Mark Wegierski

The Maverick Party (formerly the Wexit Party) is the federal Western separatist party readying to attack the Conservative flank in the next election. The Conservatives do not need an election, until they can figure out how to deal with this undoubtedly potentially fatal vote splitting.

Their Western flank is only going to be more exposed as time passes (as Wexit/’Buffalo’/separatism becomes more organized and established as a political machine west of Ontario).

Most commentators are saying that they have no idea if the emergence of the Maverick Party will repeat the 1993 election that saw the conservative vote split and majority government Progressive Conservative party wiped out, ushering in the Chretien Liberal majority years.

It took a re-united, conservative party (Reform/Alliance and Progressive Conservative) to finally challenge the Liberals, and two elections, scandal plagued though the Liberals were, to finally win – a minority.

In 2015, the NDP under Rachel Notley won a majority government in Alberta. They won because the conservatives in Alberta split into the governing Progressive Conservatives and the upstart “western populist rebels,” the Wildrose Party. The NDP majority was wiped out in the 2019 Alberta election because the literally named “United Conservative Party” came into existence, and defeated them.

The Conservatives have no hope of winning the next federal election on Liberal scandals alone (they couldn’t in 2019) – the only hope they have is broadening their base in Ontario and Quebec, as everyone says, yes, but more importantly: not splitting the vote in the West.

Don’t take my, or any commentator’s word for this; take history’s word for it.

As the (interim, and highly effective)  leader of the Maverick Party, Jay Hill, argues it does not matter if the Conservatives win, Western Canada still gets ignored. Hill did not support Erin O’Toole in the CPC leadership, who some had earlier suggested  was going to be a Western saviour.

Hill also recently analysed the situation: no worries, at most the Conservative Party and Maverick vote split would only come to play in 22 ridings. So, it is obvious, the CPC “losing” 22 western ridings to the Liberals/NDP in the next election is nothing to worry about. That is true only if one is a Liberal or NDP.

2001: Alliance Party MP Grant Hill  suggested that the then existing federal Progressive Conservative Party join with the Alliance Party and hold joint candidate nomination meetings, to avoid vote splitting, that allowed Liberal candidates to win.

2011: Nathan Cullen, an NDP MP and candidate for the 2012 NDP Leadership, suggested that the ‘progressives’ (Liberals, NDP, Greens) unite to defeat Stephen Harper’s united Conservative Party, by holding joint nomination meetings in selected ridings and fielding only one “joint” candidate against the Conservative candidate.

The idea of holding joint party nomination meetings has been floated in the press from the right and the left. It is not a new, foreign, or impossible concept – it is a modern, real, viable, way to avoid political electoral self-immolation: splitting your base into separate political parties. Do not let your forces be divided!

Avoid the Brian Mulroney 1980’s Progressive Conservative fantasy of a “perfectly” centrally controlled group of Western and Quebec “separatists” and avoid the death of a federal conservative party, yet again. The way to ensure that was to hold joint-party nomination meetings selecting Maverick/CPC candidates. These joint-party nominated candidates, ensured to win, would be what they would be anyway, either way: conservative advocates for “The West.” Many of them would be socially conservative MPs — as they are now.

If a CPC federal government came to be, the members of the government caucus, that also were formally Maverick Party MPs, could never “betray The West.”

They (a CPC government) would lose power in the blink-of-an-eye as the MPs that held these dual-party status seats in The House would have to cut-off support for the government, should it not address “Western concerns.”  It would be ugly, but at least, finally, honest.

And not that far-fetched either. Kory Teneycke, a former director of communications for prime minister Stephen Harper, wrote that it is easy to imagine that a few current Conservative MPs might “cross-the-floor” to join a strengthening Maverick Party.

Not speaking as a “pundit”, but as a historian: the results of such talks would give the Conservatives a real fighting chance at winning the next federal election.

With their ingrained libertarianism, alienated Western Canadians seem to be afraid of actually governing in a Canadian coalition, preferring to surrender the government to the Liberals. It could be seen as a cowardly and highly unimaginative approach. The Conservative Party is unwilling to give up on “the Canadian project” and should entertain eclectic, unconventional approaches to keep Canada together.

There are a handful of open nominations, so it is not too late to experiment with dual-nominations. But if the Maverick Party costs the Conservatives seats in the forthcoming election, it is an idea that they should seriously consider in the future.

Mark Wegierski is a Toronto-based writer and historical researcher.