Kellie Leitch

This is the third in a series of posts tracking statements made by or about Kellie Leitch, a member of Parliament and candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada. Leitch has advocated testing immigrants and refugees for “anti-Canadian values” and has welcomed Donald Trump’s victory against the “elites” as “an exciting message and one we need delivered in Canada as well.” I’m writing these posts because (a) this kind of extremism needs to be opposed at every stage and defeated at the earliest possible opportunity and (b) sunlight is the best disinfectant.

So:

Over the weekend Kellie Leitch bristled at criticism from fellow leadership candidate Michael Chong during a broadcast of CTV’s Question Period, saying “I am not a racist. I am not a person who’s out groping other individuals.” Well, all right then. As LBJ could tell you, having to issue that kind of denial is not good for your political career: most politicians don’t have to say that they’re not racists or gropers. Dale Smith cites this as an example of Leitch playing the victim card. Another example is the bizarre report of a break-in at her home — which turned out not to be an actual break-in, but an alarm going off. Regardless of whether the incident was real or serious, her campaign certainly seems to be torquing it.

Meanwhile, Chris Alexander, who joined Leitch in announcing the barbaric cultural practices hotline during the 2015 election and is now also a CPC leadership candidate, is slamming Leitch’s attempts to bring Trump-style politics north of the border. And Leitch’s policy is costing her some high-profile supporters: she’s lost retired senator Hugh Segal, Graham Fox (Joe Clark’s former chief of staff) and former Newfoundland and Labrador deputy premier Steve Kent, all of whom had previously endorsed her.

Leitch says she’s not concerned about racists supporting her campaign. (“It’s not for me to speak about other individuals.”) Wrong answer. The correct answer is “I don’t want their votes.” When bafflegab and obfuscation appear in the place of clear and unequivocal denunciation, it’s … very telling.

The Toronto Star’s Thomas Walkom warns that the forces that brought Trump and other right-wing populists to power need to be understood, and that we can’t assume that it can’t happen here in Canada. But is Leitch capable of becoming a Trump-like figure?

Not, it would seem, an authentic one. The CBC’s Robyn Urback notes that the former cabinet minister and surgeon “is the embodiment of everything she purports to run against” and is running “a completely inauthentic, deliberately provocative campaign.” And in the National Post, John Ivison notes that, no matter how much she tries to pick and choose from the Donald Trump playbook, “[t]he problem for Leitch is that she’s no Donald Trump. […] she lacks Trump’s populism, narcissism and conceit.”

To follow up on my earlier post on Trump-wannabe Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch, because I’m keeping track, damn it:

She’s been condemned by fellow leadership candidates Michael Chong and Deepak Obhrai; Obhrai also reports he’s getting angry emails telling him to leave the country thanks to his opposition to Leitch’s immigration policies.

At the Conservatives’ leadership debate last Wednesday, Leitch cited Points of Entry, a book by McMaster sociology professor Victor Satzewich that looks at decision-making by visa officers, as evidence that Canada’s immigration standards are weak. Trouble is, Satzewich disagrees with Leitch, and would rather not have his work used to make her argument. Buzzfeed, iPolitics.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that despite her anti-elite rhetoric, Leitch is holding a $500-a-plate fundraiser in Toronto next Monday. It’s possible that Leitch, a paediatric surgeon and university professor, may need an explanation of what “elite” means. Now you can run a campaign strictly on small donations (many politicians have, and have made a hair-shirt point of it) but it’s unlikely she’d have raised the $450,000 she has as of September 30 if she had. You kind of need the elites for that kind of dosh. In the July-September quarter, for example, she raised $215,635.97 from 811 donors, an average of $265.89 per donor. Not exactly small donations from lots of grassroots supporters.¹

Brian Alkerton is joining the Conservative Party just to vote against her, and suggests the rest of us do the same. The trouble with candidates like her is that sometimes they win despite everything, as we’ve seen elsewhere, and we can’t assume that she’ll be defeated later if she wins now. The world is full of black swans lately.

Thinking ahead to the next election. Simcoe–Grey, Leitch’s constituency, is normally considered a safe Conservative seat, but it’s not an impossible one. The Liberals held it in the 1990s, losing it narrowly to Helena Guergis in 2004 by only 100 votes. In 2011 Leitch won the seat; she was re-elected in 2015 with 46.6 percent of the vote vs. the Liberal candidate’s 38.6 percent — a margin of 5,260 votes. Difficult but not impossible, for a decent candidate with a well-funded campaign. Hint, hint.

(Much of the above via Dale Smith.)

Note

1. Maxime Bernier and Michael Chong have raised $428K and $209K, respectively, to the end of September. In the July-September quarter, Bernier raised $307,605.89 from 1,838 donors during that quarter — an average of $167.36 per donor. Michael Chong raised $124,224.34 from 243 donors — an average of $511.21 per donor.

Last night Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch sent out a message to her supporters that described Donald Trump’s victory against the “elites” as “an exciting message and one we need delivered in Canada as well.”

This is the same Kellie Leitch who announced the “barbaric cultural practices” hotline during the last federal election campaign. The same Kellie Leitch who wants to test immigrants and refugees for “anti-Canadian values” — whatever they are. (Love to know who determines what is and isn’t a barbaric cultural practice or an anti-Canadian value.)

It is, shall we say, of a piece.

I get what Leitch is trying to do. There are more than a dozen candidates for the Conservative party leadership, and she needs to stand out. Cosplaying Ilse Koch seems to have accomplished that goal. She’s gotten no shortage of attention, including a Maclean’s cover story, and according to the Ottawa Citizen she leads the field among polled Conservative supporters.

But here’s the thing. Aping Trump’s strategy to stand out from the pack is a short-term strategy at best. The next federal election will be in 2019. If Leitch manages to win — and if the Earth has not yet been turned into a smouldering cinder by then — by 2019 we will be in the third year of the Trump presidency. At that point I expect Trump’s popularity in Canada, such as it is, to be at its utter nadir. Leitch’s faux-populist, xenophobic message will be long past its sell-by date.

I don’t intend to let things go on that long, though. This rhetoric must be opposed, forcefully and continuously. If this isn’t an anti-Canadian value or a barbaric cultural practice, then nothing is.