A leadership race is an opportunity to promote bold ideas and invigorate a political movement. Canada’s right wing party seems to understand this, the left not so much.
In recent months Conservative Party leadership contenders have promoted a bevy of extremist ideas. Last week the spokesperson for Conservative contender Brad Trost boasted that his candidate is “not entirely comfortable with the whole gay thing.” For his part, Maxime Bernier is pushing to abolish taxes on those who make money from their money (capital gains) and supply management, as well as lowering the corporate tax rate to 10 per cent. For her part, Kellie Leitch called for the CBC to be “dismantled” while Chris Alexander labelled most of the world “anti-Semitic” for criticizing illegal Israeli colonies.
Outside the Conservative Party rightist groups are leveraging their heightened influence – at a time when candidates need support from more right-leaning party members – to get contenders to amplify their views. In the highest profile instance, four Conservative leadership candidates spoke at a Rebel Media rally to protest Muslims… I mean Motion-103. At least one person in the Toronto crowd raised his arm in a Nazi salute.
Rebel Media also drew three leadership candidates to a December rally against Alberta’s planned carbon tax. Brad Trost told the Calgary audience “this whole climate-change agenda is not science fact-based.”
A hodgepodge of other extreme right groups…