Corbella: Erin O'Toole's political shape shifting is really what did him in

Article content

So long to the big pretender — the political shape-shifter that is Erin O’Toole.

He declared himself to be “true blue” before winning the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, but ended up being redder than Justin Trudeau. He was the epitome of false advertising and false pretence. He seemed embarrassed to be a conservative and came across as terribly inauthentic.

O’Toole trotted out Brian Mulroney at a campaign event during the fall federal election — the prime minister who ushered in free trade (saving Canada’s economy), an acid rain treaty (protecting Canada’s lakes), created eight national parks and helped usher out Apartheid in South Africa, and much else besides.

Just before O’Toole did that, however, he bizarrely declared “this isn’t your father’s Conservative Party.”

It was pretty baffling and exposed O’Toole’s questionable judgment. Instead of touting all that the Conservative Party had done, he acted as though it had a legacy that deserved to be forgotten rather than celebrated.

Can anyone actually say what the now-deposed O’Toole stood for? Was he in favour of fiscal conservatism?

He said so when he ran to be leader, but then when his election platform was costed out in August he outspent the Liberals, who were breaking spending records.

Actual true-blue conservatives were left scratching their heads. He’s going to outspend the big-spending Liberals with a more than $100-billion deficit? He’s going to engage in stimulus spending during a time of inflation?

O’Toole had an impressive resume. He became a captain in the Canadian Air Force conducting rescue missions while Justin Trudeau was dressing up in black face and putting bananas down the front of his pants. He then went to law school and became a corporate lawyer, while Trudeau was donning brown face as a drama teacher.

But he was incapable of capitalizing on how he would be different than the scandal-plagued Liberals. During the election he scarcely mentioned the SNC-Lavalin or WE Charity scandals that plagued Trudeau’s government.

When Trudeau called the $610-million election last Aug. 15, he did so anticipating that he would win a majority and O’Toole was, at least, able to hold him to a minority government. Indeed, the federal Liberals won power with the slimmest share of the popular vote in Canadian history with just 32.6 per cent — meaning that 67.4 per cent of Canadians didn’t vote for the governing Liberals. The Conservatives garnered 33.7 per cent of the popular vote.

But O’Toole failed to win more seats in the coveted 905 area code of Toronto — something he needed to do to beat the Liberals.

Now, he has been ousted as leader after 62 per cent of the Conservative caucus voted him out Wednesday, with the final tally at 73 to 45 MPs.

Mount Royal University political science professor Duane Bratt says O’Toole’s political career was not built on strong political principles.

“There’s been so many reversals going back years for Erin O’Toole,” says Bratt.

“Running as a moderate in 2017 (for the Conservative Party leadership), then running as a true-blue conservative in 2020 (for the Conservative leadership), then tacking to the centre during the federal election campaign . . . The flip-flops on guns and vaccines during the campaign and this last week with the truckers just crystallized every bad thing that you thought about Erin O’Toole,” said Bratt.

“When he put out that video saying, ‘I’ll meet with the truckers,’ nobody believed him.”

The real problem with the federal Conservatives is the system it uses to choose its leaders. It’s not one member, one vote. There’s a points system (that made sense to get the Reform party and the Progressive Conservatives to merge) that gives more weight to regions that have fewer members (such as Quebec). That means special interests, such as anti-abortionists, pro-gun types or the dairy lobby can hold enormous sway when it comes to choosing a leader.

The Conservative grassroots need to decide whether they want to make a statement — by voting for a pro-life candidate, for instance, which makes them virtually unelectable — or do they want their party to win the next election?

Let’s face it, had Peter MacKay won the last leadership race, he’d have likely beat Trudeau and won power. But the socially conservative grassroots felt he was too red a Tory. So they voted in a virtual unknown instead.

Will the grassroots learn from this?

There are many politicos and pundits predicting that the Conservative Party is ungovernable and unfixable, and that electoral success is unlikely in the near future.

People have such short memories. Remember, it wasn’t so long ago that Liberals were wondering the same thing after Stephane Dion lost an election and then Harvard academic Michael Ignatieff — viewed as the saviour for the party — lost his own seat in the 2011 federal election in the worst electoral defeat in the party’s history — winning only 34 seats. He was an infamous flip-flopper, too. The Liberals came in a distant third behind the Conservatives and NDP. That was just 11 years ago.

On Wednesday night, the Conservative caucus voted for Candice Bergen — an MP from Manitoba, former cabinet minister in Stephen Harper’s government and the most recent deputy leader of the party — to be the party’s interim leader until a new leader can be chosen.

Ottawa-area MP Pierre Poilievre — who is originally from Calgary — is the early front-runner in the race that has already unofficially begun.

As for O’Toole, maybe now as an MP he can try to figure out where he actually stands on the issues and can practice being a compass, instead of a weather vane.

Licia Corbella is a Postmedia columnist in Calgary.

lcorbella@postmedia.com

Twitter: @LiciaCorbella