The battle for post-Trump conservatism is already underway - and Canada's Tories are watching closely - 2019-07-03

The battle for post-Trump conservatism is already underway - and Canada's Tories are watching closely July 3, 2019, Stuart Thomson, National Post

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On a hot Toronto evening at the end of June, about two dozen conservative big-thinkers crowded into a small private room in a pub called the Bedford Academy to hear that free trade and the free market aren't all they're cracked up to be.

It's not a message that historically resonates with Tories, and it's possible that some of the attendees — which included people who ranked highly in the federal government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper and members of Doug Ford's Ontario current government — were simply there to socialize and eat steak frites. But it may be a sign of the Trumpian times that Oren Cass, a former policy wonk for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign and now a fellow at the Manhattan Institute think tank, wasn't run out of town for his free market heresies, instead capturing the attention of a polite — if skeptical — audience of Canada's Conservative power-players convened by Sean Speer, once an economic adviser to Harper and now a fellow at the University of Toronto's Munk School and the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

Cass's work — which questions the mantra that a growing economy eventually benefits everyone and which dismisses the idea that the free market is always right — is part of a broader re-think of conservative free market orthodoxy.

Wikipedia cite:

{{cite news | first = Stuart | last = Thomson | title = The battle for post-Trump conservatism is already underway - and Canada's Tories are watching closely | url = https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/republican-wonks-preparing-for-the-post-trump-world-are-questioning-conservative-free-market-orthodoxy | work = National Post | date = July 3, 2019 | accessdate = December 10, 2019 }}