Canada’s federal Tories are looking for a new direction for the 2020s. The party brass has announced that they will select a new leader on June 27 at a convention in Toronto. Yes, the Toronto where the Tories also selected their last leader. The decision to keep the convention in Toronto is symbolic of the party’s desire to “broaden the tent” by appealing to the vote-rich urban centres. They obviously need to do this, but if they are not careful, the party risks further alienating the West and undoing whatever little inroads they could ever hope to make.

First, let’s look at how we got to this point. Now that outgoing party leader Andrew Scheer has been thrown to the wolves, many among the party faithful seem to be clamouring for a major change in direction. Playing it safe was the old strategy that got Scheer to the leadership back in 2017, as the candidate preferred by the party’s establishment. After a decade of power under Stephen Harper, the party had hoped to repeat their success by choosing a “Harper with a smile.” Even Scheer’s federal election campaign looked like a re-run from the Harper years, offering voters a few micro tax credits and hoping that the latest bout of Liberal scandals would allow them to sail through to Ottawa. It was an uninspiring strategy, perhaps, but it had worked before.

Former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer campaigning in Toronto in October 2019 (Source: WikiCommons)

With the failure to topple a scandal-ridden Trudeau in the 2019 election, however, some of the party’s leading voices are not interested in business as usual. Many seem to envision this leadership race as part of a broader transformation, with calls for more foundational change in party policy, branding, and strategy. Conservative commentator and former Harper staffer Andrew MacDougall, for example,wrote in the Ottawa Citizen that the party needs a “root-and-branch reform” to overcome its reputation for being too “traditional” and “old.”

That’s the assumption, but is it true? After all, the party was apparently not too “traditional” for the West, including the major urban centres of Calgary and Edmonton. There are a lot of potential reasons why the Tories failed to connect with voters: Scheer’s lack of name recognition compared with Trudeau’s, an uninspiring platform, etc. The answers will come out in time, starting with John Baird’s expected report. In the meantime, who exactly are they trying to impress with all this talk about a new progressive direction?

The answer is simple: Toronto. Matt Gurney’s comments in the National Post seem to sum up Conservative Party thinking these days:“If the Tories are ever going to form a national government again, they’re going to need to dramatically improve on their performance in and around Toronto (doing better in Quebec would be nice, too).”

On the surface it seems like a sound strategy. After all, every party needs to move beyond their base to achieve nationwide support. And the GTA is the most vote-rich part of the country, with 25 seats in Toronto alone and 30 more in the surrounding 905 region. With this population base, relatively small region of the country controls more seats than Alberta and Saskatchewan combined.

Massive crowd of people gathered for “We the North Day” in downtown Toronto (Source: WikiCommons)

Westerners should be cautious of endorsing a plan for the Tories to suck up to the GTA even more than it currently does.

Firstly, there is a low chance that this Toronto-focused strategy will even work. The current Conservative share of the vote in most Toronto area ridings is as pitiful as the Liberal vote is in most Western Canadian ridings. Do the Tories really think a leader who loves the carbon tax and waves a pride flag will make up for these dismal showings and bridge the gap? That’s like Liberals saying they will win Calgary if they just take a few more selfies at the Stampede. It’s not going to happen.

Even when Harper was able to take many 905 seats in the 2011 election, it had less to do with strategy than with circumstances. The Tories benefitted from a strong NDP collapsing the Liberal vote. Most of those seats went right back to the Liberals as soon as the NDP itself collapsed in the post-Layton period. The CBC’s Eric Grenier explained this dynamic as follows: “When the NDP is struggling, the Liberals have a high likelihood of winning. When the NDP is doing well, the Conservatives tend to have the edge.” The Conservative majority in 2011 was not about fundamentally reforming the party, it was about being at the right place at the right time.

Former NDP leader Jack Layton at a campaign rally in Toronto in 2008 (Source: Matt Jiggins, WikiCommons)

But major changes in the Conservative Party could do something far worse: it could further alienate an already volatile West. Consider how Western conservatives will respond if a Laurentian Red Tory gets elected on a platform designed primarily to appeal to Toronto and Quebec. In the 2017 Tory leadership race, Michael Chong ran on expanding the vote in urban centres by focusing on climate change and promoting immigration. When he declared his support for the carbon tax, however, he was roundly booed in Edmonton. Chong ultimately came in fifth place with 9.14 per cent of the vote. Leadership contenders should take that as a warning that Western Canada’s support must not be taken for granted.

Best case scenario for a Tory Toronto strategy: they swing a few seats in the GTA and disgruntled Westerners hold their nose to vote for an Eastern Tory. This isn’t a given, as many Westerners will begin to look elsewhere to have their voices heard. In the last election the upstart People’s Party (PPC) was only able to pick off 1.6 per cent of the popular vote, but Patrick Cain argued on Global News that even that small vote share may have cost the Conservatives up to six seats. If small-‘c’ conservatives continue to get the impression that the Tories are moving to the left to appease Toronto, that number will grow, negating hard-won growth in the GTA.

Whereas Maxime Bernier’s PPC has so far only made a small splash on the national scene, a Western independence party at the federal level could be a different matter altogether. The PPC has the challenge of spreading its limited resources across all 338 ridings and finding a message that appeals to voters in every part of the country. Consequently, there is no particular region where they have yet achieved a breakthrough.

WEXIT organizers are working to register just such a party at the federal level. If they – or another Western sovereigntist party – can build up a strong regional base like the Reform Party, they have the potential to be a real game changer.

Wexit rally in Calgary (source: Facebook)

Time will tell if Wexit’s rallies and social media following can translate into effective political mobilization. Wexit is as yet a political movement with significant support, but not viewed as a viable political engine. This weekend’s Wexit rally in Edmonton may be a good indication as to whether the movement will continue to gain steam and become a credible political force in the 2020s.

If so, the federal Tories have chosen the worst possible time to pivot their attention to Toronto. If they want to avoid another major rupture on the right, they would be wise to tread carefully in their courtship of the GTA.

Western Canadians have proven time and time again that we are willing to turn on the establishment parties and throw our support behind parties that will stand up for our interests.

The Tories have been warned.