Conservatives under Harper started to align their policies more with Democrats and then with eventually Republicans. The gag orders on scientists, climate denial, private prisons, mandatory minimum sentences with a focus on drug crimes, slashing social programs, tightening up immigration and nationality rules, singling out muslims, and broad tax cuts without specific goals. This is the playbook of the US right / global far-right. The recent feud / split with the new Libertarians in Canada I think illustrates that at least a subset of the party was dragging everyone right, and eventually they had to break off. Of course trump is one step further right still so by comparison they appear downright reasonable. Then at the provincial level Ford speaks for himself haha.

I can’t imagine for instance a Joe Clark conservative jumping at these ideas but maybe it was always like that?

Fair enough, this was basically what I thought you meant; there are a lot of people in the "lol they is nazis because they is tories lol" camp and I worry sometimes that nobody is actually paying attention to the specific issues.

The one that really got to me was the F-35 purchase order, which they did not even try to explain to the public.

I hope the PPC can bring some competition and vigour back to our parliament, and get them actually talking about issues, and talking to their own constituents rather than to the fourth wall.

I don't agree with all of their framing, and the English is not native, but their platform documents actually name the laws and procedures that correspond to their legislative priorities, in plain language, and that gives me the warm fuzzies.

F-35 was such a nightmare lol. Definitely with you that competition is always good, I like that while the NDP isn’t likely to enter office any time soon there’s 3 or 4 (if you count the Greens) major parties in Canada. That gives me the warm fuzzies even if I don’t agree with all the policies of each.

Two parties rounds down to one.

I've been out of Canada for 15 years, so I missed the whole Conservatives under Harper. However, I think to be fair wrt comparing today's Conservatives to Joe Clark's Conservatives, the latter organisation doesn't really exist any more. The Conservatives were down to 2 seats when they merged with Reform Party. I think that's where to you start to see the drift to the right. They had to actively kick out the really extreme right wingers when that happened, but it's just not the same party at all IMHO. Seeing from abroad, I always got the impression that Harper's government was pretty much exactly what you might expect from a slightly toned down Reform party and it wasn't really a surprise to me.

Thanks for the perspective. I spent about half the Harper years abroad, and while I remember the Progressives Conservatives and the Reform / Canadian Alliance parties merging back in what, 2003? I wasn't really paying enough attention to politics back then to understand the implications. I think to your point the Conservatives in the merger basically marketed themselves as a more moderate Reform party.