Conservatives need solutions-oriented leader, Nunavut senator says
Erin O’Toole ousted as leader Wednesday following a vote of MPs
Nunavut Sen. Dennis Patterson says the next Conservative leader must find unity between the party’s socially conservative and progressive wings. (File photo)
The Conservative Party of Canada needs a thoughtful and “solutions-oriented leader” who can unite a divided party, says Nunavut Senator Dennis Patterson.
Erin O’Toole, who had been the party’s leader since 2020, was ousted by his caucus Wednesday morning, when MPs voted 73 to 45 in favour of his removal. O’Toole had been under fire for his performance in last year’s election, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party won. Enough O’Toole critics in caucus signed a letter earlier this week calling for his resignation to trigger the vote.
Patterson, a Conservative who was appointed to the Senate by former prime minister Stephen Harper in 2009, attended Wednesday morning’s virtual caucus meeting. Voting was limited to MPs, so the unelected senator was only able to listen to the speeches and observe.
A lifelong Conservative, Patterson said he supported O’Toole in leading the party to be more progressive. Notably, Patterson praised O’Toole for working to develop a northern policy for the party.
With O’Toole gone, Patterson said the party’s next leader needs to provide a “solutions-oriented” approach to governing.
“We need to show Canadians and northern residents that we have a plan with real solutions to the problems we all are so acutely aware of,” Patterson said in an interview. “I agree with a platform, a party, a policy that recognizes Indigenous rights, supports Indigenous reconciliation, recognizes and supports LGBTQ2S rights, recognizes climate change is real, and it’s a real threat that we’re facing and that we need a thoughtful and strong program to deal with that.”
One of the issues Patterson says has divided the Conservative Party is the debate whether it should take a progressive or conservative approach to social issues. Patterson says that “extremist” voices are not good for the party or Canada as a whole.
“I know full well that the Nunavummiut are very impatient and tired of the far-right extremist rhetoric and stances that so often, and in the past, have made conservatives seem dated and out of touch,” he said.
Patterson, a self-proclaimed “red tory,” said Wednesday’s vote was a sign of the current divisions within the party.
He said he hopes the new leader, who will be elected by party members, as well as the interim leader, who was to be chosen by MPs on Wednesday, will maintain the party’s progressive direction and find reconciliation with the party’s socially conservative members.
“I believe that, with this change the MPs have decided to make today in leadership, I hope we have an opportunity now to move away from the divisive, angry rhetoric and politics, both inside and outside the caucus room, that I don’t agree with.”
How bold of Dennis to speak up at this point.
Once the leader has been voted out, now he tells us that they need somebody different!!!
Another courageous move for the Senator.
To be honest, this bacchanal of self-righteous judgement is more juvenile than enlightening or interesting.
Conservative Reform Alliance Party (CRAP) is a divided party. Separate Conservative Reform Alliance Party (SCRAP) and bring back Progressive Conservatives (PCs) .
Senator Patterson is on the right track here. The problem with the recent Conservative Prime Minister candidates is that they’re out of touch with the modern world. The rights of indigenous groups, LGBT+, and other oppressed minorities must be taken into consideration and respected by anyone trying to become the Prime Minister. The overwhelming scientific evidence of human accelerated clime change must also be taken seriously.
Any Conservative candidate who doesn’t do this at a bare minimum will just be seen as another western wing nut trying to Canada into the United States North.
That’s why you don’t like them, that isn’t the problem or the reason leaders keep getting ousted. The Conservative Party didn’t oust O ‘Toole because he is not Liberal enough, it is because he is too Liberal. They ousted him because he is too Liberal and a percentage of his base won’t support Red Conservatives.
@ Dave for one while I don’t fully support Trudeau I would be what most consider to be a liberal. Two, as much as O’Toole espoused liberal values to an extent he also had a somewhat hidden side where you could also almost consider some his values to be far right. He was a regular participant on Parler.
No. What the Cons need to do is dump their Reform/Social Conservative base that keeps using non-starters like conversion therapy, Climate Change and Assault rifle bans as leadership issues.
Anyone else thinking that we really need to reform the Senate so that there is more turnover? The last thing that I can recall Dennis doing was to oppose and delay making cannabis legal.
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At least Senators are no longer appointed for life and Dennis will be forced to retire in 2023. Just thinking that maybe an Inuit senator would be more appropriate for a territory that is 85% Inuit.
Even though the senator position is useless, it’d be reasonable to appoint someone who is from Nunavut and whom has accomplished good outcomes for Nunavimmiut.
Better though, Nunavimmiut could make a collective stand and declare that we don’t want a senator. We could distribute the savings by giving $10 to each resident of NU.
Or, with the savings, we could build one new house each year – in the non-senator’s honor.
It is often said that the conservatives should ditch the populism along with their pointless obsessions with certain social issues. Undoubtedly, these hinder their appeal to the electorate at large. This is the sentiment that seems to run through calls to bring back the PC’s, which is to say many of us want a more moderate brand of conservatism than what has been on offer for the last two decades or so.
That said, it is not difficult to see how superficial, performative and void of substance Justin Trudeau’s liberal party has become (or perhaps, was all along). The last election showed that the appeal of the Liberals is only marginally better, if at all. They are, without much doubt, defeatable.
Lamentable for many of us is knowing that the Conservative party should be a viable alternative, and it could be a party that can win. Had it pulled itself together in the years since the defeat of Stephen Harper, it could be the ruling party today. Instead, like a black hole, it continues to form an intractable gravity around positions that have consistently moved away from the center and toward the fringe.
One sign of hope is in the splintering off of the People’s Party, showing there is some line in the sand, but is it enough? Strip away the populism, strip away the appeal to climate change denial, to conversion therapy and other calcified views on gender roles (not all conservatives hold these views) and some might ask what is left, but some form of a Liberal? Some form indeed, Conservatism is always and only understandable within the context that it is embedded (a ‘Conservative in the Soviet Union of the early 1990s, for example, was a Communist, concerned with preserving tradition and order).
The Conservatives not only need to be moderate; they need to embrace liberalism while incorporating those parts of its trajectory that stand to good sense and reason. That is, they need to embrace Indigenous rights and reconciliation, LGBTQ2S rights, and recognition of climate change. Without this as a starting point they will continue to drift in the wilderness.
Nice work, balanced editorial there.
Nothing wrong with Government, it’s the people running it. Stop putting barriers, all of them have been identified on a daily basis, start implementing the solutions.
What the slippery Senator fails to mention is that a majority of Conservative party members voted AGAINST a policy resolution stating that climate change is for real. That’s the company he keeps.
“Conservatives need solutions-oriented leader, undemocratically appointed leader who’s never offered any solutions says”