The Conservative Party of Canada’s leadership race, scheduled to conclude in May 2017, is off to an inauspicious start. Between fights in the name of “Canadian values” and hot takes on same-sex marriage, the candidates appear to be competing to see who can advocate the most regressive policies, with a few notable exceptions.

This takes a look at the five frontrunners—Kellie Leatch, Brad Trost, Maxime Bernier, Michael Chong and Lisa Raitt—and their respective proposals for immigration, social issues, the environment and the economy.

Kellie Leitch

Leitch’s signature proposal is “screening immigrants, refugees, and visitors for anti-Canadian values.” Her website boasts, “Kellie is the only candidate who will ensure that those coming to Canada believe in the equality of women, freedom of religion, and equality under law,” but is short on details on how she plans to achieve this.

According to a recent interview with Toronto Life, the Simcoe Grey MP opposes the legalization of recreational marijuana, supports gay marriage, and identifies as anti-abortion.

She vows to repeal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s national carbon tax if elected, insisting that carbon pricing should be left to the provinces.

Leitch vows to balance the budget by instituting a cap on government spending. Her website hints at mass privatization when it says that the government must “find new ways to get things done—new ways that don’t involve increasing taxes or borrowing money.”

Brad Trost

Though critical of Leitch’s vague “Canadian values” test, Trost (Saskatoon-University) said in an emailed statement that he wants to distinguish between immigrants who “Choose Canada” for its values and those who “Use Canada” for its public services.

Trost is staunchly opposed to gay marriage, wants “legislation to protect pre-born victims of crime,” and supports tough on crime legislation. “Catch and release is great for fishing, but not so great for criminals,” he said.

“I don’t think the uncertain science around climate change should be leveraged to force producers to leave oil and gas and coal in the ground,” he wrote, contending that the negative of job losses from reducing fossil fuel dependence outweigh the positives.

Trost aims “to keep corporate and income taxes LOW (sic),” which he said would be his main priority as prime minister.

Maxime Bernier

Bernier “plans to make an announcement on immigration later in the campaign,” says spokesman Maxime Hupe.

The Beauce, Que. MP supported the removal of the party’s “definition of marriage as being the union between a man and a woman” at its May 2016 policy convention in Vancouver, according to his website.

However, he vowed to reopen the abortion debate if party members request it, allowing a free vote. This is despite the vehemently anti-abortion Campaign Life Coalition rating him as consistently pro-abortion and therefore “not supportable.”

“Our prosperity is, and will remain for decades to come, dependent on fossil fuels to a large extent,” his website reads. He calls advocates of national carbon taxation “extremist green activists” who “want to see their standard of living significantly reduced to contribute in a negligible way to the global fight against climate change.”

Bernier advocates leaving the issue of carbon taxation up to the provinces and allowing the private sector to develop green energy of its own accord.

In a speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto, Bernier called for a reduction in the corporate tax rate to 10 per cent from 15 percent and the outright abolition of capital gains taxes.

Michael Chong

Chong (Wellington-Halton Hills) seeks to maintain the status quo on immigration, noting in a statement that immigrants and refugees are already “screened for criminality, war crimes, terrorism, health, and economic reasons.” Leitch’s proposal to vet newcomers for “Canadian values” is thus “not workable.”

He also vows not to “reopen divisive social issues,” namely those that have already been decided by Parliament, like abortion, same-sex marriage, and assisted suicide.

An outlier amongst the leadership candidates, Chong advocates a carbon tax, albeit one that is revenue neutral, to discourage fossil fuel consumption and reach the international target for emission reductions by 2030. 

To make up for the carbon tax, Chong vows to slash personal income taxes by 10 percent and corporate taxes by 5 percent.

Lisa Raitt

The Campaign Life Coalition rates Raitt as “unsupportable” due to her participation in the 2016 Toronto Pride parade and pro-abortion voting record. However, the group notes her opposition to assisted suicide, which she attributes to her Catholic faith.

In parliament, she vocally opposed the federal Liberals’ carbon taxation plan, advocating corporate solutions to what she acknowledges as the reality of man-made climate change.

During the party’s November leadership debate in Saskatoon, Raitt hinted at a reduction of inter-provincial trade barriers as a central tenet of her fiscal policies.

As the most recent addition to the leadership race, the Milton MP has yet to outline specific proposals on most issues, nor did her office respond to requests for comment. 

Wildrose Alliance leader Danielle Smith stumping during her summer tour of Alberta. The far-right party has weakened the right flank of the Progressive Conservatives. Image courtesy Wildrose Alliance.

At Marv’s Classic Soda Shop, Marvin Garriott, known for his oiled handlebar moustache, is often asked to speak of politics. He’s the local prophet on the subject; all small towns have one. A two-term councillor sitting for the 1,900-person Southern Alberta town of Black Diamond, Garriott poses for tourists and reporters, mugging in a bowling-alley inspired uniform matching the laminate, post-war decor of his pop shop. He knew the federal Conservatives would sweep to a majority, predicted the fall of the Liberals and even says he foresaw the Orange Crush (and the demise of the Bloc).

Ask Garriott to predict the outcome of the upcoming provincial leadership race and his vision goes dark. “It’s going to be an interesting one,” he says, passing judgment on the provincial Progressive Conservative party with a wince and a so-so motion of his left hand. “They weren’t listening to us. And the whole health-care issue has been a fiasco, and it still is.” Albertans face a leadership contest and probable election come fall, and are calling for change. Considering Black Diamond is in the dark blue heart of Tory country, Garriott’s verdict is a surprising vote of non-confidence.

For 40 years, the Conservatives, under the auspices of King Ralph Klein and lately “Steady Eddie” Stelmach have boasted vote margins envied by now-deposed Middle Eastern despots. At least, until Stelmach’s bumbling leadership style cost him the support of party insiders. Facing declining oil royalties, ongoing economic sluggishness and a rogue MLA forcing the party’s failing health-care policies into an unflattering news spiral, the Conservative caucus is “dissolving,” according to David Taras, a media studies professor at Mount Royal University. “People elected [Stelmach] thinking he was experienced, but it turned out there was nothing steady about Eddie,” Taras says. “When 45 percent of your budget goes into health-care, that’s the gold standard. That’s the standard by which you will be judged.”

Following in the out-sized footsteps of the iconic Klein, Stelmach’s path was bound to be bumpy. But his political missteps have been scrutinized more severely by the formation of two new parties: the centrist Alberta Party and far-right Wildrose Alliance. The latter, led by charismatic former journalist Danielle Smith, has quickly leeched the support of the populist-minded and arch-conservative alike (though the pendulum may be swinging back lately).

Stelmach’s fading fortifications were dealt a fatal coup de main during budget talks in January. His finance minister, Ted Morton, reportedly threatened to resign rather than deliver a financial plan easy on cuts and leaning heavily on the province’s reserve savings. Stelmach beat Morton to the podium. The premier resigned during a hasty news conference. He took no questions. Two days later, Morton announced himself a leadership contender. The Conservatives are now staging a six-way race to elect a leader in a five-party province.

The turmoil may even lead to an actual contest come election day—a rarity in a region where there’s more competition within parties than between them. The root of Alberta’s electoral intractability lies in its history, according to Taras. Early American immigration, strong religious communities and the hangover of the Trudeau-Era National Energy Program mean it may be decades before the province sees any real political movement—the election of superstar Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi being the exception. Up to a quarter of Alberta’s budget relies on oil royalties, and the rest of the country is growing increasingly hostile to oil sands development.

The result is a hankering for a strong leader who can stand up to the environmentalists and robber barons of Eastern Canada: “The lesson is that we need majority governments that have to be strong vis-à-vis Ottawa, because if they’re not strong, bad things can happen,” Taras says. “People see environmental politics through the lens of ‘what’s Ottawa going to do to us now?’”

And here, it should be noted, Albertans have a point. Last year, the province’s taxpayers gave the federal government $7 billion more than they received in revenue and services—about the same as what Quebec received in equalization payments. The province also receives less than its fair share in health-care transfers.

Since the ’70s, Alberta’s politics have revolved more around the protection of regional interests than the promulgation of truly conservative social values. That leaves a cadre of leadership candidates that run the gamut from Red Tory to Stockwell Day—just as long as they support oil and gas, all seem to be welcome under the big blue tent. For decades, that made for a broad, stable conservative dynasty; now that base appears to be fracturing.

Gary Mar, a former MLA, recently quit his job as the Alberta representative in the Canadian embassy in Washington. He’s emerged as an early front-runner in the leadership race. High on his list of self-described credentials are his lobbying efforts for the Keystone XL pipeline—a tube that would carry crude oil to the U.S., angering environmental groups on both sides of the border.

At 48 years old, Mar is young and eloquent: traits he shares with fellow candidate Doug Griffiths, who holds the title of youngest MLA to serve the province at 29. Former energy minister Rick Orman and deputy premier Doug Horner both have strong resumes, but may be seen as too old-school to tap into the restless undercurrent.

Alison Redford rounds the centrist Tory position. Socially progressive, she supports boosting Calgary as a world energy capital. She’s also pulled some of the campaign brains behind Nenshi’s purple revolution, which saw the mayor sweep last year’s municipal elections. “We can’t continue to presume that an election takes place, we elect a certain set of officials and then those politicians go away to make decisions, and then ask people to vote for them again,” Redford says. “People are demanding a different conversation with their politicians.”

Then there’s Mr. Et-Tu? Morton, who stands for a more conventional, American-style conservatism that blends fiscal utilitarianism and hard-right values such as opposition to same-sex marriage. Whether he has a shot at the top seat in Alberta as the Wildrose splits the right remains to be seen. “The Wildrose has made a lot of inroads,” Garriott says. Stelmach, with his humble rise to the top, should be popular among the types of people who frequent Marv’s soda shop. He’s not. “For a country boy, [Stelmach] lost touch with reality.”

In Alberta, the reality these days seems to be: expect the unexpected.

In a marketing campaign based largely on deception, the Progressive Canadian Party ran in 16 ridings, using the PC Party banner on election signs and ballot boxes.

In Richmond Hill, Ontario, Conservative candidate Pete Merrifield took issue with the PC’s Tory-blue signs and its use of the phrase “progressive conservative” instead of Progressive Canadian. He even suggested the rival PC camp was stealing his signs.

Conservative Party spokesperson Carolyn Stewart Olsen, on the other hand, maintains that while individual candidates may have had problems with the PC Party, the Conservatives as a whole did not. “We didn’t have time to pay much attention to fringe parties,” she says.

But Joe Hueglin, national coordinator for the PC Party, thinks Harper’s Conservatives should indeed be worried by the new Tories on the block. And while he acknowledges that Conservative candidates complained about his party’s tactics, he’s making no apologies. “We’re operating within the law,” Hueglin says. Did it cause confusion? “Quite possibly. But many people didn’t know they were voting for Stephen Harper [by voting for the Conservative Party], because they don’t follow politics.”

With only 100 official members, the new PC Party isn’t exactly a force to be reckoned with, but it’s got more than a familiar name on its side. One of its star candidates, Rev. Dorian Baxter (a.k.a. Elvis Priestley), is an Elvis-impersonating Anglican priest who ran against Conservative wonderwoman Belinda Stronach in the Ontario riding of Newmarket-Aurora.

Stronach won. Elvis took 2.11 percent. But according to Hueglin, “the Conservatives are blaming [the PC Party] for Belinda’s poor performance.”

Watch out, Stephen Harper. You could be next.