2021 federal election

[taylortbb]

Certainly not the first time. When I lived in Toronto 10+ years ago the rules were largely the same for local Conservative candidates. Don't show up to debates, avoid any small local media, etc.

While I dislike it, I'm also never going to vote for the Conservatives. As a strategy I think it's pretty logical. The kind of people that attend local candidate debates, or read their local CBC coverage, probably were never going to vote for the Conservatives anyways. So for them participation is pure downside (might say something dumb) and zero upside.

The thing is, while I dislike it personally, I actually think it's harmful to our democracy.

I agree it's harmful to democracy, but so is a lot of the Conservative platform. I don't generally agree with David Frum, but he was 100% correct when he said "If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.” He was of course speaking about the Republican party, but I think the same trends appear here. That doesn't make it not a logical choice for the Conservatives, "good democracy" isn't one of their party platform planks these days.