How to Build a Competitive Advantage in the U.S. Market

So there's no comprehension and little political cover. I'm not as enthusiastic or optimistic as I was only a few months ago. Chow ran like the frontrunner For the first two months, Mark Saunders ran like a front-runner, played it safe—particularly on crime and affordability—took no chances, and was otherwise unremarkable. With a month to go, he felt it was too late to shake things up. At the same time, Chow positioned herself as the agent of change and, as the genuine front-runner, ran a disciplined, low-risk campaign. She profited from a lack of media attention and her opponents' inability to properly criticize her due to absurdly low spending limitations. Any conservative strategist worth their salt understands that the last week of a federal election campaign will see a significant number of NDP-leaning supporters shift to the Liberals. Dan Robertson, who has his own opinion on the mayoral race above, stated that it is the "CPC's biggest obstacle to winning the next election." As Geoff Russ reported for The Hub, while Olivia Chow secured the left vote, a half dozen moderate candidates competed for supremacy, splitting the vote. There is a trend here. A recent byelection in Ontario saw the NDP vote plummet, benefiting the Liberals, who made the contest tighter than predicted.

It was a striking sight in 2016 when the fragmented

Republican Party couldn't rally around a single candidate to prevent Donald Trump from being the nominee, yet four years later, the Democrats basically made an institutional decision to support Joe Biden while blocking Bernie Sanders. Although nothing compares to Trump's level of effect, there are several instances in Canada regarding the Right's inability to resolve its differences, to the damage of its political parties. Stereotypes may suggest that left-leaning voters make emotional decisions, whereas right-of-center voters weigh their options rationally. The results indicate otherwise. Much of Canada's political discourse assumes that the country's most prominent fault line is regionalism. That our political identities and inclinations are based on our home provinces. That a Calgarian must have more in common with someone from Morinville than with a Torontonian, Montrealer, or Vancouverite.This shared perspective is how we wind up with the impression that our country's politics are a collection of solitudes. That Alberta and Quebec are fundamentally distinct. Just as Ontario differs from Saskatchewan, British Columbia, or whatever. Recent big city elections, such as this week's mayoral byelection in Toronto, call into question the conventional narrative. They show that provinces are not monolithic. That describing a homogeneous Albertan political culture, or an Ontario political culture for that matter, fails to reflect both provincial distinctions and cross-provincial parallels.

Olivia Chow's remarkable election victory continues 

a pattern of progressive dominance in Canada's largest cities. It is shown in the recent victories of Jyoti Gondek in Calgary, Amarjeet Sohi in Edmonton, and Valérie Plante in Montreal, who are building on the political successes of progressive big city mayors such as Naheed Nensi, Don Iveson, Stewart Kennedy, and others. (John Tory complicates this line of thought slightly. Progressives say he was a conservative since he previously led the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party and opposed raising property taxes. Conservatives often reject him for being predisposed to left-wing assumptions about identity politics and other issues. Perhaps the mistake is to think that he held to any cohesive worldview at all. The fundamental point here is that these elections should put an end to the habit to think and talk about our national politics primarily via regional lenses. Chow's mindset and policy interests are significantly more similar to Gondek's than to more conservative mayors in Ontario's smaller, peripheral, and rural cities. The real fault line is the country's urban-rural division, rather than regionalism. Growing progressive domination in Canada's major cities is crucial for a variety of reasons. First, even if one thinks that housing and public safety are the most pressing urban challenges, it is far from clear, as David Frum and I have discussed, that progressive policies will help the situation. 

They are more likely to exacerbate these difficulties

Chow, in particular, appears to be in a terrible position to make progress in increasing much-needed supply in Toronto's market-based housing market or addressing public concerns about disorder and violence through increased law enforcement. The usual progressive toolset may be ineffective in addressing current concerns.Second, the conservatives' continued failure to win political gains in Canada's large cities is a severe issue. Because of the country's demographic distribution (particularly the significant concentration of immigration settlement in big cities), a conservative party that fails to win in Toronto, Montréal, and Vancouver will essentially lose national elections. We recognize this as a truism: The Conservative Party won the popular vote in the previous two federal elections but lost because it was unable to secure seats in and around a small number of major cities.Big-city conservatism is thus a critical requirement for big "C" Conservative parties and small "c" conservative groups, intellectuals, and activists. They must make conservative ideals relevant to the lives of major city dwellers. Conservative MP Dane Lloyd is correctly asking these questions. There is a solid case against overthinking. Conservatives' "sword issues" should be housing supply and public safety.