Juno News - September 10, 2023Are the Conservatives more united than ever？
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Summary
The Conservative Party of Canada is in full swing at its national convention in Quebec City, and there's a lot to be said about the party's new leader, Pierre Polyvencic. Andrew Lawton and Elie Cartain-Nartel talk all about it.
Transcript
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Elie Cartain-Nartel here for True North at the Conservative Party in Canada's National Convention in Quebec City,
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which is wrapping up now. Behind me, you can see people wrap things up.
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I'm here with our managing editor and host of the Andrew Lawton Show, the one and only Andrew Lawton.
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I'm just glad I don't have to interview anyone anymore, that I'm being interviewed,
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because I've spent like the last three days asking everyone questions.
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It was really interesting. Now, I should say for context,
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I've never been to a Conservative convention before.
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I've been to a provincial, actually a couple of provincial party conventions in the past.
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So at the same time, I've been able to see a pretty good sense of what these things are about.
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And, you know, the one thing is that there's been a lot of malaise in the Conservative Party over the last many years,
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It lost in 2015 with Stephen Harper, it lost in 2019 with Andrew Scheer, it lost in 2021 with Aaron O'Toole.
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And each of those changes in leader was fraught with a number of challenges as well,
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Whereas right now, there's a Conservative Party that is pretty united behind Pierre Polyev.
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The People's Party of Canada has not really been succeeding all that much after its strong showing in 2021.
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I've spoken to people here that were like PPC diehard supporters that are now supporting the Conservatives.
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So there's a level of optimism in this convention that I think we have not seen in the Conservative Party for several years.
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When I spoke to everybody, I did not meet one person who told me I was dissatisfied with Pierre Polyev.
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And before I started doing journalism, I used to work in politics.
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And I remember under the other leaders, you would often find people who would tell me,
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I'm not the biggest fan, I'll vote for him because he's not Trudeau.
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But that was usually the line to, versus here, people will actually vote for Polyev.
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What do you think Polyev has been able to do that others have not been able to do?
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Because like, as we saw last night with his speech, there was a lot of momentum,
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there was a lot of people, there was a lot of energy, and we did not see that with the other two leaders.
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Well, one thing that I will point out is that in the last, well, the leadership races that elected O'Toole and Scheer,
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there was really a question of which group each was appealing to.
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Like, Andrew Scheer won because of social conservatives,
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and Aaron O'Toole won because of people that were kind of the more blue Tory types
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But it was very much an us versus them, you know, the red Tories versus the blue Tories in some way.
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Whereas Pierre Polyev won on the first ballot, and he had a margin of victory
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that even Stephen Harper didn't have when he ran for the leadership of the first conservative party.
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So I think what he's done is, at least for now, united most of the party in a way his predecessors haven't.
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And that means that even on the convention floor,
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there wasn't a lot of bickering about the type of stuff you see parties internally bickering about.
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Right, no, for sure. And I would say back to when the leadership race was happening,
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the diverse support he was getting from social conservatives,
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some red Tories from people in the establishment class,
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it was a very diverse, and yeah, we had not seen that with these other candidates.
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What we saw at this convention, though, is issues that Pierre Polyev has not really been keen to talk about himself.
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There was a motion that passed 89 percent, sorry, not even 87 percent, I believe.
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87 percent in favor of defining a woman as a female person and protecting single-sex spaces.
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And there was another one in the high 60s to be opposed to the gender transitioning of children.
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What did you make of these really strong numbers for these resolutions by the delegates?
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Well, I think, look, it's always important, as you put in your stories, to lay out the caveat that party policy is just that.
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It's where the party's members have said they stand.
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It's not what the conservative government would do in policy.
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But at the same time, these things are incredibly useful because, like, I don't support booing people that are making a contribution.
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But when people were speaking up against those motions, there was snickering.
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Like, these were not majority opinions in the conservative party, the opposed position to these motions.
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And I think that Polyev needs to look around and see where his base is on issues.
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And, look, one example that I'll bring up, which is not the gender stuff, but the Freedom Convoy.
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So this was something I've obviously covered that the Liberals and the media have tried to say is politically toxic.
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But in this crowd, any time someone mentioned a trucker, they were getting a huge amount of applause.
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And Pierre Polyev's wife, Anna, acknowledged truckers and got huge applause.
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So I think they are listening, and they have to understand where their base is.
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And, you know, Pierre Polyev, at first, when he was asked about parental rights, said, oh, it's a provincial issue.
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A couple weeks later, he gave a bit more of an answer.
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And I think any time he's been asked that, he's started to become a little bit more aware of where his base is.
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And I think that's an important check and balance on leaders, is what are the members saying.
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And, you know, the members haven't had a policy convention in five years.
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So this is a really important opportunity for them to tell the leader, this is who we are.
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I guess as a follow-up to that, we saw with the Freedom Convoy, the Conservatives going from, you know,
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being a little meh on mandates, being like, oh, we support rapid tests, to being unsure about the convoy,
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to going unapologetically in favor of the convoy and against the mandates.
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Do you think over time we're going to see the same thing with some of these radical gender ideology issues,
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where they'll slowly, because in the UK now, the Labour Party is opposed to gender ideology.
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So do you think we're heading there in Canada, too?
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I mean, Doug Ford, who is not at all a hardline Conservative by any stretch,
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has even come out and said, you know, parents need to be the ones educating their kids
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And that, for a leader like Doug Ford in a province like Ontario, is a very important development.
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I think you've got what's happening in New Brunswick and Alberta and Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Ontario.
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This is a wave that will be very difficult for any politician, Conservative or otherwise, to try to avoid.
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So we saw something interesting, too, at this convention, where we had Liberal ministers crashing the convention.
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Stephen Gilboa came yesterday, on a Friday in the morning, and Abel Rodriguez came twice.
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What signal do you think this sends from the Liberal camp?
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I mean, to be honest, I'm okay with it, because the more the Liberals are spending of their time doing stuff like this,
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So in that sense, it's like, I'd prefer they just spend all their day just going and gate-crashing Conservative events.
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Well, we should have a convention all the time.
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Let's just, you know, keep all the stuff set up back here and let Pablo Rodriguez just, you know, spin his wheels outside.
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I think it's a little bit of desperation, and I will say the shine has come off even to the media.
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Like, the questions that the mainstream media journalists were asking them were like,
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like, listen, are you in any position to judge when you look at your poll numbers right now?
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It's, oh, well, yeah, you know, we just need to work harder.
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It's like, great, then stop, like, heckling Conservatives and go and win back this trust from Canadians.
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We saw some very high poll numbers recently for the Conservatives, and that's probably one of the things that's making the Liberals nervous.
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After this convention, after the media coverage that this gets, do you think the Conservatives are stronger coming out of this convention than they were coming into it?
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I think they are, because I think there's a little bit more of a solidified message for what they stand for.
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I mean, Pierre Paliyev spoke for just over an hour last night, and a lot of what he said was repetitive.
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I mean, I'd even heard some of the jokes and, you know, asides before about, you know, a family moving into the old CBC headquarters and stuff like that.
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It's a great joke, but I'm saying I've heard it, like, you know, nine times now.
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But I think at the same time, we get a bit more of a vision, because, you know, the Conservatives are not running in an election.
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They don't have a platform out yet, because it's early.
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So when Pierre Paliyev speaks, any time, it's kind of a little bit more of the picture of what message they're going to bring in.
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They're talking about common sense, housing, affordability.
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So I think that it shows where the Conservatives are really trying to focus their efforts, while not being afraid to still talk a little bit about the other stuff.
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They could do a bit more of it, but that's where their focus is.
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There was an analogy that someone in the States made about a cake, and you have the cake, and you've got the icing.
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But, you know, a cake isn't good when it's this much icing and this much cake.
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You know, to be fair, there are some good icings out there.
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Well, this was a great way to catch up with you, Andrew.
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If you support our coverage and our work here at True North, and you support Andrew's podcast, my journalism, and any other thing that we do,
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then please visit donate.tnc.news to make a donation.
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In Quebec City, for True North, I'm Élie Quentin-Antenne.