Do the Conservatives want to keep pretending this is America, or be relevant again in this country?

Canada is not Texas. In this country bullshit artists are outed, not elected. And that is why it really doesn’t matter if Pierre Poilievre sneers his way into the Conservative Party leadership. That will be the end of his voyage, just as it was for Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole.
Conservative leadership front-runner Pierre Poilievre, left, and Conservative MP Andrew Scheer, pictured April 28, 2022, in Ottawa. Poilievre’s candidacy is an extension of the brand of conservatism currently on display in the United States—a fact-denying populism that has room for every conspiracy theory and grievance, where every authority and institution is painted as the enemy, and guys pissing in the Capitol and wearing Viking horns are lionized—until they’re sent to jail, writes Michael Harris.

HALIFAX—The Conservative Party of Canada has never really been a new party that came together in a merger. It has always been a dysfunctional hybrid in which the hard right of its Western roots conducted a hostile takeover of the Progressive Conservatives. Peter MacKay’s li...

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