Yeah because the Shining Path were such a bunch of happy go lucky do-gooders.
And that’s the problem. They don’t necessarily have to “move left”, what they need to do is “move to reality”. They need to admit that these are real problems, that need real solutions, that will really work, and then try to find “conservative” solutions that they can present to the electorate.
For example, as you mentioned, the Carbon Tax. They’re vehemently opposed to this, both because they deny that climate change is a problem, and because they hate taxes in all their forms. But once you admit that climate change is a problem, you need to propose some means of fixing it, and a tax is actually a pretty good idea. Fix a cost to pollution, that actually goes down as you pollute less, and then let the businesses figure out how much it’s worth to them to reduce their tax burden, and how to do that. Let every company innovate their own ways to reduce carbon emissions, and the ones that do the best have an inherent advantage in the market, giving them an edge on the competition, while simultaneously reducing government revenue, which they love to do!
Anyone who ever considered themselves to be the sort of conservative I used to self-identify as should embrace that as a business-centered plan to reduce carbon emissions, as opposed to a top-down, government imposed system of regulations, that is slow to adapt to changes in technology and society.
And yet, in the modern Conservative party, this is anathema.
It might be unpalatable among the more rabid right-wing types in Alberta and elsewhere, but I’m not sure it would necessarily be a bad strategy. The Progressive Conservative party was a successful mainstay of Canadian politics for more than 60 years. It took the excruciatingly horrible Brian Mulroney to destroy it.
The “new, improved” Conservative Party of Canada was simply a merger with the far-right lunatics of the Canadian Alliance, aka Reform Party. It’s had no success except under Stephen Harper, who one could kindly describe as a consummately skilled pragmatic political hack, and somewhat less kindly but more accurately as a hypocritical weasel. I could be wrong but ISTM that a return to Progressive Conservative principles would take the party back to mainstream Canadian values.
From Confederation, Canada as a “nation-state” has been an assemblage of regions, with big regional differences in natural resources, economies, histories, religions, cultures, ethnicities, immigration patterns, languages, population size (votes and seats) and more. These regions roughly, but only roughly, correspond to the provinces and territories.
So regional differences in voting are hardly surprising. And in every country, there are differences between urban and rural areas. (According a report I heard today, the Taliban are entirely representative of rural male attitudes re women and women’s throughout the country, but entirely different from those in the city.)
Successful parties compromise as much as they can, avoid strict partisan issues as best they can, and play all the regions off against each other for as long as they can. See, for example, Mackenzie King and the Progressive party, which was strong in the Prairies AND rural/farming Ontario in the 1920s. And the federal government is always careful not to alienate the big money, which is largely but not exclusively centered in Toronto and now, to a lesser extent than before, Montreal.
At some point, compromise and playing regions against each other looks to some regions as pandering, arrogance, indifference, and worse. Time for a change! Maybe this time the new boss won’t be the same as the old boss. This process happens regardless of party platforms, which as several here have noted, don’t look like much and mean even less. And voters drop off.
Meaningful work to address these differences through real compromise and no commitment to equalizing political results is never big issue within the parties, as they have strategies based on working the system as it is.
Some see this as reason for despair. Some are content that muddling through is the best of all possible worlds. Some are hopeful this signals the end of the “nation-state.” And then, it’s election time again!
This is why I like BC.
“Regional differences? We’ll show you! We vote EVERYone in!” Next election, the Bloc should run some folks here. We’d probably elect some, just to show we’re representative of everyone.
But then we’d have to elect the PPC as well! I’m not so sure we want to be THAT inclusive…
Oh, what the hell, the Bloc and the PPC should celebrate their shared values instead of their differences, and should just merge. But what to call the new party? It could be called the “Treason Party”. What, too obvious? How about the Nationalsozialistische Kanadisch Arbeiterpartei?
The conservatives are stuck because, while I understand you all think they should move more in your direction, they face an ever-present threat of a right-wing revolt if they do.
If the Conservatives start sounding like the Liberals, you will see some new version of Reform or Wildrose rise from the ashes and take votes from Conservatives. Splitting votes on the right in a country that is center-left is a formula for irrelevance.
They also can’t move much to the right, as many Canadians see them as too ‘right wing’ already.
The Conservatives will come back into power if the Liberals screw up badly and even moderate liberals hold their noses and vote for change. Or, world events could take a bad turn through no fault of the Liberals, but still trigger a ‘change’ election.
That’s the role of the Conservatives now. They’re basically destined to wait in the wings as the opposition until events hand them a win. I don’t think there is much they can do on their own to engineer one - they are trapped in a very small box.
Oh, tyere’s one thing they can do: find a more charismatic leader. The weak leaders the Consevatives keep running are a reflection of how scared Conservative politicians are of having a leader say something too ‘right wing’ and scare the electorate. So they keep nominating ciphers that won’t make a splash.
They are basically trying to hit ground balls to avoid flying out, but you don’t win elections as the challenger without swinging for the fences.
All of the O’Toole as boogeyman crap came from other parties. He really did not say much that was actually controversial and was a surprisingly positive campaigner for a Conservative. It will be interesting to see if the CPC keeps him since I think he is both relatively competent and compassionate. He was placed in the impossible position of placating suburban soccer moms and PPC contrarians and without the latter may have won the election. Yes, some previous views had changed.
The Liberals had some difficulty articulating why this election was necessary at all. One question I would like to see answered is what specific policies a majority Liberal government could pursue which would be deemed impossible with a minority Liberal government.
I’d have to agree. After plowing through my paper recycling bin, I found one of his pieces of campaign literature among the pizza menus and supermarket flyers. There’s nothing on it about assault rifles, private for-profit health care, or anything the other parties were saying about him. Rather, his platform, at least on this brochure, centered around three concerns: the economy, improving mental health care, and accountability in government. Nothing controversial there.
Now, he might well have assault rifles and for-profit health care and other Liberal/NDP boogeymen somewhere in the back of his mind, but if he did, he didn’t say so. Perhaps some Conservative candidates did and it got amplified by their opponents, which is possible, but I don’t recall O’Toole saying such things.
Do you think that is why the election was called? I certainly don’t. The Liberals were well ahead in the polls and seemed to have good support from a significant number of Canadians. Trudeau thought that he could win a majority if he triggered an election. I think it was as simple as that. I also suspect any of the other leaders would have done the same if they were in Trudeau’s position (they wish). No Party wants to have a minority government if they can possibly gain a majority.
That being said, Trudeau misjudged. I’d love to know which of his advisers were recommending a snap election and which were saying it was a bad idea. Would love to be a fly on the wall for some of the high level discussions that are probably happening!
I do not think that is why the election was called - which I deem an admixture of perceived opportunity for more power (but why, see question above), a desire to entrench power before the economic chickens of Covid become evident and return to roost, seeking legitimacy and mandate for past and future spending (to a limited extent) and striking while the opposition is disorganized.
Whatever O’Toole thought about vaccines and rifles, clearly he felt it would not appeal to both soccer moms and contrarians. But I was surprised he did not bring up the “Three Eyes” rejection. New Zealand claimed it was not significant for reasons that do not seem relevant to Canada. However, the significance is speculative.
I think this is pretty much spot on. However, to an extent it’s a prison of their own making. I think there was a path whereby the CPC could have made themselves more relevant to moderate eastern conservatives without alienating the western base, and that is by pushing for smart conservative policies that respond to legitimate concerns of typical Canadians. For example, a carbon tax properly tailored to western economies is a good, solid conservative position. Price the externality, set it up as revenue neutral, with appropriate rebate structure to not fuck over economic sectors like agriculture. Sadly, they’ve pushed the ‘climate change is fake’ and ‘Trudeau carbon tax bad’ lines so hard for so long this pivot probably wouldn’t work anymore. It might have needed Harper to start it, actually. At this point you’re probably right that this can no longer be sold to the Wildrose crowd. Also, CPC leadership is probably to beholden to the oil & gas extraction industry to do this.
It could, and should, have been done, however.
There are similar things that could be done in other policy areas. The only area in which the box is truly intractable is the social conservatism issues, but the CPC has historically kept enough of a muzzle on that portion of its electorate for it not to be too much of a drag as distance from Cardston increases.
StraightDope won’t let me post a cartoon from ipolitics.ca…
Projected results:
Liberals…………….……32%
PC………………….……32%
(Map of Canada)….……Loser
Seriously, hard to see who came out ahead in the long run.
The problem is, none of them actually want to work.
Just post the URL to the JPEG:
https://ipolitics.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/theo_moudakis_winner_loser.jpeg
Here’s the most recent one: 
https://ipolitics.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/theo_moudakis_the_wave.jpeg
The CBC suggests that federal minority government has become the rule rather than the exception in Canada. IMHO a situation where the NDP has leverage over a relatively centrist ruling party is a pretty good setup for the country. I honestly think this is a better outcome than a Liberal majority. Majority governments of either major party tend to get complacent, arrogant, and lacking in accountability.
So your saying the Liberals have just been practicing for a majority. 
Historically, Canada has had lots of experience with minority governments. Perhaps the first meaningful example is from the 1920s, when the Liberals governed “at the pleasure” of the Progressive Party, a loosely organized group representing an amalgam of farmers, labour, and progressives. This group would fall apart later, but many of its members went on to form the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, which became the NDP. Liberal minority governments existed in the 1960s and 1970s. So, it’s hardly unknown, and progressive measures that many support—looking at you, healthcare!—likely would not have come about when they did without such governments.
Also, in Canada, the effective opposition to the federal government is often provincial governments. Thus the success of King’s post-war Liberal victories came from his reading of the success of the CCF in the 1940s at the provincial level and in federal polls. Not a minority government situation, but one pushed by the success of the CCF elsewhere, and thus King had to pay attention to more than his own party.
But falling prosperity after 1975 has made people afraid, defensive, and angry. Seneca, quoted in another thread, seems to have caught the spirit of the PPC: “Men think some things unjust because they ought not to suffer them, and some because they did not expect to suffer them: we think what is unexpected is beneath our deserts. Consequently, we are especially excited at what befalls us contrary to our hope and expectation: and this is why we are irritated at the smallest trifles in our own domestic affairs, and why we call our friends’ carelessness deliberate injury.”
It’s not surprising that angry deprived people often do not react rationally and carefully, and are inclined to kick down rather than punch up: punching up takes a lot more work and does not provide the quick emotional charge as kicking down. The right is often authoritarian, as well, and that is appealing to angry desperate people.
So my humble prescription for eliminating the threat of the authoritarian right is to reach out to people with meaningful programs, from education to housing to jobs so they have real channels for that anger that will reap rewards for them.
Such reforms cost money, which many fear will lead to inflation. Let me just note here that the Financial Times today was in a lather about potential inflation growth, and argued that one major cause of inflation is higher wages. That paying people well threatens the entire global economy tells us something important about the nature of that global economy, that is, it creates and is dependent on a lot of suffering while money is funnelled upwards.
Minority government is not a booby prize. Although the theoretical power of a majority government is very considerable it is laughable to suggest nothing could be done. Name one Liberal policy that could be pursued only in a majority? The reality is with vote divided on the left and right minority governments are the foreseeable future without very compelling reasons, and that on the whole this is a good thing for Canadians.