The Conservative Party has invited one of the founders of Britain’s Vote Leave campaign to give the keynote address at their convention in Québec City next month.
Lord Daniel Hannan, a columnist and ex-politician who was an influential voice during the Brexit debate, is scheduled to give the keynote speech at the Conservative policy convention, being held next month at the Centre des congrès de Québec.
The Conservative grassroots will gather in Québec City for three days of policy talk, networking and rallies beginning on Sept. 7. It’s the first time the party faithful will have a chance to be together since Pierre Poilievre’s decisive first-ballot leadership victory last year.
The Oxford-educated British peer, styled The Lord Hannan of Kingsclere after being elevated to the title by former Prime Minister Boris Johnston, is perhaps an unusual choice to address this iteration of the Conservative Party. Poilievre has repeatedly railed against “elites” and talked about the need to bring “common sense” from “common people” to Canadian politics.
As a former member of the European Parliament and a columnist, Hannan has also advocated for policies that run counter to the direction of the Canadian conservative movement, such as limited drug decriminalization and electoral reform.
But his prominent billing at the policy convention is in keeping with some Canadian Conservatives’ longstanding admiration for their British counterparts, specifically, Johnston’s success at winning over “blue collar” voters that typically voted Labour.
“Lord Daniel Hannan is a renowned conservative speaker and author who believes in individual freedom and accountable government,” wrote Sarah Fischer, the Conservative Party’s director of communications, in a brief statement to Global News. “We are thrilled to have Lord Hannan as a keynote speaker at the 2023 Conservative Convention.”
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Fischer did not address questions about Lord Hannan’s policy differences with Poilievre. Lord Hannan did not respond to a request for comment earlier this week.
The Québec City meet-up is the first policy convention since Andrew Scheer was leader and the party met in Halifax back in 2018. And it may be their last convention before the next general election, which is at most two years away.
While the Conservatives pride themselves on being a grassroots-led party, it’s unlikely that any of the policy debates will fundamentally transform Poilievre’s eventual election platform. And with the Conservatives playing with a lead in the national polling, a no-drama event would best suit the party’s leadership.
Voting results obtained by Global News give some insight, however, into the Conservative grassroots’ priorities ahead of the convention.
The top priority – with 90 votes out of 173 Conservative electoral district associations (EDAs) – was reforming the bail system, which the proposal refers to as a “catch-and-release” system, echoing some of Poilievre’s rhetoric in recent months.
Among the more prominent policy resolutions is a pledge to “streamline” firearms classifications based on technical criteria, and to re-institute mandatory minimum sentences for the criminal misuse of firearms – a contentious issue that has already been before the Supreme Court in multiple cases. The policy received votes from 69 Conservative EDAs.
Protecting free speech in “the public square” – another issue raised by Poilievre frequently, largely in response to Liberal legislation around media and the internet – received the backing of 59 EDAs.
A policy committing a future Conservative government to banning gender-affirming medical care to Canadians under the age of 18 received the endorsement of 46 EDAs. The Canadian Press recently reported that resolution could become an issue for Poilievre, after conservative-leaning governments in New Brunswick and Saskatchewan recently enacted policies restricting teachers from using students’ preferred pronouns without parental consent.
Asked about gender-affirming care for children on Wednesday, Poilievre told reporters he hadn’t “had a chance to study all the proposals” and that he’ll “take a careful look at every proposal and decide whether or not it lines up with our platform.”
At least two policies also harken to the 2022 convoy protests, which Poilievre embraced as an MP and later as a contender for the party’s leadership. One demands the revocation of the Emergencies Act, a law passed by Brian Mulroney’s government and invoked for the first time by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to address the protests. Another accuses the Liberal government of “overreach” in using the law to address the protests in Windsor, Ontario.
The data, which was publicly-accessible on a Conservative website and provided by a source to Global News, suggests nearly 60 policy resolutions will be considered at the convention. Fischer, the Conservative Party spokesperson, did not address questions about the priority policy resolutions.
— With files from the Canadian Press.
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