Andrew Coyne covers the “revelations” (that anybody who’d been paying attention already knew) about how the federal Conservative leadership race was won and lost from Maxime Bernier’s upcoming book, Doing Politics Differently: My Vision for Canada.
You would think this would be something of a scandal. The leadership race was hijacked by members of a vested interest who not only had no prior involvement with the party, but most likely wished it ill: what in civilized countries are called “entryists.” The winner of the race, the party’s current leader, sold himself and the party, not just to the highest bidder, but to a particularly venal bidder at that, with a direct financial interest in the outcome.
The result was to leave the party hitched to what is widely acknowledged as an indefensible policy, one that takes food off the table of the country’s poorest families for the benefit of a dwindling number of wealthy quota-owners. That the policy — combining internal supply quotas, sky-high external tariffs, and heavy doses of government regulation — makes a mockery of every principle for which the party allegedly stands is probably worth mentioning as well.
So naturally the response of party supporters, on being lately reminded of all this, was fury … at the guy who pointed it out.
That would be Bernier. In his forthcoming book, the plangently titled Doing Politics Differently: My Vision for Canada, a chapter of which was released this week, the former industry minister recalls how Scheer’s campaign courted the dairy industry’s “fake Conservatives,” who were “only interested in blocking my candidacy and protecting their privileges.” He notes the ballooning of party membership in Quebec just before the vote, from 6,000 to 16,000, and its collapse back to 6,000 shortly afterward.
And that’s about it. He does not attribute his defeat solely to his stand on supply management: indeed he thinks he won more votes than he lost over it. Neither does he question the legitimacy of Scheer’s victory — indeed he acknowledges that Scheer’s tactic is “fair game in a democratic system.” He merely points out that this sort of squalid trading of votes for favours is “why so many people are so cynical about politics.”
