Kevin O’Leary, the Boston-based former CBC personality said that if he were ever elected, he would make unions illegal. He is one of 14 people running to lead the Conservative Party of Canada.

This was presumably before he had a plan to enter politics. He has since told the Toronto Star that he didn’t really mean that. He’d negotiate with unions, not outlaw them.

Whether or not O’Leary was lying then, lying now, or has honestly had a change of heart about unions hardly matters. The Conservatives have had a hostile relationship with organized labour and it’s unlikely to change, regardless of who is elected.

Among the 14 candidates, there is a troubling convergence of policy and ideas. This is most evident when the candidates talk about the economy.

“The economy” is many things. It’s industry: resource extraction, construction, retail, agrifood, and banks. It’s health care and education. It’s public infrastructure, public service, the arts, and telecommunications. In capitalism, the economy is everything: from our access to food and shelter, to our individual sense of meaning and self-identity.

The economy is certainly a favoured discussion topic among right-wing politicians. But workers? Not so much.

The Conservative voting system requires candidates to have riding-by-riding support, not simple popular support. It’s a system that disadvantages the bombastic and populist rhetoric of candidates like O’Leary and Kellie Leitch, and helps candidates who have demonstrated national and consistent support.

One of those candidates is Andrew Scheer. Scheer is the former Speaker of the House and an Ontario transplant from Saskatchewn whose folksy downhomeyness is only outdone by rhetoric such as: “Our forest industry is currently under attack. Pressure groups like Greenpeace are threatening our forest industry by disseminating false information to clients of Canadian businesses operating in the forestry sector. Our forestry workers use the best practices in the world and we need to tell that story. We must fight back and defend ourselves.”

His plan to promote Canadian lumber includes demonstrating how workers cut down trees. He even says workers! But this is about as close as Scheer gets to talking about workers. Of his 14 featured policies at his website, none are about the economy. He wants even more free trade, but the details are thin. He opposes condemning Islamophobia and paradoxically supports more religious freedom.

Lisa Raitt, former Minister of Labour, promises to “create jobs for all Canadians” through a combination of lower taxes, smaller government, and more jobs in the extractive industries. Of course, smaller government will mean fewer jobs, but there’s no explanation or strategy to square that contradiction.

Erin O’Toole has promised to give young people who have finished a post-secondary degree or apprenticeship $100,000 in tax breaks before they turn 30. If they graduated in coding or engineering, the tax break increases to $200,000. It’s a program that would reward the rich: You can only get a tax break if you make enough money to be in a higher income bracket. A recently engineering graduate, who is most likely to be a man who makes $120,000, is going to benefit from a $200,000 tax break much more than a social worker who can barely crack $30,000.

Among the candidates, there is general agreement that the best way to stimulate Canada’s economy is through tax cuts. Every candidate is promising to lower taxes, with the most extreme position held by Rick Peterson. He vows to eliminate corporate income tax entirely. Peterson is a long-shot candidate, but has announced his intention to run in Montreal for the seat recently vacated by Stéphane Dion.

The connection between lower taxes and job creation is the subject of great debate. There is no clear line from one to the other, and Canadians should be worried that this stands in as the most prominent jobs policy.

Lower taxes mean less money for services and infrastructure paid by the federal government. There are ways to make up for this gap, like privatizing parts of the public system so that they are funded by user fees, but privatization schemes only benefit people with higher incomes. In a Canada with no corporate income tax, we would have $37.9 billion less for federal services and provincial transfer payments that pay for health care, education, and municipal services.

Conservatives argue that corporations would have more revenue and profit, and in theory, would hire more people. More people receiving a salary would then boost the purchasing power of individuals, who could then choose the private school or private hospital of their liking.

But the correlation between tax cuts and an improved labour market is suspect. David Doorey, labour law professor at York University, cautions his students from believing the argument that there’s a clear correlation: “The Tory assertion that corporate tax cuts ‘create jobs in Canada’ or ‘improve productivity’ is a not a fact, it is an assertion only, and a highly dubious one at that when the ‘evidence’ is reviewed.”

There is a crisis of ideas and debate within the Conservative Party—and the broad consensus that lower taxes are central to improving Canadians’ access to work signals that Conservatives are more interested in undoing the social security net of Canada than they are about strengthening it.

The Conservative Party of Canada’s leadership race, scheduled to conclude in May 2017, is off to an inauspicious start. Between fights in the name of “Canadian values” and hot takes on same-sex marriage, the candidates appear to be competing to see who can advocate the most regressive policies, with a few notable exceptions.

This takes a look at the five frontrunners—Kellie Leatch, Brad Trost, Maxime Bernier, Michael Chong and Lisa Raitt—and their respective proposals for immigration, social issues, the environment and the economy.

Kellie Leitch

Leitch’s signature proposal is “screening immigrants, refugees, and visitors for anti-Canadian values.” Her website boasts, “Kellie is the only candidate who will ensure that those coming to Canada believe in the equality of women, freedom of religion, and equality under law,” but is short on details on how she plans to achieve this.

According to a recent interview with Toronto Life, the Simcoe Grey MP opposes the legalization of recreational marijuana, supports gay marriage, and identifies as anti-abortion.

She vows to repeal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s national carbon tax if elected, insisting that carbon pricing should be left to the provinces.

Leitch vows to balance the budget by instituting a cap on government spending. Her website hints at mass privatization when it says that the government must “find new ways to get things done—new ways that don’t involve increasing taxes or borrowing money.”

Brad Trost

Though critical of Leitch’s vague “Canadian values” test, Trost (Saskatoon-University) said in an emailed statement that he wants to distinguish between immigrants who “Choose Canada” for its values and those who “Use Canada” for its public services.

Trost is staunchly opposed to gay marriage, wants “legislation to protect pre-born victims of crime,” and supports tough on crime legislation. “Catch and release is great for fishing, but not so great for criminals,” he said.

“I don’t think the uncertain science around climate change should be leveraged to force producers to leave oil and gas and coal in the ground,” he wrote, contending that the negative of job losses from reducing fossil fuel dependence outweigh the positives.

Trost aims “to keep corporate and income taxes LOW (sic),” which he said would be his main priority as prime minister.

Maxime Bernier

Bernier “plans to make an announcement on immigration later in the campaign,” says spokesman Maxime Hupe.

The Beauce, Que. MP supported the removal of the party’s “definition of marriage as being the union between a man and a woman” at its May 2016 policy convention in Vancouver, according to his website.

However, he vowed to reopen the abortion debate if party members request it, allowing a free vote. This is despite the vehemently anti-abortion Campaign Life Coalition rating him as consistently pro-abortion and therefore “not supportable.”

“Our prosperity is, and will remain for decades to come, dependent on fossil fuels to a large extent,” his website reads. He calls advocates of national carbon taxation “extremist green activists” who “want to see their standard of living significantly reduced to contribute in a negligible way to the global fight against climate change.”

Bernier advocates leaving the issue of carbon taxation up to the provinces and allowing the private sector to develop green energy of its own accord.

In a speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto, Bernier called for a reduction in the corporate tax rate to 10 per cent from 15 percent and the outright abolition of capital gains taxes.

Michael Chong

Chong (Wellington-Halton Hills) seeks to maintain the status quo on immigration, noting in a statement that immigrants and refugees are already “screened for criminality, war crimes, terrorism, health, and economic reasons.” Leitch’s proposal to vet newcomers for “Canadian values” is thus “not workable.”

He also vows not to “reopen divisive social issues,” namely those that have already been decided by Parliament, like abortion, same-sex marriage, and assisted suicide.

An outlier amongst the leadership candidates, Chong advocates a carbon tax, albeit one that is revenue neutral, to discourage fossil fuel consumption and reach the international target for emission reductions by 2030. 

To make up for the carbon tax, Chong vows to slash personal income taxes by 10 percent and corporate taxes by 5 percent.

Lisa Raitt

The Campaign Life Coalition rates Raitt as “unsupportable” due to her participation in the 2016 Toronto Pride parade and pro-abortion voting record. However, the group notes her opposition to assisted suicide, which she attributes to her Catholic faith.

In parliament, she vocally opposed the federal Liberals’ carbon taxation plan, advocating corporate solutions to what she acknowledges as the reality of man-made climate change.

During the party’s November leadership debate in Saskatoon, Raitt hinted at a reduction of inter-provincial trade barriers as a central tenet of her fiscal policies.

As the most recent addition to the leadership race, the Milton MP has yet to outline specific proposals on most issues, nor did her office respond to requests for comment.