Suddenly, the World Economic Forum is a ballot box issue in a Manitoba byelection

Back in 2008, Maxime Bernier — as Stephen Harper’s foreign affairs minister — went to Davos, Switzerland and set foot on the grounds of the World Economic Forum’s annual conference. No one could have imagined at the time that he would one day be attacked publicly by his former party for being there.

Fifteen years after his trip to Davos, Bernier is running under the banner of his own party — the People’s Party of Canada — in a byelection in the Manitoba riding of Portage-Lisgar. And the Conservative candidate has made the World Economic Forum a ballot box issue.

“Unlike Maxime Bernier, I will never attend the World Economic Forum or join up with groups who don’t put Canada first,” Branden Leslie tweeted last week.

Below that text was an image with the key message displayed in block letters: “I PROMISE I WILL NEVER ATTEND WEF.”

The Conservative Party’s pursuit of Bernier on this point predates the byelection.

“I think Maxime really has to come clean on why he attended the World Economic Forum, why he was involved in that,” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre told an interviewer in March.

Leslie’s tweet got Bernier’s attention. And when he responded by trying to parse the meaning of the word “attend” (his argument boiled down to the claim that he went to Davos to meet with other foreign ministers who happened to be there, not to actually attend the conference), the Conservative Party and Poilievre pounced.

“Maxime Bernier lied to cover up his involvement in the World Economic Forum,” Poilievre tweeted.

For many Canadians — maybe the vast majority — this might seem like an an obscure and impenetrable debate. But a not-insignificant number of voters — especially on the right side of the political spectrum — seem to see it as a very relevant and important issue.

How the WEF became a villain

The World Economic Forum might best be viewed as a fancy think tank. It has no real power but it publishes studies and policy papers. Each year, it also convenes a closely watched conference in Davos — several days of speeches, public discussions and private chats — that regularly attracts important political and business leaders from around the world, along with the odd socially conscious movie star.

It is both an impressive conglomeration of people and an easily mockable affair. If nothing else, it’s a triumph of event planning.

There is much that one might criticize about “Davos” (the name of the town has become synonymous with the forum) and what it represents. But in recent years, the World Economic Forum has become a focal point for conspiracy theorists — the inspiration for a new wave of tales about powerful people conspiring in the shadows to impose their dark agenda on the masses, similar to the Trilateral Commission or the Bilderberg Group in previous eras.

Those conspiracy theories really picked up steam during the pandemic. Last year, the WEF factored into a tide of emails and phone calls that flooded the Senate when a bill concerning basic income was put up for consideration. The ethics commissioner was inundated with requests to investigate alleged links between parliamentarians and the WEF.

Poilievre alluded to one conspiracy theory when he denounced the “great reset” in November 2020. A year and a half later, while running for the Conservative Party leadership, he vowed that no cabinet minister in a government led by him would be allowed to attend the WEF’s annual conference.

Poilievre is also not the only Conservative with concerns about the World Economic Forum. Leslyn Lewis, infrastructure critic in the party’s shadow cabinet, has been even more outspoken.

The first thing to note about Poilievre’s promise and the criticism directed at Bernier is how dramatically the Conservative Party’s official position on Davos has shifted.

Prime Minister Harper himself spoke to the forum in 2010 and 2012. Multiple Conservative ministers attended in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. John Baird, who co-chaired Poilievre’s campaign, made the trip on more than one occasion.

In theory, the World Economic Forum could be invoked as part of a larger critique of recent economic orthodoxy or the uneven results of globalization and policies like free trade and corporate tax cuts. But a political leader could articulate such an argument while still making it clear that they do not endorse the most sinister theories about the organization.

O’Toole delivers final address in House of Commons

Former leader of the Conservative Party Erin O’Toole announced he would be leaving federal politics in the spring and would not seek re-election. During his final address, he advised parliamentarians against letting ‘performance politics’ get in the way of the important work they do.

It is those theories that former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole called out in his final speech to the House of Commons this week and in a subsequent interview with CBC Radio’s The House.

After reminding his colleagues of Canada’s long history of promoting and working within multilateral organizations, O’Toole told MPs that “we are allowing conspiracy theories about the UN or the World Economic Forum to go unchallenged, or we attribute sinister motives to these organizations or people in a way that is simply not true or not fair.”

If there is an explanation for why the Conservatives are talking about WEF — particularly in the context of the Portage-Lisgar byelection — it might be found in a survey published last year by Abacus Data.

Abacus found that 20 per cent of all respondents said it was definitely or probably true that “the World Economic Forum is a group of global elites with a secretive strategy to impose their ideas on the world.” But support for the idea was highest among Conservative and People’s Party voters — 30 per cent among CPC supporters, 62 per cent among PPC supporters. (The margin of error for those sub-samples is higher.)

‘The dark side of some of these ideas’

If Poilievre is worried about Bernier — and he certainly acts like he is — needling the People’s Party leader about WEF might make sense, at least as a short-term political tactic.

In the long term, there are much bigger things than a single byelection to worry about.

Amarnath Amarasingam, a professor at Queen’s University who has studied conspiracy theories, said this week that “what we are seeing here is not so much Poilievre pushing conspiracy theories himself, but meeting the voters where they are — and sadly, after the pandemic, many of these conspiracy theories are held by more and more of the voting public.”

“Many of these ideas about so-called globalist agendas and individual freedoms being curtailed for the sake of the collective were very much mainstreamed because of pandemic policies. I fear that most of the politicians who are echoing these ideas because they think that’s what their voters want them to talk about don’t fully understand the dark side of some of these ideas. They have a surface-level understanding of how harmful these ideas can be for our democratic discourse,” Amarasingam said via email.

“For them, it just sounds like they are promoting individual freedoms and Canadian economic interests. But these ideas, for these conspiratorial communities, arise from a deep well of apocalyptic thinking, antisemitism and far-right populism. Politicians should be careful not to inadvertently mainstream these viewpoints in their campaigns.”

On a very basic level, the distrust and suspicion that is central to conspiracy theories seems antithetical to the trust and cohesion that is necessary for democracy to function. But Amarasingham’s view — that politicians are echoing their voters — also aligns with something else O’Toole told the House of Commons this week.

If politicians continue to let conspiracy theories go unchallenged, he said, “we are allowing others to define the debate for us and we risk allowing others to set the course for this country, because too many members on all sides of this chamber … are becoming followers of our followers when we should be leaders.”

And if leaders are too willing to follow their followers, there’s no telling where they — and Canadian democracy — might end up.