On Feb. 2nd, Erin O’Toole was voted out as leader 73 votes to 45 after a leadership review was triggered.
O’Toole will continue to serve as Durham Riding’s Ottawa representative. Manitoba MP, Candice Bergen, has been brought on as the party’s interim leader. Bergen has defended the recent anti-vaccine mandate protest, which has caused gridlock in the city centre, as well as lost revenue for business.
Under party rules, the interim leader cannot enter the race to become the Conservatives’ permanent leader.
As for the future of the Conservative party, no one quite knows. But, people can predict and react based on what happens in the now. Matt Farrell, a Political analyst and Fanshawe professor, says that the future doesn’t bode well for the Tories.
“You’d like to have a leader in place, you’d like to have a more policy focus coming out of an election. And in a situation where you’re getting more of the popular vote share. And then you hit the reset button, and you go back to choosing a new leader,” he explained.
“I think what it speaks to is just a general division in the party that stems back to the merger between the old reformed party and the old Progressive Conservative Party.”
He says the one factor that kept the party together during that merger, was Stephen Harper, who led the Conservatives through three governments, one being a majority.
Farrell credits Harper’s ability to “keep the two factions happy” as the reason the Conservative Party saw so much success for nearly a decade.
“The best way to do that is by winning elections. And so when they’re losing elections, that is what’s sparking the introspection and the unhappiness with whoever happens to be in charge.”
This division is what Farrell calls the biggest challenge the party currently faces.
“The Conservatives are sort of stuck. In order to be competitive, they need to be a brokerage party that accommodates lots of different interests, but they’re stuck being a more ideological party.”
Due to this split interest, Farrell says the party doesn’t have enough appeal to break through in a few crucial regions.
He does, however, believe that the upcoming leadership contest has the chance to figure out where the party wants to go.
“Do they stay sort of anchored to that Western, rural, social conservative base? Or is there somebody from central Canada…that’s able to bring a different background…somebody that might be okay with some of the social conservative stuff, but really tracks more in line with a red Tory? It’s difficult to say right now.”
But with the way politics have been going in North America, the possibility of moderations gets further and further away.
“If I was going to guess, in 10 years, we wouldn’t see the Conservative Party as an entity the way it is now. I think we might see something of a of a split again, some kind of realignment in the party system that is more representative of the different factions.”
With the landscape of Canadian politics rapidly changing every year, predicting what will happen is difficult. Add on rapid change in party leadership in recent years, the future of the Conservative Party as we know it, is murky at best.
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