Conservatives and the crackpot wing

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/01/2024 (706 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sometimes on social media, I see posts from Conservative members of Parliament that force me to wonder whether Pierre Poilievre believes any of the nonsense spouted by some of his caucus members.

It’s true that Conservatives consistently raise much more money than the Liberals. And a big reason for that is their highly committed and enthusiastic rural base in Western Canada, some of whom have been embracing various conspiracy theories they want exposure for in Ottawa.

The latest message of controversy from the odd duck division of the Poilievre Conservatives is from Leslyn Lewis, an anti-abortion, anti-vaccine social conservative who is a Torontonian without a ghost of a chance of winning in Toronto. So she’s in a safe Conservative seat in rural Ontario called Haldimand Norfolk.

Here is what she posted earlier this week. “Over 60,000 Canadians have now signed a petition calling on Canada to protect our national sovereignty by withdrawing from the UN and its subsidiary organizations.” The rest of the message tells Canadians how they can sign the petition.

Now, to be clear, petitions posted by MPs are always fundraising fodder, because you can’t sign the petition without getting your name into the Conservative database. Once that happens you’ll be hounded for the rest of your days to send money.

There is nothing illegal about this and the process is open to all MPs. But Canadians need to get past the process and go to the substance.

Yes, the UN has its own odd duck wing. Regularly and routinely, human rights committees at the UN are chaired by representatives of the worst human right violators on the planet, including the one best known recently for imprisoning and executing young women who are seen in public without their hijabs. It’s the same country that executes men because they are gay. It’s the one that arms the two best known terrorist organizations in the Middle East, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Yes, Iran occasionally chairs the human rights committee at the United Nations. So rational people have a good reason to kick up some dust at the United Nations. The UN can be fairly criticized for being a highly unreliable agent of peace in the current Israel-Gaza conflict.

But the issue before us with the Leslyn Lewis petition isn’t about Palestinians and Israelis. It’s about Canadians and whether we, as a country, want to turn inward and step away from the world stage.

The premise of the petition posted by the Conservative MP is that Canada’s membership in the United Nations threatens Canadian sovereignty, implying that Canada is not an independent country that makes its own decisions.

I am not suggesting Poilievre believes that, or that a Poilievre government would actually ensure that Canada is the only nation in the world without a seat at the UN. But he owes it to Canadians to separate his leadership from conspiracist ideas.

In the interests of full transparency, I was based in Tampa Bay, Fla., in the early ’90s and hosted a national talk show which aired in more than 130 cities and towns. I took many calls from what we now called rural Red State America.

A handful of callers told me they wanted their country to pull out of the United Nations for the same reason Lewis is stating in the petition she is sponsoring. Some of my American listeners had been told by those raising money for right-wing causes that the United Nations threatened the independence of the U.S.

It felt preposterous to me, especially because of where I was seated — only minutes away from U.S. Central Command, where leading members of the American military were sitting in front of giant screens watching their forces all over the planet projecting American strength and sovereignty.

When taking those odd conspiracist phone calls, I considered myself fortunate to be Canadian, naively thinking the crackpot content I was doing my best to tolerate in that country could never be imported into Canada.

Unfortunately and tragically, I was wrong. And on this day in this new year, I can pledge to you that you will never see me say that what happens politically in the U.S. will never happen here.

Poilievre pays close attention, not just to policies pursued by American right wingers, but to their methods, as well.

I would hope that he silently agrees that Canada is a serious country. We are much more than a Facebook page for conspiracists.