What is a conservative in Canada? There was a time when I would have answered that question in economic, financial terms, and I think many others might have agreed with that. Conservatives are wary of increasing the Federal debt, and insistent on prudently balancing the budget. My father used to inveigh against “spending our children’s future” and at the time I thought that was a noble position to take – that we should deny ourselves in this generation, so as to avoid loading our children and grandchildren with debt. 

Conservatives are a bit bullish on defence spending, and pretty tight-fisted about expanding the social safety net in any way. There is a conservative economic stand against over-taxing corporations and a desire amongst conservatives to create an environment in which business can flourish. That position was expressed and amplified during the Reagan years in the United States as “trickle down economics”.  The conservatives’ theory held that business, not government, should lead the economy and that if business did well, the benefits of good jobs and a strong economy would trickle down to the middle class. 

History has blown that theory all to Hell. The middle class in the United States is disappearing, and there has been a relentless flow of wealth from the bottom to the top. But nevertheless, there are conservative financial positions that remain viable talking points. Excessive government spending is dangerous, and careless expansion of the social safety net needs to be examined and criticized. We need a cautious and “small c” conservative review of climate management policy. Immigration is a growing policy concern around the world and a conservative view might hold that we should limit immigration and force applicants through a process which allows Canada to choose immigrants who fill a current Canadian need – more skilled tradesmen, for example, or farm workers.

Sadly, that picture – that conservatism is a pragmatic, cautious, braking approach to taxation and government spending – is not a realistic representation of conservative voices in Canada today. The Conservative Party of Canada held a policy convention in Quebec City early in September, and passed a number of policy resolutions which confirmed that the party is moving from fiscal and economic conservatism and is embracing a social conservative platform. News stories at the time noted that Pierre Polievre wasn’t bound by these resolutions and that he would have to walk a fine line to capture the socially conservative right wing vote without scaring off fiscally conservative moderates whose votes are also important. But he might embrace some of those policies himself and even if he doesn’t, he might be forced to accept positions about which he has personal doubts. Let’s look at some of those resolutions.

Limiting Trans-gender Health Care

I’m quoting loosely now from a John Paul Tasker article posted on September 9^th on the CBC website. 

– “A strong majority of the delegates on hand voted for a motion that stated children should be prohibited from gender-related “life-altering medicinal or surgical interventions.” 

– “young people should be barred from gender-affirming care, which sometimes includes hormone-related treatments that delay puberty or promote the development of masculine or feminine sex characteristics.”

– “It’s not clear precisely which medical treatments would be targeted by the proposed ban.”

Mr Tasker noted that “The Canadian Pediatric Society (CPS) has said that “gender-affirming medical interventions may be an important component of comprehensive care” for some transgender or gender-diverse adolescents.” 

So the Conservative position is that they don’t care what the experts say, they’re going to stop…something. They don’t know exactly what they’re going to stop, but by God, they’re going to stop it.  

On a related issue, Conservatives addressed washrooms.

– “delegates voted by an overwhelming 87 per cent to support a plan to demand single-sex spaces that are only open to women, which the party now defines as a “female person” 

– “Badalich said it’s “not extremist” to demand that what she calls “biological women” have a space to call their own.”

Those statements reveal their fundamental problem with dealing with gender dysphoria issues, and sexual orientation issues. It’s a binary view of the world – you’re either a woman or you’re not, and there’s no dubiety about which is which.  The LGBTQ community holds that it isn’t that simple – that there is a wide range of gender and sexuality orientation. We have all, every one of us, grown up with people who were “different” – effeminate boys or masculine seeming girls. Isn’t it time that we acknowledge those differences and grow some tolerance and accommodation of their needs? Well, the Conservative Party of Canada says no, it’s not time for that yet.

Conservative parties in New Brunswick and Saskatchewan have generated some headlines by pursuing policy that says that children under the age of 16 cannot change their pronouns or preferred first names in a school setting without seeking parental consent. A court in Saskatchewan granted an injunction, holding that this law could cause irreparable harm to the young people affected by it. My first reaction was that this is a mental health issue and that parents must consent to health treatments for their children, and that therefore the law, while distasteful, is aligned with other medical health law. 

But I was wrong. There is a “mature minor” common law position in Canada, and specifically in Saskatchewan. I found this position statement by a Saskatchewan lawyer. “In Canada, the common law recognizes the doctrine of a mature minor, namely, one who is capable of understanding the nature and consequences of the proposed treatment. Accordingly, a minor, if mature, does have the legal capacity to consent to his or her own medical treatment. At common law, where a minor is mature, no parental consent is required.”

So, if the common law position is that students have the legal capacity to make their own mental health decisions, why is Premier Moe of Saskatchewan so driven by the need for this law that he is planning to invoke the constitutional “Notwithstanding Clause” to force it into effect? Let me get back to that issue in a minute or two. First, I want to address another related issue from the CPC policy convention.

The Conservatives “adopted a proposal from the Alberta riding of Medicine Hat-Cardston-Warner to impose stiffer penalties on sex offenders and pedophiles” because “there are nefarious actors who are trying to “assault, sexualize and traffic our children”. 

Are there really nefarious actors trying to assault, sexualize and traffic our children? Well maybe – the world does contain some small number of pedophiles. But there is absolutely no evidence that this sickness is spreading, or is controlled and directed, or that it is firmly established in any particular political party or race, or religion. Wickipedia says “The LGBT grooming conspiracy theory is a far-right conspiracy theory pushed by a growing number of mainstream conservatives that falsely accuses LGBT people and their allies of child grooming and enabling pedophilia…These accusations and conspiracy theories are characterized by experts as baseless.” In his book “American Psychosis”, author David Corn traces the history of the Republican party in the US, and he documents how conspiracy theories have been used by the GOP to advance their political ends. Communists, Catholics, Jews, pedophiles, people of colour, Muslims – they’ve all been used to create a boogey man that the Republicans will fight on your behalf if only you vote for them. Anti-LGBTQ sentiment is just one of the many right wing looney-tunes conspiracies that are seeping across our borders from the US. And politicians in Canada, like Premier Moe, sensitive to the need to attract right wing votes, are pandering to that segment.

Vaccine Mandates

Conservative Party delegates “agreed with about 68 per cent voting to “affirm Canadians have the freedom and right to refuse vaccines.” This bit of idiocy is a reaction to the vaccine mandates that were imposed during the early months of the Covid pandemic. It’s support, if you will, for the rights of the individual over the rights of the community. It’s also tacit support for the Freedom Convoy people who terrorized Ottawa. 

Is there any medical or scientific support for such a policy? No, there is not. Polio, smallpox, tuberculosis, diptheria – the history of the effectiveness of widespread vaccine use in combatting diseases is impressive. And the history of the Covid pandemic is that extensive uses of Covid vaccines saved millions of lives compared to the statistics in countries where vaccine use was limited. 

What would be the erect if this policy became law? Does the whole public health vaccination program against a legion of diseases go down the tubes because Pierre Polievre believes he can make Justin Trudeau look bad on this issue?

Woke Culture

“Delegates passed a policy that said federally funded jobs should go to a person who’s best qualified, “irrespective of the personal immutable characteristics, …. all job choices should be decided on merit, not the colour of a person’s skin…On a similar matter, 81 per cent of delegates supported a policy to end “forced political, cultural or ideological training of any kind” at a workplace, such as mandatory diversity training and other such programs.” 

Recently in the United States, the Supreme Court struck down race-conscious affirmative action programs, ruling that college admission could not be based on anything that looked remotely like a race based admissions quota. It’s not hard to see this particular set of resolutions in Canada as more right wing racist ideology being imported from the States. 

Climate Change

“In another vote, 84 per cent of delegates agreed there should be a “purposeful, gradual transition to a lower carbon-use future,” but the country should continue to use oil and gas.” 

In the opening paragraphs of this little dissertation, I postulated that a sensible conservative party would seek a reasonable approach to climate change policy. The policy adopted by the CPC doesn’t fit that mould. Purposeful gradual transition, but keep using oil and gas is shorthand for “we really don’t want to change anything”. Climate change denial isn’t effective climate change policy. But what climate change denial is, is adoption of the anti-environmental agenda of the Heritage Society and other manipulative tools of the Koch brothers.

What it means for us

I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record, and like I’m seeing the same boogey man everywhere. But look south of the border in the last month and what do we see? We see a Republican Party so sick that they’re threatening to destroy the process of government in the United States. Look to Hungary where the European Parliament has characterized the government of Viktor Orban as an “electoral autocracy” with a long list of fundamental rights they believe to be under threat, including the electoral system, the independence of judiciary, privacy, freedom of expression, media pluralism, academic freedom, LGBTIQ rights and the protection of minorities and asylum seekers. Why is Viktor Orban significant? He is loved by the American right wing and is cited as the model being followed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis among others.

The Economist publishes a Democracy Index. There are 24 countries listed as full democracies, and Canada, at number 12 is one of them. Both Hungary (56) and United States (30) are listed as flawed democracies. We have nothing to learn from those countries, and it is dangerous for us to aspire to their sickness.

The Republican Party, long aligned with the racist John Birch Society in the United States, has been pushing conspiracy theories and racism for more than half a century. In the 1990’s, a man named Pat Buchanan founded an organization known as the Christian Coalition, and the Republicans, hungry for votes, pandered to his philosophies and desires. And it’s from the marriage of fundamentalist Christianity, persistent white racism, and Koch brothers anti-government libertarian greed that right wing social conservatism is born. 

I do not allege any mysterious, evil, right wing conspiracy operating in Canada. For one thing, there’s nothing hidden about what I’m about to connect for you. It’s all available on the internet. At the Conservative convention in Quebec, the keynote address was given by Lord Daniel Hannan, a pro-Brexit conservative from Britain. Lord Daniel Hannan is a vice chair of the International Democracy Union, the IDU. The current chairman of the IDU is former prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper. The Director of Operations and Outreach for the IDU is Chelsie McIntee of the Conservative Party of Canada. The Treasurer of the IDU is Christopher J Fussner of the Republican Party USA. And one of the member parties in the IDU is the Fidesz party of Hungary’s near-dictator Viktor Orban. So, the IDU is not so strongly democratic as the title would have you believe, embracing as it does some parties and countries that are rapidly straying from the democratic path. And although I don’t allege anything like a conspiracy, I think the connections show that there is a flow of ideology from some failed and failing democracies into the highest ranks of Conservative thought in Canada.

The Conservative party platform polices adopted in September are a reflection of the influence of the American extremist right. We need to be vigilant. We need to challenge the CPC. And we need to separate legitimate fiscal conservatism from racist, religious, conspiracist social conservatism.