Walk around and find out

The Conservatives’ latest embrace of the so-called “freedom convoy” began in a strip mall parking lot west of downtown Ottawa.

Just before noon on June 30, leadership hopeful Pierre Poilievre met up with James Topp, the soldier who set out on a cross-country walk to protest vaccine mandates. For roughly a half-hour, the two men strolled toward the National War Memorial with droves of anti-mandate supporters in tow. They chatted about public health measures, the country’s political divisions and John Diefenbaker. Camera people got out in front to capture the scene.

Since the start of Topp’s journey four months ago, several of the COVID mandates he is protesting have been suspended: the federal government no longer requires vaccines for people who board trains or planes in the country, work for the federal government or take a job in federally regulated transportation sectors, though you do still need a jab to serve in the military. Topp, an army reservist, was charged in February after criticizing federal vaccine mandates in uniform — a strict no-go for members of the Armed Forces — and is currently facing a court martial.

Poilievre later explained his choice to associate with Topp by saying: “People should have the freedom to make their own decisions with their own bodies.”

But the convoy movement that has rallied around Topp is about more than just vaccines. From the get-go, organizers of the months-long occupation in Ottawa earlier this year put out a “memorandum of understanding” seeking to dismantle the government (they later withdrew it to avoid “unintended interpretations”). One of the movement's most vocal supporters has championed a racist lie known as the replacement theory and encouraged violence. Now, several of the original convoy leaders are facing charges — some from behind bars — and vaccine mandates are largely a thing of the past, but the movement has evolved into a loose, leaderless collection of groups pushing an assortment of causes.

One thing that’s remained the same, though, is the convoy movement’s connections to far-right extremism. Topp has reportedly made multiple appearances on a podcast hosted by Jeremy MacKenzie, de facto leader of the white supremacist, antisemitic Diagolon movement. The Canadian Anti-Hate Network describes Diagolon’s members as accelerationists trying to hasten violence, anarchy and societal collapse.

Which is an important part of why Poilievre’s walk with Topp made headlines: a man poised to become the next leader of the Conservative Party chose to appear alongside someone who’s shared the airwaves with a far-right extremist.

It’s not just Poilievre, though. A week before his meeting with the army reservist, fellow leadership candidate Leslyn Lewis and 22 other Conservative MPs — one-fifth of the Conservative Party caucus — showed up to a presentation by Topp, convoy spokesperson Tom Marazzo, convoy security director Daniel Bulford and Paul Alexander, a science adviser to former U.S. president Donald Trump. Interim party leader Candice Bergen has given her caucus the OK to attend convoy protests. Add in the fact that former Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall was texting advice to a different convoy organizer who’s now facing charges over his involvement in the protest, and Poilievre’s walk isn’t really about one politician or one photo op — the Conservatives in general are embracing a movement with ties to the far right.

To dig a bit deeper into what this means for the Conservative Party and Canadian politics, I asked Canada’s National Observer columnist Max Fawcett for his take. Here’s what he said:

Dana: What does Pierre Poilievre's walk with James Topp — and the Conservatives' relationship to the convoy movement more generally — say about where the party is right now?

Max: I think it says that the Conservative Party of Canada's braintrust is all-in on the convoy and its brand of politics. But the bigger question for me is what does that mean for their strategy in the next election? Poilievre is clearly the front-runner in the race, and it's hard to see how this embrace of a fringe right-wing personality helps him with a general public that is widely opposed to the convoy. It's generally assumed that whoever wins the leadership will tack back towards the centre to try and win over the voters the CPC needs to win a general election, but this walkabout suggests to me that they see a different path to victory — one paved with [People’s Party of Canada] supporters and other Canadians who buy and believe this stuff. If it works, it will put Canada in a very different (and dangerous) place.

What about party members who have distanced themselves from the convoy movement and its extremist elements? If the party does embrace convoy supporters more enthusiastically after the leadership race, what might happen to Conservatives — both politicians and everyday Canadians — who don't align with more right-leaning MPs like Pierre Poilievre and Leslyn Lewis?

I suspect they'll talk a big game and end up doing very little. Yes, they could create a new Progressive Conservative Party, and there would certainly be a market for that among both disaffected conservatives and disaffected blue Liberals. But the actual work of building a party from scratch is both painstaking and time consuming, and I just don't see these folks being willing to put that work in. That's especially true if Justin Trudeau remains Liberal leader for the foreseeable future, since the hatred of him will probably be strong enough among even centrist Conservatives to keep that party together for another election cycle.

Throughout the CPC leadership race, we've gotten a sense of how the party might be changing. But what about Canadian politics as a whole? How does Topp's audience with the likes of Poilievre, Lewis and nearly two dozen other Conservative MPs impact the overall tone and conversations on Parliament Hill, not just among the CPC but all parties?

I'd imagine that watching your colleagues meet with people who want to orchestrate an illegal coup and arrest the prime minister for treason, among other deeply unrealistic things, would be a tough pill for some government MPs to swallow. But the Poilievre wing of the Conservative Party of Canada clearly believes that this sort of Trump-esque approach to politics works for them, and they're clearly in the ascendancy right now. Until they're dealt a decisive defeat, I suspect they're going to continue pushing things in this direction. That's incredibly dangerous for our country and its political discourse, but I don't get the sense that they care much about things like decency and decorum (or even democracy).

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