CanadianTory's Test Thread

[CanadianTory]

First infobox done on the new laptop.

 

[CanadianTory]

Spoiler: Logos

 

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Spoiler: Logos

 

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Spoiler: Map

 

[CanadianTory]

For New Democrats, many admitted that they had hoped to experience such an evening with a different leader, the man who had gotten them so far in the first place. It was Jack Layton's night, but the man himself was not there to celebrate it with them, leaving an unmistakable tinge of melancholy hanging over the gathering. Standing in front of the crowd of jubilant supporters and party staffers in his Outremont riding in Montreal, some with tears in their eyes as they witnessed the accomplishment of what many in the room had spent a lifetime chasing, Tom Mulcair thanked his campaign team, his staff, and of course Canadians. Borrowing the ambiguous and hokey phrase that had defined the election campaign, the newly minted 'Prime Minister-designate' proclaimed that change had come to Canada, and that change was here to stay (For such a political event, paradoxical statements are forgivable, even expected). Only hours earlier the major media networks had all projected that, for the first time in Canadian history, the New Democratic Party of Canada would form government, albeit a minority. So for once it actually seemed like the use of the word 'change' was appropriate. But the idea that Tom Mulcair would stand in front of this crowd, wearing a genuine smile on his face, with one-hundred-and-thirty-four MPs poised to join him in Ottawa, still seemed pretty unbelievable. In fact, only weeks earlier such a scene would have appeared pretty improbable.

Make no mistake, the campaign waged by the New Democrats was not a successful one, not in the truest sense of the word. Oxymoronic, sure, considering it was Tom Mulcair, not Stephen Harper nor Justin Trudeau, who stood in front of their supporters on Election Night smiling and waving, having smashed 148 years of Liberal and Conservative duality in Ottawa. The NDP was a party that found itself in a position, not unlike the Conservatives were following their birth ahead of the 2004 campaign, simultaneously trying to make themselves appealing to the wider, more moderate electorate, while at the same time keeping their more partisan, more ideological base. It was a new situation to find themselves in. A lot of voters who wanted change and wanted to see Stephen Harper finally get the boot parked their vote with the NDP, not because they were true believers but because that was the party that had the best shot to make that goal a reality. Tom Mulcair had been elected leader of the New Democrats in 2012, following the untimely passing of Jack Layton, precisely on the premise that he was the most electable candidate to centrist Canada. Here was a former Quebec Liberal who had served in the cabinet of former Quebec Premier Jean Charest, himself a former leader of the defunct Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, who had cut his teeth in the Quebec National Assembly, a place just as if not more ruthless than the House of Commons, appearing ready to jettison just about everything that made New Democrats feel good about themselves for the last thirty-years or so. After all, to many within the new leader's inner circle, the only reason the NDP had made such a monumental breakthrough in Quebec, winning more seats than the Bloc Quebecois ever did, was because they had managed to convince a group of non-traditional NDP voters, namely Quebec nationalists, to switch over and give them a chance. Mulcair simply sought to continue those efforts in a more national strategy. The party had come first in one-hundred-and-three ridings and second in over another hundred or so others, and strategists had convinced themselves that the numbers for a broad governing coalition were there with the right message and the right leader. Compared to the alternatives seeking to lead the post-Layton NDP, like Brian Topp and Nathan Cullen, Tom Mulcair was the obvious next step. But of course, a political party that seeks to change upsets the status quo within itself, and the NDP was no different. Some, like former National Director Gerald Caplan, worried that a convert to the party like Mulcair risked the New Democrats becoming the very thing that they had defeated; Liberals.

But while the New Democrats sought to change themselves into this new and grand political party, Stephen Harper and the Conservatives were content with continuing on as they were. It had led them to three straight election victories and had made Harper the second longest serving Conservative Prime Minister in Canadian history, behind only Sir John A. himself. Yet, according to the polls, the growing desire for change meant that the Tories were entering into their fourth election campaign as government as the undisputed underdogs.

Prime Ministers grow into the job. Very rarely does Canada find a politician who can immediately occupy that kind of power and influence on day one without making some kind of slip-up. Paul Martin, Brian Mulroney, and certainly Joe Clark all struggled in their early days. Stephen Harper was no different. When the former Reformer finally settled his family and belongings into 24 Sussex, he lacked the type of confidence that defined Pierre Trudeau or Jean Chretien's stints in the job, and relied on a fairly capable group of Ministers and insiders to make up for his shortcomings, perceived or otherwise. Jim Prentice served as his de facto deputy, and was the kind of smooth talking political operator that oil executives suspicious of Harper could reach out to. Same with MacKay and Flaherty. But inevitably time marches on, and Prime Ministers gain more and more confidence, until that confidence morphs into egotism and the belief that they are capable of accomplishing all things at all times. Their focus narrows and the number of figures they rely on for counsel shrinks. Again, Stephen Harper was no different. So, after finally capturing that strong, stable, national Conservative majority government that he kept asking for in the 2011 campaign, Harper started to relax, to let his newfound confidence shine through, and the wheels started to come off the Tory bus. For the most part, the Conservatives had weathered some fairly damning scandals in their march to their majority. The Bernier scandal, the G8 "Fake Lake" spending in 2010, the Afghan Detainee question, various prorogations of parliament, Peter Mackay's helicopter misadventures, and getting found in contempt of parliament itself failed to capture the public's attention and generate any meaningful outcry in the opposition's favour. Just ask Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff. Ironically it was the Senate, whose reform had been one of the centerpieces of the Tories' previous platforms, which had left the deepest dents in the government's poll numbers. Unsuccessful attempts to radically reform the chamber had yielded to the appointment of dozens of Tory loyalists, cronyism which would have enraged Reformer Steve Harper. Mike Duffy, Patrick Brazeau and Pamela Wallin all generated unflattering headlines for the boss, including forced suspension, improper expense claims, and criminal charges. Harper, usually a calm, cool, unflappable figure during Question Period, finally appeared uncomfortable under the flurry of pointed questions posed by Mulcair and the rest of the opposition. Making matters worse, Harper's loyal chief of staff, Nigel Wright, cut a $90,000 cheque for Duffy's questionable expenses, supposedly without the Prime Minister's knowledge or approval. Yikes.

Then there were the election expenses and robocall accusations. Back in 2006 the Conservatives pleaded guilty for exceeding the national election advertising spending limits. Then shortly after the 2011 election it emerged that robocalls had misdirected some voters away from the polls, culminating in the conviction of a former Tory staffer. Once is coincidence, twice is happenstance, and thrice is a pattern. The resignations of Conservative MPs Dean Del Mastro and Peter Penashue over illegal election spending also didn't help ease the impression that the once transparent and anti-corruption Conservatives had become far too comfortable in power.

Joining the Tories as both joint-underdogs and (If the polls were to be believed) almost frontrunners were the federal Liberals, Canada's once unstoppable political juggernaut that, as of the last federal campaign, had been relegated to an embarrassing third place in the House of Commons for the first time in the party's history. After more than a decade in power under Jean Chrétien, infighting over succession and a litany of scandals had eroded the public's confidence in "Canada's Natural Governing Party", which had only grown worse under the successive leadership stints of Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff. Rather than help the party move on from their tumultuous past, both Dion and Ignatieff allowed the Conservatives under Harper to further paint the party as out-of-touch from ordinary voters. With a caucus of only thirty-four MPs, barely enough to fill a storage closet, Liberals looked to someone who could help bring the party back to relevance, to garner some positive headlines, and breath new life into their dismal fundraising efforts. They instead settled on Bob Rae. That name may seem familiar, as it was Rae who had previously sought the leadership of the Liberal Party twice, in 2006 and 2008, both ending in defeat. The idea of Bob Rae as interim leader was sold to caucus on the premise that he could correct and steady the ship as they search for a new captain. Rae and his team hoped that if they did a good enough job, the third time would prove to be the charm and the party would hand the former Ontario Premier the leadership on a silver platter, as it had done with Ignatieff only a few years earlier. But the idea of a twice defeated leadership aspirant and the guy who's time as the first and only NDP Premier of Canada's largest province still produced attack ads for the Ontario PCs didn't exactly produce enthusiasm. Yes, everybody respected him, but nobody really loved him either. The man everyone wanted to run (Aside from Rae and his inner circle) was the sunny and optimistic heir to one of Canada's most familiar political namesakes, Justin Trudeau. First elected in 2008, Trudeau the younger had sworn off any interest in running for his dad's old job, and at one point even appeared poised to quit politics altogether. But the Chrétien people were gone. So were Paul Martin's. The people who had run Dion and Ignatieff's leadership offices had also quietly found employment elsewhere, having been chased out after their employer got canned. That'll happen when most of the party's MPs are defeated. Turns out it was enough for Trudeau and his own inner circle, spearheaded by Ontario Liberal insider Gerry Butts, to plot a takeover that was largely welcomed by what remained of the Liberal rank-and-file. Aside from the longshot candidacies of a few leftover MPs and his dad's ex-girlfriend, Trudeau won the job in a cakewalk, capturing over seventy percent of the vote. With little connections to the party's recent past, Trudeau's ascension saw the party's poll numbers shoot up over night, and it appeared that for the first time in a very long time Canadians were seriously looking at the Liberals as a credible option again.

Each of the three major parties sought to accomplish the impossible in the election. Stephen Harper and the Conservatives were aiming to win their fourth straight election, something that no politician had managed since Sir Wilfred Laurier in 1908. Justin Trudeau and the Liberals, if they wanted to finally return to power, had to gain well over one-hundred seats and leapfrog two other parties to get to first. Tom Mulcair and the New Democrats simply had to win. The latter two goals had never happened in Canada, period. When Stephen Harper called the 11-week campaign, the longest in the nation's history, every knew why he did it. The Tories were the only party with that kind of cash to burn, and if they were to convince enough Canadians that change shouldn't be the theme of the election, and that it should revolve around the economy, or defence, or whatever the issue was to keep Harper in charge, they would need all the time they could get.

Yet innovative was not a term which could be used to describe the Conservative Party's 2015 campaign. Much like the leader himself, the party machinery had only grown more insular and rigid since their majority-winning campaign four-years earlier. Rather than seek out new blood and new approaches, Harper relied on the same team that got him that majority back in 2011, with the exception of former campaign director Doug Finley, who had passed away in 2013. In his place stepped Jenni Byrne, a true blue believer and former acolyte of the Reform Party. Byrne was safe, knew what her boss wanted and how to play to his strengths. But she was also, like her boss, openly hostile towards the media, and sought to protect and retain the party base, rather than growing it. Byrne was also predictable, and her team birthed a campaign that not only sought to reject change as a central election theme, but as a potential strategy for the Tories. But things had changed. Gone was the Bloc Quebecois as an electoral force, and along with them the narrative that they would be a threat to national unity by propping up an unorthodox coalition led by either the Liberals or the NDP. Then there was the stunning lack of a signature campaign policy. No 2006 GST-cut or the like this time. Instead, the Conservative platform would read as a greatest hits album, a list of the government's record since coming to power, with sprinkles of new spending promises here and there to fill in the holes. Not exactly fresh material. Harper had also lost, either through death or through retirements, a number of his most successful and well-known cabinet ministers. Diane Ablonczy, Shelley Glover, James Moore, John Baird, and the party's own deputy leader, Peter MacKay, had all decided to sit out 2015 and return home to their families. Jim Flaherty had died of a heart attack only a year earlier. The Team Harper strategy was dead before the election even began. More and more it appeared to be a one-man show. After a decade in power, voter fatigue, and a growing number of anti-Harper special interest groups, the task of re-electing the Harper government was monumental. Monumental, but not unachievable. The Conservatives under Harper had still balanced the budget, brought the debt-to-GDP levels down to about what it had been when they first came to power in 2006, and could claim a litany of other economic successes ranging from various free-trade agreements, to tax reductions, to reversing the growth of the federal government. If 'Change' was going to be the issue offered by their opponents, the Tories would offer up leadership, security, and the economy as their alternative. Their three paths to victory. While it showed some early signs of success, the party's other strategy of limiting the media to only five questions at election events, and their initial attempts to force attendees to sign non-disclosure agreements began overshadowing Harper's narrative. It only reinforced every negative perception about the Prime Minister and the ballot question of their opponents.

In the aftermath of their own inept and unfocused campaign in 2011, Liberals found their once great Big Red Machine, which had delivered Jean Chretien three straight majorities, in tatters. Gone was the Quebec base that had kept the party safe in campaigns past. Their presence in both Ontario and Atlantic Canada had been reduced to rumps. Out West he Liberal Party was virtually non-existent. Even worse the party was bankrupt. Which was why Trudeau's focus after getting elected leader in 2013 was largely spent on rebuilding. Everything. It would also provide Trudeau the opportunity to recruit more forty-something professions, much like himself, as candidates. Bill Morneau, Jody Wilson-Raybould, Harjit Sajjan, Jane Philpott, Andrew Leslie, and François-Philippe Champagne all represented the kind generation shift that Trudeau himself belonged to. No connections to the Chretien-Martin feuds of the last few decades. No connection to the Sponsorship Scandal. Fresh faced political newcomers who were experts in their respective fields. It would not be a slate consisting of lightweights or party staffers. Gerry Butts and Katie Telford, both of whom hailed from Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne's Ontario, sought to make that 'lack of experience' a strength. Team Trudeau, as it would be called, would represent "Real Change", and their leader was the best positioned of the three leaders to accomplish it. Butts and Trudeau also agreed that the Liberal campaign had to be fought on Sunny Ways. No negativity. Just gamble on providing voters a big and radical reason to vote Liberal and watch the votes pour in. For the most part it worked. Trudeau put in the work. He was the front of the party, crisscrossing the country, pledging to go into deficit spending to pay for some big and transformative policies like childcare. Voters were responding. Positively. Halfway through September internals showed the party rising fast, and the public polls confirmed it. The Liberals were in the lead, at the expense of a dropping NDP.

But then, like every campaign, an unexpected thing happened. Which led to more unexpected things.

Campaigns pride themselves at knowing the skeletons in their leader's closest. Usually they know where the dirt is, what it looks like, and how to respond to it. Sometimes that response leaves the other guy looking worse for having brought it up as an attack in the first place. In this instance, however, the Liberals were caught by surprise, and their response ended up making their guy look even worse.

On the morning of September 17th, the day of the Globe and Mail and Google Canada debate on the economy, it was reported by the Vancouver Sun that the Liberal leader, during his time as a teacher at West Point Grey Academy, had worn brownface makeup as part of an Aladdin costume. Butts and Trudeau had built the campaign around the idea of Sunny Ways, that doing politics differently and doing it better was possible. Achieving that meant making Trudeau the Prime Minister. So, discovering such a photo ran very counter to that narrative. It was hypocritical, if you were to listen to the supporters of the other parties. In the hastily-arranged scrum with reporters while campaigning in Calgary, Trudeau apologized for the incident. When asked why he had waited eighteen years to admit any wrongdoing, Trudeau appeared flustered and muttered something about it being an opportunity for everyone to reflect on their past behaviour. Pressed about whether or not there were other examples of racist behaviour, the Liberal leader, clearly annoyed, retorted that he wasn't a racist and charged the journalist to do better (Trudeau would later apologize for his response, claiming that he thought he had been accused of being a racist. Totally different). Liberal High Command was in a panic, and it appeared that their guy had been knocked off his game at perhaps the most pivotal moment of the campaign. Those fears were only confirmed later that evening as the debated unfolded. Gone was the charismatic and confident Trudeau of the first debate, and in his place was a man who was lackluster, spoke too quickly and was coming across too negative to too many pundits and journalists. He failed to push back against Mulcair's needling of his criticism of the Prime Minister for running deficits, while at the same time pledging to do the same himself. He failed to make a big enough distinction between his positions and the NDP's. His attacks against Harper came across as flat and rehearsed. It was a clear victory for Tom Mulcair, who came out looking like the real alternative to Stephen Harper. Justin Trudeau had looked like a teenager arguing with the adults.

The entire situation had also provided Mulcair and the New Democrats the chance to shift focus away from an issue that McGrath and Lavigne had worried would prove fatal to their campaign; the niqab. Only a few days prior to the blackface scandal, occurring simultaneously with the release of the NDP costing platform announcement, was a Conservative announcement by Denis Lebel, Harper's Quebec Lieutenant Denis Lebel that the government would appeal the previous day’s Federal Court of Appeal ruling allowing women to take their citizenship oaths while wearing the niqab and reinstate their ban on the practice within one hundred days of being re-elected. The Tory position was incredibly popular in Quebec, and Mulcair's firm opposition to it threatened to lead to the complete collapse of NDP support in the province, leading to the possibility of a resurgent Bloc. The blackface photo began to steal focus away from the issue. Media coverage over the issue had led to more clicks and more viewers, so more and more journalists began writing about it. Even Stephen Harper began to talk about the importance that the occupant of the Prime Minister's Office demonstrate moral as well as economic leadership.

And then, just a day prior to the Consortium debate, a second photo of Trudeau in blackface emerged. Then a third was posted on Twitter by Robert Fife. Liberals cried foul, but the damage was already done.

It was if someone had saved them just for the occasion, and decided to release them to make the most impact on the election. Trudeau's refusal to admit that there were additional photos after having been asked by reporters only compounded problems further. A large portion of the anti-Harper vote, which comprised something like sixty-five percent of the previous vote, were looking to back whoever they thought had the best chance to defeat Stephen Harper and get him out of Ottawa. As more and more compromising photos of Justin Trudeau were leaked, Tom Mulcair, boring and middle-of-the-road, was appearing the safer bet. Trudeau spent more time apologizing for past deeds, chalking them up to the youthful ignorance of a twenty-nine year old, and began backpedaling on the Liberal strategy of Sunny Ways. His stump speech was meaner, sounded more cynical, and seemed like a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding to the NDP, who in turn had recaptured some of that happy warrior magic that had lifted Jack Layton to Stornoway. Mulcair was energized, hungry, and his team decided to go all in. There wasn't going to be a better opportunity for a closing argument than this. Trudeau was young and naïve. Good intentioned, but too much of a risk. Tom Mulcair was a seasoned statesman. He could kick the Conservative's teeth in one moment, and have a bear with you the next. It was an unexpected end to a very long and bitter campaign. All the leaders returned to their home ridings to bask in the unbiased adoration of their die-hard supporters as they prepared to kick their feet up and watch the returns come in.

On Election Night voters opted for some change. After the results got through Atlantic Canada, which all the parties had understood to be the last great bastion of support for the federal Liberals under any scenario, Quebec surprisingly put to bed any doubts as to who would voters had trusted as the main Harper alternative. Winning sixty seats, Mulcair had surpassed Mulroney's 1984 showing in La Belle province, leaving the Liberals in a very distant second with seven. Ontario, demonstrating the strength of the Tories' strategy, split their vote almost evenly between the three parties and handed Harper almost sixty of their seats. It wouldn't be until the results came in from British Columbia, where the province narrowly broke in favor of the NDP, that the networks could finally call it. It wasn't enough for anyone to be even close to a majority, but enough that the drivers of that change would be that funny orange party led by that guy with the beard.

Spoiler: Map

Stephen Harper was now gone. The man who had dominated Canadian politics for much of the previous decade announced his resignation as leader without actually having said it in public. Old habits die hard and all that, and it was typical of Harper, who had long given up any pretense that he had any respect for journalists, whom he viewed with either suspicion or outright distain. Left in Harper's wake was a gigantic hole. Stephen Harper had effectively created the Conservative Party, won the leadership of the party, and had for the last eleven years been its ideological soul and reason for staying together. Without him, the Tories had to now ask themselves a very important question; who were they and what did this new Harper-less party now stand for? Luckily for the party, the outgoing boss had left them in pretty good shape. After nine-years in power, four of which as a majority government, the Tories still had 119 seats in the House of Commons. That was about twenty more than they had after their first outing as a party in 2004, and fifteen behind the newly minted NDP government. After nine-years of Brian Mulroney (and a few months of Kim Campbell), the PC Party found itself broke, with only two seats, and no future in sight. So not bad, all things considered. Before they could answer any big and meaningful questions about the future of the party and the Conservative movement, the newly minted caucus of Tory MPs would have to do the obvious and first pick an interim leader, someone who could lead the party for the next several months. That person would be barred from seeking the permanent leadership of the party, would face the unenviable task of trying to heard a caucus not held in-check by the fear of Stephen Harper, face-off against Tom Mulcair during Question Period, and then go back to being a normal MP at the end of it. Surprisingly a number of candidates decided to step forward and offer their services. Rona Ambrose, Dianne Finley, Candice Bergen, Mike Lake, Julian Fantino, Erin O'Toole, Rob Nicholson, John Williamson, and the tag-team consisting of Michelle Rempel and Denis Lebel rounded out the field of candidates who thought they would be best suited for the job. Despite the Tories' professed love for the first-past-the-post system, the contest would be decided through a preferential ballot, with only elected Tory Members of Parliament allowed to cast votes. Opting to keep the grey hair and same bland style, albeit with a newer, nicer tone, former Veteran's Affairs Minister and Durham MP Erin O'Toole ended up as the last man standing. First elected in 2012 following the resignation of Bev Oda over her preference for charging taxpayers for her expensive orange juice, O'Toole was seen as a steady hand who had helped bring down and temperature in the Veteran's portfolio after the unrest under his predecessor, Fantino. Such an accomplishment appeared attractive considering the circumstances. A veteran himself, O'Toole promised to hold the new government to account and pledged to pass onto the next leader a fully united party ready to take back power. Quebec MP and Libertarian firebrand Maxime Bernier had already indicated his intention to stand for the job, which came as a surprise to absolutely no one.

Justin Trudeau meanwhile found himself very much where he had started. Back in third place. Yet the case for keeping Trudeau was fairly obvious. The Liberals had risen from thirty-four to seventy-eight seats, more than doubling the size of their caucus. If Trudeau resigned, the party would simply have to elect another rookie leader, who would have to go through the process of starting all over again. At least the current guy had the name recognition and had now gotten the experience of fighting a national election. There was also the fact that there was no obvious leader-in-waiting, no Paul Martin or Michael Ignatieff type figure waiting in the wings. Justin Trudeau was now the face of the party, end of story. He could learn the lessons of his defeat and apply them in the next campaign (whenever that would be). Yet the membership, specifically the old guard type who proudly call themselves Liberals and not progressives, were pissed. There had been high hopes that Trudeau would be able to pull off the impossible, and for several moments during the campaign it looked like he would. Then blackface scuttled those plans, and shepherded enough of the anti-Harper vote to the NDP camp. That was now two elections in a row where the Liberal Party had ended up in third place. If it happened again, insiders worried about the continued existence of the party. It would also mean that Trudeau would definitely be out of a job. So, for the time being, the Liberals would assist the New Democrats where they agreed and prove to Canadians that it was the party of Sir Wilfred Laurier, not the party of Tommy Douglas, who had the maturity to usher and guide effective change through parliament, and hopefully not lose the progressive vote to the new government in the process.

As for the new government, Prime Minister Mulcair basked in the glory of the global media's coverage. The BBC and its affiliates declared it the beginning of the rise of unabashed social democracy in North America. CNN and MSCNB asked what it meant for the unfolding Democratic primary and whether it would benefit Bernie Sanders in his fight against Hillary Clinton. Fox News decried it as proof socialists had begun to infiltrate North America, and that the United States was their next target. Phone calls from various world leaders pored in congratulating him, including an invitation from President Barack Obama for a visit to the White House (Sure, it wasn't a state dinner, but it was the next best thing). Praise poured in from across the punditry for his decision to name a gender-balanced cabinet. It was about time, after all. With the help of the Liberals, the New Democrats would finally be able to get at least some things on their wish list through parliament. This was all the better for Mulcair and his team, since it meant he wouldn't need to rely on the party's more radical socialist members to support him. But the New Democrats had a long list of election promises to fulfill, and likely not a lot of time to implement them before the opposition decided to pull the plug on his government. It was time to get to work.

 

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[CanadianTory]

Turns out the key to winning elections is doing politics better than your opponents. Also possibly timing. Stephen Harper and the Conservatives lost the 2015 election campaign precisely because Harper, the guy every pundit claimed had moneyballed politics, had forgotten to follow his own lessons. Harper had succeeded as Canada's sixth longest serving Prime Minister, and the second longest Conservative after Sir John A. Macdonald, because he opted for compromise rather than strict adherence to ideology. He built bridges with Quebec nationalists, old-fashioned Atlantic Red Tories, the pragmatic Ontario business conservatives, and Canada's expanding ethnic communities. He even called Brian Mulroney and Joe Clark a few times asking for advice, despite having founded his political beginnings opposing the idea that either man was in fact a true conservative. Then, shortly after winning his long coveted majority, Stephen Harper simply stopped pretending to care. He got tired of trying to explain himself to the other side, and appeared increasingly content with just the loyal base of conservatives that agreed with him. That meant attitudes towards the media got worse, evident by the fact that the Tories only allowed five questions at campaign events. Not five questions per journalists, but rather five questions in total. It was a total disaster. Gone were the cabinet ministers and more pragmatic Tory insiders who could reign in Harper's more negative, self-inflicting tendencies. They all either retired or had been pushed out. By contrast Jenni Byrne, the former Reform acolyte-turned-campaign-director, was more than happy to play to her boss's more partisan, right-wing nature, and the wider campaign reflected that. Again, a complete mess. Harper had adopted the same outlook that Pierre Trudeau had towards the end of his time in office, that he was indispensable to the country, or in this case the Conservative Party, and that no one else could succeed in winning an election. In the end, as in turned out, neither could Harper.

Yet the Conservative Party, even without the man himself, was still the vehicle of Harperism. So was the conservative movement, that thing Tories liked to refer to themselves as to separate their party from the institution that is the Liberal Party of Canada. To many Tories their strength comes from their grassroots, even though the guy who led them for over a decade did little to listen to said grassroots. Didn't matter. He was still winning, sticking it to the Liberals. That was all that mattered. But with defeat, and Harper's not-so-public resignation, the party found itself asking; what did Harperism stand for without Harper?

Many pundits immediately claimed that the ensuing leadership election would break down along the ideological faultline that Harper had sown shut, namely between old-time Progressive Conservatives and the more populist former members of the Reform Party/Canadian Alliance. It would be Peter Mackay against Jason Kenney. Or Jean Charest against Jason Kenney. Or Jim Prentice against Jason Kenney. Maybe someone from the Mulroney family would give it a shot. That never ended up happening, a testament to Harper's record of healing intraparty animosity. Jim Prentice had retired back to the more profitable world of the private sector following his defeat at the hands of Rachel Notley and Alberta's NDP. Charest had signaled little interest (at this time) to reenter the world of partisan politics. After a lot of soul-searching and politely listening to everyone's proposals, Peter Mackay opted to following Prentice's example and decided it was more important to earn some real money in the private sector and spend time with his young family. That left Jason Kenney all by his lonesome, with the Tory crown his for the taking.

Kenney, Harper's outgoing Defence Minister and unofficial Minister for "Curry in a Hurry", was an excellent student of doing politics better than his opponents. A rare combination of being both a fiscal and social conservative, Kenney's political roots began in the Saskatchewan Liberal Party, working in the office of then party leader and future federal cabinet minister Ralph Goodale. Discovering conservatism through an issue of the National Review magazine, the young Kenney quickly evolved to become to head of the Canadian Taxpayer Federation. It wouldn't be long until the rising right-wing star was tapped by Preston Manning to run for the Reform Party in Calgary (Coincidentally Kenney would enter Ottawa just as Stephen Harper was leaving it). Bouncing between Manning's Unite-the-Right initiative and leading both of Stockwell Day's Canadian Alliance leadership bids, Kenney at one point even accused then-Alliance leadership candidate Harper of flip-flopping on abortion, a favourite topic of the Calgarian MP. Fast-forward a decade, Kenney was now lock-step with Harper on every issue, including Harper's refusal to legislate social issues like abortion. In his nine-years as a fixture of Stephen Harper's cabinet, from his celebrated stint as Canada's Immigration Minister (Many credited Kenney with the Conservative's 2011 victory and growing support amongst ethnic Canadians) to Employment to National Defence, Kenney routinely logged twenty-hour work days and twenty-event weekends, often staying in the office well past midnight. A workaholic in the truest sense, Jason Kenney's friends would note that their boss would master not only his own file, but those of his cabinet colleagues. Like a monk who had forsworn earthly attachments, Kenney's sole purpose in life appeared to be dedicated to politics. That's not to say he was perfect. Even Kenney would admit that he had adopted the persona of partisan attack-dog during Question Period (Bested only by fellow cabinet colleague John Baird). His solitary nature, namely his lack of a romantic partner for his entire adult life, rose questions over his sexuality and often made him appear awkward with women. Kenney would simply note Mackenzie King's bachelorhood and move on. What mattered to Kenney was winning, and it appeared that after years of sidestepping the question entirely, he could finally muse about taking over Stephen Harper's job. Problem was, Kenney wasn't sure he wanted it. He was tired, and he admitted to his friends and inner circle of advisors that he wasn't sure he had it in him to take it on.

Three portraits hung in Kenney's parliamentary office in Ottawa; Thomas Moore, William Wilberforce, and Abraham Lincoln. Of those three, only Lincoln had led a government, whilst the other two served either as the power behind the throne or as an agitator towards established authority. It reflected the debate with himself. Did Jason Kenney want to be the leader, or did he want to be the one whom the leader owed everything? He didn't log in all those hours and crisscross the country in service to his own ambitions, but because he truly believed in the cause of the conservative movement. It was everyone else who subscribed to him the burning desire to become leader. For all of his partisan bluster, Kenney was self-aware enough to ask his advisors if Canada would accept another Conservative leader from Calgary. There was also the fact that his adopted home-province had elected an NDP government, and with the right divided between the PCs and Wildrose parties, many were begging him to come back to Alberta and do there what Harper had done nationally; unite the right and lead the free enterprise movement. It was temping. Very temping. But Canada had elected an NDP government of its own, and that offended Kenney just as much if not more than Alberta's Rachel Notley. When he looked at all the potential candidates lining up to replace Harper, the ones garnering the most attention were the ones advocating for an abandonment of Harperism. The snazzy-dressed champion for conservatives who felt that Harper didn't go far enough was Maxime Bernier, whose libertarian-bent policies advocated a full throated rejection of the outgoing boss.

'Mad Max', as his supporters dubbed him, started out as the kind of new generation conservative that Harper was delighted to recruit. Tall, handsome, well-dressed, incredibly sociable and highly unconventional, he was the full package at first glance. Bernier's father had even served as a minister in Brian Mulroney's government. But Bernier also garnered a reputation for both carelessness and taking issue with following the rules. Back in 2008 the then-Foreign Minister left classified documents as his girlfriend's residence. This was bad enough, but compounded with the fact that said girlfriend had ties to the infamous Hell Angel's biker gang, and it wasn't long before the MP for Beauce was persona non grata to Stephen Harper. To Harperworld you didn't embarrass the boss. Not ever. Sure, Bernier would return to cabinet in 2011 after the Orange Wave left the Harper cabinet in need of representation from Quebec, but it would be a junior role. Still, even from that tiny power base, Bernier became the voice for those who viewed Stephen Harper's cautious approach as having done more to betray conservatism than to protect it. Some even went as far as to blame Harper for leaving Canada to suffer with a 'truly socialist' government.

Kenney knew he could do politics better than Bernier, and he knew that Bernier was the candidate whom Prime Minister Mulcair most wanted to face off against. Swing 520,000 votes to the Tories and Stephen Harper would have won the popular vote and possibly the election. Harperism wasn't broken, and Kenney was personally offended that someone he deemed too lazy considered themselves not only a suitable successor to Stephen Harper, but the candidate best suited to rid Canada of the NDP. That job required careful planning and experience, not whatever batshit crazy stuff Bernier was spouting to fifteen-year old Ron Paul enthusiasts on the internet. On a Friday in October, Kenney found himself jotting down notes about how to take on Mulcair and the NDP. Before he knew it, it was Saturday morning, and he had written about twenty-five pages outlining his strategy to reestablish the Conservative coalition that had won in 2011. In the end, the strength of Kenney's brain outweighed his heart's desire to leave. He had the strategy, and he was the only candidate he could trust to execute it properly. He was in, begrudgingly.

Gone were the days when leadership was decided through delegated conventions. At one time party-approved delegates would show up at an overheated stadium, appear to be heading in one direction, only to pivot in the opposite direction at the drop of a hat. In 1976 the Progressive Conservatives appeared dead-set to select Quebecer Claude Wagner as the man to take on Pierre Trudeau. On the fourth and final ballot they instead picked Joe Clark for that honour. Back in 2006 the Liberal insiders orchestrated a convention to select Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff to replace Paul Martin. Delegates picked a different kind of academic in Stephane Dion, a decision they would quickly come to regret in earnest. Conservatives looked at these as examples of what to avoid, hence the decision to elect their leader through a ranked ballot by the entire party membership (Or at least those willing to mail their ballot). Each riding would be given one-hundred points, and whoever won a majority of those points (not votes) would be elected leader. Supposedly it was the system that Peter Mackay needed in order to unite with the Canadian Alliance and avoid the PC membership from getting swamped by scores of Westerners. They wound up with Stephen Harper anyway.

Against Kenney stood a field of candidates, some of whom were impressive. There were a few who, like Kenney, thought that the Harper legacy, with perhaps a few more smiles and human interaction, was a good place to start. That included former Transport Minister Lisa Raitt, former Labour Minister Kellie Leitch, and former Immigration Minister Chris Alexander. Then there were the candidates who thought that after almost ten years of Stephen Harper, Canadians were desperate for a bolder, more right-wing agenda to inspire them. Polls be damned. That group consisted of Steven Blaney, who apparently served in cabinet at one point, Maxime Bernier as his libertarian cohorts, and recently defeated Saskatchewan MP Brad Trost, the unabashed social conservative in the race. Rounding out the contest was Michael Chong, who had infamously resigned from Harper's cabinet after his decision to pass a motion announcing that Quebec was indeed a nation, albeit one in a united Canada. He was promoting a carbon tax of sorts and more transparency. A principled and doomed effort that won him accolades amongst journalists, just not with Tories. Aside from Jason Kenney, it was a race of B-tier and D-Tier candidates. Everyone, from the journalists to the party membership, to officials within the PMO and Justin Trudeau's office, knew who was going to win. Even the other candidates in the race must have known. Jason Kenney was the frontrunner who the other candidates, or at least most of them, refused to attack. Sure, they'd joke about giving Kenney a plum job in their opposition team, but nobody really believed it, aside from Bernier's supporters. To them, 'Mad Max' could do no wrong. Just don't ask him about specifics, or the fact that like everyone else who served in the Harper government, he spent nine-years doing absolutely nothing to push any of the policies he now championed. Steven Blaney spent a lot of time and money attacking Bernier for that piece of trivia, likely in the hopes of displacing Bernier as Quebec's favourite son candidate. Nothing much came of it for Blaney except rumours that he was on Kenney's payroll.

Spoiler: Campaign Logos

​

When it came to the final results, the only notable thing pundits found to write about was how long it took Kenney to actually win. Rather than an outright victory on the first ballot as many expected, Kenney's team included, it took until the fifth ballot to secure a majority of the vote. Bernier and his team managed to entice enough Tory members with his pledge to end Supply Management to overcome Brad Trost's surprising showing on the back of angry social conservatives, but not enough to crack even a quarter of the vote. Plagued by technical glitches and attempts to draw out an ending that everyone expected, by the end supporters in the room were tired and eager to go back to their hotel rooms. But, being good Conservatives, they stayed around for their new leader's speech. Looking tired and not at all surprised to be up on stage, Jason Kenney did his best to deliver a cause for Tories to rally behind. He delivered a series of best hits, speaking of the importance of pipelines, the need for economic freedom, the strength of multiculturalism to the conservative movement and the inevitable moment when the Conservative Party would kick Tom Mulcair out of 24 Sussex (even though, since it was being renovated, Mulcair didn't actually live there).

Jason Kenney had now become the heir to Stephen Harper's legacy and all that entailed. He was also now responsible to complete Harper's final and most important goal; prove that the Conservative Party, flush with cash and united, was able to win without the man who had helped give it life. Time would tell whether Kenney could make it happen.

 

[CanadianTory]

Politicians run for office for various reasons. Some seek the love and support of the people, while others do so to validate their own egos, believing they are capable of representing the interests of the majority or plurality of citizens. Despite her humiliation in 2008, Hillary Clinton should have given up on those desires. However, she couldn't, or more accurately, she wouldn't. The desire for power, and perhaps the desire for revenge against those who had built careers by humiliating her, was too potent. Running for president was the culmination of every single decision she had made since before July 7, 1999, when she announced her bid to represent New York (A state she did not live in nor had any particular affection for). Eight years as First Lady, where everyone expects you to be perfect for them rather than true to yourself, was a difficult task, especially for one as independently minded as her. Any attempt to exhibit independence or influence typically ended in more humiliation. For instance, when Hillary Clinton spearheaded her husband's healthcare reform initiative, it did little other than open her up as a target to the emerging power that was Rush Limbaugh and the conservative radio industry (A precursor to the conspiratorial websites that would haunt her later, but more on that later). The Senate was a place where, freed from interior designing the White House during Christmas, she could flex her independence and prove she was more than Bill Clinton's wife. Styling herself as a policy wonk and workhorse of the United States Senate, Hillary demonstrated that she was indeed worthy of being a member of the club. In her defense however the bar was especially low and would only get lower in the proceeding years. Still, she thrived. So much so that there were calls to run for president as early as 2003 when John Kerry seemed destined to be so bad a candidate for the highest office in the nation that he would lose to a man who hadn't even won it in the first place. But there was a War on Terror going on and Clinton opted to demonstrate a rare moment of restraint and patience. 2008 would be her year, based on all the polls, endorsements, and hauls of campaign cash. The problem, and it always seems to be the problem with her, is that Hillary Clinton is a terrifically flawed candidate for public office. Her attempts to come across as authentic instead appear rehearsed. Morality and principle only seem applicable when it has been tested and approved by the surveys and focus groups. Efforts to appease progressives and the downtrodden often fall flat when she turns around and says something completely different in paid speeches to Wall Street executives and insiders. Was it really a surprise then that she lost to Barack Obama? To the millions of voters outside of HillaryLand (the nickname for her braintrust of aides and trusted supporters) the answer was a resounding 'no'. To those inside HillaryLand, it was just further proof that the system - to which Hillary Clinton proudly belonged - was somehow rigged against her. Self-reflection and personal growth were not strengths. Strength was strength. Winning was strength.

Fast forward to Election Night 2016. Hillary Clinton stood on stage in front of her gathered supporters at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, underneath an intentional glass ceiling, showing a rare case of genuine human emotion (Complete with smiles and tears). It was a win. A shitty win. A bitter win, considering who she was up against. It was a win devoid of any real love and had been engineered by being just a little bit less hated than her opponent. Many in the crowd were there because they genuinely supported Clinton. Others were there to witness the historical moment when a woman finally shattered the highest, hardest glass ceiling in American politics. The rest because they couldn't stomach the thought of someone like Ted Cruz being elected to succeed Barack Obama as President of the United States. A portrait of the modern-day Democratic coalition; don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative. For Hillary Clinton, that was good enough.

Despite the certainty that surrounded Clinton's victory, it almost didn't happen. For all the money and establishment support that she enjoyed, she still made it difficult for herself. After decades of being in the public eye she had simply come to embody the idea of Democrats as "Democrats" - all the bad and boring qualities of government, all the accomplishments and promises that failed to address the actual problems happening in America. Yet for all her flaws, President Obama still liked Clinton. He respected her intelligence, her drive, and the fact that even after having experienced decades of sexist attacks from Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and just about every Republican elected politician since 1992, she hadn't given in. That was part of the reason why Obama had worked so tirelessly behind the scenes to anoint his former Secretary of State as his successor and heir, much to the annoyance of Joe Biden and his team. He was confident that despite all of Clinton’s failings as a campaigner, and her routine overdependence on surveys and focus groups, voters would choose his third term over whatever bullshit Ted Cruz and the Republicans were selling. The hard part was getting through the primary unscathed.

Bernie Sanders wasn't slick in any conventional sense, but the disheveled Senator had one thing that Hillary Clinton lacked; consistency. Since first getting elected to public office almost forty-years earlier, Sanders had done little else than rail against income inequality and the growing class divide between the those who had and those who didn't. Wall Street and the billionaire-class were his favorite punching bags, and he was authentic enough to fully embrace the label of 'socialist' in a country where it was equated with communism. In almost every respect that made the Independent Senator from Vermont the perfect foil for Clinton. At first HillaryLand, much like the rest of the punditry, thought Sanders' entry into the race would benefit her. The seventy-something senator wouldn't win any actual primaries or caucuses, and would occupy a nice spot firmly to Clinton's left, denying it to more plausible opponents like former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley. Eventually, after having had his moment on the debate stage and time to discuss a range of policy options important to him, Sanders would drop out and go back to being the loner of the United States Senate. Unfortunately for Clinton, Bernie caught fire. In a lot of ways the populism and frustration that was at the heart of Sanders' campaign message was very much the same as Obama's eight-years earlier. Instead of 'Hope' and 'Change', it was now 'Enough is Enough'. All that hate towards the system, towards business as usual, towards Hillary Clinton herself had found a political vehicle to which it could pour its energies into. A draw in Iowa, a landslide win in New Hampshire, Bernie had quickly gone from joke to legitimate threat to the Clinton machine. To Hillary and her team it was shades of 2008 all over again. But, unlike 2008, this time Clinton had the White House, African-Americans, and the entire party establishment backing her campaign. She even had Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Donna Brazil, and the Democratic National Committee onside, doing her favors. It proved to be enough to quell the revolution from engulfing the entire party, just not enough to spare Clinton the bruises and damage of a drawn out primary.

For all the headaches that Democrats experienced in their primary, Republicans had it worse. After four years trying to deny Obama a second term, fail, and then turn their attention to spending another four years stopping his chosen heir from securing him a third term, the GOP couldn't decide what they actually wanted to achieve beyond that. They had become a party without purpose other than attaining power. John McCain and Mitt Romney's promises of electability through moderation had fallen flat, and it appeared that the base of the party - old, angry, confused, and white - was running into the arms of a man who perfectly embodied that. Donald Trump had flirted with running for President before. He briefly sought the nomination of Ross Perot's Reform Party in 2000 before decrying it as a haven of right-wing wackos and conspiracy theorists. He became a Democrat back when it was good business sense to hate on George W. Bush. Then, when America elected a African-American President, he switched tact and became the icon of the birtherism movement, the idea that Obama wasn't really an American but instead a secret Muslim socialist born in Africa. He liked to brag that he was the only presidential frontrunner who quite the race while ahead in the polls. Why be president? That came with way too many headaches and not enough money. But fast forward a few years, and he was riding down that escalader, cheered on by paid attendees, spouting racist statements and outright falsehoods as he declared his candidacy for president. Turns out it made him feel good, and gave him the attention he wanted. Problem was, Trump hadn't spent his life preparing to run for president. He was a businessman, and a pretty horrible one at that. There was plenty of dirt on him, and it didn't take long for it to begin leaking out into the press. A lot of it Trump pressed through, attributing to misstatements or media lies, much to the enjoyment of his supporters. They loved the strongman act. But the Access Hollywood Tape, where Trump would openly brag about sexually assaulting women on account of his fame, proved to be one step too far for the Republican electorate. Leaked only a week before the Iowa caucuses, it forced Republicans to reflect on whether they wanted to lose with someone they really liked, or compromise with someone they could tolerate. But who to support? Chris Christie was a blowhard like Trump, but had damaged his reputation through the Bridegate scandal. Marco Rubio was pitching himself as a Republican version of Obama - a new generation politician who could attract non-traditional voters to the Republican coalition. Problem was he had a record on immigration that was insufficiently intolerant for many GOP voters. Rand Paul was fucking crazy. Ben Carson was putting people to sleep. Scott Walker was trying to come across as the second coming of Ronald Reagan, but his campaign was burning through more campaign cash than they could raise. John Kasich was popular, just not amongst Republicans. Ted Cruz was sufficiently conservative and populist enough to piss off the establishment that primary voters hated so dearly, but had a face that could be best described as 'punchable'. After much deliberation, debates, and primary contests, conservatives decided looks didn't matter and nominated the Senator from Texas.

The problem was that Cruz had even less appeal to the wider electorate than Clinton did. Much like his Democratic opponent, Cruz had earned a reputation for saying and doing anything to advance his own career, even at the expense of others in his own party and colleagues. His nomination would only solidify the argument for the election; who do you hate more?

​

Turns out Americans were pretty solidly divided on that question. As such, they opted to continue down the path they were on.

 

[CanadianTory]

Many New Democrats have taken pride in being the ‘conscience of the house’; that they would rather stay true to their political principles than sell themselves out for power. Jack Layton was convinced that the NDP, with enough confidence and hard work, could be more than a party of opposition and actually build the kind of Canada that they always talked about. There were plenty of laughs when Layton referred to himself as the country’s next Prime Minister, or spoke of forming an NDP government, simply because previous leaders didn’t act or talk like that. Alexa McDonough, Audrey McLaughlin, Ed Broadbent, David Lewis, and Tommy Douglas all appeared comfortable in the role of strong-arming the Liberal government of the day to achieve moral victories, like on healthcare or affordable housing. For Jack Layton, he just wasn’t content with his party living in the Liberal’s shadow. He wanted to supplant them. After three failed attempts at a breakthrough Layton got there on his fourth try, capturing 103 seats, and forming Canada’s Official Opposition, the first step towards smashing the Liberal and Conservative duopoly on power. The joy of that moment, shared by supporters gathered in the InterContinental Hotel ballroom in downtown Toronto on that historic night on May 2, 2011, was only eclipsed by the unimaginable pain and grief that the entire nation felt when he passed away from cancer only a few short months later on August 22. To many within the party the passing of Jack Layton also meant the passing of the dream of winning power.

Tom Mulcair knew how to wield power, and had often done so with skill during his time as a cabinet minister in the provincial government of then-Quebec Premier Jean Charest. He wasn’t a natural fit for the NDP, as his colleagues in the Quebec Liberal Party would observe. In fact, Mulcair’s constant obsession with size of the government or the civil service seemed to suggest that he belonged to the party’s centre-right flank. Yet that didn’t stop Layton from sweettalking Mulcair after the latter quit the provincial seen, eventually making him his Quebec Lieutenant and responsible for recruiting candidates in the province. Still, Mulcair’s previous association with the Quebec Liberal Party, which was headed by a former conservative (progressive conservative, but still), and his centrist positions on fiscal policies was enough to draw serious opposition to his bid to lead the New Democrats post-Layton. Chief among those opponents was the tag team of former leader and party statesman Ed Broadbent, and former party president and Layton confidant Brian Topp. Normally the two men wouldn’t be caught dead being in the same room as the other, but their shared fear that Mulcair would wind up as a Canadian version of Tony Blair and shift the party away from social democracy and income redistribution was enough for them to burry the hatchet. Broadbent was correct, however, in that Mulcair was no social democrat. Canada-as-Sweden was not apart of his political ethos or his vision for the party going forward. Mulcair liked to envision himself as a progressive, someone in-between the dogmatic socialist and the market-oriented Liberal. If the NDP were to get anything done, it had to stop taking positions that were politically untenable and accept an injection of pragmatism. The lure of power – real power – was enough for Mulcair to win the leadership and keep the party united until 2015, where the New Democrats would finally achieve Layton’s goal in his absence and form government for the first time in Canadian history.

As for the opposition, the New Democrats hoped that Canadians would buy their line that both the Tories and the Grits were little more than spoiled, out-of-touch cousins. Jason Kenney was Stephen Harper 2.0; a little bit younger but hailing from the same region in Calgary and offering up the same failed economic policies. They could portray him as Canada’s Ted Cruz, a religious social conservative who was far outside the mainstream of Canadian politics. Still, Kenney was a tough opponent, and had kept the Conservatives united much the same way Mulcair had with the New Democrats. For all of their differences, both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition were strategists at heart, and some in the press gallery even noted that they appeared to enjoy going up against one another during Question Period. Kenney would accuse Mulcair of being the tax-and-spend socialist head of a de facto coalition with the Liberals, and the Prime Minister would stand up an remind the House of the Stephen Harper and the Conservative’s failed record on this issue or that issue, before praising his own governments progress on the file. Justin Trudeau and the Liberals were there too, but were forced to endure the humiliation felt by almost every leader of the New Democratic Party for the last fifty-years; watch as the government steals its ideas and get the credit for introducing popular and progressive legislation. Only this time it wasn’t David Lewis or Alexa McDonough lashing out at the unfair nature of it all, it was Justin Trudeau. For all the natural charm that he demonstrated amongst voters during the campaign, the Liberal leader usually appeared uncomfortable and rehearsed while he read from his script during Question Period. He lacked the flare and theatrics of the other party leaders, and was forced to back Mulcair and the NDP all the while pledging that his party could do the same thing, but better. Third place just wasn’t a natural fit for him. Trudeaus were built to govern, not oppose.

As is always the case, governing is far more difficult than campaigning (poetry versus prose and all that). The NDP campaigned on a great many and complicated promises in the election, including abolishing the Senate, doing away with First-Past-The-Post in favour of proportional representation, launch a national cap and trade plan to combat greenhouse gas emissions, do away with the Trans Pacific Partnership, all while balancing the budget within the first year of their mandate. Achieving one or even two of those promises would be a tall order for any government, let alone a minority government dependent on parties that hated them. Hence, one year after their historic victory, the NDP had traded 'Ready for Change' for 'transparency takes time' and 'we're following due process'. For the punditry and observers, the growing consensus was that Mulcair and his government had started more things than it had accomplished. He had made international headlines and won many accolades when he appointed Canada's first gender-balanced cabinet. He pleased environmentalists and his party's left-wing (and pissed off the Albertan NDP government) when he announced that the Keystone XL Pipeline was dead. He had established a national inquiry into the deaths and disappearances of aboriginal women. He was making inroads with New Brunswick, British Columbia, Manitoba, and the some of the other provinces to buy into his $15-a-day childcare program, and it appeared the Liberals were willing to play ball too. He got a warm welcome from Barack Obama despite the President's preferred candidate still languishing in third place in parliament, and enjoyed the benefits of comparisons between his government and the tumultuous battle between Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz. Back home the tone was different in Ottawa, and polls showed that Canadians were excited, at least by comfortable margins, to experience the first ever New Democrat federal government along with every other politician in the House of Commons. He still had a quasi-carbon tax to implement, and that meant further discussions with the provincial Premiers. He also had to at least make it appear that he was trying to work with the opposition parties to get the rest of his agenda passed through the House, even though he knew it had absolutely zero chance of doing so. Mulcair and his inner circle of advisors clung to 'deliverology' as the government's defining feature, a concept born of and marketed by former Tony Blair advisor Sir Michael Barber. The idea was simple; everyone in the country who cares enough to follow the goings on of politics should know what the goal is, and anyone with internet access can follow the progress of said goal through publicly shared data. In other words, whenever a journalist or political opponent points out the fact that your government hasn't fulfilled their promise, publish so much data showing the progress towards the goal in the hopes that they forget what their complaint was. It was a spin on the Harper method in that rather than starve the media of government information, Mulcair would make them drown in it. Death by oversaturation. Until the NDP won a majority - or was thrown out by voters - there was very little else it could achieve aside from looking busy and complaining about Canada's legacy parties (and their Senate cohorts) obstructing them at every turn.

In order to translate that message into one of success, Mulcair took a page from Stephen Harper’s playbook, specifically the chapter on caucus control. The NDP had to entice more unaffiliated voters and supporters of other parties if they were to have any hope of ever capturing a majority government. As Harper had demonstrated in each of his successful campaigns, voters responded with instinct and the majority who voted usually went with the leader who they felt was most like them. That meant Mulcair had to take center stage and be the focal point of the entire government. Trouble was, Mulcair wasn't exactly a transformative or inspiring figure to Canadians. He was bland. Sure, he had put on the smiles and charm for the campaign, speaking of his youth growing up as a member of the 'middle class', but that didn't reflect who he was as a politician. He was a lawyer, a vicious and brutal tactician who could be extremely demanding and difficult to work with. Part of that reason, however, was that he carried with him the weight of Jack Layton's legacy. Like so many who had joined up with the NDP, Mulcair had done so because of Layton. He had made the unexpected jump to the party that lacked any representation in Quebec primarily because he respected the leader's morality and work ethic. That respect eventually evolved into love and admiration as they got to know one another better. He didn't want to see all the years of work that Layton had put into building up the party to its current state to go to waste because a handful of rabid ideologues couldn't stomach a little water in their wine. If keeping the New Democrats in power meant sacrificing some of the old tenants of the party's orthodoxy, putting a muzzle on the more radical members of the party, and flipping the bird to the socialist groups calling for an end to capitalism on the road to revolution, Mulcair would gladly oblige.

Spoiler: Cabinet by Portfolio

 

[CanadianTory]

Being Leader of Her Majesty's Official Opposition is a pretty sweet gig. Your primary job is making fun of the government, which is pretty easy considering that as the Official Opposition you're likely already ideologically opposed to just about everything the government says and does. You get a pay bump on top of your standard pay as a Member of Parliament, get to live in public housing, and you get an excellent seat in the House of Commons. Problem is, if you're Leader of the Opposition that also means that your party probably lost the most recent election, the press will be more than eager to remind you and Canadians of the various reasons why your party ended up in there (rather than simply keeping the government accountable), and being in opposition carries with it many of the same headaches of government minus any of the benefits of power. Keeping those obstacles in mind, since Confederation only fifteen Leaders of the Opposition managed to get themselves promoted to the top job in Canadian politics, the most recent being Tom Mulcair. Jason Kenney - disciplined, hard-working, fiercely intelligent, and one of Harper's best fixers in cabinet - wanted to be the sixteenth.

By 2015 most voters had decided that Stephen Harper was too angry, too reclusive, and too out-of-touch with the rest of the country. With the election having handed the New Democrats only fifteen more seats than the Tories however, conventional thinking suggested that the Conservatives didn't have to reinvent the wheel when it came to the policies on offer, they simply had to rejig they way in which they offered them. Tone is important in Canadian politics, at least important enough that Stephen Harper worked really hard on it back when his party was winning elections. He'd just slap on a sweater vest, pretend to mingle with Canadian families, and occasionally smile. Just human enough to reassure voters. Jason Kenney's selling proposition as Conservative Party leader was that he could offer the kind of Harper-continuation that the base wanted, but appeal to swing voters and minority groups that had abandoned the party in the previous campaign. Many within the party had credited Kenney's outreach to various minority groups historically sympathetic to the Liberals to the Conservative's success leading up to and including their majority victory in 2011. According to Kenney, that winning coalition of voters could easily be replicated again, just so long as the party didn't veer too far into the kind of extreme rhetoric that it had begun to dabble with during and after the election. Unless the Conservatives led on pocketbook issues, they would only lose more ground to the NDP. Part of that makeover involved the new 'Shadow cabinet' and leadership team to take on the government during Question Period. Lisa Raitt, who finished fourth in the leadership race that elected Kenney, was named as the party's new Deputy in the hopes that pairing the single and relationship-less Kenney with a woman from Ontario would help make the new leader more appealing to voters. Erin O'Toole, the party's former interim leader who won accolades from party MPs and insiders for his ability to keep the various factions of the party united during his brief stint as head of the party, was named Foreign Affairs critic against Megan Leslie. Leading the charge against Finance Minister Nathan Cullen would be Gerard Deltell, the former leader of the now-defunct Action démocratique du Québec, who was also subsequently named as the new leader's Quebec Lieutenant. As a consolation for missing out on the finance portfolio, Max Bernier would instead get assigned to shadow Alexandre Boulerice and Kenney's old job in Employment. Several other new faces, like Parm Gill, Effie Triantafilopoulos, and Dianne Watts also received promotions. A clear attempt to appease both moderates and the more right-wing base of the party. Trouble was that many in the base of the party, including those who had voted for Kenney, weren't exactly interested in pursuing the Stephen Harper strategy of incrementalism and restraint. They and their activist friends had felt abandoned by Harper, and were eager to push the party in a more ideological direction.

There was also the fact that defeating a government after a single term in power is a tough ask under even the best of circumstances. Canadians are usually willing to give the new government time and the benefit of the doubt. Even Stephen Harper needed at least two kicks at the can to take down Paul Martin, and his premiership could be best described as a deer in the headlights. The last government to fail to get re-elected under the leader who had gotten them elected in the first place was Joe Clark way back in 1979. Tom Mulcair had his own share of flaws, but he had more in common with Brian Mulroney than Clark, so the comparison was largely moot aside from the expected chatter about the longevity of a new federal NDP government. Tory spin to the contrary, the New Democrats had (for the time being) united firmly behind Mulcair's pragmatic progressive strategy, and aside from a few hiccups like Veterans Minister Peter Stoffer's overly touchy behaviour, had avoided big scandals.

Then there was the media. Conservatives had long made distrusting the media and their journalistic emissaries a cornerstone of their movement. The whole lot of them were Liberal sympathizers. When pressed to explain how they knew that, Tories would just point at journalists blatant admiration of Justin Trudeau. It was just so obvious. Jason Kenney was as close to Harper as anyone in the party could get, but he was always more comfortable than his boss in his handling of the media. Much as he had as a minister of the Crown, Kenney engaged in long scrums with reporters, eschewing the former Prime Minister's preference for only answering five questions per day from the media. Like the fictional Arnold Vinick from the American political drama the West Wing, the Tory leader would routinely answer question after question until journalists simply ran out of things to ask him. Problem was that Kenney, who could exhibit charisma at times, was still at his heart a policy wonk, and suffered from delivering overlong answers that often failed to make it into the evening political recaps over at CTV or the CBC. When Kenney tried to stick to message, he would get ridiculed for refusing to offer more detail. Catch twenty-two.

Kenney's response to all this? A little more Ralph Klein and less Stephen Harper. King Ralph (as he was commonly referred to in the press) was a politician of the people, unafraid to make cuts to the public sector, pay down the debt, and speak bluntly about issues facing Alberta. He was happy to become the villain for environmentalists or Chretien's Ottawa, and Albertans rewarded him for it, electing him to four consecutive majority governments and the longest stint as Premier since Peter Lougheed. Kenney wanted to take that sensible populist blueprint and apply it nationally. Gone were the suits and ties that had been the style for much of his previous two decades in Ottawa, and in their place were blue jeans, rolled up sleeves, and the blue pickup truck ablaze with the Conservative Party logo. Cue mockery from the Laurentian media in the Ottawa bubble. It didn't matter whether it was a prayer breakfast in Kitchener, a Sikh event in downtown Toronto, a rodeo in Calgary, or a policy announcement in Vancouver, Kenney would pull up in his truck wearing blue jeans, all smiles. He'd claim that the NDP were prisoners to environmental extremists, that Mulcair was punishing the energy sector and taxpayers. Canada wasn't the largest green house gas emitter in the world, so why did it make sense that Canadians had to pay the price to cut their carbon footprint when places like China or the United States refused to play by the same rules? If you asked Kenney and the Tories, that kind of logic didn't make any sense. In a lot of ways the Tory strategy began to mimic that of the BC Liberal Party under Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark; a party of free-enterprise and pipelines versus a party of socialism and bloated bureaucracy. To the reluctance of some within the party, the Conservatives even appeared poised to adopt a carbon 'levy' that punished major emitters, with the money raised going towards a green technology fund. Not enough to please environmentalists, but certainly a more credible approach that other conservatives were advocating (Which amounted, quite frankly, to do nothing).

In this way Jason Kenney's leadership of the Conservative Party was not that dissimilar from that of Prime Minister Mulcair's of the New Democrats. Both parties were built on an ideologically motivated base of volunteers that scared the crap out of most voters. Whereas the NDP had to deal with union leaders, socialists, environmentalists, and maybe the odd communist here and there, the Tories had to deal with social conservatives, the religious right, homophobes, climate-deniers, and conspiracy theorists. The job was to keep those motivated volunteers in the tent but make sure the average Canadian never saw heads or tails of them. Who else was going to man the phone lines, mail out donation requests, and nail-in the campaign signs for the local party candidate? Certainly not the other ninety-eight percent of Canadians who didn't go out and buy a membership with a political party. They have better things to do. So, like Stephen Harper before him, Kenney threw the odd piece of red meat to the base, like on tax cuts for families who homeschooled their kids or for the inclusion of anti-abortion groups in Canada's summer job program. If there were any grumbles from within the tent, Kenney could just point out that he had received a historic mandate from the membership for his leadership. He had won on the fifth ballot in an eight candidate race, beating his closest competitor by thirty-points. You had to go all the way back to the 1942 PC leadership race that elected the populist John Bracken for anything remotely similar in conservative politics. He'd never legislate on issues like abortion or same-sex marriage, and hoped that the movement's desire for revenge against the New Democrats would be enough to keep the party united going into the next federal campaign. Six months out from having won the job, Kenney's leadership was still stuck. For all of his work, Canadians didn't appear to be responding to the party, and poll after poll placed the Tories firmly in the mid-to-high twenties, with government well ahead. Not exactly a ringing endorsement. Unless Kenney turned things around, his time as leader of the Conservative Party seemed poised to end much the same as Bracken's; defeated by a popular government that he decried as socialist and rendered a footnote in the history books.

 

[CanadianTory]

 

[CanadianTory]

Ironically sitting on the floor below the office used by the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, the Prime Minister’s Centre Block office is also a step down when it comes to style. For example, it lacks the frescoes and the fireplace that immediately grabs your attention. It’s a lot less spacious too, and doesn’t enjoy the same stellar view of downtown Ottawa. But like so many others before him, Harper included, Tom Mulcair opted for symbolism over functionality. Besides, as Canada’s first ever New Democratic Prime Minister, it was doubly important to appear as conventional in the job as possible, and that meant embracing humility (or humiliation depending on who you asked) and moving into a cramped office space. Canada's first ever New Democratic government spent a lot of its time bragging about its election being proof of voter's rejection of Harperism and a turning of a page to a more positive brand of politics, but when you looked closer some of the old foundations of the Harper regime were still there. To be sure, there were plenty of differences between Tom Mulcair and his immediate predecessor in the job. For example, Ottawa was definitely back in the business of "buying change', a favoured Chretien-era euphonism for blackmailing provinces into compliance. Or, in Mulcair's case, cajoling them through largely popular policies. For many that alone was more provincial outreach than the last guy ever bothered to try. But as Mulcair settled into the job as Prime Minister, it was hard to ignore that there were at least a few similarities between him and Stephen Harper. Like Harper, Mulcair had found success partly by appealing to middle-class voters who valued a more forceful style in communications. If someone was going to throw a punch, the Prime Minister was going to punch back, and hard. Mulcair also wasn't considered the warmest guy in his party, and could be accused of being highly combative, stubborn, and outright controlling of his caucus. Sound familiar? Some in the press gallery even joked that all Tom Mulcair was doing was selling a combination of orange-tinted Harperism, NDP optimism, mixed in with a much more Liberal approach to spending. Luckily for the NDP, polls showed that voters were alright with that.

A common phrase used by the new government was that "transparency takes time," or "we’re following due process,". Everyone knew that was shorthand for "we don't have the votes at this time,". Minority governments are shackled by the truest law of politics; arithmetic. At only one-hundred-and-thirty-four seats in the House of Commons (39.9 percent of its seats), thirty-six seats shy of an outright majority, the New Democrats also had the distinction of being the smallest minority government in Canadian history, besting Stephen Harper's record back in 2006 in a smaller parliament. That meant that if the NDP were to prove they were competent enough to get anything done, they needed a dance partner. Almost seventy percent of Canadians did not vote for Mulcair and the NDP. But over fifty percent had voted for them and the Liberals, who weren't exactly eager to go straight back into an election campaign with their leader's blackface scandal still fresh in the minds of many voters. Where the government could largely act on its own, like calling a national inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women or cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline, it would. Where they needed support to pass major legislation that were matters of confidence, like a national carbon tax, they offered concessions and turned to Trudeau and the Liberals for support. Everything else, like their childcare plan, abolishing the Senate, or their promise to reform Canada's electoral system, would have to wait. Studies and consultation with the opposition and provincial governments take time, after all. Or at least that was the line they'd feed to journalists, before shifting gears and began citing all the data showing the progress they had made on countless other files. Death by oversaturation, as it was quickly dubbed by the press, who were more than a little surprised to find the NDP embracing such tactics.

The last set of comments that Justin Trudeau would deliver to the 42nd Parliament lasted an entire five minutes. In the final Question Period before the House adjourned for its summer break, the Liberal leader rose to declare how disappointed he was in the Prime Minister and the New Democrats. He humbly praised his own party's efforts to help the government shepherd some of its well meaning (A.K.A. "popular with voters") legislation through the chamber, but lamented the fact that it didn't appear to have the chops nor the nerve to do more for Canadians. Tough talk considering this was coming from the leader of the party that had once held a nigh-unbreakable hold on power for much of the 20th century. Problem was that these days the words of the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada carried a lot less weight than his predecessors, since for the second parliament in a row they were in third place. To many Liberal partisans this was an affront to the natural order of Canadian politics. Their leader was charming, handsome, charismatic, and everything that they thought Canadians should have in their Prime Minister. If it hadn't been for a few overzealous journalists eager to make a name for themselves, Trudeau, like his father before him, would sit in the Prime Minister's office, likely doing a much better job than the guy who actually won the job. Trust them, they knew how ordinary Canadians thought. But even the most loyal Liberal insider admitted that the last two years hadn't gone by without problems. Trudeau had banked the 2015 campaign on the idea that voters wanted bold action, pledging to go deep into deficit spending to finance a long list of goodies and promises. When that didn't work, partly thanks to those overzealous journalists finding evidence of Trudeau's use of blackface in his youth, the rest of the Liberal's rhetoric fell flat. It's tough to position yourself as an agent of change against a Prime Minister with a rocky relationship with the media when you're either barking at reporters or ignoring them altogether. Things hadn't improved in opposition, which Justin Trudeau was ill-suited for. The New Democrats had control of the agenda, and were stealing moves straight out of the Trudeau's playbook. If the Liberals and Trudeau were to recapture momentum and outflank the government from the left, they couldn't exactly been seen to oppose the government's childcare agenda, it's national drug plan, or its carbon tax legislation. More and more reporters were asking the very legitimate question of why would Canadians want a Liberal government if the New Democrats were already implementing most of their key policy proposals? Trudeau would smile wanly, and offer some convoluted argument that the Liberals might do the same thing if in power, only better. Then he would ramble on a bit more.

When Stephen Harper took over the Canadian Alliance in 2002, the party was a joke. When Tom Mulcair decided he'd had enough of provincial politics, he joined the NDP, which had never won a seat in Quebec. They both understood the hills they had to climb and the fights they'd have to win if they were going to make it. Trudeau, without the sense of inevitability, looked listless.

On the flipside, the Tories and their new leader were energetic to the point of almost looking manic. Jason Kenney was probably the best well-known quality out of the three major-party leaders, and had spent almost all his time since becoming leader trying to remedy that fact. Every politician tries to reinvent themselves at some point in their career. Stephen Harper tried to shed his image as an ideological firebrand into a sweater-wearing dad you'd see hanging out at Tim Horton's. Justin Trudeau and his team launched a counter-campaign trying to shift the narrative that he was in fact ready to be Prime Minister. He was still working on that. Paul Martin successfully went from being perceived as the man most prepared to lead the country to being a deer in the headlights once he actually got the job. Kenney wanted to ditch the suit and tie and instead cast himself as the blue jean-wearing everyman. A little less Bay Street and a bit more Ralph Klein. Maybe you wouldn't want to have a drink with him, but you'd be alright with him running the shop while you were out. He'd drive around in his Tory blue pickup truck, shake hands with supporters, chat about how tough it had supposedly gotten under the radical tax-and-spend NDP government, then pack up his act and move on to the next town. Rinse and repeat. For Kenney and his team, the consistency of the message was key. If the Conservative's weren't focused on the NDP, many within the party feared it would collapse into its foundational components. The only thing the Tories hated more than the different factions within their own party was the idea of socialists running the country and undoing all the good that Stephen Harper had accomplished. Jason Kenney would sell himself as a champion of free enterprise, and hope to god that the country ignored the rest of his party.

All elections are about leadership, to a greater or lesser extent. Stockwell Day or Robert Stanfield were full of tough talk and employed some pretty smart strategists, but neither man ever ended up at 24 Sussex. Jean Chretien and Pierre Trudeau, for all their arrogance and imperfections, were just better leaders. They could speak the same language as the people they wanted to govern. Competence always wins with voters. For the New Democrats, this was at the heart of their Regular-Folks Initiative. The 2015 election had been won primarily thanks to Mulcair's strong performance (Or Trudeau's disastrous performance, depending on who you asked) as the main alternative to Stephen Harper and the Conservatives. Voters wanted change, and by the end of the campaign the NDP leader was the last man standing. This time NDP strategists knew that if the party was to win on its own merits and capture a majority, it would have to do so on the backs of "folks", namely those voters who'd agree that something had to be done about climate change, just so long as it didn't cost them an arm and a leg for the federal government to get it done. Typically the Conservatives had that an almost exclusive-hold on that segment, thanks to Stephen Harper's almost effortless ability to frustrate academics and economists. So, the New Democrats now found themselves in the almost impossible situation of trying to appeal to those academics and university-degree voters that made up the core of urban centers like Toronto and Vancouver, while also reaching out to voters in Swift Current, Saskatchewan and North Bay, Ontario. Their advantage? They were now the incumbents. They didn't have to outfox the Liberals as the main alternative to the Conservatives this time. They already had. All they had to do was keep that status quo going. So when Tom Mulcair stood in front of a crowd in Montreal, a pep in his step and a grin on his face, pledging a billion dollars for affordable childcare, people listened. It wasn't a hypothetical argument anymore for the New Democrats. When he promised indigenous leaders in Nunavut that the NDP would both create a national council to implement the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and appoint an Indigenous Canadian as the next Governor General, they believed him. All voters needed to do to make those progressive policies a reality was to vote NDP. In the leader's debate Mulcair stared right into the camera (another borrow tactic from Harper) and told voters not to get distracted by the Liberals. The NDP were already here. In power. Why make the change now? If you didn't want to vote for tolerant, progressive policies, he'd say, Jason Kenney was right there. It was either the NDP, moving Canada forward, or the Tories, who'd move the country back. The Liberals weren't even a part of the debate. Trudeau could bang his fist all he wanted, and complain about doing more than the New Democrats if he were in charge. But at the end of the day the NDP was still doing more, and a wide range of issues, than the last guy. For a lot of progressives, that was enough.

For their English-language election campaign slogan the Liberals settled on "Change for Better". Neither really seemed to apply to the party or their leader, but instead to many Liberal insider's hopes for their electoral fortunes. Problem was, those fortunes were still intertwined with their leader's personal brand. Justin Trudeau didn't do shakeups when it came to himself, so much of his inner circle and campaign staff remained unchanged from the 2015 campaign. But this wasn't the 2015 campaign. Justin Trudeau was not the fresh faced unknown that Canadians could pin their aspirations and imaginations on (Despite being seventeen years younger than Tom Mulcair and three years younger than Jason Kenney). He was more experienced, having now served almost a decade in parliament. Had a few more grey hairs. His speeches had begun to sound a bit less optimistic. More importantly, he didn't have Stephen Harper as his foil. Progressive voters weren't exactly happy to see the self-identified feminist leader of the Liberal Party attack another progressive, especially one who was promising and enacting a lot of the same policies that Trudeau himself had supported. They preferred it when Trudeau attacked Jason Kenney and the Tories. But if the Liberals were going to win, they needed to peel off voters from the NDP, and that meant they had to throw a few punches at Tom Mulcair. The Liberals would require provinces to sign-on to their national carbon pricing scheme, rather than giving Conservative-led provinces the opportunity to opt-out, as was the case with the NDP's cap-and-trade scheme. Wanted a stronger economy? Fairer Trade? Trudeau would sit down with President Clinton and resolve all those troublesome differences that Tom Mulcair just couldn't solve. Just as voters were finally starting to listen to the Liberal leader's proposals, rumors began spreading of yet another instance of blackface, this time with a video. It was excruciating for the Liberals. There was their leader, again, wearing blackface, sticking out his tongue in a poor quality video and wearing what seemed to be a t-shirt with bananas on it. Trudeau and his inner circle's reaction was unchanged from 2015. Behind the scenes campaign staffers bemoaned the pesky journalists who were again acting in bad faith. Didn't matter how many meaningful policies the party would offer voters, or how much their boss pledged to change politics for the better, the critics wouldn't let up. Liberal HQ's inability to accept that some of that criticism towards their boss was justified just made them all the nastier. Anyone who even brought up blackface was persona non grata to Team Trudeau, including fellow Liberals. When candidates like New Westminster-Burnaby's Will Davis began to demur when asked whether Trudeau should step down as leader, alarms went off in the Liberal war room and threatening emails were quickly dispatched to quell any potential dissent. Former Northwest Territories Premier Stephen Kakfwi, formerly a staunch ally of Trudeau, wrote an op-ed calling on the Liberal leader to resign, citing his consistent use of blackface unforgivable. Before long journalists and pundits were again discussing what a pre-Election Day resignation would even look like. Were there candidates already waiting in the wings? Was Trudeau actively considering it? What was Jean Chretien's opinion on all of this? Much to the glee of both the Tories and the NDP, it all seemed to coincide at exactly the right time for both of their campaigns.

When he stepped off the Tory campaign bus in Surrey, British Columbia in one of the rare moments without his trademark blue pickup truck, Jason Kenney seemed pretty at ease for a guy who had been trailing the NDP for the last two years (A.K.A. his entire stint as party leader). He read pretty much the same prepared script in both official languages, sprinkled in with a vague pledge to reduce regulations to get more homes built, an extra jab at Prime Minister Mulcair, then waved to his supporters and got back on his bus. Rinse and repeat, again. According to insiders within the Conservative campaign, the hope was that if the message remained consistent, and if Kenney remained laser-focused on job creation, the economy, and Canada's potential as an energy superpower, enough free-enterprise voters would flock to the Tories to keep the New Democrats to yet another minority. Best case scenario? Jason Kenney could even emerge with enough seats to form a minority of his own. But that was a longshot. Tom Mulcair and the New Democrats still had that new car smell, and hadn't been in power long enough to have any meaningful scandals stick to them. Sure, Kenney could criticize Mulcair for appointing a parliamentary science "czar" responsible for $100 million toward helping 25 northern and remote communities, or punish them with overbearing regulations as he put it, but that wasn't ever going to be a winning election issue with voters. The best the Tory leader could do was attack the government's wasteful spending habits, it's refusal to ratify the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal, and its attempts to bully provinces into buying onto its cap and trade plan to fight climate change. Socialism run amuck. Things were better under the last Conservative government (Just don't mention the guy who was Prime Minister during that nine-year stint unless you were West of Ontario and East of British Columbia). That wasn't to say Jason Kenney's entire strategy was just about keeping the base happy. He was also busy at work trying to mend fences with the nation's multicultural community, a relationship that had been partially strained in the 2015 campaign. That meant interviews on Punjabi radio stations. Visiting Mosques and Synagogues. Touring Chinatown in downtown Toronto. There was even something on offer for environmentalists. Want a real climate plan? The Tories would punish large emitters, not consumers, with a levy and put the revenue towards a green technology fund. Revenue neutral towards voters but still acknowledging there was a problem. Sure, journalists would bemoan the fact that it wasn't a serious plan, but they were going to say that regardless. It showed that Kenney took the issue at least somewhat seriously compared to other leading figures within his party. Preston Manning was even on board. Before long, the bleeding began to stop, and the Tories had stabilized in the polls. Not enough to win, but it was better than the alternative. Some business-friendly Liberals, those types who had thrived under Paul Martin's brief premiership and were terrified at the thought of living under an NDP majority, appeared ready to swallow their pride and do what was once unthinkable; vote Conservative. Still, this was still Jason Kenney, and the social conservative albatross around his neck left a lot of voters uncomfortable with the idea of the guy representing Canada on the world stage.

Enter the minor party leaders. As the only Bloc Quebecois gain of the 2015 campaign, Rheal Fortin was the natural (and only) candidate to take over from Gilles Duceppe, who had returned from retirement as a Hail Mary pass from the sovereignty movement. With a caucus large enough to fill a storage closet on Parliament Hill, the Bloc's decline was a decade in the making. Less and less Quebecers, especially younger, more left-leaning Quebecers, were interested in fighting the battles of Rene Levesque and Jacques Parizeau. By and large they appeared content to remain in Canada, and were put off by debates that boiled down to "sovereignty or bust". But if not independence, what did the Bloc stand for? They could protest pipelines all they wanted, but Tom Mulcair had long beat them to the punch. Fortin could come out and say something outrageous towards English Canada in the hopes of riding the ensuing controversy, but nobody seemed to car. Elizabeth May meanwhile seemed pretty happy considering polls showed her party losing support to the NDP. Maybe it helped being the only Green MP in the House of Commons, or the fact that she faced little real opposition in her Saanich—Gulf Islands riding. Why worry when you had job security? The Greens had long been accused of having become little else than a means to further their leader's own personal career. But Green supporters, or at least those who showed up to cheer May on as she travelled back and forth from her riding, seemed happy with it. Some Green staffers admitted that their strategy amounted to little more than trying to appease the NDP and influence their climate change policies going forward. After all, Elizabeth May was prepared to work with anyone who could help keep her relevant in Canadian politics. Eleven years after first getting elected leader of the party, May showed little interest in going away any time soon.

Spoiler: Map

Canadians tend to give their governments time and considerable benefit of the doubt. Since 1867 only three elected Prime Ministers have experienced defeat after a single victory; Alexander Mackenzie, R.B. Bennett, and poor old Joe Clark. Each of those men also had the distinction of getting bested not by a newcomer, but by the guy they defeated in the first place. Re-election is far more common than defeat in Canadian politics. But Stephen Harper wasn't interested in hanging around Ottawa and making a comeback, despite his honest assessment that he could have stayed Conservative leader with minimal opposition. Some in the party might have even preferred it, given the results on Election Day. Tom Mulcair had entered the campaign as Prime Minister, and he ended it as Prime Minister, bolstered by a not-exactly strong nor stable one-hundred-and-seventy-six-seat majority government.

If the New Democrats were to win, their strategists knew they needed to push up their numbers in British Columbia and Quebec, all while keeping their iron grip on Quebec. They accomplished exactly that. Twenty-eight-seats in B.C., sixty in Ontario, and another sixty-five in Quebec (even better numbers than Mulroney posted in his '88 re-election). They gained seats across each of the Atlantic provinces too, notably taking out Liberal heavy weight Sean Casey in Charlottetown, PEI. This illustrated the big problem facing the Liberals; if voters were happy with the New Democrats, what was the point of voting Liberal? In every corner of the country support for he party of Laurier, Trudeau I, and Chretien had shrunk yet again. With the exception of the 2015 election, that was now five of the last six elections where that had happened. Just as they had in all of those unsuccessful campaigns, the party was driven by the misplaced assumption that those defeats were abnormalities. They'd bounce back eventually. After all, Stephen Harper's election was a fluke. Now so was Mulcair's. Justin Trudeau was young and handsome and didn't have any of that baggage from the Chretien-Martin years. But Liberals now faced the harsh reality that by the next election in 2021, they would be out of power for fifteen-straight years, the longest ever drought for the party in it's history, and the longest gap for a former governing party since the Tories back when Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Trudeau were in power. That was no fluke.

When Trudeau stepped on stage to greet his supporters, the atmosphere felt more like 2011 than 2015. Liberals standing around in the room looked almost as tired as their leader, whose smile seemed forced and empty. His gaze seemed to drift upwards, almost as if he was looking for divine inspiration to help console his party. He didn't find any. Trudeau spoke of the importance of democracy, of Canada's Liberal values, and the great list of accomplishments that were achieved back when they governed the country. But that was all in the past. Looking forward, all they saw were problems and heartache. It became clear the morning after the election that the party would need to select an interim leader, with Trudeau having narrowly lost his Montreal-area riding to popular City Councilor Luc Ferrandez of the NDP. Nobody expected him to stay on as leader, even if he held his seat, so defeat in Papineau made Justin Trudeau's exit easier for everyone involved. Trudeau needed a flawless campaign and some pretty big mistakes on the part of his opponents. He got none of that. Instead he called a press conference, flashed his trademark smile, promised to help the party rebuild in any way he could, and left just as quickly as he showed up. After four years of hope and nice hair, the second coming of Trudeaumania was over. As for who would take over the reigns of their sinking ship, Liberal MPs turned to rookie parliamentarian Jonathan Wilkinson, who was both fluently bilingual, lacked any ambition to lead the party on a permanent basis, and was one of three remaining MPs from British Columbia. It was also a tad bit ironic, since in Wilkinson's youth he had served as the leader of the Saskatchewan NDP's youth wing. As for the party's next great hope, senior Liberals were looking across the Atlantic at the Bank of England. Even better, the great hope was returning their calls this time, worried about the direction Canada was heading under the NDP. Finally some good news.

Aside from Tom Mulcair, the only other party leader who could claim some good news was Jason Kenney. The Tories had entered the campaign flush with cash, but so low in the polls that some in the Ottawa press gallery were talking about the possibility that the party of Harper could end up with as few as eighty seats. Whether fairly or unfairly, Jason Kenney was thought of as an ideologue. A dangerous social conservative who would finally enact Stephen Harper's hidden agenda. Yet, the morning after the election, the Conservative's had won one-hundred-and-nine seats and thirty-one percent of the popular vote, only ten seats fewer than they had won in the last campaign using essentially the same number of votes. Not too shabby all things considered. Yes, they had failed to prevent the New Democrats from winning their coveted majority, but it wasn't the blowout that many had expected. In fact, aside from Ontario and British Columbia, the Tories had actually increased their support, capitalizing on the collapsing Liberal vote as many free-enterprise minded voters returned to the fold. Alberta and the prairies had held. There was an uptick in support up North. In Pierre Trudeau's old riding of Mount Royal, which had elected Liberals since the dawn of time (including in the Mulroney majorities of '84 and '88), residents instead chose Conservative candidate and former journalist Pascale Déry, delivering a pyrrhic victory for Tories in a province that had otherwise gone overwhelmingly for their opponents. Still, there were growing pockets of discontent. Some conservatives firmly in the party's right flank were unhappy with Kenney's performance, clearly feeling buyers remorse that the guy they thought was the fire breathing advocate for the grassroots who'd finally let them loose instead turned out to be just more of the last guy. Maxime Bernier was making rounds, checking to see if anyone was still interested in what he had to say. Luckily for Kenney caucus was happy with his performance and didn't appear eager for another divisive campaign. Over in Alberta, controversial Wildrose MLA Derek Fildebrandt was also reaching out to disaffected conservatives who felt that not only had Kenney abandoned the base, and in doing so he had allowed the socialists to take over the country. Behind the scenes there were murmurs over whether or not Kenney actually wanted to stay on as leader. After all, he had been playing the game for a few decades at this point and had been at least somewhat reluctant to take over as leader in the first place. But Kenney was a loyal soldier to the cause, and told his caucus he was prepared to stay on for one more campaign. Even Stephen Harper needed a second attempt.

Fast forward a few months, and Prime Minister Mulcair was cautiously optimistic. CTV's Lisa LaFlamme sat down with him in December for the Prime Minister's customary year-end interview, where Mulcair spoke about his optimism for the upcoming year, his intent to work with other parties in the areas where they agreed, and get through the reforms the NDP had campaigned on during the election. But what stood out the most was the fact that there was no fire in his voice. No energy or confidence behind his pledges to enact the platform of the successful campaign. For all intents and purposes Mulcair still appeared like he was heading a minority government that could teeter and fall at any moment. This was at odds with statements coming from new MPs like Svend Robinson, the leftwing firebrand who had successfully made his comeback in his old Burnaby riding out in BC. Robinson was pushing for radical changes. Those in the Prime Minister's office weren't. Mulcair was not a revolutionary figure like Senator Bernie Sanders down south of the border, nor was he an ardent socialist like Robinson and a few others within his caucus. He was a pragmatist. He was elected leader of the New Democratic Party because he was the most electable, pragmatic candidate in the race. He had helped the party win its first ever federal election because he was the pragmatic choice in a contest of very flawed candidates. He'd just won a majority government because he eschewed the perception that the NDP would rush to enact transformative and costly policies the moment they won power, and offered Canadians a slow and cautious vision of government wrapped up in the radical option of electing the New Democrats. More than ever, Mulcair reasoned, Canadians wanted stability, and now those who wanted it would have it. Much like Kenney, Mulcair's challenge was how much of the party could he drag with him to the center of Canadian politics and still keep his job. For possibly the next four years, they'd both have the chance to find out.

 

[CanadianTory]

 

[CanadianTory]

If you were to ask some of the more dyed-in-the-wool partisans of the government, they'd say that the biggest immediate issue facing the New Democrats wasn't the long list of promises from the last campaign, nor was it going to be all the inevitable fights they were going to have to pick with the Premiers. They'd have four years to deal with all that, and 2021 was a long ways off. No, the biggest issue was their headspace. Too many New Democrats were having trouble accepting that they'd won a majority government, albeit a small one, and both the Prime Minister and his inner circle weren't exactly sure what to do next. Tom Mulcair had accomplished the impossible, twice, in electing the country's first ever New Democrat government and then elevating it to a majority. Unheard of. Unimaginable. But if you bothered to listen to the Prime Minister's end of the year interview with Lisa LaFlamme and CTV, you could have been forgiven for thinking the man had only narrowly hung on to power. Here he was, talking about compromising with the opposition, about sitting down and having a meaningful debate with people like Brad Wall and Brian Pallister, the two Premiers whose job seemed to be criticizing almost every word that came out of Mulcair's mouth. For the more "passionate" members of the government, it didn't make any sense. Why seek compromise with climate-deniers, homophobes, and corporate shills? Canadians had given the NDP a mandate, hadn't they? If 39% was good enough for the Tories and the Liberals to enact their agendas, it sure as hell as good enough for those like Svend Robinson and his friends. The government had a historic opportunity to fight income inequality, climate change, political and economic corruption, and here was their leader sounding cautious. careful. centrist. Liberal.

Yet it was exactly that cautious approach that the New Democrats had used to win their new mandate, and Tom Mulcair wasn't interested in scaring off potential voters to appease caucus members who were in too much of a hurry. The Tories were still playing Stephen Harper's best hits and the Liberals were going to spend the next two years trying to define their leadership choices. A majority government was an opportunity for Mulcair and his party time to establish themselves as the best choice for centrist voters ahead of the next election. In order to do that, the New Democrats had to stay disciplined, focused, and constantly on-message. That meant that Tom Mulcair was still going to be in charge of the Tom Mulcair government, and that meant the tight-control over caucus that had defined his time as a minority prime minister would continue on now that he was a majority prime minister. Ministers would receive their briefings from the PMO, the line that the Prime Minister and his inner circle wanted to push to Canadians, and more deliverology; the idea of flooding everyone with so much data about the government's progress on this policy or that policy that any complaints would get buried.

Heading Mulcair's inner circle was yet another former Liberal from Quebec, Alain Gaul. Having previously served as the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff back when he was Quebec's environment minister, Gaul knew Mulcair probably as well as anyone in politics could. More importantly, he was trusted, and had proved capable after helping the party transition from opposition to government after the 2015 campaign. Like his boss, Gaul wanted to get stuff done in Ottawa and didn't have much time for the kind of absolutism that defined a lot of social democrats outlooks. Pre-Orange Wave New Democrats didn't like him, not least because of his previous career as a corporate restructuring lawyer. To help ease some of those tensions was Deputy Chief of Staff Anne McGrath, Jack Layton's former top advisor and the party's former president. McGrath had been involved with the party since the 1990s, and both MPs and party operatives trusted her as if she were Layton himself. If someone felt like Mulcair was straying too far from NDP orthodoxy or was betraying Layton's memory, they'd likely get a visit from McGrath. She'd set them right. Rounding out the PMO side of things was Brad Levigne, the Prime Minister's Principal Secretary and top advisor. Another former party operator from Layton's tenure as leader, Levigne had been the architect of Mulcair's makeover for the 2015 campaign, helping the then-leader of the opposition settle on a clearer, simpler message for voters; Ready for Change. It was his job to make sure that same message was carried forth by caucus, and not get bogged down by the kind of muddled intellectualism that defined much of the party's past.

But the Prime Minister had won his job by earning the loyalty of his colleagues (Or at least a big enough chunk of them). He had abandoned the Quebec Liberals and joined up with Jack Layton when the idea of any NDP representation was ludicrous. It was a gamble that paid off. He had worked hard and had won the leadership over a more familiar, more establishment-friendly candidate. Again, another gamble. Mulcair had taken a party that had only begun to embrace its confidence and reach for power and had dragged it over the finish line, in some instances kicking and screaming. For all the accusations that he was a loner, that he relied too heavily on the unelected insiders that made up the PMO, Tom Mulcair still got along with much of his caucus and his cabinet.

In terms of seniority, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Megan Leslie typically topped the list. Obviously it helped having a woman as Mulcair's number two. It softened his image and made him seem more appealing to the electorate. But Leslie also brought with her a decade of parliamentary experience and a quick wit typical of most Nova Scotian politicos. Her inclination to build-bridges and foster dialogue between factions within the party also helped balance Mulcair's top-down style of leadership. To many within the NDP, she was the future of the party and an obvious potential successor to the Prime Minister. Unfortunately for Leslie supporters, the candidate most likely to get Mulcair's blessings in a hypothetical future leadership contest also happened to have a seat in his inner circle of cabinet ministers. Despite having backed Brian Topp in the race to succeed Jack Layton, Alexandre Boulerice worked his way into the Prime Minister's confidence. The svelte and bearded MP for Montreal’s Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie riding had been a longtime member of the NDP, well before it was fashionable in Quebec. A longtime union activist, his backing of his leader gave Mulcair the kind of left-wing credentials needed to keep the NDP together as it transitioned from principled, forever opposition to pragmatic government. Mulcair and his team didn't forget it, and rewarded Boulerice's loyalty by making him the minister in charge of Canada's workforce and Labour, perhaps the most important portfolio to any die-hard Dipper. Plus, he was a Quebecer, and someone who the Prime Minister wanted to take under his wing and mentor. Leslie, Boulerice, Howard Hampton and Nathan Cullen were all big names in cabinet, and were capable performers, but only one member of the government enjoyed the rare ability to speak to journalists and appear on television without having to clear it with the PMO first. As the government's House Leader, Peter Julian's job was to manage the NDP's legislative agenda, a position he had held since 2013 when the party was still in opposition. Solid, boring, experienced, the B.C. MP was yet another trusted figure within the party, firmly placed on the party's left but void of the type of rhetoric that defined approaches like Ashton's or Robinson's. He and Mulcair got along well, sharing a desire to fulfill Jack Layton's dream of supplementing the Liberals, permanently. If that meant some compromising here and there, Peter Julian was fine with it.

For the rest of his cabinet, the Prime Minister opted for pretty much the same ministry that he entered the campaign with, with the odd change here and there. A few newcomers, like Toronto's Jennifer Keesmaat and New Brunswick's Jennifer McKenzie, managed to find seats at the cabinet table, whereas a few other ministries got some new names. The big offices of National Defence, Foreign Affairs, Health, Justice, and Finance remained the same, with Jack Harris, Megan Leslie, Nycole Turmel, Craig Scott, and Nathan Cullen all keeping their jobs, respectively. The press called it a rather unremarkable shuffle, and that the Prime Minister was likely hedging his bets in the hopes of avoiding alienating anyone in his minor majority government. They were right. Not counting Speaker of the House Don Davies, the government could only ever afford to lose five votes lest they lose their unchallenged command of the House of Commons. Mulcair was going to have to pick his fights very carefully going forward, and avoid alienating too many of those social democrats that he didn't much care for. Impossible? The Prime Minister had overcome the impossible twice before. But that had often been thanks to luck, and in politics everybody's luck ran out eventually.

 

[CanadianTory]

Ask any Conservative partisan and they'd say the reason they lost the 2015 was because of Stephen Harper's tone. After nine years Harper was just too angry, too reclusive, and too much like the caricature that people accused him of being to reward him with another mandate, even a minority one. Ask any of the Tory insiders currently in the employ of Jason Kenney why they lost the 2017 campaign and they'd blame it on timing. Timing is important in politics. According to the Tories the 2017 election was just too soon after the last campaign that the New Democrats still had that "new government" smell about them. Besides Joe Clark, Canadians don't really throw governments out after a single term. They like to give them the opportunity to screw things up first.

Gathered in Stornoway, the official line coming from the leader's office was that everything was fine. The truth was a bit more complex. Kenney and his teamed banked that the New Democrat's, without a figure like Stephen Harper, would see their coalition of voters split apart between themselves and the Liberals, allowing the Tories the opportunity to run up the middle. Yet Kenney's selling proposition as Conservative Party leader was that he was essentially Stephen Harper, albeit a Stephen Harper who could speak more languages and felt more at home amongst immigrant communities. Better humoured too. More willing to chat with reporters. According to those within the Opposition Leader's office, Kenney took pride in watching reporters run out of questions to ask, or eventually stop writing down what the Albertan Tory was saying because they had run out of space. In some ways it was Kenney's attempt to co-opt the government's "deliverology" strategy. Flood journalists with enough information and all they're write is how impressive and smart you are. Or at least that was how the theory went in Tory High Command. It didn't always turn out that way. As for the campaign, the Tories had spent most of the previous two years trying to shed their image as corrupt and out-of-touch by sticking Kenney in a blue pickup truck and parading him around the barbeque circuit. The plan for the 2017 election was to keep doing that. No suits, only a dress shirt and blue jeans. Tories' struggled with what their post-Harper identity was, so most just decided that for the time being to replace "Harper" with "Kenney". But no matter how many times Kenney assailed Tom Mulcair and the NDP for their "assault on free enterprise", or spent time with immigrant community leaders, the party just couldn't escape the social conservatism. For some conservatives, that was perfectly fine with them.

A growing faction of the Conservative Party of Canada was sympathetic to the idea that Harper's nine-years in Ottawa was a disappointment for the conservative movement, since a significant portion of Harper's time was spent reigning in the more vocal, more socially conservative, more libertarian members of the party. After all, Stephen Harper had witnessed the intra-conservative battles of the late 19080s and 1990s. Canada was never going to elect a purely socially conservative government. So they had to focus on incrementalism. Build a broader coalition of voters. For a good number of Tory activists, they wanted to be let off the leash. They wanted conservatives to be like their conservatives, and damn the consequences. Not unlike some within the current federal government, there were some within the party whom the Kenney leadership team dubbed as "eternal oppositionists", those who would rather be right than be right and win. Kenney, like Stephen Harper, had learned that lesson and reveled in it's success during those nine-years in power (The second longest stint for Conservatives in the country's history). Kenney's expectation was that like the old boss he'd be able to woo the factions together in harmony under the promise of power. That was proving to be difficult.

Kenney's post-election Shadow Cabinet was yet another attempt to reset those relations. The biggest question was who was going to take on Finance Minister Nathan Cullen during Question Period. For the previous two years that role had belonged to Quebec MP and former Action democratique du Quebec leader Gerard Deltell. A passionate and fiery former journalist, Deltell knew the art of the performance and also served as the party's Quebec Lieutenant. But Deltell also hailed from the Mulroney, moderate PC wing of the party, and to many in the party's activist wing represented everything wrong with the party's direction in the last campaign. So, out with Deltell, and in with Kevin Falcon, the party's star candidate in South Surrey—White Rock, British Columbia. Premier Gordon Campbell's former Health Minister, Falcon had run as the conservative successor to Campbell when the latter decided to retire in 2011. He lost to the more moderate Christy Clark, and instead ended up as Deputy Premier and Finance Minister before bowing out of politics altogether in 2012. Western, conservative, experienced and acceptable to both major wings of the party, Falcon was the ideal choice. Deltell would remain the party's Quebec Lieutenant, a reward for the party's showing in his native province in the last campaign, and move to Justice. Most other big names would stay put, including former interim leader Erin O'Toole at Foreign Affairs, Manitoba's James Bezan for National Defence, and 2016 Conservative leadership runner-up Max Bernier as Transportation critic, while fellow 2016 candidate Lisa Raitt stayed on as Deputy Leader.

With the loss of a number of Ontario MPs, including Opposition House leader Paul Calandra, Saskatchewan MP and former Speaker of the House of Commons Andrew Scheer would move back into the role, hopefully utilizing his knowledge of the House and its procedure to keep the government and its narrow majority on it's toes. Cheryl Gallant would shadow the Families and Social Development portfolio in another big win for the social conservatives of the party. Yet placing Gallant in that job posed the risk of losing a lot of that goodwill that Kenney would need for the wider electorate. Journalists were already asking questions about abortion again, which Kenney and his team had to have expected with her appointment. That social conservative albatross was still hanging there, stinking up the room.

Still, the truth was things could've been a lot worse for the Conservatives, and even most of those dyed-in-the-wool activists could admit that Kenney had run a mostly solid campaign (Emphasis on mostly), saving potentially dozens of seats out West and expanding the party out in the East. Remember those seat projections saying the Tories would drop to 90, or even 80 seats? A loss of only ten seats was a resounding victory as far as Kenney and his allies were concerned. Because of that loss, Kenney would still be required to face an automatic leadership review in six month's time, and it was also true that there were indeed forces brewing to try and force Kenney out.

Derek Fildebrandt was the unofficial leader of those disgruntled partisans. A backer of Bernier in the last leadership campaign, Fildebrandt styled himself as the tough-talking, true blue conservative that was right at home amongst the likes of Ezra Levant, Conrad Black and Rebel News. Fildebrandt was the kind of populist who reflected a growing number of louder, angrier conservatives trying to flood the scene. According to him, the Tories lost because they were trying to act too much like the government and not enough like real conservatives. Rumour was that Fildebrandt was putting out feelers to Max Bernier about starting a new right-wing populist political party. Rumour also had it that those discussions were going nowhere, citing Bernier's skepticism that there were enough voters to make such a venture worth the risk. Ted Cruz had lost to Hillary Clinton. Bernier had lost to Jason Kenney by a fairly convincing (A.K.A. large) margin. Apparently Bernier was fine cooling his heals until something better came along. But with the support of countless faceless voices on Twitter and outraged voices from Rebel News, it seemed like Fildebrandt might launch such a party on his own if no bigger names stepped forward. Despite his exhaustion, the threat of a right-wing challenge seemed to only energize Kenney, who told those close to him the last person who was going to force him out of his job was Derek Fildebrandt. Kenney considered him little better than an annoyance, and had advised Wildrose leader Brian Jean not to readmit him into the provincial caucus's fold lest they jeopardize either merger talks with the Albertan PCs or Wildrose's chances against the Notley and the NDP at the next election, scheduled for 2019. As far as the Tory leader was concerned, this was just Fildebrandt seeking to even the score against his political betters.

But the irony of the situation wasn't lost on Kenney either. He himself had been apart of an insurgent political movement from Alberta, and understood how dangerous it could be for conservative unity in the long-term. Derek Fildebrandt had his admirers, but he was no Preston Manning. Then again, Manning was no real threat until it was too late to stop him.

 

[CanadianTory]

 

[CanadianTory]

Every Prime Minister is partly defined by his or her relationship with whoever sits in the Oval Office. That's just the nature of being neighbors with a world superpower. We feel every twitch and every grumble from across the border because the stakes are just always that high. Jean Chrétien was very interested in building a good working relationship with then-newly elected President George W. Bush. Cabinet Ministers reached out to their American counterparts, and Bush and his team seemed interested in the Alberta oil-sands. Despite their obvious political differences, the Bush-Chrétien relationship had the potential to be profitable to both sides. Then 9/11 happened. Chrétien decided to sit out the Iraq War. That was the end of that relationship. When Barack Obama got elected in 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper knew that there were going to be ideological differences. Obama was the charismatic new President who heralded hope and change in a country desperate for both. Harper wore sweater vests and listened to The Beatles. Both sides tried to manage expectations and adopt to the changing tides of the Global Recession, and admittedly worked well together in that regard. But toss in Harper's disinterest in environmental issues and Obama's disinterest in approving the Keystone XL Pipeline and those frosty relations never really warmed. Tom Mulcair hoped to prove to voters that he could get along with the Americans and show that the New Democrats could be trusted with Canada's reputation on the world stage.

Whereas Barack Obama and his team's preference for Justin Trudeau was hard to ignore (and according to Canadian officials made for an awkward first meeting between the two men), Mulcair found a friendlier ally in Hillary Clinton. Many within Clinton's personal circle still feigned annoyance towards Trudeau and the Liberals, stemming from the latter had tried to use Clinton to fundraise off of on multiple occasions. First time had been in 2014 when they had used a supposedly apolitical event hosted by the Canada 2020 think-tank as a fundraiser for the upcoming election campaign. Then in 2016 Liberal Party high command had reached out to (or begged, depending on who you talked to) the Clinton campaign in the hopes that their candidate would record a message of support for Trudeau for their party convention. Huma Abedin, President Clinton's longtime confidant, expressed her distain at the Liberal's blatant attempt to ride her boss's coattails. The reveal of Trudeau's use of blackface didn't help matters either. If there was one thing Hillary Clinton didn't respect it was sloppiness. She had, after all, built an entire career around carefully scripting every move, every vote, and every sentence that would come out of her mouth. Trudeau reminded her too much of Obama; all charisma and no real substance. But at least Trudeau was a known quantity in Hillaryland. Meanwhile the election of Tom Mulcair and the New Democrats was greeted with mystery and caution. Some uninformed observers suggested that Mulcair was more in line with views being pushed by Clinton primary challenger Bernie Sanders. Others warned that the election of an openly socialist government on the northern border would only embolden Republicans, who would be more than happy to hang such a label around Clinton's neck. Fast forward to Clinton and Mulcair's first face-to-face meeting in February 2017, and both leader's discovered a number of similarities. Both agreed that the Keystone XL Pipeline was dead. Both were leading parties that increasingly relied on a younger, more left-leaning base. Both were viewed with distrust and suspicion by members of that base. Both were disinterested in anything having to do with socialism. Canadian journalists couldn't help but notice the relaxed nature between the two leaders, quickly dubbing it as a new thawing between Canada and the United States, and possibly the start of the strongest special relationship since Bill Clinton and Jean Chrétien.

Unfortunately is wasn't long before that relationship began to take a back seat in the face of the President's mounting domestic problems.

G7's are routinely criticized as oppressive and costly photo-ops, where politicians from around the world descend on a city, talk about a bunch of issues and do nothing about anything of it. Rinse and repeat. Not to mention all the protestors and security headaches that accompany those politicians. While true, the G7 meetings really do help the world’s major industrialized economies align their work. The 44th G7 gathering in Mulcair's native Montreal was the NDP leader's first opportunity to play host to his other colleagues. Embrace the role of statesman setting the agenda for the rest of the world to follow. Fresh off his majority victory, it was seen by many within the New Democratic caucus as a chance for their Prime Minister to flex his muscles and actually push for progress on climate change, gender equality, Syrian refugee relocation and job growth across all sectors and incomes. But without the United States onside, not much of anything of substance would get done, and President Clinton didn't seem interested nor capable of committing her country to being onside of much of anything. Arriving in Montreal, President Clinton was tired. Her history-breaking Presidency, which seemed to have so much promise when it began, had quickly fizzled out and gotten dragged down into the mud and grime of obstructionism and polarization. No matter what she did or how many concessions she offered congressional Republicans, Mitch McConnell wanted nothing to do with her. Clinton had spent so much of her time and political capital to get someone, anyone successfully nominated for the Supreme Court that by the time the President attended the G7, there were already articles being written about the oncoming bloodbath that awaited the Democrats in the upcoming U.S. midterms, or how Clinton might not even get renominated by her party come 2020. The President was also getting hounded daily by MeToo Activists who to the Clinton's seemed intent on digging up old stories that were better left in the past. Even embattled UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was reported to have told French President Emmanuel Macron just how tired Hillary Clinton looked, sparking accusations of sexism from some corners of the press and social media. Sexist? Very likely. True? Also very likely.

Like Mulcair, Boris Johnson was trying to use the G7 meeting to demonstrate his statesmanship quality and shore up support for himself back home. Johnson, the architect of the successful and divisive Brexit vote, had been elected leader in 2016 because he pledged to deliver a clear break from the European Union. Two years and one election later, Johnson had only secured a narrow majority over the opposition Labour Party and had gotten no closer to delivering on a Brexit deal that pleased all parties involved, including the various factions within his own Conservative Party. Rumours swirled that amidst poor polling numbers and growing frustration with Johnson's management style, members of the government were assembling signatures to dump him as leader. A successful and calm G7 could persuade wobbling supporters that Johnson was steady and reliable on the world stage, maybe buying him enough time to get a deal through parliament. Best that Boris would get was a stumble off the photo-op platform with his fellow G7 leaders that quickly got memed by the internet.

Aside from Clinton-fatigue and BoJo-memes, the other most notable story emerging from the gathering of leaders was the one that everyone had already been writing from the very beginning; that the 44th gathering would be German Chancellor Angela Merkel's final such meeting since coming to power in 2005. Twelve years later and Merkel was leaving behind a successful electoral legacy marred by recent controversies over the amount of Syrian refugees she and her government had allowed into Germany. The incumbent Christian Democratic Union, led by former Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen, was now neck and neck with the opposition Social Democrats and the technocratic Martin Schulz. With the election scheduled for September, it was a real possibility that Merkel's chosen successor and heir to her legacy would get rejected by German voters. In the meantime Merkel would relish in her swansong and bid her colleagues a fond farewell, and every G7 leader made sure to pay her tribute in return, Mulcair included.

​

Before Clinton even got back on her plane for Washington, D.C. journalists and columnists from the Ottawa press pool were already submitting write-ups labeling the summit as yet another superficial do-nothing. Tom Mulcair's attempt to appear as the leader of the agenda had fallen flat, with Canadian officials reported to had been routinely sidelined in talks between the United States and the other players at the summit. A meeting between Mulcair and the newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron had been canceled last-minute, only to have Macron spotted speaking with Clinton hours later. There had been a joint communiqué promising to commit to further discussions on increased global trade and gender equality, but it was all the usual lip service that observers and protestors expected. Much to the chagrin on many New Democrats, the communiqué said nothing about climate change. Although Mulcair had pushed for something to be included, Clinton had convinced the ensemble of world leaders to wait until the next G7 meeting in France next year (coincidentally after the U.S. Midterms). Mulcair let it be known that he wasn't pleased by the turn of events, nor how he and his team had been treated by their American and French counterparts. A call between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Affairs Minister Megan Leslie, which was meant to smooth things over, apparently didn't go much better either. Whether he liked it or not, Tom Mulcair had been reminded that he was at the mercy of the Americans, and didn't have any real cards to play of his own. When President Clinton was asked by reporters about she thought about having undermined her Canadian hosts, she replied that Mulcair had been a gracious and effective host and that she had enjoyed herself at the Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth Hotel. The G7 had actually taken place at the Ritz-Carlton.

 

[CanadianTory]

 

[CanadianTory]

A mainstay of politics in Canada is often described as taking one for the team. You'll never agree on everything, the saying goes, but you suck it up because its in the team's best interest. The Liberal Party is famous for it. Yes, there were spats between leader's and members of the government, and everyone knew about them, but they all happened in private. Liberals clammed up in public when the reporters were around, smiled, and parroted the message of the day. For instance, when someone asked whether Justin Trudeau should stay or go as leader of the party, the caucus was resolutely behind the guy. Patience won out and eventually that problem sorted itself out. Now the Liberals were free to gush about how things were going to be so much better under Mark Carney's enlightened leadership (i.e. sunny ways minus the blackface) without the risk of appearing disloyal to the team. It's a lesson that wasn't lost on the New Democrats. The government was divided on a whole range of issues, including the Middle East, free trade, energy and Canada's natural resources, NATO, you name it. But they fight together as New Democrats. They (mostly) keep their team united because the alternative means they don't get to do the things they've waited over five decades to do. Canadians don't have a lot of confidence in a political party's ability to manage the government if they can't manage themselves. Just ask the litany of opposition leaders who now find themselves out of politics.

Conservatives have a mixed record when it comes to playing as a team. The Conservative Party of Canada, as a creation of Stephen Harper, made loyalty to the party and its leader a cardinal virtue. Hell, even Harper's then-chief of staff, Nigel Wright, wrote a personal cheque to make the Mike Duffy scandal go away for his boss. It was simply a case of doing what you had to do to help the team win. Although criticized by journalists and the other parties as evidence that Stephen Harper was some kind of control freak, to those with any understanding of history admitted it made perfect sense. Canada's right had been fractured and divided for a decade before Stephen Harper and Peter Mackay put the pieces back together again. Before that, Ottawa journalists routinely wrote about how much the Progressive Conservatives and their more right-leaning, rural cousins in the Canadian Alliance hated one another more than the Liberals. Before the movement split the papers wrote about Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney's rivalry. Before that, Diefenbaker and the divisions that were wrought after bringing his leadership to a bitter end. Whenever Tories fight themselves, the Liberals win. Harper hoped to put an end to that and for nine years, two-hundred-and-seventy-one days, he did. But there had long been whispers of what would happen to the party post-Harper. Would the various factions continue to play nice with one another, or would ideology and self-interest win out as the party devolved to its baser, unelectable pieces?

Derek Fildebrandt is no stranger to self-interest. The former Wildrose MLA has long been a fixture of controversy in Alberta. He was briefly suspended from Wildrose in 2016 after he hurled blatantly homophobic attacks against Kathleen Wynne, Ontario's first openly gay Premier. According to him it was just a matter of poor phrasing. But only a few years later Fildebrandt would permanently get the boot from Wildrose leader Brian Jean. Maybe it was the fact he was renting out his taxpayer-funded Edmonton apartment on AirBnB. Or that he was found guilty of a hit-and-run accident. Or maybe it was his hunting violation. Or maybe Jean just saw the writing on the wall; keeping a loose cannon like Fildebrandt around was only ever going to cause his party headaches as it prepared to do battle against Rachel Notley and the Alberta NDP and a reinvigorated PC Party under former provincial cabinet minister Manmeet Bhullar. Since his ejection from Wildrose, Fildebrandt had made little secret his contempt for Jason Kenney, whom he blamed for orchestrated his predicament. As the story goes, according to Fildebrandt, Kenney and his team, in the hopes of influencing a merger between the right in Alberta, provided Jean with the resources and cover needed to dump the controversial MLA without suffering much heat from the political right. The fact that no one came to his defense is proof, according to Fildebrandt, that Albertan conservatives, both provincially and federally, have been bought off by Jason Kenney. Certainly is has nothing to do with the fact that polls show a majority of Albertans in favour, including a narrow majority of Wildrose supporters, of Fildebrandt's removal from the party.

Yet living in the political wilderness didn't deter the Wildrose-now-Independent MLA's determination for revenge against his political enemies. For months after his ejection from Wildrose, rumours swirled that Fildebrandt was looking to recruit former Conservative cabinet minister and leadership-runner-up Maxime Bernier to publicly challenge Jason Kenney for the leadership of the federal party, or failing that, abandon the Tories altogether and establish a new right-wing political party to represent what he called "pissed off conservatives" tired of trying to be anything other than the most extreme version of the Canadian Alliance/Reform Party. In Derek Fildebrandt's dream scenario, Bernier would publicly call out Kenney for being weak, start up the new party, win countless seats out in Alberta and the rest of western Canada, and force the federal Conservatives to either bend the knee to their demands, or get bent themselves. Of course, the fiery Albertan would be at Bernier's side the entire time, maybe even with a seat in Ottawa. That ended up not happening. Bernier, for all of his tough-talk against supply-management or his distaste for the equalization formula used by the federal government, was at least smart enough to realize that hitching his wagon to someone like Derek Fildebrandt wouldn't likely win him any success in the long-term. Besides, brash, right-wing leaning populism had been defeated at the ballot box almost everywhere. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz's presidential campaigns. Le Pen in France. Doug Ford in Toronto. Bernier's own leadership campaign in 2016. In every instance, the seemingly more moderate, establishment-friendly candidate had won out against the candidate seeking to upend the apple cart. Besides, there was a lot of chit chat that Bernier's next move was to take over the Conservative Party of Quebec and build his own credible, libertarian-leaning alternative to Francois Legault and the CAQ. A nice way to end one's political career. Either that or make enough of a splash that he could write a book and maybe get his own show on The Rebel or (even better!) Fox News.

No Bernier? No problem! If the MP from Beauce wouldn't rid the conservative movement of those pesky Toronto-area consultants who supported abortion, same-sex marriage, and aboriginal reconciliation, than Derek Fildebrandt would do it himself. Luckily for him (and unluckily for Jason Kenney), he was at least able to steal some headlines and cause the Conservative leader some embarrassment when he announced that Manitoba MP and former cabinet minister Steven Fletcher would join his party as its parliamentary spokesperson. The notoriously free-spirited Fletcher had often found himself on the outside of Harper and Kenney's inner circles, and had failed on more than one occasion to break into the upper ranks of Jason Kenney's shadow cabinet. The best he managed was as Ed Fast's deputy shadowing Peggy Nash and the Treasury Board portfolio. He was never going to get finance or health, his views were just too outside the mainstream. Fletcher had been blunt with both friends and colleagues; if he wasn't going to be a player in the Conservative Party of Canada, he'd start looking elsewhere. Derek Fildebrandt's new Western Freedom Party seemed as good a fit as any, and would finally allow the Manitoban MP the opportunity to speak his mind on issues he cared about, not to mention give disgruntled Tories an opportunity to voice their frustrations.

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For Kenney and the Conservatives it was an unwelcomed distraction. For months Kenney had been hammering away at the government and the Prime Minister for his lackluster performance at the G7. Making matters worse for the NDP, their narrow majority had only gotten narrower following the ejection of Quebec MP Hans Marotte for comparing Quebecer's struggles to those of Palestinians in Israel, complete with the expression of hope that sovereigntists had found the right political vehicle in the NDP. Fast forward a few weeks later and Marotte was the Bloc Quebecois' only representative in parliament, their first since before the last election. Instead of slamming the government for being soft on separatism or weakening Canada's stature on the world stage, Kenney was now answering whether his position as leader was secure. What was he going to do? Was the party still united behind him? Were any other caucus members going to defect? Had he spoken to Derek Fildebrandt? And on and on it went. Jason Kenney knew how potent protest parties could be. Political protest movements have been influential in Canadian politics before. In Kenney's lifetime those have included the Parti Quebecois, the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance, the Bloc Quebecois. Having failed to stop this insurgency from being born, Kenney's only hope now was to stop it in its infancy before it amassed enough resources and resigned the Tories to another decade in the political wilderness. Still, when asked by reporters, a great many Tories within caucus were optimistic. Derek Fildebrandt wasn't exactly a political genius.