Ben Woodfinden: The new conservative fight isn't red vs. blue. It's young vs. old
Understanding what’s really happening today means forgetting the battle lines of 2003.
By: Ben Woodfinden
In the days since former Conservative MP Chris d’Entremont crossed the floor to join the Liberal government, there has been a robust discussion around the role of “Red Tories” in the modern Conservative party and movement more broadly. D’Entremont claimed that he is a Red Tory and this was part of why he decided to cross the floor.
These discussions are missing the forest for the trees. In fact, thinking about these debates along these lines is a tell. Anyone framing debates like this is probably old enough to remember and have perhaps participated in the old parties, and has never escaped this thinking. This isn’t Reds vs. Blues. It’s Young vs. Old.
The specific complaints from people like d’Entremont and other grumbling voices are less about ideology and more the tone and style of Pierre Poilievre (though perhaps the two are connected). Poilievre’s temperament and style rubs certain people, including some Conservatives, the wrong way. Now, full disclosure, I worked for Poilievre for a few years, and I can confirm he’s a demanding boss. But so is the prime minister, reportedly. And Poilievre is also in my experience the hardest working person I’ve ever met.
The tone battle is not a revival of Red vs. Blue. It’s not clear those terms are even relevant today. “Red Tory” is often used pejoratively to describe a “Liberal Lite” voter who identifies as a conservative but is indistinguishable from a Liberal — those who fit the “social progressive, fiscal conservative” moniker. This is not what Red Toryism historically meant; it’s actually the opposite of this. Red Toryism is a distinctly Canadian tradition of conservatism that was focused on the preservation of Canada contra a liberal United States, and emphasized the role of the state in this. It blended conservatism and elements of socialism in a distinctly anti-liberal synthesis that rejected radical individualism — that’s what the “red” part actually means, not liberalism but socialism. This kind of Toryism — “conservatism with a conscience” — is committed to public institutions and is pro-market but not entirely libertarian.
But Red Toryism is no longer a dominant force in Canadian conservatism; today it’s a remnant, largely in Atlantic Canada. What we’re really looking at here is a generational fault line that cuts right through the heart of Canadian conservatism.
Many older Canadians are conservative, and these older Tories are (in general) fairly well off. They are retired, or well advanced into their careers. They own homes that are paid off, or will be in the near future, and worth a lot more than what they paid for them. Many of them have been able to help their children get started in their own careers, or with down payments on homes of their own. They value stability — it is essential if they are to continue enjoying their prosperous lives. These people have long enough memories to remember the political battles that led to the creation of the modern Conservative Party of Canada in 2003 — some of them were no doubt even participants, and may still identify with one faction or the other.
Now contrast this with many of the leading voices on the other side of the debate. They call themselves “the new right.” In the absence of a better term, I’ll use that. Canada’s new right tends to be younger, and this matters not just because the old PC/Reform divide means very little to them, it matters because they are much angrier with our general state of affairs, and for good reason.
The emerging flagship publication for this collection of young conservatives is the Substack Without Diminishment. In some ways, the emerging conservative opposition in Ontario to Premier Doug Ford centred around an organization called Project Ontario (discussed in last week’s On The Line podcast here) is also a good representation of it.
The voices and figures involved in this movement are younger, often very online, and eager to pick fights with this older generation of conservatives. For some of the writers at Without Diminishment, the archnemesis of their conservatism is Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne. He represents, for them, an outdated kind of “Boomer conservatism” that does not speak to them or the issues they care about. New conservatives have also recently written, after Ford ran ads featuring Ronald Reagan in America, that it’s time for “the gatekeepers of the Canadian right … to move on from 1984” — namely Reagan-era conservatism.
These younger “new” conservatives look around and see a country that does not work for them. Part of this is undoubtedly an economic story. There is a growing and now entrenched divide between asset-rich Canadians who have seen their home values skyrocket and who seem committed to preserving a status quo that functions like a pyramid scheme, maintaining the lifestyles of boomers on the backs of younger people who remain locked out of the housing market. A good job with a steady income is no longer enough to support a middle-class lifestyle in most major cities.
Part of what they are reacting to as well is an unacknowledged sense of entitlement and privilege amongst these older Boomer conservatives that goes beyond cost-of-living challenges.
In the pandemic, it was young people who did not have the luxury of having comfortable homes in which to ride it out. They were stuck in overpriced shoeboxes without balconies, they lost important years early in their careers with constant openings and closings of businesses, their educations were disrupted and impacted by years of online classes. Their social lives, including their romantic lives during the years when they would have hoped to meet a long-term partner, were also badly disrupted. Loneliness was, and remains, a major issue for many. They were asked to make sacrifices for older Canadians, and they did so, but they bore the brunt of downstream impact of these sacrifices.
These new conservatives, who grew up in or came of age in our social-media era, are naturally much more online than older Canadians and much more accustomed to online battling than older cohorts. Online discourse is also just naturally more abrasive and brash — this has nothing to do with any specific ideology or individual, it’s the nature of arguments taking place behind a screen far away from your opponents.
The “tone” issue is important. The people most likely to be concerned about tone and moderation in conservatism are also, I suspect, the wealthier, home-owning group that generally supported restrictive pandemic-era health measures. The new conservatives prefer blunter talk that rubs older conservatives the wrong way. Poilievre, as leader, has clearly adopted much of the tone of the new conservative, because in many ways he is one of them. The coalition he has built is younger, he speaks to their issues, and his style of politics emphasizes digital prowess. This will inevitably make his politics more confrontational.
The new conservatives were confident in victory — that their guy was going to win, their way. And then Donald Trump came along and changed all that, and those most incensed by the threats of annexation were those who again could comfortably do it from their homes and get the most animated about being “elbows up.” Carney won because he met the moment for this in the way many Canadians wanted (though his approach has changed dramatically since the election), and brought his party back from certain death to within only a few seats of a majority largely with the support of older Canadians.
All of the above is obviously a broad description, and it’s certainly not my intent to further stoke the generational battles — I’m simply trying to describe the combatants and the front lines as best I can. The critical point is that, once again, sacrifices are being most acutely felt by young people — even Prime Minister Carney has acknowledged as much. The federal Conservatives believe that they have lots of room for growth with young people, and young men especially, which is why it’s not a coincidence that just a few weeks ago Pierre Poilievre held a “no more sacrifices” youth rally in downtown Toronto.
That the Conservatives are holding youth rallies in our largest city tells you that the party, and Poilievre’s broader voter coalition, is not the conservatism of your grandfather. This shift may in fact be accelerating; a group of younger Conservative MPs led by rising star Jamil Jivani has embarked on a “Restore the North” campus tour to try and speak to and engage with younger people.
If you watch some of the videos from these events, or read any of the coverage, one thing you’ll notice is not just economic frustrations, but cultural ones too. And this is something else that this new right is speaking to. In addition to the economic alienation many young Canadians feel, there is a cultural alienation too. This passage, written by Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard, captures part of this alienation very eloquently:
“Gen Z has come of age with a thinner social fabric of fewer friends, fewer romantic relationships, and rising social unease. Raised amid a constant “culture war” and the spirit of deconstruction, they were, in a sense, stripped of landmarks. They were stripped of national and cultural identity by a multiculturalism that prizes conflict and difference more than what binds citizens together. They were stripped of stability by a libertarian rhetoric on policing, drugs, and marriage that weakens the shared framework protecting people from antisocial behaviour. Gen Z is living with the consequences of the progressive revolution launched in the 1960s by a generation that took for granted the cultural and civilizational inheritance we now lack.”
My own view of this is that the new conservatives, and I consider myself one of them, risk overplaying their hand if they aren’t careful. Yes, there is a feeling of social alienation and dislocation, but I’m skeptical this is going to lead to mass religious revival or anything like that.
What I think best captures this alienation is a feeling that the world that their parents grew up in, where, to quote Poilievre, “anyone from anywhere can achieve anything. That hard work gets you a great life, with a beautiful house, on a safe street, under our proud flag,” has slipped away. It’s not a longing for some reactionary past, it’s a longing for a return to normalcy. It’s not economics or culture, it’s both.
Moderation, whether in temperament or substance, is much less appealing to people who feel like they’ve been screwed over. Especially if concerns over tone and temperament seem to be a bigger priority for influential people than offering real answers for a sclerotic and failing status quo.
A conservatism that acknowledges things have gone wrong is going to be naturally angrier and more aggressive and more confrontational. You can try and root this in old PC vs. Reform factions, but it doesn’t capture the actual intent of younger conservatives who don’t remember or care about these divides.
To older conservatives, these new conservatives are upstarts, driven by a dangerous radicalism that feels disruptive and unappealing. If you pay attention to developments in conservatism south of the border, there is some serious merit to these concerns as well.
But the alienation and frustrations of younger conservatives can’t just be dismissed as grievance politics or reactionary populism. Moderation and tone policing in service of the defence of what feels like a failed status quo is a major problem for those living through the consequences of those failures. Moderation and tone matter in politics, but they are in some sense “luxury concerns” for people who aren’t feeling this pain in the same way.
These fights aren’t going anywhere and they are going to animate intra-conservative feuds in the years to come. Next time you’re reading about conservatives fighting and wondering what it’s all about, think less about old political divides and much more about new generational divides.
Ben Woodfinden is a senior advisor at Meredith Boessenkool & Phillips and the former director of communications for Pierre Poilievre.
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I’m Gen X (later Gen X, but not quite millennial). It took us over 30 years of marriage to buy a house. Largely due to a low income childhood and being in debt before reaching adulthood.
I know this article reflects how may Gen Z feel (I have 3 kids who are Gen Z,) but I think there is also an opportunity. We have multiple generations who haven’t been taught how to build even a little wealth before moving out. Kids move out at 18 and of course can’t support themselves - but then we stigmatize those who stay at home until they’ve saved enough to launch independently.
There is another way to live - even in current circumstances. It takes planning, and patience, and a lot of follow-through. But it can be done. I would argue that instead of giving Gen Z a platform to talk about how unfair inflation is, more should be done to help increase intergenerational wealth, encourage young unmarried adults to stay at home. Open a TFSA or an FHSA or an RRSP as soon as they’re 18. Then contribute to it when they don’t have to pay rent. Value staying debt free with not using a credit card to lend money. These are things that Gen Z can do while still living at home and it’s an easy way for millennials and Gen X to support their kids.
Yes, the world and economy is different. The pandemic response destroyed a lot of our social connections and lowered literacy and general education. But there are options available to help support young adults in becoming stable. I know they’re not sexy options and I doubt a political party could cater to that - it’s not as catchy as build the homes or axe the tax. But maybe if we spent more time on solutions rather than slogans that get people worked up, we’d actually address the problem instead of creating attention economies that stoke frustration and hopelessness but don’t change how someone lives.
One doesn't need a degree in social science to see how divided things have gotten in Canada. Ideology plays a major part in the great divide. If our politicians were honest and motivated by the need to improve the lives of Canadians instead of the constant need to cater to this and that faction in order to get re-elected, we might not see such a huge chasm. Unfortunately, we insist on electing unscrupulous selfish and self-interested individuals who don't seem to much care about the impact of their decisions on Canadians. We need to get serious about the affairs of this country or it will fracture beyond repair in short order.