A sermon criticizing Harper shows the struggle for Conservative souls

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OTTAWA — In a candid, hour-long sermon to an Ottawa church in May 2022 about faith and politics, Sarah Fischer, now the federal Conservative party’s communications director, got to the heart of a long-running debate among members of her political flock.

Namely: How much can a political party sacrifice its fundamental ideas in exchange for winning elections? And what is the point of getting in power if you don’t implement things you believe in?

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Fischer, who was working at the time as a staffer for Alberta MP Rachael Thomas, then offered a cautionary allegory that might have sent whispers through the pews of the West Ottawa Community Church.

Former prime minister Stephen Harper sacrificed his “principles for power,” she said.

Not only that. She said the loss the Conservative party suffered in the 2021 federal election under then leader Erin O’Toole was likely for the best because it forced the party to reflect on what it really stands for and to come back from it stronger.

Her speech was delivered while Conservatives were just months into their leadership contest to replace O’Toole, who had been ousted by his caucus that February.

In her speech, Fischer boasted she was one of “a couple” of people who worked to remove O’Toole, repeating the criticisms often heard by the ex-leader’s detractors that he “completely flip-flopped” on issues after campaigning as a “true, blue Conservative.”

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It’s not uncommon to hear Conservatives accuse O’Toole, who brought in a platform with a carbon tax and reversed himself on defunding the CBC, of having sacrificed core party values.

But Harper is a venerated figure in the party and in the broader Canadian conservative movement. For some, Fischer’s criticism might have bordered on blasphemy.

“I think there’s always the temptation for a leader, especially of a Conservative party, to sacrifice principles for power, and that is what we saw with Stephen Harper,” she said in the sermon, a recording of which is posted on the church’s website.

“There were a lot of things that he said when we were in a minority government. He said, ‘just wait, just wait ‘til we get a majority and then we’ll do these things’. And it turns out that the narrative changed a little bit, and it was, well, ‘let’s just wait. We don’t want to hurt our majority’.”

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In contrast to Harper’s mostly incremental policy approach, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has promised a fiercely ambitious agenda that will involve major reforms on criminal justice, defunding the CBC and cutting taxes. His unapologetic defence of smaller-government, free-market policies won him the party leadership after O’Toole was turfed. Now running in an election against a new Liberal leader, Poilievre has so far largely resisted softening his approach.

Neither Fischer nor Poilievre’s campaign responded to a request for comment for this story. A representative for Harper did not respond to a request for comment.

Harper began his political career with the Reform party (later the Canadian Alliance) as a critic of the once-dominant Progressive Conservatives, before eventually leading a merger with the PCs. He then won two consecutive minority governments in 2006 and 2008 before winning a majority government in the 2011 general election.

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Despite his exit from politics after losing the 2015 election, Harper remains within a small circle of trusted advisors to Poilievre, who served as a minister in Harper’s government. And Poilievre has long considered the former prime minister a mentor.

Harper went on to serve on the Conservative party’s powerful fundraising board. He also took the rare step of endorsing Poilievre during his leadership bid. It was Harper’s first public show of support for a successor.

The former Conservative prime minister most recently signed a fundraising email for Poilievre, in which Harper accused Liberal Leader Mark Carney of stealing credit for the handling of the 2008 financial crisis from former finance minister Jim Flaherty, who died in 2014.

Harper’s ex-director of communications Dimitri Soudas defended his former boss’s record.

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“Prime Minister Harper’s three consecutive governments focused on exactly what was promised: cutting the GST, scrapping the gun registry, ending the Wheat Board monopoly, bringing in child care benefits, toughening criminal laws, standing firmly with Israel, and balancing the budget,” Soudas said in a text message to National Post.

Speaking just three months after O’Toole was forced out, Fischer took repeated shots at the ousted leader during her sermon, particularly over his response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The leader had found himself in an election dominated by the crisis, caught between a party base that opposed mandates and vaccine passports, and polls showing the public health restrictions were popular with a nervous public.

At one point, she asks “is this being recorded?” She then continues to say she would “speak plainly” to allow those listening to arrive at their own conclusions.

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She suggests the Conservative party made a misstep in conducting public polling about how Canadians were feeling about the pandemic and that O’Toole made the mistake of failing to present “an alternative narrative” from the pro-mandate messaging prime minister Justin Trudeau was campaigning on.

O’Toole’s end ultimately came during the 2022 Freedom Convoy protests that blockaded Parliament Hill, when he was voted out by a majority of his MPs for being insufficiently supportive of the demonstration.

Fischer was a vocal backer of the protest.

She went further than most, however, when she suggested in her speech that the 2021 election loss by the O’Toole Conservatives (the party she worked for), partly due to vote-splitting with the further-right People’s Party of Canada (PPC), was necessary to purify the party.

“This is controversial as a Conservative, but I, in a way, felt like we had to lose the battle to win the war. Yes, it may have cost us that election by so many people going to the PPC and voting with their conscience and on principle,” Fischer said.

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“But I actually think it that has paved the way for something very exciting that is going to come where there will be a focus on freedom and on the Canadian people, not just on a leader or a party,” she told her fellow congregants.

Four months later, Poilievre was elected leader of the Conservatives in a landslide.

National Post

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