To unseat Trudeau, Conservative seeks middle ground
TORONTO — The man who could oust Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from power advertised himself a year ago as a “true-blue conservative.” He became Conservative Party leader with a pledge to “take back Canada” — and almost immediately started working to modernize the party by pushing it toward the political center.
Erin O’Toole, a military veteran and a member of Parliament for nine years, has only quickened his pace while campaigning for Canada’s snap federal election. Despite criticism that the former lawyer would say and do anything to get elected, polls show O’Toole’s Conservatives could defeat Trudeau’s Liberal Party on Monday.
O’Toole’s strategy, which has included disavowing positions held dear by his party’s base on issues such as climate change, guns and balanced budgets, is designed to appeal to a broader cross-section of voters in a country that tends to be far more liberal than its southern neighbor. Whether moderate Canadians believe O’Toole is the progressive conservative he claims and whether it has alienated conservatives have become central questions of the election campaign.
“He has distanced himself from being Conservative,” said Jenni Byrne, who served as campaign manager and deputy chief of staff to former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. “He distanced himself not just from the Harper years but from the leadership campaign that he ran less than two years ago.”
Byrne calls it a gamble and a mistake.
“There seems to be a lack enthusiasm everywhere,” Byrne said.
“He’s basically mirroring Liberal policies instead of past conservatives policies. There is no evidence that that has actually worked and gotten Conservatives elected. And there’s no evidence that it has been helping Erin.”
John Baird, a former Conservative foreign minister, said he didn’t want to opine on whether he thinks O’Toole is taking the party in the right direction. But Baird said O’Toole is the opposite of Trudeau, who has made the cover of Rolling Stone and been featured in Vogue magazine.
“He’s not the sizzle, he’s the steak,” Baird said of the Conservative Party chief.
A Conservative win would represent a rebuke of Trudeau, 49, who called the election despite the pandemic in hopes of shoring up his minority government but now is at risk of losing office to the head of the opposition, a politician with a fraction of the name recognition.
Trudeau said O’Toole can’t be trusted.
“O’Toole tells Conservative friends what he’s really going to do and pretending to Canadians something completely different,” Trudeau said during a campaign stop in Montreal on Thursday. “Whether it’s been on guns, on the environment or whether its been on vaccines, Mr. O’Toole has been misleading Canadians, not leading.
