the vote is, etc. I don’t think O’Toole did any of these things
    Also, a leader prepares to announce a “win” whether it passes or not — if it fails, start talking it up as “we ALMOST passed it, made a lot of progress, next time for sure we will” etc
    All in all, it was a demonstration of how O’Toole doesn’t know how to lead.

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