O'Toole was, if I recall, tacking a bit more centrist. Does this defeat mean that the Can-Cons are likely to veer right in how they present themselves?
That is an interesting difference, though - the UK Tories are generally the best of the parties at maintaining discipline in the ranks (with the possible exception at Westminster of the SNP, who are very disciplined too AFAICT). If UK Conservatives start breaking ranks in large numbers, it's a sign that the party is probably about to go into a major internal crisis.
O'Toole did a classic "appeal to the base to get nominated, then tack to the centre to try to win an election." Parts of the Conservative base seemed quite upset that he did not push their pet causes.
The social conservative part of the Conservative base seems angry, as does the part influenced by US right-wing politics. The problem is that "abortion, LGBT ideology, oppressive lockdowns, and liberty-destroying passports for abortion-tainted vaccines" (as
a spokesman for the Campaign Life Coalition describes them) are pretty popular in Canada. Likewise, their opposition to putting a price on GHG emissions puts the Conservative core membership outside the Canadian mainstream. I don't know anything about their interim leader Candice Bergen.
Canada has an affordable-housing crisis which is easy to blame on scary foreigners (the problem is that older Canadians who tend to own homes vote and write letters, so any policy to drive down housing prices faces heavy opposition). Just like in other countries there is some unsettlement about the new ideas about gender and race which are being pushed by the Toronto media. Old Media and the liberals have been using division about pandemic policy. Its easy to present vaccines as a simple fix, then present the unvaccinated as the causes of everyone's troubles and not fellow Canadians who have often been misled by some very sophisticated, unscrupulous people. The federal Liberal and CBC message on the truck protests has been that they are all far-right extremists who can never be spoken to, rather than a mix of ordinary right-wing activists and a few very hateful people. This may drive some people who disagree with the Liberals on pandemic policy farther right.
(OTOH, the truckers who wave banners saying "F**** Trudeau" are also confused about the difference between activism and clickbait - like him or not, Trudeau is in charge of the government whose policy they want to change).
I think a harder-right version of the federal Conservatives would focus on blaming the troubles of renters and resource workers on someone who does not vote in Canada, on opposing state action to shore up indigenous and visual minority rights, on opposing the idea of gender as identity, and on talking about how public health policy should be based on individual freedom. But it really depends on who they chose as leader and which of that leader's gambits seem to get traction.
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