When your election platform is just a rough draft

OTTAWA—Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole is trying to redefine the concept of integrity in an election campaign. Is it possible to reverse your party’s position on a major issue and contradict the commitments in the written campaign platform that is supposed to be the locked-in expression of your intentions? And to do so halfway through the campaign because you realize it’s a liability with voters? And get away with it? As recently as Sept. 4, the Conservatives said they would live up to the stance on firearms laid out in their platform. On page 90 of Secure the Future, O’Toole’s account of his campaign promises, it says: “We will start by repealing C-71 and the May 2020 Order in Council …” That May 2020 order, a response to the 13-hour shooting rampage that left 22 victims dead in Nova Scotia, outlawed some 1,500 makes and models of what the government calls “military-grade weapons.” Bill C-71 was Liberal legislation that toughened restrictions on transporting firearms and expanded the reach of background checks on gun buyers. On Sept. 5, O’Toole executed a full reversal of the Conservative campaign pledge. He told reporters the May 2020 Liberal ban will now remain in place under a Conservative government while a public review of the firearm classification system is conducted. “It's critically important for me to say to Canadians today that we are going to maintain the ban on assault weapons, we're going to maintain the restrictions that were put in place in 2020,” he said. In an Olympic-worthy bit of chutzpah during an election campaign, O'Toole suggested Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was trying to politicize the issue. The public review proposed by the Conservatives would “bring the politics out” of gun control, he said. Last week, O’Toole had still been defending his intention to scrap the May 2020 ban on military-grade weapons, repeating the standard Conservative line that Trudeau’s gun control laws amounted to the Liberals making “criminals out of farmers, hunters, and law-abiding firearms owners.” Having covered dozens of election campaigns going back many years, I was trying to think of a more abject, bold-faced repudiation by a political leader of his own party's platform on an issue of significance. I couldn't think of one. There’s no doubt that, in the internet age, facts and information tend to get lost in the endless prop wash on social media. And in this election, when anger over the fact that it is happening at all seems to be an outsized issue, consistency or maintenance of principles may count for less than ever. But it's obvious that the whole process becomes meaningless if the parties’ promises and proposals are totally malleable. In response to O’Toole’s flip-flop, Toronto Liberal candidate Bill Blair said the Conservative leader “stands apparently for everything, and therefore for nothing.” He also echoed those who say the Conservatives’ proposed review of the firearms rules is just a means of providing cover for the planned rollback of gun restrictions as advocated by the gun lobby. The Conservatives have opposed tighter gun control for years and were aided in their ascension to 10 years in office under Stephen Harper by voter support, particularly in rural ridings, for their plan to do away with the Liberals’ former long gun registry. It was created by Jean Chretien’s government after the 1989 killing of 14 female students at l’École Polytechnique in Montreal, but eliminated by Harper in 2012. O’Toole’s positioning on this issue has put him on side with the anti-gun control movement during the Harper government and during the Conservative leadership races of 2017 and 2020. It probably helped him win the leadership last year. And his campaign manager once was a lobbyist for a firearms organization. By Sept. 6, there was a cloud of uncertainty across the country about what O’Toole wants to do. Nathalie Provost, a spokesperson for PolySeSouvient, which advocates for tougher gun control laws, said O'Toole's flip-flop does not constitute a real change from his previous position. “Yes, he said he would maintain those prohibitions, but he also promised a review of all firearms classification. It is not hard to predict how such a review would play out, as he has repeatedly stated that farmers, hunters and sport shooters ‘have been unfairly caught up’ in the Liberals’ 2020 ban,” Provost told Canadian Press. O'Toole is now “offering a more convoluted stance that sounds good to the general public but which can clearly be construed as a dog whistle to sports shooters and collectors of assault weapons,” she added. Not everyone in the Conservative party seemed to get the memo. Battle River-Crowfoot, Alta., candidate Damien C. Kurek insisted on Facebook that "a Conservative government will stand with hunters, farmers and sport shooters—law-abiding firearms owners—and will repeal C-71 and the May 2020 Liberal Order in Council." This led O’Toole to declare in response: “I am the leader.” It makes one wonder about the thousands of other promises in the Conservatives’ 160-page election platform. Les Whittington is a regular columnist for The Hill Times. The Hill Times