The past few days have been very difficult on traditional conservatives in Canada.  At the Conservative Party of Canada's national convention in Vancouver, delegates voted in favor of same-sex marriage and to progress along the path toward marijuana legalization.

Individual delegates at the party convention also caused a stir.  As reported by Maclean's, a Canadian national current affairs magazine:

That debate turned emotional at an election review session Friday where party officials candidly acknowledged the strategic and tactical blunders that upended the 2015 campaign. But it was Urz Heer, a 47-year-old delegate who works for Brampton MP Kyle Seeback, who made the more lasting impressing on the room. She broke down as she assailed the party for its strategy.

"This last election campaign was a disaster. I'm also a Muslim and this campaign targeted us, unfairly," she said, her voice shaking with emotion.

"This party worked actively and aggressively against my people." When some delegates fired back that it did not, Heer doubled down: "It did," she insisted. "It did."

"This country belongs to everyone, including me. For the first time I felt that I didn't belong here, and this is my country. It's unfair. It was unfair to my people."

A review of Ms. Heer's current LinkedIn profile reveals the following:

Volunteer Experience: ... June 2009-2011- Director of Brampton West Federal Liberal Riding Association ... Director Brampton West Federal Liberal Riding Association November 2014 -- Present (1 year 7 months)

This is confusing.  Ms. Heer, according to her own profile, appears to still be the director of the Brampton West Federal Liberal Riding Association.  How, then, does one get to be a delegate at the Conservative Party's national convention while apparently also concurrently being a director in the Liberal Party?

(Note: A "riding" is a Canadian electoral district.)

Her Twitter feed also shows a deep admiration for Barack Obama and deep dislike for Donald Trump.  Some notable tweets by Ms. Heer include the following:

• tweeting "entertainment tv for #canadians is watching #DonaldTrump and the #USPresidential race. #GOPDebate #Whatthe ?"
• retweeting a fact tweet stating that "Israel has broke 65 U.N resolutions with no consequences. Iraq broke two and got invaded, bombed and destroyed."
• multiple approving tweets on Leonardo di Caprio's Oscar speech about climate change, including "Yes! Leo did it. #Oscars" and "Awesome speech Leo on #climatechange. #LeonardoDiCaprio #OscarsSoLeo," and retweeting the White House's tweet stating that "Climate change 'is the most urgent threat facing our entire species.' RT if you agree with @LeoDiCaprio. #Oscars"
• tweeting approval of violent protests in Chicago against Donald Trump: "Well done #Chicago ! #TrumpRally #TrumpChicago #Trump #DumpTrump #donalddrumph #ChicagoProtest #ChicagoRally #USElections2016 #USElection"
• tweeting support for the former leader of the far left New Democratic Party: "Much respect to you @ThomasMulcair for standing up for what you believed and serving people in your role as #NDP leader. #NDP2016 . #cdnpoli"
• retweeting Sandy Garossino's (who edits the very non-conservative National Observer) anti-white men tweet: "Body language of the white men in this photo foretells the #cpc16 future. #cdnpoli"

Clearly some very ideologically complicated times in the Conservative Party.

Equally confusing was the statement to Maclean's by Monte Solberg – a former cabinet member in prime minister Stephen Harper's government – that "climate change is the most important policy issue facing the party and country."  Regardless of where you stand on whether or not climate change is dominantly caused by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, to claim this is "the [single] most important policy issue facing the party and country" is absurd.  Ongoing economic difficulties, only exacerbated by Harper's policies, coupled with geopolitical challenges from the Islamification of the West and expansionary tendencies in Russia and China, are far greater threats.

Conservative member of Parliament Michelle Rempel apparently "wants to focus on 'taking the Conservative lens and transposing it over the lens of being a woman' ... 'Are there different viewpoint [sic] and ways to look at pushing a feminist agenda?'"  So much for gender-blind conservatism.

Also coming to light at the convention was a study examining why the Conservative Party got its proverbial behind booted out of office last October by the Liberal Party.  Except the study was apparently conducted by the former federal director of the Australian Liberal Party.  That is sure to endear the party to old-stock Canadians.  Lose an election, and then call in foreign liberals to analyze why conservatives lost.  Perhaps choices such as these are exactly why conservatives walked away from the party.  Next time, try hiring a conservative Canadian citizen for such work.

Of course, nearly a decade in office showed that Harper's Conservative Party had a generally greater love for immigrants and foreigners than old-stock Canadians, despite superficial protestations to the contrary.  In fact, far too many Conservative Party leaders have a real disdain for old-stock Canadians, seeing them as just unwilling to work for those rock-bottom wages and nonexistent rights that imported temporary foreign workers can conveniently do.

The party's leadership candidates are hardly inspiring confidence.  All current and potential contenders supported the same-sex marriage policy.

Tony Clement, in particular, has a history of questionable judgement.  In addition to supporting taxpayer-funded monuments to communism on Canadian soil, even standing for the communist anthem, Clement also "played a key role in launching the Chemical[s] Management Plan, which the Conservative government claimed 'made Canada a world leader in chemical management'."

That was a wise decision.  One of the "Science Committee Core Members" for the Canadian Chemicals Management Plan is Miriam Diamond from the University of Toronto, who – once the Conservative Party lost the federal election last fall – authored an op-ed in the leading academic journal Environmental Science & Technology titled "Out of the Woods" in which she attacks the Conservative Party's policies and engages in what can only be reasonably described as a partisan love-in toward the incoming Liberal Party government.  Great choice, Tony – nothing like creating and supporting government agencies that despise your party.  That is an election winner and a great way to inspire confidence in the conservative base.

Other residual issues of deep concerns to social conservatives have never been properly addressed.  The drummer in Stephen Harper's band was recently jailed for two counts of sexual interference involving a 13-year-old girl, going – yet again – to the heart of the former prime minister's judgement.  Then there was the incident of the police having to respond to the prime minister's official residence "to tend to a drunken 18-year-old woman the same night Prime Minister Stephen Harper's son Ben held an 18th-birthday pool party."  The limited details the press has been able to obtain are troubling:

Paramedics have said the RCMP called them to the residence around 1 a.m. for a drunk, underage woman near the property's west gate... A young woman contacted last month by the Citizen, who said she was at a party at the residence, said about 20 of Ben Harper's friends and sports teammates attended, many with swimsuits. She said Ben's RCMP protective detail was around but she didn’t see either of his parents. It's believed an underage woman was taken to hospital with a suspected case of alcohol poisoning.

Unattended, underage drinking to the point of alcohol poisoning in the official prime minister's residence?  Great parenting skills that all traditional conservatives must surely value in their party leader.

Then there were the comments of Tom Flanagan – one of Harper's former key advisers, whom the Toronto Star characterizes as "the man behind Stephen Harper's rise to power, the godfather of the rebirth of right-wing Canadian politics" – stating publicly that "viewing child porn shouldn't be a crime."

The future leader of the far-left New Democratic Party, Thomas Mulcair, was also apparently recruited by the Conservative Party back in 2007.  The question must be asked: why?  That is analogous to Ted Cruz's campaign attempting to recruit Bernie Sanders as a V.P. candidate.

Conservatives aren't asking too much for (trigger warning: potentially offensive word forthcoming) a "normal" leadership team in the party.  Surely, there must be some common ground between ISIS-lite and the Studio 54 libertarian lifestyle that seem to represent the party's bimodal distribution social policy end members?

The cancer runs deep in the party, which is why conservatives have been so confused for the last several years.