Who do you think will win a battle over who can best use centralized government power to control Canadians?.In sports, teams do everything they can to get a ‘home-field advantage.’.It is easier to play at home, where you know the stadium or arena, feel comfortable in the locker room, get to sleep in your own home, and have the home crowd cheering you on..Home-field advantage is seen as such a benefit that it’s the reward for winning the regular season in most team sports..In the NBA and NHL, you get home-field advantage through the assurance a decisive game seven will be played at home..In the NFL, you get home field advantage by playing your playoff games at home, with the best team in each conference getting to contest all playoff games on their home turf..If a coach was to intentionally give up home-field advantage – and play on their opponent’s turf – they should be fired in short order by management and ownership..Which brings us to Erin O’Toole..Canada has four statist political parties – the Liberals, NDP, Greens, and Bloc Quebecois..Those parties all believe the choices of individuals should be severely restricted and replaced with government mandates, taxes, and intervention to ensure the ‘correct outcome’ prevails..Those parties have seldom met a tax or regulation that they didn’t love. They have spent years honing their arguments in favour of tax increases and centralized power (or, in the BQ’s case, centralized taxation, and decentralized spending)..Excessive taxation and government control is their home field advantage. .By contrast, the home turf of the Conservatives is (supposed to be) respecting individual freedoms, including how to spend their own money. Conservatives win when voters feel government intervention has gone too far, and when they get tired of politicians demanding excessive power..Successful Conservative politicians manage to get the opposition to respond to them, and play on their turf. This is achieved by presenting ideas that are coherent with conservative principles..Erin O’Toole has instead decided to move the Conservatives towards statism, surrendering to the Liberals, NDP and Greens. He wants to play on their turf. .O’Toole has willingly given up home-field advantage by conceding the Liberals are right on carbon taxes, and that he will emulate their approach with a few blue ‘tweaks.’.And ironically, those tweaks are even more statist than the Liberal’s statist policies. .At least the Liberals can claim to be giving people rebate cheques they can spend on whatever they want..By contrast, O’Toole plans to take your money, and put it into a Bay Street-controlled account that you can only use to spend on government-approved ‘green’ items..Read that sentence again..If our only two options are the Liberal and Conservative platforms, then Trudeau is the more libertarian-conservative of the two. .We can see how it reads like a terrible mashup of the Liberals elitism and the NDP/Green obsession with mandating ‘green behaviour.’.I might have thought that a “conservative” party announcing this policy was a sick joke, had I not watched it come from the mouth of Erin O’Toole himself. .O’Toole has put himself and the Conservative Party in a terrible position..He is going to demoralize his already demoralized base further while trying to win an argument on government intervention with parties who are far better at those arguments than he is..How do we think that is going to work out for him, for conservatives, and for Canada?.How’s it been working out so far?.The party is floundering in the polls, with O’Toole’s strategy so far failing to win over new supporters, rendering his ‘trade the base for centrist voters strategy’ a losing proposition..And then there’s the issue of trust..Erin O’Toole pledged to repeal and abolish the carbon tax more times than one can reasonably count. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has been all over him for this flip-flop, breaking his written promise to do so in simple English (and French)..Why would Canadians trust O’Toole on anything else he says when he was willing to lie to Canadian Conservatives – his own party – over and over again?.By surrendering to the statists, O’Toole is disenfranchising the millions of Canadians who believe the government shouldn’t be adding new taxes, and leaves them without representation..Conservative MPs must speak out against O’Toole’s policy and demand he reverse it immediately. If he refuses, they must dump him as leader. If they don’t, those MPs will be complicit in his great betrayal. .Spencer Fernando is a Columnist for the Western Standard
