After Michael Ignatieff lost to Harper in the early 2010s and before Trudeau took over, the mainstream narrative at the time was that the Liberals would be in the wilderness forever because the Conservatives were dominating them by pandering to the ethnic vote.
While the Chinese are problematic for various reasons, and while the Sikhs wern't as populous here (and I will say that there are probably more liberal and NDP Sikh
youth now than there are conservatives)
Conservative East Asians, which seemed to be many, were pretty chill. Someone said this earlier, but things are pretty bad when even the Chinese are leaving. As least the Koreans and Japanese Canadians expect a certain level of order or politeness that actually is congruent with Western culture, and understand not to poison the well even when some of the older ones used to get into lefty politics.
God help the next generation though, theyre the same as Canadian liberals.
But they simply aren't eroding enough of that right-wing normie base.
The conservatives are not an alternate to the liberals. They are the liberals in slow motion.
The problem is that:
a) First the PPC has to prove it can actually win, or gain a significant minority of the vote (if theres one thing people hate, its throwing away their vote and just empowering the liberals further)
and b) theres the question of, can they actually govern? How will they govern? Is a lot of what theyre just saying talk?
I'm actually willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on B) because I just dont care, see the conservatives as being basically the same as the liberals,
but the same way people don't vote libertarian in the US because it just splits the vote and gets someone like Clinton in power, thats why Id be wary of voting for the PPC.
Imagine that you do, and next election its Trudeau again? I get it, the next argument is "well if everyone voted with their heart, we'd overtake the PC and become the new an true conservative party". It rarely works that way. The US reform party in the 90s basically was what won the election for Clinton, for example.
This is by design as well, in the first past the post system. Maybe electoral change is the only way to solve this, something Trudeau ironically promised. In Europe, you do have a rise of the far right because you can vote with your heart, and if the PPC gains 10%, PC gains 40% and the liberals gain 40%, you still win and you dont have to worry about this trap. And then you snowball from there. Over here though, whoever wins basically takes it all.
So do Canadians try to retake and change the conservative party into an actual conservative party once more?
Do we campaign for electoral reform?
Do we start a new third party?
The answer is all three and none of the above.
As Reagan said, you become an adult when you stop relying on the government to solve your own problems. IMO, the best thing to do is to try and get on with your life, and insulate yourself as far away from government as possible. Theres more important things in life to focus on. Sucks that Canada is making that more and more difficult, however. If you have to choose politics vs personal business though, always go the business route.