CanadianTory
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CanadianTory's Test Thread
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CanadianTory
WALZ 2028
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The past is never dead. It's not even past. The guy who wrote that, William Faulkner, would probably find that sentiment applicable to the federal New Democrats and their ongoing identity crisis. For a lot of New Democrats, or left-wingers who had bought up NDP memberships, the big question everything kept coming back to was what the party actually stood for. What was the purpose of the New Democratic Party of Canada? Was it to win elections, or just say wonderful things to one another while languishing in opposition, principles and ideology intact? It had lived without power for it's entire existence up to 2015. Now the debate was could it live without principles.
To those who held an NDP membership card and had actually led their party to a successful election result - BC Premier John Horgan, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, and Prime Minister Tom Mulcair - the answer was obvious. There was only so much good that you could achieve from the sidelines of Canadian politics compared to what you could sitting around a cabinet table. Notley in particular, who would likely soon find herself out of a job according to polls back home, was adamant that the NDP had to stand up for the rights of all workers, including those who worked in Canada's energy sector. If Canada's economy was to continue to function, it needed to keep building natural-resource infrastructure. That meant pipelines had to be built, current ones had to be maintained, and environmentalists had to get with the program. It was an issue that divided the party like no other, including between elected officials. John Horgan, for example, was firmly of the position (Like Mulcair) that it was in his province's best interests to prevent further oil tanker traffic in and around Vancouver and the Salish Sea. Whereas Notley saw the issue as one of jobs, Horgan and most other party members saw it as one of environmental catastrophe. As one would imagine, the tensions went beyond just the NDP tent and extended to the entire federation.
But Mulcair was still the boss. For a lot of those left-wing activists, many of whom weren't particularly affiliated with the NDP, this ran contrary to their vision of the country. Didn't matter that Mulcair had refused to ratify the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal, canceled the Keystone XL Pipeline when the more politically logical decision would've been to approve it, or the fact he had repeatedly thrown cold water on the Trans Mountain pipeline. What mattered to the activists was that the NDP leader still wasn't going far enough. The Alberta Tar Sands were still functioning, for instance, despite the fact they employed thousands of Canadians. Mulcair and his team had also repeatedly distanced themselves from Avi Lewis and the Leap Manifesto crowd - those who advocated for a complete and immediate end to any new natural-resource development. Leave the oil in the ground and quadrupole efforts to reach net-zero emissions targets by 2050. Aside from a few canceled pipeline projects, Mulcair and the NDP were still publicly in favour of a pipeline that ran from west to east to refine oil in Canada (So long as it was independently approved by the National Energy Board). Even worse, the Prime Minister was still calling for Canada to be an energy superpower of the 21st century. That didn't fit in with activist's tiny perfect vision of Canada's future.
Then there was the government's position on carbon pricing. Mulcair and the NDP had been elected, twice, based upon the pledge that they would introduce a cap and trade carbon pricing scheme on big polluters. According to the government their plan would reduce Canada's emissions by eighty percent by 2050, compared to levels from 1990. Nobody actually believed that would happen, especially since the government had also pledged against imposing a national plan on provinces so long as their own made-in-province carbon pricing plans were equal to or greater than the government's targets. But that promise was made in 2015, when the New Democrats were elected to a minority. No minority government, even a historical one, would find itself with the political muscle to convince other provinces to sign on. But now that the government had a majority, it could. But, according to Mulcair's office, the government wouldn't. Rachel Notley had implemented a plan in Alberta, but it was an election year and Mulcair wasn't interested in damaging her already difficult odds at re-election. Quebec had just elected Francois Legault and the CAQ, who had warned the NDP that it would not accept any mingling in provincial jurisdiction by the federal government. Over in Ontario Vic Fedeli and the Progressive Conservatives had included carbon pricing in their 2018 platform. But that was before they had to go and dump their former leader mid-campaign when accusations of sexual misconduct came to light. Now that Patrick Brown was gone they claimed they were no longer bound to a promise they had explicitly campaigned on. Only British Columbia and New Brunswick had signed on. Everyone else had decided to come up with their own plans, or were dragging their feet.
Saint-Jean MP Hans Marotte had been kicked out of caucus for repeated pro-separatist comments. He now sat with the Bloc Quebecois. Former International Trade Minister Paul Dewar had passed away in February. The government's minor majority had shrunk even smaller in a manner of a few months. There didn't seem to be a lot of appetite in the PMO to begin waging a war against the provinces. That only enraged the activists further.
In stepped Svend Robinson. Tall, handsome, well-spoken, Robinson had more grey in his hair than he did in 2004, when he last served as the Member of Parliament for Burnaby North—Seymour. From 1979 until 2004, Robinson was the left-wing firebrand of the NDP with a long history of controversy. Be it his heckling of then-President Ronald Reagan during his speech to the House of Commons, or his proposal to have September 11 named Chile Day (to mark the overthrow of Salvador Allende's democratically elected government by the American government), Robinson was no stranger to standing on principle. Even in his unsuccessful bid to lead the NDP in 1995, Robinson ran in seeming defiance of any notion of power. Having resigned from parliament in 2004 following the theft of an expensive ring, he would stage his political comeback in 2017 in the shadow of Bernie Sander's unsuccessful challenge to Hillary Clinton in the previous year's Democratic presidential primaries. Although defeated, Sanders had galvanized large segments of voters to passionately support his candidacy and it's socialist policies. The BC MP wanted to replicate that movement's momentum in Canada. Unfortunately for Tom Mulcair and his allies, for the elder statesman of the NDP's left-flank that meant pushing the party in a very un-Mulcair direction on a whole range of issues. Hence Robinson's decision to form the NDP Community Movement, the spiritual successor to his previous faction that was formed at the start of the new century, New Politics Initiative. Like the NPI, the NDPCM (What a mouthful) aimed to simply be a vehicle to preserve the party's leftwing principles in the face of more moderate (AKA electable) leadership. Whether you were against globalization, free trade, pipelines, or championed the principles of feminism, environmentalism, or just didn't like Tom Mulcair all that much, the NDPCM was to be your new home. If you asked Svend Robinson what the aim of the faction was, he'd say it was to prevent the New Democrats from turning into the Liberals. A lot of observers, including journalists, interpreted that to mean preventing Tom Mulcair from leading the party into the next election.
If you were to interpret that as the group's primary and only goal, which members would tell you it wasn't, obviously you would need a pretty serious candidate with whom to replace Tom Mulcair with. A Paul Martin to Mulcair's Chretien. You would need someone who had name recognition with Canadians and connections to the party grassroots and labour movement. Someone who could conceivably maintain the NDP's support in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia while growing its support out in Atlantic Canada and the rest of the west. Someone who was fluently bilingual. Someone who could push the party in a more left-wing direction but not alienate the voters who had voted NDP in 2017. Lucky for the party and for the Prime Minister, nobody checked all those boxes except Mulcair himself. For many NDP MPs, especially those coming from those three key provinces, they were elected under Tom Mulcair's NDP, not Svend Robinson's. Back in the 1990s the big question facing the NDP was whether they should simply roll up their tent and pack it in entirely. Fast forward to 2019 and now they found themselves in government, holding the levers of power.
Power or principles? So long as the party kept winning elections, the principles would probably keep taking a back seat. But if Canadians fell out of love with Tom Mulcair, or the it looked like the party was heading for defeat, the NDP would have to make a serious choice. Would they reopen the rifts that Mulcair had closed, and embrace the principles that they told themselves were beautiful and right, or would they buckle down and keep playing for power? Whatever the party decided, they'd have to learn to stick with it.
To those who held an NDP membership card and had actually led their party to a successful election result - BC Premier John Horgan, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, and Prime Minister Tom Mulcair - the answer was obvious. There was only so much good that you could achieve from the sidelines of Canadian politics compared to what you could sitting around a cabinet table. Notley in particular, who would likely soon find herself out of a job according to polls back home, was adamant that the NDP had to stand up for the rights of all workers, including those who worked in Canada's energy sector. If Canada's economy was to continue to function, it needed to keep building natural-resource infrastructure. That meant pipelines had to be built, current ones had to be maintained, and environmentalists had to get with the program. It was an issue that divided the party like no other, including between elected officials. John Horgan, for example, was firmly of the position (Like Mulcair) that it was in his province's best interests to prevent further oil tanker traffic in and around Vancouver and the Salish Sea. Whereas Notley saw the issue as one of jobs, Horgan and most other party members saw it as one of environmental catastrophe. As one would imagine, the tensions went beyond just the NDP tent and extended to the entire federation.
But Mulcair was still the boss. For a lot of those left-wing activists, many of whom weren't particularly affiliated with the NDP, this ran contrary to their vision of the country. Didn't matter that Mulcair had refused to ratify the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal, canceled the Keystone XL Pipeline when the more politically logical decision would've been to approve it, or the fact he had repeatedly thrown cold water on the Trans Mountain pipeline. What mattered to the activists was that the NDP leader still wasn't going far enough. The Alberta Tar Sands were still functioning, for instance, despite the fact they employed thousands of Canadians. Mulcair and his team had also repeatedly distanced themselves from Avi Lewis and the Leap Manifesto crowd - those who advocated for a complete and immediate end to any new natural-resource development. Leave the oil in the ground and quadrupole efforts to reach net-zero emissions targets by 2050. Aside from a few canceled pipeline projects, Mulcair and the NDP were still publicly in favour of a pipeline that ran from west to east to refine oil in Canada (So long as it was independently approved by the National Energy Board). Even worse, the Prime Minister was still calling for Canada to be an energy superpower of the 21st century. That didn't fit in with activist's tiny perfect vision of Canada's future.
Then there was the government's position on carbon pricing. Mulcair and the NDP had been elected, twice, based upon the pledge that they would introduce a cap and trade carbon pricing scheme on big polluters. According to the government their plan would reduce Canada's emissions by eighty percent by 2050, compared to levels from 1990. Nobody actually believed that would happen, especially since the government had also pledged against imposing a national plan on provinces so long as their own made-in-province carbon pricing plans were equal to or greater than the government's targets. But that promise was made in 2015, when the New Democrats were elected to a minority. No minority government, even a historical one, would find itself with the political muscle to convince other provinces to sign on. But now that the government had a majority, it could. But, according to Mulcair's office, the government wouldn't. Rachel Notley had implemented a plan in Alberta, but it was an election year and Mulcair wasn't interested in damaging her already difficult odds at re-election. Quebec had just elected Francois Legault and the CAQ, who had warned the NDP that it would not accept any mingling in provincial jurisdiction by the federal government. Over in Ontario Vic Fedeli and the Progressive Conservatives had included carbon pricing in their 2018 platform. But that was before they had to go and dump their former leader mid-campaign when accusations of sexual misconduct came to light. Now that Patrick Brown was gone they claimed they were no longer bound to a promise they had explicitly campaigned on. Only British Columbia and New Brunswick had signed on. Everyone else had decided to come up with their own plans, or were dragging their feet.
Saint-Jean MP Hans Marotte had been kicked out of caucus for repeated pro-separatist comments. He now sat with the Bloc Quebecois. Former International Trade Minister Paul Dewar had passed away in February. The government's minor majority had shrunk even smaller in a manner of a few months. There didn't seem to be a lot of appetite in the PMO to begin waging a war against the provinces. That only enraged the activists further.
In stepped Svend Robinson. Tall, handsome, well-spoken, Robinson had more grey in his hair than he did in 2004, when he last served as the Member of Parliament for Burnaby North—Seymour. From 1979 until 2004, Robinson was the left-wing firebrand of the NDP with a long history of controversy. Be it his heckling of then-President Ronald Reagan during his speech to the House of Commons, or his proposal to have September 11 named Chile Day (to mark the overthrow of Salvador Allende's democratically elected government by the American government), Robinson was no stranger to standing on principle. Even in his unsuccessful bid to lead the NDP in 1995, Robinson ran in seeming defiance of any notion of power. Having resigned from parliament in 2004 following the theft of an expensive ring, he would stage his political comeback in 2017 in the shadow of Bernie Sander's unsuccessful challenge to Hillary Clinton in the previous year's Democratic presidential primaries. Although defeated, Sanders had galvanized large segments of voters to passionately support his candidacy and it's socialist policies. The BC MP wanted to replicate that movement's momentum in Canada. Unfortunately for Tom Mulcair and his allies, for the elder statesman of the NDP's left-flank that meant pushing the party in a very un-Mulcair direction on a whole range of issues. Hence Robinson's decision to form the NDP Community Movement, the spiritual successor to his previous faction that was formed at the start of the new century, New Politics Initiative. Like the NPI, the NDPCM (What a mouthful) aimed to simply be a vehicle to preserve the party's leftwing principles in the face of more moderate (AKA electable) leadership. Whether you were against globalization, free trade, pipelines, or championed the principles of feminism, environmentalism, or just didn't like Tom Mulcair all that much, the NDPCM was to be your new home. If you asked Svend Robinson what the aim of the faction was, he'd say it was to prevent the New Democrats from turning into the Liberals. A lot of observers, including journalists, interpreted that to mean preventing Tom Mulcair from leading the party into the next election.
Svend Robinson (Burnaby North—Seymour)
Dennis Bevington (Northwest Territories)
Sean Devine (Nepean)
Dirka Prout (London North Centre)
Paulina Ayala (Honoré-Mercier)
Mathieu Ravignat (Pontiac)
Erin Weir (Regina—Lewvan)
Bill Sundhu (Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo)
Dennis Bevington (Northwest Territories)
Sean Devine (Nepean)
Dirka Prout (London North Centre)
Paulina Ayala (Honoré-Mercier)
Mathieu Ravignat (Pontiac)
Erin Weir (Regina—Lewvan)
Bill Sundhu (Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo)
Power or principles? So long as the party kept winning elections, the principles would probably keep taking a back seat. But if Canadians fell out of love with Tom Mulcair, or the it looked like the party was heading for defeat, the NDP would have to make a serious choice. Would they reopen the rifts that Mulcair had closed, and embrace the principles that they told themselves were beautiful and right, or would they buckle down and keep playing for power? Whatever the party decided, they'd have to learn to stick with it.
Ready for Change - Appendix 2.J (2019 Alberta general election, 2019 Prince Edward Island general election, 2019 Newfoundland & Labrador general election, 2019 Manitoba general election, 2019 Nova Scotia general election)
CanadianTory
WALZ 2028
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
CanadianTory
WALZ 2028
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The Liberals had experienced a weird couple of years. Way back in 2012, rather than let Bob Rae parlay the interim leadership into the permanent gig, the party rallied around a second generation Trudeau. He was bright, youthful, and carried with him a kind of natural Liberal energy that the last few leaders definitely lacked. Nobody ever expected Michael Ignatieff to impress Canadians with his socks (although to be fair no one ever asked to see them, so who knows what he was packing). If you listened to Justin Trudeau talk about policy, you'd be hard pressed to imagine him belonging to the same party as Jean Chretien. Chretien was a creature of the centre and had won three, back-to-back majority governments precisely because of it. He had allowed Free Trade to remain after campaigning against it. He and Paul Martin slashed and slashed every single department they could find until Canada was able to post its first surplus in decades. But Trudeau and his team appeared to recoil at the very notion of the political middle. Deficit spending, carbon taxes, bigger government. Basically anything that Stephen Harper did, Justin Trudeau proposed to do the opposite. All those big, structural differences with the NDP? All gone, with the hope that voters would side with sunny ways rather than the guy with a beard. According to the polls at the time, Canadians seemed receptive to it, and before anyone knew it Justin Trudeau sounded like a winner. He was going to sweep the country off its feet just like his dad and transform politics for the better.
Fast forward a couple of years, including two elections and a few blackface scandals, and Trudeau was out of a job. A Trudeau would now join the ranks of Stephane Dion, Michael Ignatieff, and Edward Blake as leaders of the Liberal Party of Canada who would never wind up as Prime Minister. It was a massive embarrassment to his father's legacy, to whom he was its keeper, and an even deeper disappointment for the Liberal Party. Eight years on from that disastrous, third-place showing in the 2011 election, and the Liberals were still in third-place. What was the point in being a Liberal if not holding power? Without that power, what did the party actually stand for?
Did voters even care what they stood for anymore?
Merging with the New Democrats had been floated as an idea almost the second after all the votes were counted in 2011. Hell, it had been popping up ever since the ill-fated coalition agreement between Stephane Dion and Jack Layton (With Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois in attendance) had been signed back in December 2008. Journalists and pundits who lived in the Ottawa-bubble would salivate at the idea of this mythical, untested, complex, and likely-to-fail creation. Chretien might be in favour of it. Ed Broadbent too. Lock them in a room together with a bottle of brandy and let them hash out the details. But that was back in the days when Stephen Harper was the common enemy. There wasn't much of an argument for the NDP, the incumbent government, to join forces with a party that many of its members detested (Years of being mocked and getting looked down by the Liberals will do that to you). Mulcair had publicly ruled out both a merger or co-operation, citing the collapse of the coalition in early 2009. NDP MP Ryan Cleary had publicly mused that if any Liberal MP was interested in joining the party, they'd have to resign from parliament and run in the ensuing by-election under the NDP banner. Floor-crossings to the government were not permitted and merging was out of the question.
That was not to say that there was zero appetite for a merger. Pat Martin, who had been forced to resign from cabinet because of accusations of sexual harassment, had long been in favor of a merger between the NDP and the Liberals. Finance Minister Nathan Cullen, back when he was a leadership candidate to replace the late Jack Layton, won around twenty-four percent of his party's convention vote based on the premise of cooperation with the Liberals. Not enough to make any of this a reality, but enough to suggest that there was a market for it in some corners of the party. The biggest obstacle still remained the hope within Liberal Party member's heart that they were just one election away from being swept back into power, and Mark Carney was drawing people to the big red tent.
The former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor had long been touted as a possible leadership candidate, despite his repeated claims of having little-to-no interest in getting involved in electoral politics (they all say that). The first such "Carneymania" frenzy happened in 2012, shortly after Bob Rae announced that he would not seek the job he had lusted after since ditching the NDP in favour of the Liberals seven years earlier. Instead of challenging Justin Trudeau, Carney departed for England to take up the position of Governor of the Bank of England, the first Canadian to hold the gig. The whole international-mandarin-class could barely hide their disappointment. He survived the tumultuous (and ongoing) Brexit crisis, and while it destroyed political careers in the UK, it provided Carney with the opportunity to not only further raise his profile on the world stage but build up a thicker skin needed for electoral politics back home. From across the Atlantic, as Trudeau flustered and floundered from scandal to scandal, Liberals could only look on with envy. Apparently the feeling was at least somewhat mutual, since Carney was taking calls from senior Liberals back home about everything from the party's fundraising numbers to Trudeau's state of mind. Of course when such information leaked to the press, as it always does, Carney was ready with his reply; he takes calls from everyone, and is prepared to give advice if people want it. So when he finally ended his stint in England and returned home to launch his leadership bid, it was obviously done because not enough people in the party were taking that advice. Ambition? Nope, just a desire to be of service. Cue the campaign slogans and aw-shucks grins.
But not everyone was happy at the thought of a bureaucrat with zero elected political experience taking the reigns of Canada's once great natural governing party. Carney's star has risen outside of the party and its culture, which has only grown more clannish than it had been during the Chretien-Martin days. Although desperate for solutions, there are many within the party who have zero tolerance for any criticism or thoughtful critique. Carney's leadership launch pointily criticized, without naming names, the growing out-of-touch nature of the Liberal Party. Besides, could someone as politically inexperienced as Mark Carney be the type of candidate to catapult the Liberals from third to first? It was a legitimate concern, even amongst some of his admirers. To his detractors, Carney's centrist and admittedly centre-right credentials made him on odd fit for a party where the centre-left was more and more on the ascend. Calls were being made to recruit a candidate who could actually give Carney a run for his money, which he had a lot of.
Jean Charest, the former Quebec Premier who led the dying federal Progressive Conservative Party from 1993 until 1998, politely declined calls from senior Liberals (including Jean Chretien) to seek the Liberal leadership. As the case for Charest went, his candidacy would reinvigorate the party's prospects in Quebec, challenging the NDP's iron hold on the province. Instead, sources close to Charest had indicated that the former Quebec Premier was more interested in seeking the Tory leadership when it inevitably opened up after Jason Kenney lost in the next election and stepped down. Although Charest would need to get around former Prime Minister Stephen Harper's inevitable opposition to make such a bid even remotely viable.
Toronto Mayor John Tory, another name associated with the Progressive Conservative brand, was also on the lips of some pretty senior Liberals. Surveys showed that Tory registered quite high with Liberal voters, especially among those who had helped propel him to an easy re-election victory over former councilor Doug Ford. But Tory was clearly enjoying being mayor of Canada's largest city, and was apparently still holding out hope that the Ontario PCs, struggling with a minority under Vic Fedeli, would come crawling back to him and make him Premier.
François-Philippe Champagne? As the highest profile Liberal still standing in Quebec (There were six MPs in total) he was fielding calls from both federal and provincial Liberals eager for his economic credentials. But while Champagne was happy getting the attention, he admitted to those close to him he lacked the financial backers to take on someone of Mark Carney's stature. Former MP Chrystia Freeland, a once rising star who had been narrowly defeated for re-election in the NDP's march through downtown Toronto, was taking her own calls, in this case from former leader Justin Trudeau and his former top aid Gerald Butts. But Freeland was getting back into journalist and international politics, and was also negotiating behind the scenes with Prime Minister Mulcair and his people to be Canada's next ambassador to the United Nations. Like Tory, former Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson was also fielding requests to throw his hat into the ring, but he was too busy organizing for Mark Carney against fellow BCers Joyce Murray and Taleeb Noormohamed.
More polite no's to the unofficial "Anybody but Carney" campaign.
But suspense in politics is overrated. Mark Carney's first-ballot victory was virtually guaranteed from the outset, especially when his most credible opponent was an also-ran from the previous leadership race. With over fifty percent of the convention vote, the scale of Carney's win meant that at least until after the next election, his word was law. His authority would be uncontested. His opponents would either get on board or have to start updating their resumes and begin lining up jobs outside of elected politics. Want a merger with the New Democrats? Go run in a by-election for them.
By the time Carney got to the podium, Liberals were begging for a reassuring, no-nonsense presence. That's exactly what they got. Namechecking party luminaries like Lous St. Laurent and Lester Pearson (two leaders with deep ties to Canada's bureaucracy), Mark Carney's speech could be best described as bland and straight to the point. A far cry from his predecessor, but that was exactly the point and part of the deal when it came to Mark Carney. There was some language about Canada reaching for its full environmental potential, maybe through a federally mandated carbon tax, and a stronger presence on the world stage, but observers could be forgiven for thinking they were listening to a speech being delivered by the current occupant of the PMO. Yet again, the Liberal Party was banking on the star power of their leader to paper over the cracks. Yes, there wasn't a whole range of differences between the Liberal leader and the Prime Minister, but Mark Carney had helped guide Canada's banks through the Great Recession and had nabbed some pretty good international headlines for the country while he was abroad. He was the favourite son who had gone and made a name for himself out in the real world. Surely voters would be willing to trust the keys to 24 Sussex to someone with that kind of resume than the guy who had accidentally gotten himself elected and re-elected.
Ask any Liberals and they'd just keep saying the same thing; the NDP hadn't won the last two elections, the Liberal Party had blown them. That wouldn't happen a third time.
Two years out from the next scheduled election and the Liberals were ahead in the polls again, thirty-three percent to the Tories twenty-eight. The incumbents were at twenty-seven. Not great for the government, but still plenty of time to turn things around. In some polls Brian Mulroney trailed as bad as third place before romping to a second straight majority in 1988. For the time being though it looked like swing voters and soft-Liberals were willing the lend the party their stamp of approval again. They'd done the same for Trudeau. Now it was Carney's turn.
Fast forward a couple of years, including two elections and a few blackface scandals, and Trudeau was out of a job. A Trudeau would now join the ranks of Stephane Dion, Michael Ignatieff, and Edward Blake as leaders of the Liberal Party of Canada who would never wind up as Prime Minister. It was a massive embarrassment to his father's legacy, to whom he was its keeper, and an even deeper disappointment for the Liberal Party. Eight years on from that disastrous, third-place showing in the 2011 election, and the Liberals were still in third-place. What was the point in being a Liberal if not holding power? Without that power, what did the party actually stand for?
Did voters even care what they stood for anymore?
Merging with the New Democrats had been floated as an idea almost the second after all the votes were counted in 2011. Hell, it had been popping up ever since the ill-fated coalition agreement between Stephane Dion and Jack Layton (With Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois in attendance) had been signed back in December 2008. Journalists and pundits who lived in the Ottawa-bubble would salivate at the idea of this mythical, untested, complex, and likely-to-fail creation. Chretien might be in favour of it. Ed Broadbent too. Lock them in a room together with a bottle of brandy and let them hash out the details. But that was back in the days when Stephen Harper was the common enemy. There wasn't much of an argument for the NDP, the incumbent government, to join forces with a party that many of its members detested (Years of being mocked and getting looked down by the Liberals will do that to you). Mulcair had publicly ruled out both a merger or co-operation, citing the collapse of the coalition in early 2009. NDP MP Ryan Cleary had publicly mused that if any Liberal MP was interested in joining the party, they'd have to resign from parliament and run in the ensuing by-election under the NDP banner. Floor-crossings to the government were not permitted and merging was out of the question.
That was not to say that there was zero appetite for a merger. Pat Martin, who had been forced to resign from cabinet because of accusations of sexual harassment, had long been in favor of a merger between the NDP and the Liberals. Finance Minister Nathan Cullen, back when he was a leadership candidate to replace the late Jack Layton, won around twenty-four percent of his party's convention vote based on the premise of cooperation with the Liberals. Not enough to make any of this a reality, but enough to suggest that there was a market for it in some corners of the party. The biggest obstacle still remained the hope within Liberal Party member's heart that they were just one election away from being swept back into power, and Mark Carney was drawing people to the big red tent.
The former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor had long been touted as a possible leadership candidate, despite his repeated claims of having little-to-no interest in getting involved in electoral politics (they all say that). The first such "Carneymania" frenzy happened in 2012, shortly after Bob Rae announced that he would not seek the job he had lusted after since ditching the NDP in favour of the Liberals seven years earlier. Instead of challenging Justin Trudeau, Carney departed for England to take up the position of Governor of the Bank of England, the first Canadian to hold the gig. The whole international-mandarin-class could barely hide their disappointment. He survived the tumultuous (and ongoing) Brexit crisis, and while it destroyed political careers in the UK, it provided Carney with the opportunity to not only further raise his profile on the world stage but build up a thicker skin needed for electoral politics back home. From across the Atlantic, as Trudeau flustered and floundered from scandal to scandal, Liberals could only look on with envy. Apparently the feeling was at least somewhat mutual, since Carney was taking calls from senior Liberals back home about everything from the party's fundraising numbers to Trudeau's state of mind. Of course when such information leaked to the press, as it always does, Carney was ready with his reply; he takes calls from everyone, and is prepared to give advice if people want it. So when he finally ended his stint in England and returned home to launch his leadership bid, it was obviously done because not enough people in the party were taking that advice. Ambition? Nope, just a desire to be of service. Cue the campaign slogans and aw-shucks grins.
But not everyone was happy at the thought of a bureaucrat with zero elected political experience taking the reigns of Canada's once great natural governing party. Carney's star has risen outside of the party and its culture, which has only grown more clannish than it had been during the Chretien-Martin days. Although desperate for solutions, there are many within the party who have zero tolerance for any criticism or thoughtful critique. Carney's leadership launch pointily criticized, without naming names, the growing out-of-touch nature of the Liberal Party. Besides, could someone as politically inexperienced as Mark Carney be the type of candidate to catapult the Liberals from third to first? It was a legitimate concern, even amongst some of his admirers. To his detractors, Carney's centrist and admittedly centre-right credentials made him on odd fit for a party where the centre-left was more and more on the ascend. Calls were being made to recruit a candidate who could actually give Carney a run for his money, which he had a lot of.
Jean Charest, the former Quebec Premier who led the dying federal Progressive Conservative Party from 1993 until 1998, politely declined calls from senior Liberals (including Jean Chretien) to seek the Liberal leadership. As the case for Charest went, his candidacy would reinvigorate the party's prospects in Quebec, challenging the NDP's iron hold on the province. Instead, sources close to Charest had indicated that the former Quebec Premier was more interested in seeking the Tory leadership when it inevitably opened up after Jason Kenney lost in the next election and stepped down. Although Charest would need to get around former Prime Minister Stephen Harper's inevitable opposition to make such a bid even remotely viable.
Toronto Mayor John Tory, another name associated with the Progressive Conservative brand, was also on the lips of some pretty senior Liberals. Surveys showed that Tory registered quite high with Liberal voters, especially among those who had helped propel him to an easy re-election victory over former councilor Doug Ford. But Tory was clearly enjoying being mayor of Canada's largest city, and was apparently still holding out hope that the Ontario PCs, struggling with a minority under Vic Fedeli, would come crawling back to him and make him Premier.
François-Philippe Champagne? As the highest profile Liberal still standing in Quebec (There were six MPs in total) he was fielding calls from both federal and provincial Liberals eager for his economic credentials. But while Champagne was happy getting the attention, he admitted to those close to him he lacked the financial backers to take on someone of Mark Carney's stature. Former MP Chrystia Freeland, a once rising star who had been narrowly defeated for re-election in the NDP's march through downtown Toronto, was taking her own calls, in this case from former leader Justin Trudeau and his former top aid Gerald Butts. But Freeland was getting back into journalist and international politics, and was also negotiating behind the scenes with Prime Minister Mulcair and his people to be Canada's next ambassador to the United Nations. Like Tory, former Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson was also fielding requests to throw his hat into the ring, but he was too busy organizing for Mark Carney against fellow BCers Joyce Murray and Taleeb Noormohamed.
More polite no's to the unofficial "Anybody but Carney" campaign.
By the time Carney got to the podium, Liberals were begging for a reassuring, no-nonsense presence. That's exactly what they got. Namechecking party luminaries like Lous St. Laurent and Lester Pearson (two leaders with deep ties to Canada's bureaucracy), Mark Carney's speech could be best described as bland and straight to the point. A far cry from his predecessor, but that was exactly the point and part of the deal when it came to Mark Carney. There was some language about Canada reaching for its full environmental potential, maybe through a federally mandated carbon tax, and a stronger presence on the world stage, but observers could be forgiven for thinking they were listening to a speech being delivered by the current occupant of the PMO. Yet again, the Liberal Party was banking on the star power of their leader to paper over the cracks. Yes, there wasn't a whole range of differences between the Liberal leader and the Prime Minister, but Mark Carney had helped guide Canada's banks through the Great Recession and had nabbed some pretty good international headlines for the country while he was abroad. He was the favourite son who had gone and made a name for himself out in the real world. Surely voters would be willing to trust the keys to 24 Sussex to someone with that kind of resume than the guy who had accidentally gotten himself elected and re-elected.
Ask any Liberals and they'd just keep saying the same thing; the NDP hadn't won the last two elections, the Liberal Party had blown them. That wouldn't happen a third time.
Two years out from the next scheduled election and the Liberals were ahead in the polls again, thirty-three percent to the Tories twenty-eight. The incumbents were at twenty-seven. Not great for the government, but still plenty of time to turn things around. In some polls Brian Mulroney trailed as bad as third place before romping to a second straight majority in 1988. For the time being though it looked like swing voters and soft-Liberals were willing the lend the party their stamp of approval again. They'd done the same for Trudeau. Now it was Carney's turn.
CanadianTory
WALZ 2028
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
First minster's meetings are a Conservative invention. Although Wilfred Laurier was the first to assemble the country's Premiers in 1906, it wouldn't be until R.B. Bennett, elected in 1930, that it was made a regular practice. During Bennett's five-year premiership he hosted the Premier's on four separate occasions, each time trying to entice the provinces to cede direct control of the economy to the federal government in exchange for higher transfer payments. It was the Great Depression and the federal government was desperate to turn things around. Each time the Premier's said no, and by 1935 Canadians decided that they'd had enough of Bennett and brought back William Lyon Mackenzie King. By the end of his eleven years Mackenzie King had four conferences. Louis St. Laurent had six in his nine years. Lester B. Pearson nine in five years. Between them, Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney had thirty-seven. Thank their government's constitutional shenanigans for that deluge of meetings.
When Stephen Harper was in power the Premiers began calling themselves the Council of the Federation, a lofty name for a group that would meet without the Prime Minister, since Harper had no real interest in meeting with them. He was a Conservative after all, and wanted the federal government to do a lot less, not more. He was also a control freak and tried to avoid situations where he was outnumbered by his opponents as much as possible. That meant the Premiers, who believed it was the federal government's job to dole out money for whatever project they had in mind, would meet without the one person to whom they all needed to meet with. Not exactly a recipe for success.
Fast forward to 2019 and Tom Mulcair was clearly wishing he had followed Stephen Harper's example and avoided these things like the plague. It was awkward considering candidate Mulcair had campaigned in 2015 on the explicit promise to hold two meetings with the Premiers per year, one in Ottawa and one in a province or territory on a rotating basis. four months after taking office Prime Minister Mulcair held his first meeting, on pension reforms, but nothing aside from a joint commitment to hold more meetings on the issue in the future. A second meeting a few months after that yielded the same results. Photo-ops and handshakes ensued and journalists raved that it was a return to the good old days. Nothing was getting done, but it at least it looked like it was. As with all Prime Ministers uniformity was the goal. If they couldn't agree on a solution, at least they could all agree they'd keep looking for one. The federation was healing!
Trouble was that when he had a minority government, there really wasn't a lot that Tom Mulcair could do at those meetings. If anything his meet ups with the Premiers began to look an awful lot like the one's that Paul Martin had. Those were more muggings than any serene exchange of views between the participants. Push for provinces to either adopt the NDP's cap-and-trade carbon pricing scheme or come up with their own plan? Yeah, the Premiers would reply, we'll get right on that. Smile for the journalists and boast that real substantive discussions were happening, and that everyone was moving forward in a constructive, collaborative manner. Everyone would then retreat back to their corner of the country, move on with their lives, and then meet up again the following year. Rinse and repeat.
But now that he had a majority government, Mulcair held all the cards. He could walk into those meetings and tell the Premiers what was going to happen. They'd either have to get serious on carbon pricing or have it force on them. Senate reform discussions would finally happen, whether Premiers Legault or Fedeli liked it. The country could finally have those grand discussions between leaders where actual debates could occur and Mulcair, like Pierre Trudeau did in the latter's 1982 meetings on constitutional repatriation and the Charter of Rights, could score a big win. Goodness knows he needed one. Even those around the Prime Minister acknowledged that since capturing a majority for his party in 2017, he had been tepid to use it. At only 176 seats, it wasn't exactly stable. Even worse, in the years since the election, the NDP had seen their already minor majority shrink even further.
Controversial Quebec MP Hans Marotte, a lawyer and former avowed separatist, had gained notoriety in 2015 for his Pro-Palestinian views. The fact that Marotte chose to cross-the-floor to the Bloc Quebecois only a few months after getting re-elected as a member of the New Democrats apparently did little to calm the Prime Minister's nerves. Former International Trade Minister Paul Dewar died from cancer in early 2019. They lost the seat to the federal Liberals in the ensuing by-election. Scarborough MP K.M. Shanthikumar found out that being against gay-marriage and abortion in a party that prides itself on supporting gay-marriage and abortion made for an untenable relationship, and he got the boot. Pat Martin, the blunt and straight talking veteran's minister, was forced to resign from cabinet due to some rather outdated language used around female staffers. He was still a member of the party for the time being, but his feelings about being left out in the cold by the Prime Minister's Office were obvious, and there was potential he could cause the government problems. Then there were the rumours that Finance Minister Nathan Cullen was poised to jump ship and replace John Horgan as leader of the BC NDP in time for the 2020 provincial election. Horgan had been diagnosed with throat cancer only months earlier and had indicated his reluctance to seek re-election.
By the time Tom Mulcair walked into his last First Minister's Conference of 2019, the government was down to only 173 MPs. With Svend Robinson and his Community Group faction nipping at his heals, there wasn't a lot of room for maneuvering. The Premier's knew it too. Even worse, a lot of the faces sitting around the negotiating table were looking a lot more conservative than they did when Mulcair first became Prime Minister. Kathleen Wynne, Philippe Couillard, Stephen McNeil, Greg Selinger, Wade McLaughlin, Rachel Notley, and Dwight Ball were now gone, replaced by politicians even less inclined to help out the federal government. Heck, some of them had gotten elected by specifically pledging to stand up to Tom Mulcair and his party.
Richard Gotfried, Alberta's temporary Premier while Brian Jean was busy running for the leadership of the freshly created United Conservatives, had already issued a public statement that Alberta would not, under any circumstances, impose a carbon tax on its voters. He also announced that Alberta would launch a legal challenge against the government's continued refusal to appoint Senators. Nova Scotia's Peter MacKay, Saskatchewan's Ken Cheveldayoff, Manitoba's Brian Pallister, Ontario's Vic Fedeli, and Newfoundland's Ches Crosbie, also signed on to the declaration. As the argument went, the government was threatening national unity by simultaneously blocking the province's representation in the Senate and imposing a carbon scheme that infringed on provincial sovereignty. Obviously the line on sovereignty was crap, since the federal government did indeed have those powers. Even if it didn't, it could just invoke the notwithstanding clause (although realistically that option was already off the table). But the argument on the Senate was a lot more potent. New Democrats had long pledged not to appoint anyone to the upper chamber while they negotiated with the provinces to abolish the chamber. Several legal scholars questioned the legality of that. Conservatives held a plurality in the upper chamber, meaning that if they wanted to they could grind the government's legislative agenda to a halt. The idea of a bunch of unelected politicians blocking elected politicians from doing their job wasn't exactly something the Tories were eager to champion. Jason Kenney clearly preferred beating Mulcair at the ballot box like a normal person would. But the threat was still there. Sort of.
Only New Brunswick's Brian Gallant, Prince Edward Island's Dennis King, and Francois Legault appeared open to meeting their federally mandated requirements. Quebec was exempt from the carbon pricing scheme since it was already in an agreement with California designed to reduce carbon emissions, so it didn't matter to Legault. He was more interested in getting some more powers for Quebec. Gallant received cover from Mark Carney and the federal Liberals who had endorsed carbon pricing since before 2015. Dennis King seemed open to just about anything if it meant working with people from across the political spectrum. PEI had already passed a Green-sponsored bill to lower emissions by forty-three percent compared to 2005 levels. Unlike some of his centre-right colleagues, Premier King believed in the threat of man-made climate change, and supported taking action. So long as it didn't punish the good people of Prince Edward Island.
(As of December 31st, 2019)
[Feel free to point out any mistakes if you notice them]
Nothing ended up getting decided. Sure, there was the drama that journalists enjoy writing about and some veiled insults were hurled by the Premiers and some over-eager staffers. Apparently someone from the PMO said that Saskatchewan's Cheveldayoff opposed the carbon pricing scheme because it used too many big words for him to even understand it. That unforced error resulted in Mulcair personally apologizing to someone who was leading the charge against a policy he was hinging his political career on. Humiliating would be an understatement according to NDP MPs, many of whom agreed with the staffer and said so on Twitter.
In between the smiles and photos, one couldn't help but wonder what Tom Mulcair was thinking. Maybe the Prime Minister was thinking that Stephen Harper was right after all. If nobody was interested in getting anything accomplished in these meetings, maybe nobody would get an invitation to the next one and everyone could save some money and grandstand from home.
When Stephen Harper was in power the Premiers began calling themselves the Council of the Federation, a lofty name for a group that would meet without the Prime Minister, since Harper had no real interest in meeting with them. He was a Conservative after all, and wanted the federal government to do a lot less, not more. He was also a control freak and tried to avoid situations where he was outnumbered by his opponents as much as possible. That meant the Premiers, who believed it was the federal government's job to dole out money for whatever project they had in mind, would meet without the one person to whom they all needed to meet with. Not exactly a recipe for success.
Fast forward to 2019 and Tom Mulcair was clearly wishing he had followed Stephen Harper's example and avoided these things like the plague. It was awkward considering candidate Mulcair had campaigned in 2015 on the explicit promise to hold two meetings with the Premiers per year, one in Ottawa and one in a province or territory on a rotating basis. four months after taking office Prime Minister Mulcair held his first meeting, on pension reforms, but nothing aside from a joint commitment to hold more meetings on the issue in the future. A second meeting a few months after that yielded the same results. Photo-ops and handshakes ensued and journalists raved that it was a return to the good old days. Nothing was getting done, but it at least it looked like it was. As with all Prime Ministers uniformity was the goal. If they couldn't agree on a solution, at least they could all agree they'd keep looking for one. The federation was healing!
Trouble was that when he had a minority government, there really wasn't a lot that Tom Mulcair could do at those meetings. If anything his meet ups with the Premiers began to look an awful lot like the one's that Paul Martin had. Those were more muggings than any serene exchange of views between the participants. Push for provinces to either adopt the NDP's cap-and-trade carbon pricing scheme or come up with their own plan? Yeah, the Premiers would reply, we'll get right on that. Smile for the journalists and boast that real substantive discussions were happening, and that everyone was moving forward in a constructive, collaborative manner. Everyone would then retreat back to their corner of the country, move on with their lives, and then meet up again the following year. Rinse and repeat.
But now that he had a majority government, Mulcair held all the cards. He could walk into those meetings and tell the Premiers what was going to happen. They'd either have to get serious on carbon pricing or have it force on them. Senate reform discussions would finally happen, whether Premiers Legault or Fedeli liked it. The country could finally have those grand discussions between leaders where actual debates could occur and Mulcair, like Pierre Trudeau did in the latter's 1982 meetings on constitutional repatriation and the Charter of Rights, could score a big win. Goodness knows he needed one. Even those around the Prime Minister acknowledged that since capturing a majority for his party in 2017, he had been tepid to use it. At only 176 seats, it wasn't exactly stable. Even worse, in the years since the election, the NDP had seen their already minor majority shrink even further.
Controversial Quebec MP Hans Marotte, a lawyer and former avowed separatist, had gained notoriety in 2015 for his Pro-Palestinian views. The fact that Marotte chose to cross-the-floor to the Bloc Quebecois only a few months after getting re-elected as a member of the New Democrats apparently did little to calm the Prime Minister's nerves. Former International Trade Minister Paul Dewar died from cancer in early 2019. They lost the seat to the federal Liberals in the ensuing by-election. Scarborough MP K.M. Shanthikumar found out that being against gay-marriage and abortion in a party that prides itself on supporting gay-marriage and abortion made for an untenable relationship, and he got the boot. Pat Martin, the blunt and straight talking veteran's minister, was forced to resign from cabinet due to some rather outdated language used around female staffers. He was still a member of the party for the time being, but his feelings about being left out in the cold by the Prime Minister's Office were obvious, and there was potential he could cause the government problems. Then there were the rumours that Finance Minister Nathan Cullen was poised to jump ship and replace John Horgan as leader of the BC NDP in time for the 2020 provincial election. Horgan had been diagnosed with throat cancer only months earlier and had indicated his reluctance to seek re-election.
By the time Tom Mulcair walked into his last First Minister's Conference of 2019, the government was down to only 173 MPs. With Svend Robinson and his Community Group faction nipping at his heals, there wasn't a lot of room for maneuvering. The Premier's knew it too. Even worse, a lot of the faces sitting around the negotiating table were looking a lot more conservative than they did when Mulcair first became Prime Minister. Kathleen Wynne, Philippe Couillard, Stephen McNeil, Greg Selinger, Wade McLaughlin, Rachel Notley, and Dwight Ball were now gone, replaced by politicians even less inclined to help out the federal government. Heck, some of them had gotten elected by specifically pledging to stand up to Tom Mulcair and his party.
Richard Gotfried, Alberta's temporary Premier while Brian Jean was busy running for the leadership of the freshly created United Conservatives, had already issued a public statement that Alberta would not, under any circumstances, impose a carbon tax on its voters. He also announced that Alberta would launch a legal challenge against the government's continued refusal to appoint Senators. Nova Scotia's Peter MacKay, Saskatchewan's Ken Cheveldayoff, Manitoba's Brian Pallister, Ontario's Vic Fedeli, and Newfoundland's Ches Crosbie, also signed on to the declaration. As the argument went, the government was threatening national unity by simultaneously blocking the province's representation in the Senate and imposing a carbon scheme that infringed on provincial sovereignty. Obviously the line on sovereignty was crap, since the federal government did indeed have those powers. Even if it didn't, it could just invoke the notwithstanding clause (although realistically that option was already off the table). But the argument on the Senate was a lot more potent. New Democrats had long pledged not to appoint anyone to the upper chamber while they negotiated with the provinces to abolish the chamber. Several legal scholars questioned the legality of that. Conservatives held a plurality in the upper chamber, meaning that if they wanted to they could grind the government's legislative agenda to a halt. The idea of a bunch of unelected politicians blocking elected politicians from doing their job wasn't exactly something the Tories were eager to champion. Jason Kenney clearly preferred beating Mulcair at the ballot box like a normal person would. But the threat was still there. Sort of.
Only New Brunswick's Brian Gallant, Prince Edward Island's Dennis King, and Francois Legault appeared open to meeting their federally mandated requirements. Quebec was exempt from the carbon pricing scheme since it was already in an agreement with California designed to reduce carbon emissions, so it didn't matter to Legault. He was more interested in getting some more powers for Quebec. Gallant received cover from Mark Carney and the federal Liberals who had endorsed carbon pricing since before 2015. Dennis King seemed open to just about anything if it meant working with people from across the political spectrum. PEI had already passed a Green-sponsored bill to lower emissions by forty-three percent compared to 2005 levels. Unlike some of his centre-right colleagues, Premier King believed in the threat of man-made climate change, and supported taking action. So long as it didn't punish the good people of Prince Edward Island.
(As of December 31st, 2019)
[Feel free to point out any mistakes if you notice them]
Nothing ended up getting decided. Sure, there was the drama that journalists enjoy writing about and some veiled insults were hurled by the Premiers and some over-eager staffers. Apparently someone from the PMO said that Saskatchewan's Cheveldayoff opposed the carbon pricing scheme because it used too many big words for him to even understand it. That unforced error resulted in Mulcair personally apologizing to someone who was leading the charge against a policy he was hinging his political career on. Humiliating would be an understatement according to NDP MPs, many of whom agreed with the staffer and said so on Twitter.
In between the smiles and photos, one couldn't help but wonder what Tom Mulcair was thinking. Maybe the Prime Minister was thinking that Stephen Harper was right after all. If nobody was interested in getting anything accomplished in these meetings, maybe nobody would get an invitation to the next one and everyone could save some money and grandstand from home.
CanadianTory
WALZ 2028
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Staffers, even the disgruntled ones who believed Mulcair should've been more aggressive from the start, had begun to speak morosely of the early years of "Orange Ottawa", as it had been dubbed. With the election of Canada's first ever New Democratic government, there was a sense that anything was possible. Maybe Canadians really had turned the page on the divisive politics of Stephen Harper. Maybe Canada was about to change for the better. Weed was legalized and the Canadian Pension Plan had been expanded. Keystone XL was dead and the government was implementing a federal carbon pricing scheme of some sorts, even if they were allowing the provinces to opt out. Billions were being put aside for new public transit spending. For all the limitations of being a minority government, these were still serious and meaningful accomplishments.
In recent years, however, things had grown frustrating.
For instance, the government was embroiled in a bitter cold war between Mulcair's more moderate faction and Svend Robinson's proudly socialist cohorts. A former fixture of the NDP's left flank, Robinson had found his way back into the House of Commons in the 2017 election, and had quickly got back to his roots. That meant setting up a party within the party and using the government's unstable majority to his advantage. He wouldn't bring down the government, but the option was always on the table. Mulcair, ever the cautious politician, only grew more cautious. The Prime Minister's backers, like policy advisors Anders Rasmussen and Rosa Kouri in the PMO, only got more bitter and angry at what they viewed as a threat to the boss. Not exactly a situation that breeds trust.
Then there was the scandal involving then-Supreme Court Justice Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond. Appointed in December 2017, Turpel-Lafond, who claimed Cree ancestry, had previously been Saskatchewan's first Indigenous justice. Now she was Canada's first Indigenous member of the Supreme Court. For a country still struggling with its relationship with the Indigenous community, and still coming to terms with how to handle it, such an appointment was wildly applauded across the political and legal landscape. By February 2019, however, reports had begun emerging suggesting that Turpel-Lafond wasn't actually Indigenous, unleashing a firestorm of controversy and dividing members of the government. Justice Minister Craig Scott initially suggested that the government had done its due diligence and completed an extensive background check into her history. A few weeks later as the controversy intensified, Scott backtracked those comments, telling the House of Commons that if anything had been missed the blame was shared by members of the ad hoc committee of members of Parliament responsible for such appointments. Forget about the buck stopping with the Prime Minister, who ultimately got the final say in the appointment, here was the Justice Minister saying everyone was at fault. Backbench MPs, already fearful of worsening poll numbers, wanted Turpel-Lafond out. Mulcair, not wanting to appear guilty of gross incompetence, wanted more time to conduct a full investigation. A month after the initial reports, Justice Turpel-Lafond announced her resignation. She was receiving calls to resign from those close to her and return her countless awards and honors and just wasn't interested in further participating in what she labeled a media witch-hunt. Although the resignation prevented matters from getting worse for the government, those close to Mulcair said that the ordeal had rattled the Prime Minister and his trust in a great number of MPs.
Polling companies had started asking Canadians whether or not Mulcair should lead his party into the next election, and whether the Supreme Court debacle had fatally damaged him. Mark Carney and the Liberals were leading in the polls, with Jason Kenney and the Tories second and the NDP a not-too-distant third. It wasn't the first time the NDP had found themselves in such a position, nor the first time questions like that had been asked. However, It was the first time since winning a majority government that people had begun asking what a post-Mulcair NDP would look like. It was a lesson in loyalty for Mulcair. So long as he was a winner he'd have the party behind him. If he didn't, they'd start looking elsewhere.
Svend Robinson meanwhile was trying to evoke Bernie Sanders, the U.S. Senator who had given President Clinton a run for her money in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. The BC MP's call to combat climate change, to fight inequality and tax the rich were a more galvanizing message to party members than whatever Mulcair and his office were doing at the moment.
Fast forward several months later and the scandals were forgotten. Fears over COVID-19 had replaced people's concerns over the ancestry some judge had claimed to have and when. Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer, had at first urged Canadians to be vigilant, but not panic. She advised the government not to have Canadians returning from international travel to isolate, even going as far as to strongly advise against wearing masks for fear of transferring any possible virus from their hands to areas around their mouth and eyes (Unlike Anthony Fauci in the United States, Tam wasn't an independent official and had to be onside of the government of the day). The country was a lot better positioned than it had been during the SARS health crisis more than a decade earlier, and Canada would simply take the steps advised by the World Health Organization. Instead of curtailing the virus, by the end of March 2020 Canadians saw their healthcare system, like countless other nations around the globe, pushed to the brink, their schools closed, and lockdowns become the norm. Even the House of Commons wasn't immune, and in-person questions were scuttled. A novel virus had become a global health emergency and a once-in-a-life crisis.
Perhaps cynically, such a crisis presented an opportunity for the New Democrats to change the channel. Prime Minister Mulcair could shed the controversey and tarnish from the Turpel-Lafond scandal and instead adopt the mantle of non-partisan statesman and crisis manager. Nobody was going to ask whether or not Tom Mulcair was a drag on the NDP's re-election chances when he was attending virus updates with Dr. Tam or giving news conferences with reporters, talking up the government's response to the virus. Billions of dollars worth of spending went to support small businesses and Canadians stuck at home, unable to go to work, or those out of work entirely. According to the government it was the only way to keep the economy afloat. Forget it being a complex intergovernmental problem the likes of which hadn't been seen in about a century, Tom Mulcair was finally embracing the the role that many New Democrats, especially the socialists within caucus, had been urging him to since first getting elected in 2015.
In only a few months the guy who had seemed too scared to impose a national carbon pricing scheme on the country was standing in front of reporters announcing that his government was prepping to invoke the National Emergencies Act should the provinces not fall behind the government's approach. A replacement for the War Measures Act, which had been controversy used during the First and Second World Wars as well as the October Crisis of the 1970s, the National Emergencies Act came into existence back in 1988. With more checks and balances there would be less of a chance of violating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Still, it would give the federal government powers that were normally reserved for the provinces.
Still, there were those in cabinet who suggested that the act be held as a last resort. The nuclear option, should things get worse. If it was invoked too early, the NDP could be seen as too eager to take advantage of the situation.
Yet the Prime Minister was adamant that he was the man for the moment, and that his career at both the federal and provincial levels meant he had the insight needed to navigate the troubled waters. Canada had to tackle the situation as a unified force on the same page. There wasn't room for ideology or politicking. If the Premiers knew any better, they'd sign on and follow Ottawa's lead. A good number of those Premiers, most of whom landed in the centre-right of Canada's political spectrum, were outraged at the very suggestion that Mulcair would invoke the act, calling it an attack on provincial jurisdiction.
But if you asked anyone in the cabinet or PMO, whether or not a Premier was a conservative or not had nothing to do with potentially invoking the controversial act. Seriously. It would be a total coincidence.
Such serious times also required a serious cabinet reshuffle. Deputy Prime Minister Megan Leslie was handed the finance portfolio, taking over from Nathan Cullen who had resigned his seat in order to pursue the leadership of the BC NDP. Other major shake-ups included former International Trade Minister Romeo Saganash taking Foreign Affairs, former Toronto City Planner Jennifer Keesmaat at Health, Peter Julian to National Defence, and Workforce and Employment Minister Alexandre Boulerice taking over Julian's duties as Government House leader. Matthew Green, Hamilton's first Black MP since the days of Lincoln Alexander and self-described "Stanley Knowles New Democrat" was the NDP's new Digital Government Minister. Gender parity was maintained and some new faces were promoted from the backbench. Everyone was happy. Except for maybe Svend Robinson and his friends.
Aside from Niki Ashton remaining as Indigenous Services Minister, both Robinson and his sympathizers were left out in the cold. No cabinet positions for them. In such a time of crisis, the government needed to be on the same page.
That was how the NDP wanted to frame the next campaign. After a few years of lacking a reason or narrative for re-election, the government had been handed their key campaign issue on a silver platter. Want to get through COVID-19? Vote NDP. Want the government to keep you, your business, and your pay-cheques safe? Vote NDP. Want to keep the Tories and the COVID-denying extremists out of power? You had to vote NDP, not Liberal. A vote for Mark Carney was a vote for Jason Kenney to be Prime Minister.
The once proud champions of doing politics differently, the New Democrats had now fully embraced the tried and true strategy of going negative. Even Stephen Harper could be proud of how brazen it all was.
In recent years, however, things had grown frustrating.
For instance, the government was embroiled in a bitter cold war between Mulcair's more moderate faction and Svend Robinson's proudly socialist cohorts. A former fixture of the NDP's left flank, Robinson had found his way back into the House of Commons in the 2017 election, and had quickly got back to his roots. That meant setting up a party within the party and using the government's unstable majority to his advantage. He wouldn't bring down the government, but the option was always on the table. Mulcair, ever the cautious politician, only grew more cautious. The Prime Minister's backers, like policy advisors Anders Rasmussen and Rosa Kouri in the PMO, only got more bitter and angry at what they viewed as a threat to the boss. Not exactly a situation that breeds trust.
Then there was the scandal involving then-Supreme Court Justice Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond. Appointed in December 2017, Turpel-Lafond, who claimed Cree ancestry, had previously been Saskatchewan's first Indigenous justice. Now she was Canada's first Indigenous member of the Supreme Court. For a country still struggling with its relationship with the Indigenous community, and still coming to terms with how to handle it, such an appointment was wildly applauded across the political and legal landscape. By February 2019, however, reports had begun emerging suggesting that Turpel-Lafond wasn't actually Indigenous, unleashing a firestorm of controversy and dividing members of the government. Justice Minister Craig Scott initially suggested that the government had done its due diligence and completed an extensive background check into her history. A few weeks later as the controversy intensified, Scott backtracked those comments, telling the House of Commons that if anything had been missed the blame was shared by members of the ad hoc committee of members of Parliament responsible for such appointments. Forget about the buck stopping with the Prime Minister, who ultimately got the final say in the appointment, here was the Justice Minister saying everyone was at fault. Backbench MPs, already fearful of worsening poll numbers, wanted Turpel-Lafond out. Mulcair, not wanting to appear guilty of gross incompetence, wanted more time to conduct a full investigation. A month after the initial reports, Justice Turpel-Lafond announced her resignation. She was receiving calls to resign from those close to her and return her countless awards and honors and just wasn't interested in further participating in what she labeled a media witch-hunt. Although the resignation prevented matters from getting worse for the government, those close to Mulcair said that the ordeal had rattled the Prime Minister and his trust in a great number of MPs.
Polling companies had started asking Canadians whether or not Mulcair should lead his party into the next election, and whether the Supreme Court debacle had fatally damaged him. Mark Carney and the Liberals were leading in the polls, with Jason Kenney and the Tories second and the NDP a not-too-distant third. It wasn't the first time the NDP had found themselves in such a position, nor the first time questions like that had been asked. However, It was the first time since winning a majority government that people had begun asking what a post-Mulcair NDP would look like. It was a lesson in loyalty for Mulcair. So long as he was a winner he'd have the party behind him. If he didn't, they'd start looking elsewhere.
Svend Robinson meanwhile was trying to evoke Bernie Sanders, the U.S. Senator who had given President Clinton a run for her money in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. The BC MP's call to combat climate change, to fight inequality and tax the rich were a more galvanizing message to party members than whatever Mulcair and his office were doing at the moment.
Fast forward several months later and the scandals were forgotten. Fears over COVID-19 had replaced people's concerns over the ancestry some judge had claimed to have and when. Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer, had at first urged Canadians to be vigilant, but not panic. She advised the government not to have Canadians returning from international travel to isolate, even going as far as to strongly advise against wearing masks for fear of transferring any possible virus from their hands to areas around their mouth and eyes (Unlike Anthony Fauci in the United States, Tam wasn't an independent official and had to be onside of the government of the day). The country was a lot better positioned than it had been during the SARS health crisis more than a decade earlier, and Canada would simply take the steps advised by the World Health Organization. Instead of curtailing the virus, by the end of March 2020 Canadians saw their healthcare system, like countless other nations around the globe, pushed to the brink, their schools closed, and lockdowns become the norm. Even the House of Commons wasn't immune, and in-person questions were scuttled. A novel virus had become a global health emergency and a once-in-a-life crisis.
Perhaps cynically, such a crisis presented an opportunity for the New Democrats to change the channel. Prime Minister Mulcair could shed the controversey and tarnish from the Turpel-Lafond scandal and instead adopt the mantle of non-partisan statesman and crisis manager. Nobody was going to ask whether or not Tom Mulcair was a drag on the NDP's re-election chances when he was attending virus updates with Dr. Tam or giving news conferences with reporters, talking up the government's response to the virus. Billions of dollars worth of spending went to support small businesses and Canadians stuck at home, unable to go to work, or those out of work entirely. According to the government it was the only way to keep the economy afloat. Forget it being a complex intergovernmental problem the likes of which hadn't been seen in about a century, Tom Mulcair was finally embracing the the role that many New Democrats, especially the socialists within caucus, had been urging him to since first getting elected in 2015.
In only a few months the guy who had seemed too scared to impose a national carbon pricing scheme on the country was standing in front of reporters announcing that his government was prepping to invoke the National Emergencies Act should the provinces not fall behind the government's approach. A replacement for the War Measures Act, which had been controversy used during the First and Second World Wars as well as the October Crisis of the 1970s, the National Emergencies Act came into existence back in 1988. With more checks and balances there would be less of a chance of violating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Still, it would give the federal government powers that were normally reserved for the provinces.
Still, there were those in cabinet who suggested that the act be held as a last resort. The nuclear option, should things get worse. If it was invoked too early, the NDP could be seen as too eager to take advantage of the situation.
Yet the Prime Minister was adamant that he was the man for the moment, and that his career at both the federal and provincial levels meant he had the insight needed to navigate the troubled waters. Canada had to tackle the situation as a unified force on the same page. There wasn't room for ideology or politicking. If the Premiers knew any better, they'd sign on and follow Ottawa's lead. A good number of those Premiers, most of whom landed in the centre-right of Canada's political spectrum, were outraged at the very suggestion that Mulcair would invoke the act, calling it an attack on provincial jurisdiction.
But if you asked anyone in the cabinet or PMO, whether or not a Premier was a conservative or not had nothing to do with potentially invoking the controversial act. Seriously. It would be a total coincidence.
Such serious times also required a serious cabinet reshuffle. Deputy Prime Minister Megan Leslie was handed the finance portfolio, taking over from Nathan Cullen who had resigned his seat in order to pursue the leadership of the BC NDP. Other major shake-ups included former International Trade Minister Romeo Saganash taking Foreign Affairs, former Toronto City Planner Jennifer Keesmaat at Health, Peter Julian to National Defence, and Workforce and Employment Minister Alexandre Boulerice taking over Julian's duties as Government House leader. Matthew Green, Hamilton's first Black MP since the days of Lincoln Alexander and self-described "Stanley Knowles New Democrat" was the NDP's new Digital Government Minister. Gender parity was maintained and some new faces were promoted from the backbench. Everyone was happy. Except for maybe Svend Robinson and his friends.
Aside from Niki Ashton remaining as Indigenous Services Minister, both Robinson and his sympathizers were left out in the cold. No cabinet positions for them. In such a time of crisis, the government needed to be on the same page.
That was how the NDP wanted to frame the next campaign. After a few years of lacking a reason or narrative for re-election, the government had been handed their key campaign issue on a silver platter. Want to get through COVID-19? Vote NDP. Want the government to keep you, your business, and your pay-cheques safe? Vote NDP. Want to keep the Tories and the COVID-denying extremists out of power? You had to vote NDP, not Liberal. A vote for Mark Carney was a vote for Jason Kenney to be Prime Minister.
The once proud champions of doing politics differently, the New Democrats had now fully embraced the tried and true strategy of going negative. Even Stephen Harper could be proud of how brazen it all was.
Ready for Change - Appendix 2.N (2020 Ontario general election & 2020 Saskatchewan general election)
CanadianTory
WALZ 2028
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
CanadianTory
WALZ 2028
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
CanadianTory
WALZ 2028
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Losing was a painful yet familiar reality for President Clinton.
Only four years earlier she had proudly stood in the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York, under a very intentional glass ceiling, having just achieved her life’s ambition in being elected the country’s first female President. For the briefest of moments Clinton dropped the mask she had so carefully crafted through decades of walking in the hallways of power, visibly emotional. It was a bitter and narrow victory that was celebrated in many corners across the globe, proof that fair-minded and pragmatic liberalism could defeat the boisterous anger of the populists and far-right. In other words, proof that the Obama coalition had endured.
Four years later, isolated from the crowds and her loved ones due to COVID-19, President Clinton delivered a tapped concession to a man who stood as the antithesis of almost everything she stood for. She looked tired. Exhausted. It had been a difficult, almost impossible four years as President, what with an obstructionist congress.
Florida Governor Mike Huckabee, despite losing the popular vote to Clinton, would be America’s 46th President. Liberals and Progressives across the country, and in many of those same parts of the world that greeted Clinton’s 2016 win with optimism, wept and shared their anger on social media. Huckabee wasn't legitimate. He couldn't be. The Democrats had to do something. Recounts. Oppose certifying the election. Anything.
Huckabee was the type of politician that populist conservatives and evangelicals both felt comfortable with. The Florida Governor, and formerly the Governor of Bill Clinton’s native Arkansas from 1996 until 2007, was always quick with a folksy anecdote or turn of phrase. A former Baptist minister, Huck – as his friends called him – always had his rallies jammed packed with the same kind of people you would find at a mega-church. People who were devout, loyal, who could see that America was entering into a period of decline because people were abandoning their faith. America was a Christian nation, and a nation built upon the values of Jesus Christ would never fail. Nowadays people were confused about their genders, using every which pronoun possible, and allowing dangerous ideologies like Islam and socialism to creep into schools and influence people’s kids. Hillary Clinton was a socialist, a communist, a Satanist who was married to that pedophile Bill Clinton. Every day she was in the Oval Office furthered the decline of real American values. She had to go, and who better than to replace her with a man of the cloth?
Those were the kind of views coming out of people’s mouths at Mike Huckabee’s rallies. Journalists would balk at that kind of talk and bemoan the real source of America’s decline. These people were uneducated, ignorant nut-jobs who talked about conspiracy theories like they were facts and facts like they were conspiracy theories. It made no sense.
Even more maddening for journalists, whenever Huckabee was confronted with soundbites from his diehard supporters, he’d just say that people were angry, or chuckle and argue that it was just plain talk from average Americans, or swivel to talking about whatever issue he wanted to talk about. Journalists called it dog whistle politics, winking at the far-right, embracing religious extremists. Huck didn’t care. These were his people. Many of them had been with him since Iowa 2008, and he wasn’t about to abandon them now, especially when the polls remained tight.
Of course, the battle to finally get the Republican nomination hadn’t been without issue. Nikki Haley, the former Governor of South Carolina and darling of the kind of Mitt Romney establishment-types that Huckabee hated, had put together an impressive campaign machine. She was hoping to take New Hampshire, her home state of South Carolina, and spend her way to winning the nomination. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul was still trying to escape the shadow of his father’s cult following on the dark corners of the internet and launch a full-fledged Libertarian revolution of his own. Chris Christie was trying to bully his way into remaining relevant in a party that hated him. Businessman Herman Cain, who had seen his 2012 campaign implode because of accusations of sexual misconduct, was back in action with the support of his buddy Donald Trump. Trump had flirted with running again in 2020 after his campaign, like Cain’s, collapsed as a result of sexual assault accusations. Polls were done, staff were hired, and Trump's ascent as the presumptive nominee seemed like a no brainer. Yet, only a week before what was expected to be his big announcement speech, The Donald went on Twitter and told the world he wasn't interested in being President after all. Was it the onslaught of lawsuits against the Trump Organization? The supposed incoming divorce between himself and his wife Melania? Maybe it was all those Russian business deals. Didn't matter. Trump was still a beloved figure for the populists within the Republican Party, and his appearances at CPAC and other conservative functions always drew the crowds. Everyone knew that Cain was doing The Donald’s bidding, and if he somehow managed to get elected President it would be Trump the Shadow Shogun calling the shots from his bunker in New York's Trump Tower.
Without someone like Trump sucking up all the oxygen from the media, it appeared as though Haley's strategy of playing to the establishment was paying dividends. The former Governor was glamorous, well-spoken, and certainly enjoyed the attention of the media. She even made concerted efforts to outreach to areas where conservatives rarely ventured, including various podcasts and even the dreaded MSNBC. Wins in both New Hampshire and South Carolina flooded her campaign with cash, and more and more establishment types were lining up behind her. Even though the primaries weren't done, the media punditry was fantasizing about the possibility of a two-woman horse race for the presidency. It would be something to celebrate. Further proof that America was making more progress, not sliding back, even if a Republican won back the White House. Plus it would generate plenty of clicks and views online from every corner of the globe.
Then COVID-19 happened and everything changed.
It's nearly impossible to arm against unknown new infections. The term "emerging viruses" was only coined back in 1990. Governments and scientists have long worked to better understand such unfamiliar threats, to establish global early-warning systems, and to develop an international rulebook to outline government response. Think of the responses to SARS and EBOLA. The powerful influence of the World Health Organization. Yet for all the planning that goes into things like this, when it actually happens the plan is always inadequate to the reality of the situation. That often goes double for the politicians who are in charge of managing it.
As a former Secretary of State, President Clinton stressed the need for a global response to the emerging pandemic. Closing down travel from China wasn't going to be enough to prevent the virus from spreading further across America. It was already there, thanks largely to travel from Europe, not China. This wasn't a political issue, it was a health issue, and anyone who tried to make it the former rather than the latter was putting people at risk. For the first time in what seemed like forever, Democrats rallied behind Clinton with a sense of passion and energy. President Clinton was the only candidate who could keep Americans safe, and the only one experienced enough to guide the country through this once in a century crisis. A clear choice that would cut through the noise of the last few years.
Republicans meanwhile were less than consistent. At first Nikki Haley announced her support for lockdowns and social distancing, citing the recommendations of nonpartisan health officials who actually knew what they were talking about. When that kind of talk started sinking her poll numbers with the Republican base, she then claimed that she was actually against them the whole time, but that something had to be done to combat the crisis. She just wasn't saying what that something was. Mike Huckabee conceded that COVID was indeed a health crisis, but claimed the Democrats were using the COVID as an opportunity to remake America in their own far-left vision. More government telling people what to do. More cash handouts. Taking marching orders from the United Nations. It was nonsense. Then there was Herman Cain, telling his ever-growing crowds of supporters that it was all a hoax. COVID, if it was real, was nothing worse than the common cold. Masks were a threat to clean living. Social distancing was the first step towards Clinton invoking a police state. COVID-19 was going to be the issue that would help breath new life into the Cain campaign and allow him to leapfrog over both Huckabee and Haley and win the nomination. Fast forward a few weeks to March 11th and Herman Cain was dead, the result of contracting the coronavirus while attending a rally in North Carolina. His name was still on the ballot in a lot of states, and for a brief time it looked like Trump, with the blessing of the Cain family, was prepared to use what was left of the campaign to try and engineer a brokered convention. That lasted about a week before Trump lost interest and blamed the failures on everyone else but himself. Without Cain or Trump in the race dividing the vote, Huckabee sailed through to the nomination.
To those like Clinton and Obama, the choice couldn't be more obvious. Yes, voters were tired of the Democrats, and the last time a party had won four straight runs at the presidency was back during World War Two and Franklin D. Roosevelt. But these too were challenging times. Voters needed to understand the stakes of the election, and the consequences they'd suffer if they elected Mike Huckabee to the presidency. He was a religious wingnut, who after doing nothing on COVID would go after women's reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and pretty much the rights of everyone who disagreed with his narrow worldview. The only real difference between Huckabee and Ted Cruz was Huckabee was able to look and sound like a grandfather, and he could actually tell a joke. But surely that wouldn't be enough?
Yet to a great number of Americans, Clinton still sounded like she was nagging the nation into doing what she wanted. There was no warmth. No grand plan, just day-to-day press conferences. All she was talking about were reasons why they shouldn't vote Republican, not offering reasons why they should re-elect her to another four years. During the last four years Clinton had accomplished almost nothing of significance. Republicans weren't going to turn around and start passing her agenda just because she might get herself re-elected. Besides, she was just following the orders of the health professionals and the doctors. Anyone could do that. Mike Huckabee was going to have the same smart people around him. He'd listen to the science and common sense. He always talked about more common sense in those stump speeches of his.
Just as it had back in 2016, the 2020 race ended on a nailbiter. It wouldn't be until the the morning of November 5th that the networks were able to call Wisconsin and Michigan, and thus the presidency, for Mike Huckabee. There were protests, accusations of fraudulent activity, ballot stuffing and the like. Some Democrats called on faithless electors to respect the fact that Clinton had won the popular vote and re-elect her. Other Democrats were planning longshot bids to derail certifying the election. Appalled, senior Democrats and the party leadership tried to convince their defeated President to get the rogue elements of the party in line. Clinton clearly wasn't interested in doing that. If anything, members of her team were encouraging some of the nonsense behind the scenes. It required former President Obama to calm everyone's nerves. Mike Huckabee was going to be the new president, he told everyone. What mattered now was getting the party ready for the midterms and 2024. They had to get to work immediately, and they had to be united going forward. That last part was going to be tough.
Only four years earlier she had proudly stood in the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York, under a very intentional glass ceiling, having just achieved her life’s ambition in being elected the country’s first female President. For the briefest of moments Clinton dropped the mask she had so carefully crafted through decades of walking in the hallways of power, visibly emotional. It was a bitter and narrow victory that was celebrated in many corners across the globe, proof that fair-minded and pragmatic liberalism could defeat the boisterous anger of the populists and far-right. In other words, proof that the Obama coalition had endured.
Four years later, isolated from the crowds and her loved ones due to COVID-19, President Clinton delivered a tapped concession to a man who stood as the antithesis of almost everything she stood for. She looked tired. Exhausted. It had been a difficult, almost impossible four years as President, what with an obstructionist congress.
Florida Governor Mike Huckabee, despite losing the popular vote to Clinton, would be America’s 46th President. Liberals and Progressives across the country, and in many of those same parts of the world that greeted Clinton’s 2016 win with optimism, wept and shared their anger on social media. Huckabee wasn't legitimate. He couldn't be. The Democrats had to do something. Recounts. Oppose certifying the election. Anything.
Huckabee was the type of politician that populist conservatives and evangelicals both felt comfortable with. The Florida Governor, and formerly the Governor of Bill Clinton’s native Arkansas from 1996 until 2007, was always quick with a folksy anecdote or turn of phrase. A former Baptist minister, Huck – as his friends called him – always had his rallies jammed packed with the same kind of people you would find at a mega-church. People who were devout, loyal, who could see that America was entering into a period of decline because people were abandoning their faith. America was a Christian nation, and a nation built upon the values of Jesus Christ would never fail. Nowadays people were confused about their genders, using every which pronoun possible, and allowing dangerous ideologies like Islam and socialism to creep into schools and influence people’s kids. Hillary Clinton was a socialist, a communist, a Satanist who was married to that pedophile Bill Clinton. Every day she was in the Oval Office furthered the decline of real American values. She had to go, and who better than to replace her with a man of the cloth?
Those were the kind of views coming out of people’s mouths at Mike Huckabee’s rallies. Journalists would balk at that kind of talk and bemoan the real source of America’s decline. These people were uneducated, ignorant nut-jobs who talked about conspiracy theories like they were facts and facts like they were conspiracy theories. It made no sense.
Even more maddening for journalists, whenever Huckabee was confronted with soundbites from his diehard supporters, he’d just say that people were angry, or chuckle and argue that it was just plain talk from average Americans, or swivel to talking about whatever issue he wanted to talk about. Journalists called it dog whistle politics, winking at the far-right, embracing religious extremists. Huck didn’t care. These were his people. Many of them had been with him since Iowa 2008, and he wasn’t about to abandon them now, especially when the polls remained tight.
Of course, the battle to finally get the Republican nomination hadn’t been without issue. Nikki Haley, the former Governor of South Carolina and darling of the kind of Mitt Romney establishment-types that Huckabee hated, had put together an impressive campaign machine. She was hoping to take New Hampshire, her home state of South Carolina, and spend her way to winning the nomination. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul was still trying to escape the shadow of his father’s cult following on the dark corners of the internet and launch a full-fledged Libertarian revolution of his own. Chris Christie was trying to bully his way into remaining relevant in a party that hated him. Businessman Herman Cain, who had seen his 2012 campaign implode because of accusations of sexual misconduct, was back in action with the support of his buddy Donald Trump. Trump had flirted with running again in 2020 after his campaign, like Cain’s, collapsed as a result of sexual assault accusations. Polls were done, staff were hired, and Trump's ascent as the presumptive nominee seemed like a no brainer. Yet, only a week before what was expected to be his big announcement speech, The Donald went on Twitter and told the world he wasn't interested in being President after all. Was it the onslaught of lawsuits against the Trump Organization? The supposed incoming divorce between himself and his wife Melania? Maybe it was all those Russian business deals. Didn't matter. Trump was still a beloved figure for the populists within the Republican Party, and his appearances at CPAC and other conservative functions always drew the crowds. Everyone knew that Cain was doing The Donald’s bidding, and if he somehow managed to get elected President it would be Trump the Shadow Shogun calling the shots from his bunker in New York's Trump Tower.
Without someone like Trump sucking up all the oxygen from the media, it appeared as though Haley's strategy of playing to the establishment was paying dividends. The former Governor was glamorous, well-spoken, and certainly enjoyed the attention of the media. She even made concerted efforts to outreach to areas where conservatives rarely ventured, including various podcasts and even the dreaded MSNBC. Wins in both New Hampshire and South Carolina flooded her campaign with cash, and more and more establishment types were lining up behind her. Even though the primaries weren't done, the media punditry was fantasizing about the possibility of a two-woman horse race for the presidency. It would be something to celebrate. Further proof that America was making more progress, not sliding back, even if a Republican won back the White House. Plus it would generate plenty of clicks and views online from every corner of the globe.
Then COVID-19 happened and everything changed.
It's nearly impossible to arm against unknown new infections. The term "emerging viruses" was only coined back in 1990. Governments and scientists have long worked to better understand such unfamiliar threats, to establish global early-warning systems, and to develop an international rulebook to outline government response. Think of the responses to SARS and EBOLA. The powerful influence of the World Health Organization. Yet for all the planning that goes into things like this, when it actually happens the plan is always inadequate to the reality of the situation. That often goes double for the politicians who are in charge of managing it.
As a former Secretary of State, President Clinton stressed the need for a global response to the emerging pandemic. Closing down travel from China wasn't going to be enough to prevent the virus from spreading further across America. It was already there, thanks largely to travel from Europe, not China. This wasn't a political issue, it was a health issue, and anyone who tried to make it the former rather than the latter was putting people at risk. For the first time in what seemed like forever, Democrats rallied behind Clinton with a sense of passion and energy. President Clinton was the only candidate who could keep Americans safe, and the only one experienced enough to guide the country through this once in a century crisis. A clear choice that would cut through the noise of the last few years.
Republicans meanwhile were less than consistent. At first Nikki Haley announced her support for lockdowns and social distancing, citing the recommendations of nonpartisan health officials who actually knew what they were talking about. When that kind of talk started sinking her poll numbers with the Republican base, she then claimed that she was actually against them the whole time, but that something had to be done to combat the crisis. She just wasn't saying what that something was. Mike Huckabee conceded that COVID was indeed a health crisis, but claimed the Democrats were using the COVID as an opportunity to remake America in their own far-left vision. More government telling people what to do. More cash handouts. Taking marching orders from the United Nations. It was nonsense. Then there was Herman Cain, telling his ever-growing crowds of supporters that it was all a hoax. COVID, if it was real, was nothing worse than the common cold. Masks were a threat to clean living. Social distancing was the first step towards Clinton invoking a police state. COVID-19 was going to be the issue that would help breath new life into the Cain campaign and allow him to leapfrog over both Huckabee and Haley and win the nomination. Fast forward a few weeks to March 11th and Herman Cain was dead, the result of contracting the coronavirus while attending a rally in North Carolina. His name was still on the ballot in a lot of states, and for a brief time it looked like Trump, with the blessing of the Cain family, was prepared to use what was left of the campaign to try and engineer a brokered convention. That lasted about a week before Trump lost interest and blamed the failures on everyone else but himself. Without Cain or Trump in the race dividing the vote, Huckabee sailed through to the nomination.
To those like Clinton and Obama, the choice couldn't be more obvious. Yes, voters were tired of the Democrats, and the last time a party had won four straight runs at the presidency was back during World War Two and Franklin D. Roosevelt. But these too were challenging times. Voters needed to understand the stakes of the election, and the consequences they'd suffer if they elected Mike Huckabee to the presidency. He was a religious wingnut, who after doing nothing on COVID would go after women's reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and pretty much the rights of everyone who disagreed with his narrow worldview. The only real difference between Huckabee and Ted Cruz was Huckabee was able to look and sound like a grandfather, and he could actually tell a joke. But surely that wouldn't be enough?
Yet to a great number of Americans, Clinton still sounded like she was nagging the nation into doing what she wanted. There was no warmth. No grand plan, just day-to-day press conferences. All she was talking about were reasons why they shouldn't vote Republican, not offering reasons why they should re-elect her to another four years. During the last four years Clinton had accomplished almost nothing of significance. Republicans weren't going to turn around and start passing her agenda just because she might get herself re-elected. Besides, she was just following the orders of the health professionals and the doctors. Anyone could do that. Mike Huckabee was going to have the same smart people around him. He'd listen to the science and common sense. He always talked about more common sense in those stump speeches of his.
Just as it had back in 2016, the 2020 race ended on a nailbiter. It wouldn't be until the the morning of November 5th that the networks were able to call Wisconsin and Michigan, and thus the presidency, for Mike Huckabee. There were protests, accusations of fraudulent activity, ballot stuffing and the like. Some Democrats called on faithless electors to respect the fact that Clinton had won the popular vote and re-elect her. Other Democrats were planning longshot bids to derail certifying the election. Appalled, senior Democrats and the party leadership tried to convince their defeated President to get the rogue elements of the party in line. Clinton clearly wasn't interested in doing that. If anything, members of her team were encouraging some of the nonsense behind the scenes. It required former President Obama to calm everyone's nerves. Mike Huckabee was going to be the new president, he told everyone. What mattered now was getting the party ready for the midterms and 2024. They had to get to work immediately, and they had to be united going forward. That last part was going to be tough.
CanadianTory
WALZ 2028
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ready for Change - Appendix 2.R (2021 Newfoundland & Labrador general election, 2021 British Columbia general election, 2021 Nova Scotia general election)
New
CanadianTory
WALZ 2028
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
CanadianTory
WALZ 2028
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The work of politics has never come easy for Tom Mulcair. He's often one of the most intelligent people in whatever room he's standing in, and not exactly what one would call charming, especially compared to some within his cabinet. Although comfortable in a debate or a political fistfight, he often appears out of his depth when trying to connect with voters. He's not really one of them, and his time as Prime Minister only deepened the rift between the NDP leader and the public he was trying to represent. His hair was greyer, thinner. He was getting fat. His beard, a staple of his public image and a favourite branding tool of his party, had become a lot less brown in the preceding few years, betraying the stress and strain of the job that had become increasingly difficult. The PMO, which has historically been occupied by some real talents like Hugh Segal for Brian Mulroney or Jean Pelletier for Jean Chretien, had increasingly become occupied by sycophants and trusted acolytes. Criticism of the boss was criticism of them, and that would not, or more likely, could not be tolerated. Yet the Prime Minister, ever the introvert, was more and more dependent on them. Hard times wear leaders out.
New Democrats had ridden a wave of historical discontent to power in 2015 after spending the last fifty-four years existing only as a political spoiler. New Democrats weren't meant to win on the federal level, and nobody believed that it was possible. Voters parked their vote with the New Democrats to send the Liberals a message, not to actually elect Dippers. Because of that, by definition they were a different type of government, since they were the first truly new government in the country's history. But as a result, they were more cautious and scripted. More concerned about the perception of things. Worried about making even the tiniest of missteps. Fearful of proving the old consensus right; that New Democrats just weren't ready for power. Hanging on and even thriving in power meant the party had to grow up, and quick. Despite enacting a carbon-pricing scheme, raising taxes on higher-income earners and lowering them for the rest, working to heal divisions between the government and the Indigenous community, passing a popular childcare program, a historically unpopular Conservative leader and arguably the most controversial Liberal leader in Canada's history, the New Democrats were only able to squeak out the narrowest of majorities in 2017. The math was always going to be difficult for them. Unless they became the new voice of the Canadian center, the math would continue to put them at a disadvantage. This attitude was what many Mulcair-opponents had a problem with. Why tact to the mushy middle? Although a lot of his critics liked to point out that he was a little too much like Stephen Harper at times, one Harper-era strategy they wanted Mulcair to embrace was his predecessor's ability to move the center of Canadian politics more in-line with his party, rather than the other way around. Stop trying to seek compromise with the Premiers on the carbon-pricing scheme and just impose a national plan. Abolish the Senate and tell his opponents to go to hell. Ditch First-Past-the-Post and bring in Proportional Representation. Give the voters something, anything, to rally behind, even if it was polarizing. It was ironic that the Prime Minister who led the first ever federal New Democratic government was resigned to avoid anything controversial. Mulcair wasn't a dyed in the wool socialist like Svend Robinson. He was barely what one would consider a social democrat. He was a pragmatist. To him it was a necessity, considering the circumstances.
As he liked to remind his critics, unlike so many others in his government and in his party Mulcair could actually point to real government experience, as opposed to a career in opposition. He served in Jean Charest's provincial government in Quebec in the Environment portfolio. Mulcair knew what levers to pull, which special interest groups needed to be consulted, where the bathrooms were in parliament. He was the Prime Minister of the most politically inexperienced government in Canadian history, save for a few others who had either, like him, served in provincial governments or had opted to cross over from the Liberals. If this experiment was going to work, Mulcair's word had to be law. Fast-forward to the present, and the upper echelons of the party hierarchy resembled group think; harmony, no internal debates on divisive issues, a conformity on viewpoints at the expense of people who might offer an alternative view than the Prime Minister's. Nathan Cullen, Mulcair's first Finance Minister and obvious heir-apparent, had earned a dour reputation in the PMO. He wanted to spend more and go into deficit spending. Mulcair and those he surrounded himself with didn't. Cullen decided he had enough of being told what to do and how to think in Ottawa and left to take the reins of the BC NDP.
The best that the old guard and bright-eyed backbenchers could hope for was the Cold War begun by Svend Robinson and his caucus-within-a-caucus, the NDP Community Group. Sure, with how fragile the majority was Mulcair had been forced to make some concessions to them. Ease back on some of the centrism. Criticize big business every once and awhile. But nobody realistically thought that they'd get anything more than that, like with Harper and social conservatives. Platitudes and little else. Mulcair was the man who had brought them to power, and so long as he kept winning, they'd follow his lead.
Or so the story would go.
Aside from the frustrations over policy, the power of the PMO, and the disaster that was the resignation former Supreme Court Justice Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, a growing number of New Democrats were getting tired of fundraising. Ministers were expected to use a significant portion of their time to raise money for the party. NDP fundraisers were a strange and often oxymoronic thing, considering the party liked to parade around the fact that it thrived off of money donated by Canadians, not big business. But Ministers were expected to attend nonetheless, their presence meant to not only make those who had already donated feel special, but attract new donors as well. If the NDP were to replace the Liberals permanently they needed to lock down the people who wrote the latter cheques. Mark Carney was a big name in those circles, and unless the New Democrats wanted to fall back to third place and irrelevance, they needed to get used to the meet and greets if they wanted to at least stay competitive. Tom Mulcair proudly led the charge by example. Infamously he attended an event hosted by a Chinese business executive with ties to Beijing for a $1,500 per person fundraiser. One of those guests would later donate a pretty hefty sum to the Douglas Coldwell Layton Foundation, raising further questions about the government allowing cash-for-access. When backbencher Garry Begg let it slip to reporters that he was "troubled" by the circumstances of the fundraiser, he was stripped of his spot on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. Consensus by coercion cried the opposition. Begg later announced his intention to retire at the next election. So, messaged sent and received.
Opposing this consensus with distain was Jason Kenney and the Conservatives. Much like the NDP, the modern Tory strategy was increasingly reliant on intentional polarization. Central to both their fundraising was raising the specter of what would happen if the other side got their way. For the Tories, this meant out-of-control government, anti-free enterprise legislation, being made to feel ashamed or un-Canadian for their beliefs, and socialism. Tom Mulcair was no pragmatist, but rather a puppet for big unions and the extremists in his caucus. And on and on it went. This was comfortable rhetoric for Kenney, who had cut his teeth in the era of the Reform Party and Canadian Alliance. Although he was thoroughly an Ottawa politician, unlike Mulcair he could at least comfortably speak to his base. Slap on a pair of blue jeans and a cowboy hat and Jason Kenney at least appeared like he belonged at the Calgary Stampede. After losing his first kick at the can in 2017, Kenney set about the work of rebuilding the Conservative Party into a competitive, post-Harper political machine. His supporters would tell reporters and worrisome backbenchers in caucus that it was in fact the Liberals who had given the NDP their majority, not them. Never mind the fact that those soft Liberals had chosen to vote NDP over Conservative. Four years under the New Democrats would convince most Canadians how poor a decision it would be. The upstart Western Freedom Party, whose sole purpose appeared to be to split the right-of-center vote, had sprung up in direct opposition to Kenney. Leaders Derek Fildbrandt and later Steven Fletcher would say that Jason Kenney was too much like Tom Mulcair. The Prime Minister and most voters who tuned in to politics begged to differ. What everyone could agree on was simple; if Kenney couldn't defeat the NDP in 2021, he was facing a full-fledged mutiny. It was tough to straddle the line between appeasing fire-spitting conservatives and a more moderate public, and at times Kenney's attempts left both sides looking for more. There were even rumours of an attempted coup in the works should Kenney once again fall short at the polls. Despite it all, the Tory leader would just smile, get back in his blue pickup truck, and drive off to his next scheduled pre-campaign event.
Inside the office of the Leader of the Opposition, the mantra was "Keep Calm and Energize Bunny on".
Third in the House of Commons but first according to most polls was Mark Carney and the Liberals. Carney was no Energizer Bunny, and he wasn't exactly what one could call a career politician. The job most Canadians knew him from was his stint as the Governor of the Bank of Canada during the 2008 global financial crisis, and more recently as the Governor of the Bank of England. A feat without precedent, making him a rockstar of the banking world, if such a thing existed. Because of these jobs Carney was the type of man used to making decisions, not slogans. He wanted to be setting policy, not playing games or arguing why he was the best candidate to be Prime Minister. It was obvious that for once Tom Mulcair was no longer the smartest man in the room, and that would be enough for satisfy voters and their questions. For the first year of Carney's leadership, that seemed to be the case. Polls showed the Liberals leapfrogging both the NDP and the Conservatives into first place, a position they hadn't help consistently since the initial days of Justin Trudeau's leadership. The party wasn't eager to repeat that mistake. Carney wasn't the type to be interested in the House of Commons, what with its theatrics and slow-moving procedures. Sure, he'd make the effort to show up for important votes and deliver the attack lines written up by his staff, but otherwise he wanted to be out in real Canada, speaking to real Canadians. Sick of polarization and do-nothing politics? So was Mark Carney. Tired of both the NDP and the Tories offering empty slogans? So was Mark Carney. The Liberal leader would remark to his staff just how surprised he was that so many people he met were on the same page as him, clearly forgetting that not every single Canadian was a Liberal partisan. To a card carrying Liberal, it didn't matter that their leader's statements often sounded like it was written by a bunch of refrigerator magnets shook up in a Ziploc bag. What mattered was that Mark Carney wasn't Justin Trudeau. He was an adult, with greying hair, and knew how markets worked. COVID-19 had temporarily breathed new momentum into the NDP's sails, but Liberal insiders were confident that the technocratic Carney had a plan.
Meanwhile it was the New Democrats' plan was to turn the election into a referendum on vaccination mandates. If you listened to some NDP MPs talk, you'd be forgiven to think that they were almost happy that the country had been dragged into a global pandemic, that jobs were lost, and that the economy was thrown into turmoil. But a lot of those MPs or self-described Progressives, saw it as a once in a lifetime opportunity to redefine the role of government for a new era. A crisis should never go to waste, and big challenges required a big vision, big government and even bigger spending. Again, the biggest obstacle for many NDPers was their leader. Tom Mulcair wanted the election strategy to be more nuanced, and less about making drastic changes. People were struggling to buy groceries; he would say when someone would mention the need for the government to invest in new green energy. The government needed to focus on that. But even pragmatic, noncontroversial Mulcair had to acknowledge the energy that was coming from his party's base. So, when he stood in front of Rideau Hall on September 8, 2021, after having asked Governor General Mary Simon to dissolve parliament, he was uncharacteristically hyperbolic. He told reporters that this election was a choice, and that on one end you had an NDP government saving Canadians lives, and on the other Conservatives prepared to put them in jeopardy. Life or death stakes. The Liberals? Old news, according to the Prime Minister. They were led by an out-of-touch banker, hardly the type of person you wanted leading a government in a time of crisis for the middle class. It was all well and good and would've sounded like a fairly strong campaign strategy from a well-credentialed progressive. Coming from Tom Mulcair, the guy who had argued for balanced budgets and responsible spending, it sounded like he was reading off of someone else's script. In many ways he was.
A couple blocks over in the riding of Ottawa-Vanier, where Mark Carney was challenging incumbent NDP MP Emilie Taman, the Liberal leader tried to appear like he was outraged at the whole situation. He told the assembled crowd of Liberal partisans and observing reporters that in order to get the country on track, the federal government needed a plan. A plan to get through the COVID-19 pandemic, a plan to rebuild the economy, and a plan to bring the country together. According to Carney the NDP didn't have a plan. He did. Trust him on that. But voters would have to wait on the specific of that plan until the Liberals released their platform in a few weeks’ time. Why not release it now, reporters asked. Carney would just smile and talk about how the parliamentary budget office needed time to review and cost it. Then he'd go back to criticizing the government and their lack of a plan. Even the party's slogan, "A Country for Everyone" felt like it was designed to be as bland and vague as possible, just like the leader himself. Despite having the last two years to introduce himself to voters, Carney was still banking on voters to know him from his last two jobs, rather than the one he currently had. His opening campaign salvo, like Mulcair, appeared overly scripted and rehearsed. Although, considering what had happened to Carney's predecessor, being overly scripted was understandable. Carney also had to deal with the fact that, like the New Democrats, there were many within his party that wanted the Liberals to go big and bold and outmaneuver the NDP on the left. It was tempting, and Carney was planning on making some big green policy announcements, but he was a pragmatist too. If Canada was going to emerge from this crisis, it needed to do so on sound financial footing. Spending like drunken sailors wasn't going to achieve that.
The only leader who seemed at least comfortable with going big and bold was Jason Kenney. It made sense, since this was Kenney's second and likely last kick at the can before potentially getting dumped by his party. He and his team had spent the last several months getting all three-hundred-and-thirty-eight candidates nominated across the country. The platform, which was ready to be released the moment the Tories heard back from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, called for a big ramping up government spending on everything from infrastructure to healthcare. Ten billion dollars’ worth of ramping up in some cases. According to Kenney it was the only way to deal with the triple threat of the pandemic, shrinkage of the global economy, and the collapse in energy prices. A New Deal for Canadians, as he called it. Vaguely socialist sounding to many lifelong fiscal conservatives. For them Kenney promised to cut corporate tax rates by half to stimulate economic growth and woo new investments. It was a gamble that was in part aided by the fact that the upstart Western Freedom Party, which had been billed as a serious threat to Conservative unity, had floundered since its inception. Its sole MP in the House of Commons, Steven Fletcher, had launched a successful coup against founder and inaugural leader, Derek Fildebrandt. But Fletcher wasn't exactly a spellbinding messenger for the angry, vaccination-skeptical right in the way his predecessor was, and the party continued to flounder in the polls. The Tories' plan to provide financial incentives to get vaccinated but oppose mandatory mandates was their hail marry pass to strike a compromise. People had a right to make choices for their body, not the government. No matter what Kenney and the Tories did, they were going to get labeled as anti-vaxxers, anti-choice, and pro-populists akin to Mike Huckabee and the Republicans down south. Just like their "Moving Canada Forward" slogan implied, the leader and the campaign would just keep moving ahead, go to where the people were, speak to local news outlets, and hope that neither a candidate or a supporter would say anything too extreme. Problem was, Kenney's grip on the party was far from absolute. Since Stephen Harper's time as leader ended, more and more Tory MPs were getting used to speaking their minds, often causing problems for the party's image at the expense of appeasing partisans back home in their respective ridings.
It was a confusing campaign. Tom Mulcair running around the country talking about the need to protect the business sector and jobs while at the same time trying to pull a Bernie Sanders and decry income-inequality. Why was he only talking about income-inequality now? Hadn’t he been Prime Minister for the last six years? It just sounded more and more like the kind of classic political double-speak. But the award for the most awkward campaigner had to go to Mark Carney. His events were scripted down to the questions he'd get asked from his audience of "non-partisan" attendees, who were in actuality all card-carrying Liberals. Then there was uncomfortable exchange when Carney couldn't tell a National Post reporter how much milk costed in the Ottawa riding he was running in. The Liberal leader tried to talk about global dairy markets and supply-management, before getting whisked away by his handlers. As one could expect, his opponents used the episode to only hit home how out of touch the former banker was. Meanwhile Jason Kenney was trying to duck almost every question involving vaccines and government mandates. He believed the science and supported people getting vaccinated, but believed it was up to the individual to make that decision for themselves. It was a position that seemed to piss off everybody.
There was the leader's debate. Mulcair and Carny tried to out do the other on almost every topic, but ended up sounding like like an odd-couple with commitment issues. They agreed with the other on vaccination mandates, abortion rights, the rights of anti-vaccine protestors, and daycare spaces, but couldn't agree that the other person was capable of making any progress on any of it. Carney was too rich, Mulcair charged. He didn't know what it was like growing up as a member of the middle class. The NDP leader was too weak, Carney shot back. Mulcair's party was too divided, too extreme, and had failed to prepare the country for COVID. While the the Liberal and NDP leader's locked horns for the progressive vote, Jason Kenney pulled a Stephen Harper and spoke directly and calmly into the camera. For the firs time in the campaign, the Tory leader was talking about trying to bring people together. Forget the role he played in dividing Canadians. That was in the past. Yesterday's news. For a lot of voters who were just tuning in the campaign, Kenney sounded almost normal. Calm. Prime Ministerial. Maybe the idea of Jason Kenney being in charge of country wasn't so far-fetched anymore.
Then came the audio.
Bob Fife was no stranger to the more duplicitous wheeling and dealings of Canadian politics. After all, he was a fixture of Canadian journalism and had been reporting it for well over forty years. Fife had witnessed the tense relations between Jean Chretien and John Turner, and between Chretien and Paul Martin. Ambition and plotting certainly wasn’t new. But when he published the fact that sitting members of the Conservative Party of Canada were actively planning to depose their leader even in the event that he won the election, that got even the most tuned out voter’s attention. In a recording obtained by the Globe and Mail, two Tory MPs discussed plans to invoke the Reform Act and remove Jason Kenney through a simple caucus vote and install someone else as leader, and possibly Prime Minister. Their preferred replacement? Ottawa region MP Pierre Poilievre. According to one of the participants captured on the audio, anonymously credited as Albertan MP Garnett Genius, Poilievre was even aware of the plan, and supportive of such efforts so long as they were handled discreetly. The other participant, credited as former Ontario MP and Tory candidate Maryln Gladu, agreed that the plan was the right way forward.
Politically speaking it was a complete clusterfuck, and almost as soon as the story was published the Tory’s lead in the polls evaporated,
Gladu, in a statement released to the press that same day, denied it was her voice in the leaked audio, and encouraged anyone involved with the plot to come forward and publicly declare their support for Kenney’s leadership, just as she was doing now. Rather than silence the issue, the statement only added fuel to the fire. Were there others involved with the plot? How many of the sitting Conservative MPs actually supported Jason Kenney’s leadership? How involved was Pierre Poilievre? The infamously combative MP had gone uncharacteristically quiet in the fallout of the audio leak. Some Tories, especially Michelle Rempel Garner, were privately pushing Kenney and his team to eject all the rebels immediately and damn the consequences. Voters would respect a show of force.
The best way to handle the situation, Kenney and his team reasoned, was with a show of force. In a major campaign rally in Calgary, the Tory leader surrounded himself with candidates and MPs from around the country, all professing their admiration and loyalty to their leader. The praise was so sincere that it would make even Kim Jong-Un blush. Campaign staff labeled the event as a showcase of the government-in-waiting, and that the leader had a strong and capable team standing behind him. Kenney talked about unity and the strength of a shared vision for Canada. If someone had a problem with him or this vision, they could either put up or shut up. At the same time as the speech was being given, Kenney’s team released their own statement, announcing that until an internal investigation could clear him, Garnett Genius would not be permitted to sit in caucus. Gladu and Poilievre would remain, for now. Conspicuously absent from the event, Poilievre instead posted a statement on Facebook, categorically denying any involvement in a plot involving the leadership of the party and decried it as faulty reporting on the part of the mainstream media. Kenney's name or an endorsement of his continued leadership was notably missing from the post. Immediately critics labeled it as an attempt by Poilievre to keep his options open. Unfortunately dumping Poilievre risked causing more headaches than keeping him.
At best Kenney and his campaign staff hoped they had stopped the bleeding, and perhaps a few more days of nonstop campaigning and answering every reporter’s question would be enough to regain momentum by Election Day.
That night, as the results poured in from across the country and it became clear that the winner likely wouldn’t be known until sometime the next day, Mulcair gathered whatever aids and advisors were present in his Montreal campaign headquarters and told them he was going to go out there and declare victory. It didn’t matter if the Conservatives managed to get a few seats ahead of them, he’d argue, since it was unlikely the Liberals and Mark Carney wanted to get the blame for allowing Jason Kenney becoming Prime Minister. Besides, constitutional convention meant that the New Democrats, as the incumbents, were allowed to test the confidence of the House of Commons before giving their rivals their kick at the can. Aids were in a panic. George Soule, the campaign’s spokesperson, advised that declaring victory before the results were clear could backfire and damage Mulcair’s position. The NDP and their leader had just received a pretty serious body blow from voters, and the last thing they’d want to see is the Prime Minister acting like it was business as usual. Besides, Deputy Chief of Staff Anne McGrath warned, Mulcair now had to consider that his position as leader of the party was no longer secure. Whatever ended up remaining of the Community Group Caucus under Svend Robinson would almost certainly point to the results as proof that Mulcair was a spent force, and that the party would need new leadership ahead of the next campaign. When the ambitious smelled weakness, knives often come out.
It was decided that Mulcair would go out and declare victory, but rather than a victory for the NDP it would be a victory for cooperation and bipartisanship. The crisis presented by the Coronavirus pandemic required all parties of the left or center-left to put aside their differences and act in the best interests of Canada. Those best interests just also happened to include keeping Jason Kenney and the Tories out of power and keeping Tom Mulcair and the NDP in power. That’s what the majority of voters obviously wanted.
Obviously, most observers saw the ploy for what it was; spin. The New Democrats had lost their majority and seemed on track to lose their mandate. Mulcair appeared exhausted when he delivered his speech. Exhausted and annoyed. The thrills and excitement of their historic 2015 victory seemed a very distant memory. Still, the problems facing the incumbents were fantastic problems compared to their opponents.
Kenney, ever eager to defy the experts with his superior strategy, declared that the Conservatives were on track to receive the most votes out of all the other parties. This was true. He proclaimed to the party faithful in Calgary that the winner of the election wouldn’t be known that night. Also true. The would-be, potential, hopefully-but-not-likely Prime Minister declared he was prepared to work with anyone if it meant making Canadian’s lives more affordable as Canada began looking at a post-COVID economy. This wasn’t true, but it sounded nice. What Kenney didn’t tell the crowd was that he had already decided to quit as party leader. It has always been the plan that if Kenney didn’t lead the Conservatives to at minimum a minority government in his second campaign, he wouldn’t try for a third. Although the numbers out West were looking good, but the party’s campaign manager John Weissenberger had told his boss the NDP were likely to edge them out by a couple of seats when the dust settled. Winning the popular vote was great for morale, but it didn’t mean squat if the Conservative’s were still behind in terms of seats. The math just wasn’t there, and if nothing else Jason Kenney prided himself in his ability to count.
Besides, like Mulcair, Kenney knew if he didn’t pull the plug on his leadership, others likely would. Pierre Poilievre and his friends had already tried, ultimately damaging the Tory campaign at the worst possible time. It was their duplicitous actions that had cost him the keys to 24 Sussex, Kenney told his team, and he’d be damned if he’d allow the bastard to succeed him as party leader. Weissenberger had already hired a buddy to dig up some dirt on Poilievre, should the need arise. In the meantime, Kenney planned on controlling the circumstances of his exit. He’d announce his retirement when he was good and ready. Until then, he’d let everyone keep guessing what his next moves would be. Who knows, maybe he’d let it leak he was open to going into a coalition with Mark Carney just to watch people’s heads explode.
Phones in Liberal Party headquarters were buzzing nonstop the entire night, none more so than Mark Carney’s. Everybody wanted to know what the Liberal leader was going to do. After entering the campaign as the frontrunner, the Liberals were once again set to finish in third place for the third-straight election. It was humiliating, but even more than that it began to cement the fears that many party insiders had; the Liberal Party was no longer capable of winning power. What was the purpose of the Liberals if not to hold power?
Now people were asking if the party was going to dump Carney and go back to the drawing board yet again. Was he even interested in staying? He was barely ahead of the incumbent NDP candidate in his Ottawa riding, so the situation could just resolve itself.
After his speech to his supporters, proclaiming that voters had given his party a big responsibility in the incoming parliament, Mark Carney told his aides he was going to bed. He needed time to figure out his next moves, and he couldn’t do that unless he was fully rested. All the politicking and backroom deals could wait until the next day, if he still had a job by then. Fifteen minutes after turning off the lights in his hotel room, Carney got a text that he’d won in Ottawa—Vanier. A win was a win.
New Democrats had ridden a wave of historical discontent to power in 2015 after spending the last fifty-four years existing only as a political spoiler. New Democrats weren't meant to win on the federal level, and nobody believed that it was possible. Voters parked their vote with the New Democrats to send the Liberals a message, not to actually elect Dippers. Because of that, by definition they were a different type of government, since they were the first truly new government in the country's history. But as a result, they were more cautious and scripted. More concerned about the perception of things. Worried about making even the tiniest of missteps. Fearful of proving the old consensus right; that New Democrats just weren't ready for power. Hanging on and even thriving in power meant the party had to grow up, and quick. Despite enacting a carbon-pricing scheme, raising taxes on higher-income earners and lowering them for the rest, working to heal divisions between the government and the Indigenous community, passing a popular childcare program, a historically unpopular Conservative leader and arguably the most controversial Liberal leader in Canada's history, the New Democrats were only able to squeak out the narrowest of majorities in 2017. The math was always going to be difficult for them. Unless they became the new voice of the Canadian center, the math would continue to put them at a disadvantage. This attitude was what many Mulcair-opponents had a problem with. Why tact to the mushy middle? Although a lot of his critics liked to point out that he was a little too much like Stephen Harper at times, one Harper-era strategy they wanted Mulcair to embrace was his predecessor's ability to move the center of Canadian politics more in-line with his party, rather than the other way around. Stop trying to seek compromise with the Premiers on the carbon-pricing scheme and just impose a national plan. Abolish the Senate and tell his opponents to go to hell. Ditch First-Past-the-Post and bring in Proportional Representation. Give the voters something, anything, to rally behind, even if it was polarizing. It was ironic that the Prime Minister who led the first ever federal New Democratic government was resigned to avoid anything controversial. Mulcair wasn't a dyed in the wool socialist like Svend Robinson. He was barely what one would consider a social democrat. He was a pragmatist. To him it was a necessity, considering the circumstances.
As he liked to remind his critics, unlike so many others in his government and in his party Mulcair could actually point to real government experience, as opposed to a career in opposition. He served in Jean Charest's provincial government in Quebec in the Environment portfolio. Mulcair knew what levers to pull, which special interest groups needed to be consulted, where the bathrooms were in parliament. He was the Prime Minister of the most politically inexperienced government in Canadian history, save for a few others who had either, like him, served in provincial governments or had opted to cross over from the Liberals. If this experiment was going to work, Mulcair's word had to be law. Fast-forward to the present, and the upper echelons of the party hierarchy resembled group think; harmony, no internal debates on divisive issues, a conformity on viewpoints at the expense of people who might offer an alternative view than the Prime Minister's. Nathan Cullen, Mulcair's first Finance Minister and obvious heir-apparent, had earned a dour reputation in the PMO. He wanted to spend more and go into deficit spending. Mulcair and those he surrounded himself with didn't. Cullen decided he had enough of being told what to do and how to think in Ottawa and left to take the reins of the BC NDP.
The best that the old guard and bright-eyed backbenchers could hope for was the Cold War begun by Svend Robinson and his caucus-within-a-caucus, the NDP Community Group. Sure, with how fragile the majority was Mulcair had been forced to make some concessions to them. Ease back on some of the centrism. Criticize big business every once and awhile. But nobody realistically thought that they'd get anything more than that, like with Harper and social conservatives. Platitudes and little else. Mulcair was the man who had brought them to power, and so long as he kept winning, they'd follow his lead.
Or so the story would go.
Aside from the frustrations over policy, the power of the PMO, and the disaster that was the resignation former Supreme Court Justice Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, a growing number of New Democrats were getting tired of fundraising. Ministers were expected to use a significant portion of their time to raise money for the party. NDP fundraisers were a strange and often oxymoronic thing, considering the party liked to parade around the fact that it thrived off of money donated by Canadians, not big business. But Ministers were expected to attend nonetheless, their presence meant to not only make those who had already donated feel special, but attract new donors as well. If the NDP were to replace the Liberals permanently they needed to lock down the people who wrote the latter cheques. Mark Carney was a big name in those circles, and unless the New Democrats wanted to fall back to third place and irrelevance, they needed to get used to the meet and greets if they wanted to at least stay competitive. Tom Mulcair proudly led the charge by example. Infamously he attended an event hosted by a Chinese business executive with ties to Beijing for a $1,500 per person fundraiser. One of those guests would later donate a pretty hefty sum to the Douglas Coldwell Layton Foundation, raising further questions about the government allowing cash-for-access. When backbencher Garry Begg let it slip to reporters that he was "troubled" by the circumstances of the fundraiser, he was stripped of his spot on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. Consensus by coercion cried the opposition. Begg later announced his intention to retire at the next election. So, messaged sent and received.
Opposing this consensus with distain was Jason Kenney and the Conservatives. Much like the NDP, the modern Tory strategy was increasingly reliant on intentional polarization. Central to both their fundraising was raising the specter of what would happen if the other side got their way. For the Tories, this meant out-of-control government, anti-free enterprise legislation, being made to feel ashamed or un-Canadian for their beliefs, and socialism. Tom Mulcair was no pragmatist, but rather a puppet for big unions and the extremists in his caucus. And on and on it went. This was comfortable rhetoric for Kenney, who had cut his teeth in the era of the Reform Party and Canadian Alliance. Although he was thoroughly an Ottawa politician, unlike Mulcair he could at least comfortably speak to his base. Slap on a pair of blue jeans and a cowboy hat and Jason Kenney at least appeared like he belonged at the Calgary Stampede. After losing his first kick at the can in 2017, Kenney set about the work of rebuilding the Conservative Party into a competitive, post-Harper political machine. His supporters would tell reporters and worrisome backbenchers in caucus that it was in fact the Liberals who had given the NDP their majority, not them. Never mind the fact that those soft Liberals had chosen to vote NDP over Conservative. Four years under the New Democrats would convince most Canadians how poor a decision it would be. The upstart Western Freedom Party, whose sole purpose appeared to be to split the right-of-center vote, had sprung up in direct opposition to Kenney. Leaders Derek Fildbrandt and later Steven Fletcher would say that Jason Kenney was too much like Tom Mulcair. The Prime Minister and most voters who tuned in to politics begged to differ. What everyone could agree on was simple; if Kenney couldn't defeat the NDP in 2021, he was facing a full-fledged mutiny. It was tough to straddle the line between appeasing fire-spitting conservatives and a more moderate public, and at times Kenney's attempts left both sides looking for more. There were even rumours of an attempted coup in the works should Kenney once again fall short at the polls. Despite it all, the Tory leader would just smile, get back in his blue pickup truck, and drive off to his next scheduled pre-campaign event.
Inside the office of the Leader of the Opposition, the mantra was "Keep Calm and Energize Bunny on".
Third in the House of Commons but first according to most polls was Mark Carney and the Liberals. Carney was no Energizer Bunny, and he wasn't exactly what one could call a career politician. The job most Canadians knew him from was his stint as the Governor of the Bank of Canada during the 2008 global financial crisis, and more recently as the Governor of the Bank of England. A feat without precedent, making him a rockstar of the banking world, if such a thing existed. Because of these jobs Carney was the type of man used to making decisions, not slogans. He wanted to be setting policy, not playing games or arguing why he was the best candidate to be Prime Minister. It was obvious that for once Tom Mulcair was no longer the smartest man in the room, and that would be enough for satisfy voters and their questions. For the first year of Carney's leadership, that seemed to be the case. Polls showed the Liberals leapfrogging both the NDP and the Conservatives into first place, a position they hadn't help consistently since the initial days of Justin Trudeau's leadership. The party wasn't eager to repeat that mistake. Carney wasn't the type to be interested in the House of Commons, what with its theatrics and slow-moving procedures. Sure, he'd make the effort to show up for important votes and deliver the attack lines written up by his staff, but otherwise he wanted to be out in real Canada, speaking to real Canadians. Sick of polarization and do-nothing politics? So was Mark Carney. Tired of both the NDP and the Tories offering empty slogans? So was Mark Carney. The Liberal leader would remark to his staff just how surprised he was that so many people he met were on the same page as him, clearly forgetting that not every single Canadian was a Liberal partisan. To a card carrying Liberal, it didn't matter that their leader's statements often sounded like it was written by a bunch of refrigerator magnets shook up in a Ziploc bag. What mattered was that Mark Carney wasn't Justin Trudeau. He was an adult, with greying hair, and knew how markets worked. COVID-19 had temporarily breathed new momentum into the NDP's sails, but Liberal insiders were confident that the technocratic Carney had a plan.
Meanwhile it was the New Democrats' plan was to turn the election into a referendum on vaccination mandates. If you listened to some NDP MPs talk, you'd be forgiven to think that they were almost happy that the country had been dragged into a global pandemic, that jobs were lost, and that the economy was thrown into turmoil. But a lot of those MPs or self-described Progressives, saw it as a once in a lifetime opportunity to redefine the role of government for a new era. A crisis should never go to waste, and big challenges required a big vision, big government and even bigger spending. Again, the biggest obstacle for many NDPers was their leader. Tom Mulcair wanted the election strategy to be more nuanced, and less about making drastic changes. People were struggling to buy groceries; he would say when someone would mention the need for the government to invest in new green energy. The government needed to focus on that. But even pragmatic, noncontroversial Mulcair had to acknowledge the energy that was coming from his party's base. So, when he stood in front of Rideau Hall on September 8, 2021, after having asked Governor General Mary Simon to dissolve parliament, he was uncharacteristically hyperbolic. He told reporters that this election was a choice, and that on one end you had an NDP government saving Canadians lives, and on the other Conservatives prepared to put them in jeopardy. Life or death stakes. The Liberals? Old news, according to the Prime Minister. They were led by an out-of-touch banker, hardly the type of person you wanted leading a government in a time of crisis for the middle class. It was all well and good and would've sounded like a fairly strong campaign strategy from a well-credentialed progressive. Coming from Tom Mulcair, the guy who had argued for balanced budgets and responsible spending, it sounded like he was reading off of someone else's script. In many ways he was.
A couple blocks over in the riding of Ottawa-Vanier, where Mark Carney was challenging incumbent NDP MP Emilie Taman, the Liberal leader tried to appear like he was outraged at the whole situation. He told the assembled crowd of Liberal partisans and observing reporters that in order to get the country on track, the federal government needed a plan. A plan to get through the COVID-19 pandemic, a plan to rebuild the economy, and a plan to bring the country together. According to Carney the NDP didn't have a plan. He did. Trust him on that. But voters would have to wait on the specific of that plan until the Liberals released their platform in a few weeks’ time. Why not release it now, reporters asked. Carney would just smile and talk about how the parliamentary budget office needed time to review and cost it. Then he'd go back to criticizing the government and their lack of a plan. Even the party's slogan, "A Country for Everyone" felt like it was designed to be as bland and vague as possible, just like the leader himself. Despite having the last two years to introduce himself to voters, Carney was still banking on voters to know him from his last two jobs, rather than the one he currently had. His opening campaign salvo, like Mulcair, appeared overly scripted and rehearsed. Although, considering what had happened to Carney's predecessor, being overly scripted was understandable. Carney also had to deal with the fact that, like the New Democrats, there were many within his party that wanted the Liberals to go big and bold and outmaneuver the NDP on the left. It was tempting, and Carney was planning on making some big green policy announcements, but he was a pragmatist too. If Canada was going to emerge from this crisis, it needed to do so on sound financial footing. Spending like drunken sailors wasn't going to achieve that.
The only leader who seemed at least comfortable with going big and bold was Jason Kenney. It made sense, since this was Kenney's second and likely last kick at the can before potentially getting dumped by his party. He and his team had spent the last several months getting all three-hundred-and-thirty-eight candidates nominated across the country. The platform, which was ready to be released the moment the Tories heard back from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, called for a big ramping up government spending on everything from infrastructure to healthcare. Ten billion dollars’ worth of ramping up in some cases. According to Kenney it was the only way to deal with the triple threat of the pandemic, shrinkage of the global economy, and the collapse in energy prices. A New Deal for Canadians, as he called it. Vaguely socialist sounding to many lifelong fiscal conservatives. For them Kenney promised to cut corporate tax rates by half to stimulate economic growth and woo new investments. It was a gamble that was in part aided by the fact that the upstart Western Freedom Party, which had been billed as a serious threat to Conservative unity, had floundered since its inception. Its sole MP in the House of Commons, Steven Fletcher, had launched a successful coup against founder and inaugural leader, Derek Fildebrandt. But Fletcher wasn't exactly a spellbinding messenger for the angry, vaccination-skeptical right in the way his predecessor was, and the party continued to flounder in the polls. The Tories' plan to provide financial incentives to get vaccinated but oppose mandatory mandates was their hail marry pass to strike a compromise. People had a right to make choices for their body, not the government. No matter what Kenney and the Tories did, they were going to get labeled as anti-vaxxers, anti-choice, and pro-populists akin to Mike Huckabee and the Republicans down south. Just like their "Moving Canada Forward" slogan implied, the leader and the campaign would just keep moving ahead, go to where the people were, speak to local news outlets, and hope that neither a candidate or a supporter would say anything too extreme. Problem was, Kenney's grip on the party was far from absolute. Since Stephen Harper's time as leader ended, more and more Tory MPs were getting used to speaking their minds, often causing problems for the party's image at the expense of appeasing partisans back home in their respective ridings.
It was a confusing campaign. Tom Mulcair running around the country talking about the need to protect the business sector and jobs while at the same time trying to pull a Bernie Sanders and decry income-inequality. Why was he only talking about income-inequality now? Hadn’t he been Prime Minister for the last six years? It just sounded more and more like the kind of classic political double-speak. But the award for the most awkward campaigner had to go to Mark Carney. His events were scripted down to the questions he'd get asked from his audience of "non-partisan" attendees, who were in actuality all card-carrying Liberals. Then there was uncomfortable exchange when Carney couldn't tell a National Post reporter how much milk costed in the Ottawa riding he was running in. The Liberal leader tried to talk about global dairy markets and supply-management, before getting whisked away by his handlers. As one could expect, his opponents used the episode to only hit home how out of touch the former banker was. Meanwhile Jason Kenney was trying to duck almost every question involving vaccines and government mandates. He believed the science and supported people getting vaccinated, but believed it was up to the individual to make that decision for themselves. It was a position that seemed to piss off everybody.
There was the leader's debate. Mulcair and Carny tried to out do the other on almost every topic, but ended up sounding like like an odd-couple with commitment issues. They agreed with the other on vaccination mandates, abortion rights, the rights of anti-vaccine protestors, and daycare spaces, but couldn't agree that the other person was capable of making any progress on any of it. Carney was too rich, Mulcair charged. He didn't know what it was like growing up as a member of the middle class. The NDP leader was too weak, Carney shot back. Mulcair's party was too divided, too extreme, and had failed to prepare the country for COVID. While the the Liberal and NDP leader's locked horns for the progressive vote, Jason Kenney pulled a Stephen Harper and spoke directly and calmly into the camera. For the firs time in the campaign, the Tory leader was talking about trying to bring people together. Forget the role he played in dividing Canadians. That was in the past. Yesterday's news. For a lot of voters who were just tuning in the campaign, Kenney sounded almost normal. Calm. Prime Ministerial. Maybe the idea of Jason Kenney being in charge of country wasn't so far-fetched anymore.
Then came the audio.
Bob Fife was no stranger to the more duplicitous wheeling and dealings of Canadian politics. After all, he was a fixture of Canadian journalism and had been reporting it for well over forty years. Fife had witnessed the tense relations between Jean Chretien and John Turner, and between Chretien and Paul Martin. Ambition and plotting certainly wasn’t new. But when he published the fact that sitting members of the Conservative Party of Canada were actively planning to depose their leader even in the event that he won the election, that got even the most tuned out voter’s attention. In a recording obtained by the Globe and Mail, two Tory MPs discussed plans to invoke the Reform Act and remove Jason Kenney through a simple caucus vote and install someone else as leader, and possibly Prime Minister. Their preferred replacement? Ottawa region MP Pierre Poilievre. According to one of the participants captured on the audio, anonymously credited as Albertan MP Garnett Genius, Poilievre was even aware of the plan, and supportive of such efforts so long as they were handled discreetly. The other participant, credited as former Ontario MP and Tory candidate Maryln Gladu, agreed that the plan was the right way forward.
Politically speaking it was a complete clusterfuck, and almost as soon as the story was published the Tory’s lead in the polls evaporated,
Gladu, in a statement released to the press that same day, denied it was her voice in the leaked audio, and encouraged anyone involved with the plot to come forward and publicly declare their support for Kenney’s leadership, just as she was doing now. Rather than silence the issue, the statement only added fuel to the fire. Were there others involved with the plot? How many of the sitting Conservative MPs actually supported Jason Kenney’s leadership? How involved was Pierre Poilievre? The infamously combative MP had gone uncharacteristically quiet in the fallout of the audio leak. Some Tories, especially Michelle Rempel Garner, were privately pushing Kenney and his team to eject all the rebels immediately and damn the consequences. Voters would respect a show of force.
The best way to handle the situation, Kenney and his team reasoned, was with a show of force. In a major campaign rally in Calgary, the Tory leader surrounded himself with candidates and MPs from around the country, all professing their admiration and loyalty to their leader. The praise was so sincere that it would make even Kim Jong-Un blush. Campaign staff labeled the event as a showcase of the government-in-waiting, and that the leader had a strong and capable team standing behind him. Kenney talked about unity and the strength of a shared vision for Canada. If someone had a problem with him or this vision, they could either put up or shut up. At the same time as the speech was being given, Kenney’s team released their own statement, announcing that until an internal investigation could clear him, Garnett Genius would not be permitted to sit in caucus. Gladu and Poilievre would remain, for now. Conspicuously absent from the event, Poilievre instead posted a statement on Facebook, categorically denying any involvement in a plot involving the leadership of the party and decried it as faulty reporting on the part of the mainstream media. Kenney's name or an endorsement of his continued leadership was notably missing from the post. Immediately critics labeled it as an attempt by Poilievre to keep his options open. Unfortunately dumping Poilievre risked causing more headaches than keeping him.
At best Kenney and his campaign staff hoped they had stopped the bleeding, and perhaps a few more days of nonstop campaigning and answering every reporter’s question would be enough to regain momentum by Election Day.
That night, as the results poured in from across the country and it became clear that the winner likely wouldn’t be known until sometime the next day, Mulcair gathered whatever aids and advisors were present in his Montreal campaign headquarters and told them he was going to go out there and declare victory. It didn’t matter if the Conservatives managed to get a few seats ahead of them, he’d argue, since it was unlikely the Liberals and Mark Carney wanted to get the blame for allowing Jason Kenney becoming Prime Minister. Besides, constitutional convention meant that the New Democrats, as the incumbents, were allowed to test the confidence of the House of Commons before giving their rivals their kick at the can. Aids were in a panic. George Soule, the campaign’s spokesperson, advised that declaring victory before the results were clear could backfire and damage Mulcair’s position. The NDP and their leader had just received a pretty serious body blow from voters, and the last thing they’d want to see is the Prime Minister acting like it was business as usual. Besides, Deputy Chief of Staff Anne McGrath warned, Mulcair now had to consider that his position as leader of the party was no longer secure. Whatever ended up remaining of the Community Group Caucus under Svend Robinson would almost certainly point to the results as proof that Mulcair was a spent force, and that the party would need new leadership ahead of the next campaign. When the ambitious smelled weakness, knives often come out.
Obviously, most observers saw the ploy for what it was; spin. The New Democrats had lost their majority and seemed on track to lose their mandate. Mulcair appeared exhausted when he delivered his speech. Exhausted and annoyed. The thrills and excitement of their historic 2015 victory seemed a very distant memory. Still, the problems facing the incumbents were fantastic problems compared to their opponents.
Kenney, ever eager to defy the experts with his superior strategy, declared that the Conservatives were on track to receive the most votes out of all the other parties. This was true. He proclaimed to the party faithful in Calgary that the winner of the election wouldn’t be known that night. Also true. The would-be, potential, hopefully-but-not-likely Prime Minister declared he was prepared to work with anyone if it meant making Canadian’s lives more affordable as Canada began looking at a post-COVID economy. This wasn’t true, but it sounded nice. What Kenney didn’t tell the crowd was that he had already decided to quit as party leader. It has always been the plan that if Kenney didn’t lead the Conservatives to at minimum a minority government in his second campaign, he wouldn’t try for a third. Although the numbers out West were looking good, but the party’s campaign manager John Weissenberger had told his boss the NDP were likely to edge them out by a couple of seats when the dust settled. Winning the popular vote was great for morale, but it didn’t mean squat if the Conservative’s were still behind in terms of seats. The math just wasn’t there, and if nothing else Jason Kenney prided himself in his ability to count.
Besides, like Mulcair, Kenney knew if he didn’t pull the plug on his leadership, others likely would. Pierre Poilievre and his friends had already tried, ultimately damaging the Tory campaign at the worst possible time. It was their duplicitous actions that had cost him the keys to 24 Sussex, Kenney told his team, and he’d be damned if he’d allow the bastard to succeed him as party leader. Weissenberger had already hired a buddy to dig up some dirt on Poilievre, should the need arise. In the meantime, Kenney planned on controlling the circumstances of his exit. He’d announce his retirement when he was good and ready. Until then, he’d let everyone keep guessing what his next moves would be. Who knows, maybe he’d let it leak he was open to going into a coalition with Mark Carney just to watch people’s heads explode.
Phones in Liberal Party headquarters were buzzing nonstop the entire night, none more so than Mark Carney’s. Everybody wanted to know what the Liberal leader was going to do. After entering the campaign as the frontrunner, the Liberals were once again set to finish in third place for the third-straight election. It was humiliating, but even more than that it began to cement the fears that many party insiders had; the Liberal Party was no longer capable of winning power. What was the purpose of the Liberals if not to hold power?
Now people were asking if the party was going to dump Carney and go back to the drawing board yet again. Was he even interested in staying? He was barely ahead of the incumbent NDP candidate in his Ottawa riding, so the situation could just resolve itself.
After his speech to his supporters, proclaiming that voters had given his party a big responsibility in the incoming parliament, Mark Carney told his aides he was going to bed. He needed time to figure out his next moves, and he couldn’t do that unless he was fully rested. All the politicking and backroom deals could wait until the next day, if he still had a job by then. Fifteen minutes after turning off the lights in his hotel room, Carney got a text that he’d won in Ottawa—Vanier. A win was a win.
CanadianTory
WALZ 2028
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
CanadianTory
WALZ 2028
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Tom Mulcair had just won his third-straight election victory. In his lifetime it was an accomplishment only achieved by such political titans as Louis St. Laurent, John Diefenbaker, Pierre Trudeau, Jean Chretien and Stephen Harper. Under most circumstances it would be a moment of triumph and celebration. But not these days. Voters had returned a Parliament that looked a whole lot different than the one Mulcair had won four years earlier.
Fewer than a third of Canadian who decided to actually show up ended up voting for the New Democrats this time around. It was the lowest share of the vote for a winning party in Canadian history. Compared to 2017, the NDP vote share dropped in every single region of Canada save for the Northern Territories, where the party enjoyed a clean sweep. In Atlantic Canada a resurgent Liberal vote led to the defeat of several high-profile cabinet ministers. Over in the prairies the government was nearly wiped out completely by the Conservatives, who also edged out the NDP in both Ontario and the national popular vote. So, what saved Mulcair? Solid returns in British Columbia, buoyed by the coattails of a still-popular provincial government, and Quebec, who opted to stay with their native son than throw their support behind Mark Carney and the Liberals.
Winning an election hardly means that matters were settled. Yes, under the electoral system the New Democrats could successfully claim that they had a mandate to govern the country. In a plurality of 338 ridings across the country, more voters opted to stay the course than try something new. Voters took a look at Jason Kenney and Mark Carney, signed and rolled their eyes and said thanks but no thanks. We’ll stick with the grumpy beard guy. For now, anyways.
But the guy with the beard wasn’t the same guy who had entered the Prime Minister’s Office back in 2015. He wasn’t even really the same guy who had won the 2017 campaign. Tom Mulcair was looking and acting a lot more like John Diefenbaker than Pierre Trudeau. He was grumpy. Exhausted. Increasingly paranoid. Every critic looked more and more like and enemy. Leading a government that was less and less interested in paying attention to the parts of the country where the NDP could not expect a warm welcome. So, when Mulcair talked about unity, collaboration, and ending division in his Election Night speech to supporters, it didn’t exactly come across as sincere for the rest of Canadians listening. Afterall, this version of Mulcair and his team had spent the last several months, from the floor of the House of Commons in Ottawa to scrums with reporters in Whitehorse, Yukon, denouncing his opponents as a threat to the very wellbeing of the country. Jason Kenney was a far-right ideologue who’d bend the knee to every anti-vaxx conspiracy theorist. Mark Carney was a rich banker who had no clue about the middle class. These were the guys that Mulcair was going to work with and find common ground? Rhetorical reversals are normal in politics, but spending months saying your opponents are unqualified to govern only to turn around and ask for their help is a pretty tough sell.
But that’s always the nature of politics. Campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Problem was that the make-up of parliament and its political climate meant that politicians were more interested in governing in poetry too rather than tackle the seriousness of the moment. Canadians were scared. COIVD-19 was still very much present, putting a strain on the healthcare system and on Canadian’s mental health. Was the economy going to be okay? How long could people survive on their savings and the government’s COVID relief cheques? What would returning to normal look like? These were all questions that the government needed to answer, but were too preoccupied with their own survival to answer with any certainty.
For an increasing number of New Democrats, survival meant dumping the man who got them into government in the first place. No Prime Minister had willingly retired from the job by the seven-year mark. Lester B. Pearson, at age 70 and after years of poor health and failing to win his own majority, called it quits in 1968 after a little over five years. Being in charge of an entire country’s government is not an easy job to walk away from, especially when you think you have more to offer, and Tom Mulcair was telling his friends and allies that he had more to offer. He intended on going out on his own terms when he was ready, and would be pushed to go for a walk in the snow. Besides, Mulcair didn’t need to be loved. As the saying goes, don’t compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative. In this case the alternative was Svend Robinson and his allies.
Robinson wasn’t getting a position in cabinet. He definitely wasn’t going to become Prime Minister, let alone leader of the party. But like Bernie Sanders in the United States, to many young activists within the New Democratic Party, he was a beacon of progressive values. The moral statesman to which others should rally behind. He had been saying the same thing for over thirty years, and finally the rest of the country was catching up with what he had been saying. COVID-19 was exposing all the flaws of the capitalistic system. The rich were getting richer while the middle and lower classes were struggling to get by. America had elected a theocrat, and Canada had done nothing to call him out on his homophobic, anti-poor, and hawkish policies. Rather than push systemic change, the party of Tommy Douglas had been reduced to offering platitudes and mushy centrism. The incumbent leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada had appointed a Supreme Court Justice who had lied about her Cree ancestry. He had demoted critics within the party. The Prime Minister had even gone back on his word, admittedly thanks to some arm-twisting from the Supreme Court, and had begun appointing Senators to the upper chamber again. Mulcair couldn't even win more votes than the guy he'd spent years trying to convince Canadians was a threat to democracy. Enough was enough. It was time for a change.
There were others in the party who wanted Mulcair gone but weren’t willing to do so if it meant destabilizing the government. Not a lot of politicians are suicidal, after all. The New Democrats only had a seven-seat edge over the Opposition Conservatives, and if a rebellion opened up you could bet the Tories would take advantage of the situation. How could they, bemoaned NDP insiders. Didn't they know now was not the time for political games?
Let Mulcair go gently into that good night. Remind him that there was a life after politics. He always talked about how pragmatic a guy he was, so surely he could be made to see reason.
Again, like John Diefenbaker, the reality was you would probably have to drag Tom Mulcair out of office kicking and screaming.
In the meantime, Mulcair was still Prime Minister, and he had to shuffle his cabinet.
It turns out you can be mediocre at your job and still keep your car and driver. The big winners? Megan Leslie, Romeo Saganash, Jennifer Keesmaat, Daniel Blaikie, Peggy Nash, and Peter Julian all kept their portfolios. Despite receiving a pretty clear drubbing from the electorate, Mulcair appeared disinterested in changing up the major lineup of his team. They had gotten him this far, after all. But there were plenty of losers too, aside from the cabinet ministers who had lost their seats in the election. Such a reliable character like Craig Scott found himself out of his plush job as Canada's top lawyer and instead the slightly less impressive job of leading the government in the House of Commons. Replacing him? Leah Gazan, a self-professed socialist and activist with a history of involvement with the Idle No More Movement. A notable move, and it signaled that the Prime Minister was indeed at least self-aware enough to know he had to give the progressives in his caucus something, or someone to rally behind. Having Gazan as Justice Minister and Attorney General would send a clear signal that the government was prepared to give social justice a try. Question was whether or not she'd actually be allowed to do anything, or get hamstringed by the PMO. Another notable change was Olivia Chow's departure from the cabinet, replaced as Transport Minister by Vancouver's Jenny Kwan. It was rumoured that Chow had wanted to either get a promotion to President of the Treasury Board or stay in Transport. After an offer of running the Heritage portfolio, Chow apparently decided to tell the Prime Minister's team to take a hike, although one could imagine more colourful language being used. Turns out that the people running the PMO lacked the same kind of common sense they claimed only they possessed.
That embarrassing spat basically derailed the entire cabinet unveiling. All the pundits wanted to talk about was Jack Layton's widow sitting outside of the front-bench looking in. Was she fired? Was this the start of her own leadership bid? Did she plan on undermining the government?
The Prime Minister wanted to prove to the country that he was still in charge of the government and his party, and that he was still the bright-bearded happy warrior Canadians elected back in 2015. He'd guide the country out of the pandemic. Problem was nobody seemed to feel that way. It felt like a timer had started. Most journalists could tell that nobody was particularly happy at the cabinet swearing-in at Rideau Hall, save for the newcomers who'd now be entitled with the 'Honourable" prefix for the rest of their lives.
For the time being, everybody was keeping their powder dry. Waiting for the next shoe to drop.
Fewer than a third of Canadian who decided to actually show up ended up voting for the New Democrats this time around. It was the lowest share of the vote for a winning party in Canadian history. Compared to 2017, the NDP vote share dropped in every single region of Canada save for the Northern Territories, where the party enjoyed a clean sweep. In Atlantic Canada a resurgent Liberal vote led to the defeat of several high-profile cabinet ministers. Over in the prairies the government was nearly wiped out completely by the Conservatives, who also edged out the NDP in both Ontario and the national popular vote. So, what saved Mulcair? Solid returns in British Columbia, buoyed by the coattails of a still-popular provincial government, and Quebec, who opted to stay with their native son than throw their support behind Mark Carney and the Liberals.
Winning an election hardly means that matters were settled. Yes, under the electoral system the New Democrats could successfully claim that they had a mandate to govern the country. In a plurality of 338 ridings across the country, more voters opted to stay the course than try something new. Voters took a look at Jason Kenney and Mark Carney, signed and rolled their eyes and said thanks but no thanks. We’ll stick with the grumpy beard guy. For now, anyways.
But the guy with the beard wasn’t the same guy who had entered the Prime Minister’s Office back in 2015. He wasn’t even really the same guy who had won the 2017 campaign. Tom Mulcair was looking and acting a lot more like John Diefenbaker than Pierre Trudeau. He was grumpy. Exhausted. Increasingly paranoid. Every critic looked more and more like and enemy. Leading a government that was less and less interested in paying attention to the parts of the country where the NDP could not expect a warm welcome. So, when Mulcair talked about unity, collaboration, and ending division in his Election Night speech to supporters, it didn’t exactly come across as sincere for the rest of Canadians listening. Afterall, this version of Mulcair and his team had spent the last several months, from the floor of the House of Commons in Ottawa to scrums with reporters in Whitehorse, Yukon, denouncing his opponents as a threat to the very wellbeing of the country. Jason Kenney was a far-right ideologue who’d bend the knee to every anti-vaxx conspiracy theorist. Mark Carney was a rich banker who had no clue about the middle class. These were the guys that Mulcair was going to work with and find common ground? Rhetorical reversals are normal in politics, but spending months saying your opponents are unqualified to govern only to turn around and ask for their help is a pretty tough sell.
But that’s always the nature of politics. Campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Problem was that the make-up of parliament and its political climate meant that politicians were more interested in governing in poetry too rather than tackle the seriousness of the moment. Canadians were scared. COIVD-19 was still very much present, putting a strain on the healthcare system and on Canadian’s mental health. Was the economy going to be okay? How long could people survive on their savings and the government’s COVID relief cheques? What would returning to normal look like? These were all questions that the government needed to answer, but were too preoccupied with their own survival to answer with any certainty.
For an increasing number of New Democrats, survival meant dumping the man who got them into government in the first place. No Prime Minister had willingly retired from the job by the seven-year mark. Lester B. Pearson, at age 70 and after years of poor health and failing to win his own majority, called it quits in 1968 after a little over five years. Being in charge of an entire country’s government is not an easy job to walk away from, especially when you think you have more to offer, and Tom Mulcair was telling his friends and allies that he had more to offer. He intended on going out on his own terms when he was ready, and would be pushed to go for a walk in the snow. Besides, Mulcair didn’t need to be loved. As the saying goes, don’t compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative. In this case the alternative was Svend Robinson and his allies.
Robinson wasn’t getting a position in cabinet. He definitely wasn’t going to become Prime Minister, let alone leader of the party. But like Bernie Sanders in the United States, to many young activists within the New Democratic Party, he was a beacon of progressive values. The moral statesman to which others should rally behind. He had been saying the same thing for over thirty years, and finally the rest of the country was catching up with what he had been saying. COVID-19 was exposing all the flaws of the capitalistic system. The rich were getting richer while the middle and lower classes were struggling to get by. America had elected a theocrat, and Canada had done nothing to call him out on his homophobic, anti-poor, and hawkish policies. Rather than push systemic change, the party of Tommy Douglas had been reduced to offering platitudes and mushy centrism. The incumbent leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada had appointed a Supreme Court Justice who had lied about her Cree ancestry. He had demoted critics within the party. The Prime Minister had even gone back on his word, admittedly thanks to some arm-twisting from the Supreme Court, and had begun appointing Senators to the upper chamber again. Mulcair couldn't even win more votes than the guy he'd spent years trying to convince Canadians was a threat to democracy. Enough was enough. It was time for a change.
There were others in the party who wanted Mulcair gone but weren’t willing to do so if it meant destabilizing the government. Not a lot of politicians are suicidal, after all. The New Democrats only had a seven-seat edge over the Opposition Conservatives, and if a rebellion opened up you could bet the Tories would take advantage of the situation. How could they, bemoaned NDP insiders. Didn't they know now was not the time for political games?
Let Mulcair go gently into that good night. Remind him that there was a life after politics. He always talked about how pragmatic a guy he was, so surely he could be made to see reason.
Again, like John Diefenbaker, the reality was you would probably have to drag Tom Mulcair out of office kicking and screaming.
In the meantime, Mulcair was still Prime Minister, and he had to shuffle his cabinet.
That embarrassing spat basically derailed the entire cabinet unveiling. All the pundits wanted to talk about was Jack Layton's widow sitting outside of the front-bench looking in. Was she fired? Was this the start of her own leadership bid? Did she plan on undermining the government?
The Prime Minister wanted to prove to the country that he was still in charge of the government and his party, and that he was still the bright-bearded happy warrior Canadians elected back in 2015. He'd guide the country out of the pandemic. Problem was nobody seemed to feel that way. It felt like a timer had started. Most journalists could tell that nobody was particularly happy at the cabinet swearing-in at Rideau Hall, save for the newcomers who'd now be entitled with the 'Honourable" prefix for the rest of their lives.
For the time being, everybody was keeping their powder dry. Waiting for the next shoe to drop.
CanadianTory
WALZ 2028
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Nobody from Jason Kenney's office was returning any calls. Not to the journalists from CBC, the National Post, The Star, and certainly not to the 121 MPs that now made up the Conservative Party caucus in Ottawa. Despite all the highly trained and credentialed people on Kenney's communications team, radio silence was being taken to a new art form. In a way it was understandable. After having come so close to actually forming government, a lot of Tories were left disappointed once again, sitting on the benches across from the actual government. Nobody runs to serve in opposition, and there were probably a lot of new MPs who had agreed to run in the previous campaign because they thought they were going to end up with a plumb job in cabinet or on a committee. Power gives the leader some sense of momentum. Defeat gives his opponents and those on the fence time to consider their options.
Now the Conservative Party found itself at yet another crossroad. Since the days of John Diefenbaker the divide between East and West, insider and outsider, progressive and conservative have only become more pronounced. Even Brian Mulroney's brief reassembling of Sir John A. Macdonald's winning coalition and back-to-back majorities eventually split the party into three parts. It took another decade of warfare before the Progressive Conservatives and the Alliance reunited, albeit without the Bloc Quebecois. The trend suggests that despite his best efforts, the jury was still out on whether Stephen Harper had left a viable, united, and competitive party.
So, how did things end up like this for Jason Kenney, the great master strategist and political rainmaker of Stephen Harper's cabinet? The simple truth was that he wasn't much of a strategist. Sure, he was clever in the moment and could likely win the battle immediately in front of him. But beyond that? Not much. He was a politician raised in the rapid-response war rooms of the Reform Party and later the Canadian Alliance, groups that could only win headlines if they said something outrageous. When Kenney was finally sworn into Harper's cabinet, he looked and sounded like someone competent enough to execute a long-term strategy. Everyone was crediting him with the Tories' success in building inroads with minority communities long-loyal to the Liberals, culminating in the infamous 2011 election majority and the beginning of their third-place slump. As Harper's successor as leader of the conservative movement, Kenney seemed like the right mix of cheery populism and screw-our-enemies combativeness, enough to paper over the divisions within the party and return it back to power. Getting elected in Alberta is one thing. Getting anointed as leader of a political party by a infinitesimally small group of passionate Canadians is one thing. Winning the entire country is way trickier, especially when the people who made you leader aren't really interested in what the rest of the country wants. You see the conundrum.
For a lot of the party's grassroots, Kenney's dithering on COVID-19 was the last straw. Was he for vaccines? Against them? Depended on who you asked. Whatever position you had, Kenney seemed to have it too. Now had Kenney won the election, he'd have the leeway to actually pick a position and roll with it. But he didn't. He lost, twice. Some MPs were so desperate to get rid of him that they didn't even wait for the second loss to happen on its own before they tried to dump him. Just ask Garnett Genuis, who was now sitting as an "Independent Conservative" after it was leaked in the campaign's homestretch that he and some other MPs, some of whom sounded suspiciously like newly-returned MP Marilyn Gladu, had plotted a putsch in the hopes that somehow Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre would become leader. Apparently Poilievre was in on the plot, but the details of his involvement were murky at best. But there was enough dirt to hurt everyone involved. Pigs and mud and all that.
Kenney clearly saw the writing on the wall and announced on October 25 in a press release that he would not in fact stay on as leader, nor would he stick around until his successor was chosen. He wouldn't wait around for his opponents to marshal their forces and humiliate him. Besides, Kenney was pretty good at wielding power from outside the leader's office too.
Thankfully for the Tories this ended the question as to whether or not they should publicly knife their leader in the back to who should lead the party for a few months before they start the very rules-based leadership process of stabbing one-another in the back.
So who would take on this unenvious task? Outgoing Deputy Leader Lisa Raitt would've been the obvious choice, but she had opted no to reoffer in the campaign so she could better look after her husband as he battled early-onset dementia. Everyone had understood her reasonings for retiring. John Williamson from New Brunswick graciously offered himself to caucus, but they politely declined his offer after Googling who he was. Supposedly a lot of caucus members wanted former Interim leader Erin O'Toole to take up the position again. He had taken charge in the immediate aftermath of Stephen Harper's defeat and Tom Mulcair's ascension and had spent those several months before Jason Kenney's election stabilizing the party and uniting the caucus. He'd be a safe and uncontroversial pick, albeit one pretty close with the outgoing leader's inner circle. But O'Toole wasn't interested. Apparently he was making phone calls and asking around whether or not he make a bid for the leadership himself, or give in to the growing pressure of jumping ship to take charge of the Ontario PCs. Premier Vic Fedeli, the accidental leader of the party following Patrick Brown's infamous resignation, was engulfed in scandal. Apparently he and some members of his cabinet had violated COVID-19 social gathering regulations and voters were understandably pissed. Rules for thee but not for me typically doesn't fly with most voters. More and more it sounded like neither the public nor the MPPs were willing to forgive, and wanted the opportunity to finally elect a leader properly.
A lot of other names mentioned like Andrew Scheer, Candice Bergen, Michelle Rempel Garner, Scott Armstrong and Gerard Deltell were also kicking the tires over possible leadership bids and wanted to keep their options open. Why get chained to a job that explicitly forbade you from running for leader?
Enter Kevin Falcon. A former provincial cabinet heavyweight in the BC governments of Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark, Falcon had loyally served as Jason Kenney's finance critic, or Shadow Finance Minister, since first getting elected to parliament back in 2017. A star candidate for the party, Falcon had led the charge for Conservative candidates across British Columbia. Based on the party's performance there in 2017 and 2021, he apparently wasn't much of a salesman. What he was, however, was unambitious. Falcon wasn't interested in becoming leader, so he'd be a natural fit for the interim job. Yes, the job of Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Official Opposition was a grueling, unenjoyable task, and like O'Toole during his stint at the job, Falcon wouldn't likely even have the time to move into luxurious Stornoway, the official residence that came with the title. But people would be indebted to him, and maybe, just maybe he could turn that debt into a cabinet job or an ambassadorship in the next Conservative government.
Much like the Prime Minister, Falcon had to appoint a frontbench team. Word came down from his office that anyone even entertaining a leadership bid would be barred from serving in his Shadow Cabinet. That edict was quickly reversed when those same potential candidates and their supporters within caucus reminded Falcon that they could easily bring him down as they had Jason Kenney. So never mind! All MPs were welcomed, including those who would only use their job in the Shadow Cabinet to advertise themselves for a few weeks as they prepped for their leadership bid, by which point they would resign their job as critic and force Falcon to find someone else to do it. Recall that the job was thankless.
Everyone wanted the Shadow Finance position. Made sense, since that person would lead the party's efforts against a minority NDP government. It was the highest profile platform to which candidates could advertise themselves to the base. Andrew Scheer wanted it. Pierre Poilievre wanted it too. Badly. So badly that he was auditioning for the job on podcasts and Twitter, testing out attack lines against the government. "Madman Mulcair" and "Maniacal Mulcair", for example. Poilievre even warned what might happen if he didn't get the job. Word was Stephen Harper was rooting for him.
Erin O'Toole got the job instead, thanks to some help from his buddy Jason Kenney and his allies. Poilievre would instead get the job of facing off against Employment Minister Raymond Cote. Turns out even Stephen Harper's influence had limits. Didn't help that for a lot of people in caucus, Poilievre was still the guy who couldn't keep his ambitions in-check, and had costed them government.
Andrew Scheer? Back to his job as House Leader. Michelle Rempel Garner? Immigration. Gerard Deltell? Foreign Affairs. Michael Chong? Wildlife Conservation.
So plenty of disappointed MPs, a couple of angry leadership aspirants, all led by a leader who had been selected not because he was loved, but because there were no other options. Business as usual for the Tories.
Now the Conservative Party found itself at yet another crossroad. Since the days of John Diefenbaker the divide between East and West, insider and outsider, progressive and conservative have only become more pronounced. Even Brian Mulroney's brief reassembling of Sir John A. Macdonald's winning coalition and back-to-back majorities eventually split the party into three parts. It took another decade of warfare before the Progressive Conservatives and the Alliance reunited, albeit without the Bloc Quebecois. The trend suggests that despite his best efforts, the jury was still out on whether Stephen Harper had left a viable, united, and competitive party.
So, how did things end up like this for Jason Kenney, the great master strategist and political rainmaker of Stephen Harper's cabinet? The simple truth was that he wasn't much of a strategist. Sure, he was clever in the moment and could likely win the battle immediately in front of him. But beyond that? Not much. He was a politician raised in the rapid-response war rooms of the Reform Party and later the Canadian Alliance, groups that could only win headlines if they said something outrageous. When Kenney was finally sworn into Harper's cabinet, he looked and sounded like someone competent enough to execute a long-term strategy. Everyone was crediting him with the Tories' success in building inroads with minority communities long-loyal to the Liberals, culminating in the infamous 2011 election majority and the beginning of their third-place slump. As Harper's successor as leader of the conservative movement, Kenney seemed like the right mix of cheery populism and screw-our-enemies combativeness, enough to paper over the divisions within the party and return it back to power. Getting elected in Alberta is one thing. Getting anointed as leader of a political party by a infinitesimally small group of passionate Canadians is one thing. Winning the entire country is way trickier, especially when the people who made you leader aren't really interested in what the rest of the country wants. You see the conundrum.
For a lot of the party's grassroots, Kenney's dithering on COVID-19 was the last straw. Was he for vaccines? Against them? Depended on who you asked. Whatever position you had, Kenney seemed to have it too. Now had Kenney won the election, he'd have the leeway to actually pick a position and roll with it. But he didn't. He lost, twice. Some MPs were so desperate to get rid of him that they didn't even wait for the second loss to happen on its own before they tried to dump him. Just ask Garnett Genuis, who was now sitting as an "Independent Conservative" after it was leaked in the campaign's homestretch that he and some other MPs, some of whom sounded suspiciously like newly-returned MP Marilyn Gladu, had plotted a putsch in the hopes that somehow Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre would become leader. Apparently Poilievre was in on the plot, but the details of his involvement were murky at best. But there was enough dirt to hurt everyone involved. Pigs and mud and all that.
Kenney clearly saw the writing on the wall and announced on October 25 in a press release that he would not in fact stay on as leader, nor would he stick around until his successor was chosen. He wouldn't wait around for his opponents to marshal their forces and humiliate him. Besides, Kenney was pretty good at wielding power from outside the leader's office too.
Thankfully for the Tories this ended the question as to whether or not they should publicly knife their leader in the back to who should lead the party for a few months before they start the very rules-based leadership process of stabbing one-another in the back.
So who would take on this unenvious task? Outgoing Deputy Leader Lisa Raitt would've been the obvious choice, but she had opted no to reoffer in the campaign so she could better look after her husband as he battled early-onset dementia. Everyone had understood her reasonings for retiring. John Williamson from New Brunswick graciously offered himself to caucus, but they politely declined his offer after Googling who he was. Supposedly a lot of caucus members wanted former Interim leader Erin O'Toole to take up the position again. He had taken charge in the immediate aftermath of Stephen Harper's defeat and Tom Mulcair's ascension and had spent those several months before Jason Kenney's election stabilizing the party and uniting the caucus. He'd be a safe and uncontroversial pick, albeit one pretty close with the outgoing leader's inner circle. But O'Toole wasn't interested. Apparently he was making phone calls and asking around whether or not he make a bid for the leadership himself, or give in to the growing pressure of jumping ship to take charge of the Ontario PCs. Premier Vic Fedeli, the accidental leader of the party following Patrick Brown's infamous resignation, was engulfed in scandal. Apparently he and some members of his cabinet had violated COVID-19 social gathering regulations and voters were understandably pissed. Rules for thee but not for me typically doesn't fly with most voters. More and more it sounded like neither the public nor the MPPs were willing to forgive, and wanted the opportunity to finally elect a leader properly.
A lot of other names mentioned like Andrew Scheer, Candice Bergen, Michelle Rempel Garner, Scott Armstrong and Gerard Deltell were also kicking the tires over possible leadership bids and wanted to keep their options open. Why get chained to a job that explicitly forbade you from running for leader?
Enter Kevin Falcon. A former provincial cabinet heavyweight in the BC governments of Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark, Falcon had loyally served as Jason Kenney's finance critic, or Shadow Finance Minister, since first getting elected to parliament back in 2017. A star candidate for the party, Falcon had led the charge for Conservative candidates across British Columbia. Based on the party's performance there in 2017 and 2021, he apparently wasn't much of a salesman. What he was, however, was unambitious. Falcon wasn't interested in becoming leader, so he'd be a natural fit for the interim job. Yes, the job of Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Official Opposition was a grueling, unenjoyable task, and like O'Toole during his stint at the job, Falcon wouldn't likely even have the time to move into luxurious Stornoway, the official residence that came with the title. But people would be indebted to him, and maybe, just maybe he could turn that debt into a cabinet job or an ambassadorship in the next Conservative government.
Much like the Prime Minister, Falcon had to appoint a frontbench team. Word came down from his office that anyone even entertaining a leadership bid would be barred from serving in his Shadow Cabinet. That edict was quickly reversed when those same potential candidates and their supporters within caucus reminded Falcon that they could easily bring him down as they had Jason Kenney. So never mind! All MPs were welcomed, including those who would only use their job in the Shadow Cabinet to advertise themselves for a few weeks as they prepped for their leadership bid, by which point they would resign their job as critic and force Falcon to find someone else to do it. Recall that the job was thankless.
Everyone wanted the Shadow Finance position. Made sense, since that person would lead the party's efforts against a minority NDP government. It was the highest profile platform to which candidates could advertise themselves to the base. Andrew Scheer wanted it. Pierre Poilievre wanted it too. Badly. So badly that he was auditioning for the job on podcasts and Twitter, testing out attack lines against the government. "Madman Mulcair" and "Maniacal Mulcair", for example. Poilievre even warned what might happen if he didn't get the job. Word was Stephen Harper was rooting for him.
Erin O'Toole got the job instead, thanks to some help from his buddy Jason Kenney and his allies. Poilievre would instead get the job of facing off against Employment Minister Raymond Cote. Turns out even Stephen Harper's influence had limits. Didn't help that for a lot of people in caucus, Poilievre was still the guy who couldn't keep his ambitions in-check, and had costed them government.
Andrew Scheer? Back to his job as House Leader. Michelle Rempel Garner? Immigration. Gerard Deltell? Foreign Affairs. Michael Chong? Wildlife Conservation.
So plenty of disappointed MPs, a couple of angry leadership aspirants, all led by a leader who had been selected not because he was loved, but because there were no other options. Business as usual for the Tories.
CanadianTory
WALZ 2028
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Mark Carney was learning the hard way that bragging about having a great career outside of politics doesn’t necessary translate to having a great career in it. Normally most voters assume that the best person to do politics is the one who’s already been doing some. But the Liberal Party of Canada, an institution as old as Canada itself, simply cannot help itself when prestigious outsiders come knocking on their door. Look at the success, Liberal insiders would say, of such intellectuals as Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Trudeau. They came and ushered in almost twenty years of enlightened governance, save for those few, dark, backwater months under Joe Clark back in 1979. Yeah, tell that to Ken Dryden, Marc Garneau, or Michael Ignatieff, all of whom were advertised as the solution to the party’s ailing problems of staying relevant in changing political times.
Allies had marketed Carney as the Lester Pearson of the modern age. Now some Liberals in the party were starting to worry that it was not, in fact, Pearson’s time. After several weeks of campaigning and two full years as leader of the party, the Liberals found themselves stuck in the exact same place they had been when they begged the former Governor of the Bank of England to take over. Third.
So, was Mark Carney going to resign and leave his party in search of their seventh leader in ten years? No.
He had bought a residence in Ottawa, after all. Why waste the investment?
What happened instead was that Carney overhauled his frontbench, naming a new Deputy leader and promoting several rookies to some pretty important roles in his Shadow Cabinet (Thus securing their gratitude for his continued leadership of the party). It was a lean, mean, Liberal machine that according to Carney and his team would serve as the true official opposition to the Mulcair government while the Tories were busy stabbing themselves in the back as they anointed a new leader. They’d fight for the middle class.
Team Carney just had to figure out who the middle class was and what it was in fact they wanted.
Part of the answer to that question was former Edmonton City planner-turned Liberal MP Anne Stevenson, the only Western Liberal if you don’t count British Columbia. Taking on the critic role for Justice and for Agriculture, a lot of insiders saw her as exactly what the party should represent. Young, energetic, urban, and hip. In that vein came the promotion of former Toronto City Councilor Josh Matlow, former Olympic medal-winner Adam van Koeverden, former Ontario MPPs Michael Coteau and Mitzie Hunter, and Montreal MP Marwah Rizqy, who along with a bunch of new jobs was also named as Mark Carney’s new deputy. All wonderfully telegenic MPs who’d look great as backdrops for their charming and definitely down-to-earth leader.
For those worried if the Liberal Party was actually learning their lesson and embracing a complete overhaul, not to worry. Dominic LeBlanc as House Leader, Kevin Lameroux as caucus chair, and François-Philippe Champagne as Finance critic were there to remind the new faces that the old boys club was still calling the shots.
That was another major problem facing the Liberals and Carney. Because of the party’s performance outside of Ontario and Atlantic Canada, the Liberals embarrassingly had less women on their frontbench team’s than both the New Democrats and the Conservatives.
How could you claim to represent Canadians when the MPs in your party were mostly male or had never stepped foot in rural Alberta even once in their lives? The reviews of the shadow cabinet from outside the Ottawa bubble were scathing. Or nonexistent because nobody cared what third-place party in parliament was doing. One columnist called it the death of the Liberal Party. Another said the party should maybe consider, but only if he was alright with it, asking Carney to step aside in favour of a female leader. It was looking way to boring, white, and male, they said.
Sure, the party could dump Carney in favour of the hypothetical, ticks all the boxes candidate who didn’t actually exist in human form, but it was probably the smarter bet to stick with the guy who had already gone through the grueling ordeal of an election campaign for at least another kick at the can. On the other hand, rarely do leaders who have lost their first campaign succeed in their second. Save for Stephen Harper.
Much like Harper, the lack of a clear or willing alternative to Carney left all these succession questions pretty much moot.
Andrew Leslie obviously wanted the job, trouble for him was nobody in the party wanted him. François-Philippe Champagne hadn’t left a lucrative job as an international banker for a career in a third-place political party. He wanted to call the shots. The rumour mill was saying that he was getting pressure to swoop in and revive the Quebec Liberals after they inevitably lost to Francois Legault and the CAQ in the upcoming provincial election. Former BC Premier Christy Clark was too busy flirting with federal Conservatives to flirt with her old party. So was former Quebec Premier Jean Charest. Sacha Trudeau was telling people he’d be interested in the job, but Liberals were still suffering from the last guy name Trudeau and didn’t want to find out what skeletons were in this guy’s closet. Everyone else was too green. Too progressive. Too conservative. Too much work to build into a credible leader by the next election. At least Canadians had become somewhat familiar with the current leader.
In fact, the longer he was leader the more Mark Carney was becoming more like Louis St. Laurent than Mike Pearson. The country’s twelfth Prime Minister was often styled as the “Chairman of the Board”, precisely because the government was run like a corporation with shareholders. St. Laurent wasn’t the one running the government. He was just the guy who presided over things while cabinet minister C.D. Howe ran the show. In Carney’s case, he was a successful central-bank governor in two countries, a feat without obvious precedent, and was used to delegating responsibilities.
So, who was running the shop while Carney came up with “policies, not slogans”? Depended on who you asked. A lot of MPs would say House Leader Dominic LeBlanc, arguably the most senior and experienced member of the caucus. Affable, charismatic, and an irrepressible rogue, LeBlanc’s brand of liberalism was more reminiscent of the day of Jean Chretien. More gladhanding and sweet-talking than arm-twisting (But Leblanc could do that too if needed). If Carney needed someone to step in and cover for either himself or a member of the team, LeBlanc was the guy.
The other big shot? François-Philippe Champagne. The party’s finance spokesperson.
Ambitious to a fault, Champagne was reportedly going stir crazy while his talents wasted away in opposition. He was meant for much greater things, which is why he abandoned his lucrative banking job to run under Justin Trudeau. Now Trudeau was gone, and Champagne was stuck with the bill. Finance critic is an important job when you’re the official opposition. Not so much when you’re sitting in the distant corner behind the actual official opposition.
Much like LeBlanc, François-Philippe Champagne was known for his people skills. Friends and enemies routinely compared him to the character of Harvey Specter from the television show Suits. He was the type of politico who believed in the ability to defy the odds. Especially his own ability to do it. Despite representing Chretien’s old stomping grounds and enjoying the former Prime Minister’s support, everybody in caucus knew Paul Martin was the guy who Champagne called when he needed advice.
A Chretienite, a Martinite, and an International Banker walk into a bar. Sounds like the set up for the most boring political joke imaginable. Instead, it was the triumvirate that governed the Liberal Party of Canada.
Still, nobody who actually had a job within the party thought that the Mark Carney era was going to end anytime soon. The party was still pretty flush with cash, had gained a huge number of new MPs and had come second in a number of ridings. Yes, it has been ten years since the party first tumbled into third place, but Liberals were confident that they were finally about to turn things around.
The big breakthrough was right around the corner.
Allies had marketed Carney as the Lester Pearson of the modern age. Now some Liberals in the party were starting to worry that it was not, in fact, Pearson’s time. After several weeks of campaigning and two full years as leader of the party, the Liberals found themselves stuck in the exact same place they had been when they begged the former Governor of the Bank of England to take over. Third.
So, was Mark Carney going to resign and leave his party in search of their seventh leader in ten years? No.
He had bought a residence in Ottawa, after all. Why waste the investment?
What happened instead was that Carney overhauled his frontbench, naming a new Deputy leader and promoting several rookies to some pretty important roles in his Shadow Cabinet (Thus securing their gratitude for his continued leadership of the party). It was a lean, mean, Liberal machine that according to Carney and his team would serve as the true official opposition to the Mulcair government while the Tories were busy stabbing themselves in the back as they anointed a new leader. They’d fight for the middle class.
Team Carney just had to figure out who the middle class was and what it was in fact they wanted.
Part of the answer to that question was former Edmonton City planner-turned Liberal MP Anne Stevenson, the only Western Liberal if you don’t count British Columbia. Taking on the critic role for Justice and for Agriculture, a lot of insiders saw her as exactly what the party should represent. Young, energetic, urban, and hip. In that vein came the promotion of former Toronto City Councilor Josh Matlow, former Olympic medal-winner Adam van Koeverden, former Ontario MPPs Michael Coteau and Mitzie Hunter, and Montreal MP Marwah Rizqy, who along with a bunch of new jobs was also named as Mark Carney’s new deputy. All wonderfully telegenic MPs who’d look great as backdrops for their charming and definitely down-to-earth leader.
For those worried if the Liberal Party was actually learning their lesson and embracing a complete overhaul, not to worry. Dominic LeBlanc as House Leader, Kevin Lameroux as caucus chair, and François-Philippe Champagne as Finance critic were there to remind the new faces that the old boys club was still calling the shots.
That was another major problem facing the Liberals and Carney. Because of the party’s performance outside of Ontario and Atlantic Canada, the Liberals embarrassingly had less women on their frontbench team’s than both the New Democrats and the Conservatives.
How could you claim to represent Canadians when the MPs in your party were mostly male or had never stepped foot in rural Alberta even once in their lives? The reviews of the shadow cabinet from outside the Ottawa bubble were scathing. Or nonexistent because nobody cared what third-place party in parliament was doing. One columnist called it the death of the Liberal Party. Another said the party should maybe consider, but only if he was alright with it, asking Carney to step aside in favour of a female leader. It was looking way to boring, white, and male, they said.
Sure, the party could dump Carney in favour of the hypothetical, ticks all the boxes candidate who didn’t actually exist in human form, but it was probably the smarter bet to stick with the guy who had already gone through the grueling ordeal of an election campaign for at least another kick at the can. On the other hand, rarely do leaders who have lost their first campaign succeed in their second. Save for Stephen Harper.
Much like Harper, the lack of a clear or willing alternative to Carney left all these succession questions pretty much moot.
Andrew Leslie obviously wanted the job, trouble for him was nobody in the party wanted him. François-Philippe Champagne hadn’t left a lucrative job as an international banker for a career in a third-place political party. He wanted to call the shots. The rumour mill was saying that he was getting pressure to swoop in and revive the Quebec Liberals after they inevitably lost to Francois Legault and the CAQ in the upcoming provincial election. Former BC Premier Christy Clark was too busy flirting with federal Conservatives to flirt with her old party. So was former Quebec Premier Jean Charest. Sacha Trudeau was telling people he’d be interested in the job, but Liberals were still suffering from the last guy name Trudeau and didn’t want to find out what skeletons were in this guy’s closet. Everyone else was too green. Too progressive. Too conservative. Too much work to build into a credible leader by the next election. At least Canadians had become somewhat familiar with the current leader.
In fact, the longer he was leader the more Mark Carney was becoming more like Louis St. Laurent than Mike Pearson. The country’s twelfth Prime Minister was often styled as the “Chairman of the Board”, precisely because the government was run like a corporation with shareholders. St. Laurent wasn’t the one running the government. He was just the guy who presided over things while cabinet minister C.D. Howe ran the show. In Carney’s case, he was a successful central-bank governor in two countries, a feat without obvious precedent, and was used to delegating responsibilities.
So, who was running the shop while Carney came up with “policies, not slogans”? Depended on who you asked. A lot of MPs would say House Leader Dominic LeBlanc, arguably the most senior and experienced member of the caucus. Affable, charismatic, and an irrepressible rogue, LeBlanc’s brand of liberalism was more reminiscent of the day of Jean Chretien. More gladhanding and sweet-talking than arm-twisting (But Leblanc could do that too if needed). If Carney needed someone to step in and cover for either himself or a member of the team, LeBlanc was the guy.
The other big shot? François-Philippe Champagne. The party’s finance spokesperson.
Ambitious to a fault, Champagne was reportedly going stir crazy while his talents wasted away in opposition. He was meant for much greater things, which is why he abandoned his lucrative banking job to run under Justin Trudeau. Now Trudeau was gone, and Champagne was stuck with the bill. Finance critic is an important job when you’re the official opposition. Not so much when you’re sitting in the distant corner behind the actual official opposition.
Much like LeBlanc, François-Philippe Champagne was known for his people skills. Friends and enemies routinely compared him to the character of Harvey Specter from the television show Suits. He was the type of politico who believed in the ability to defy the odds. Especially his own ability to do it. Despite representing Chretien’s old stomping grounds and enjoying the former Prime Minister’s support, everybody in caucus knew Paul Martin was the guy who Champagne called when he needed advice.
A Chretienite, a Martinite, and an International Banker walk into a bar. Sounds like the set up for the most boring political joke imaginable. Instead, it was the triumvirate that governed the Liberal Party of Canada.
Still, nobody who actually had a job within the party thought that the Mark Carney era was going to end anytime soon. The party was still pretty flush with cash, had gained a huge number of new MPs and had come second in a number of ridings. Yes, it has been ten years since the party first tumbled into third place, but Liberals were confident that they were finally about to turn things around.
The big breakthrough was right around the corner.
CanadianTory
WALZ 2028
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
CanadianTory
WALZ 2028
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
CanadianTory
WALZ 2028
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Erin O’Toole’s hometown of Bowmanville, Ontario, was as good a place as any to contemplate the future of the Conservative Party of Canada. The ghosts of Tory-establishment past linger there, haunting the walls of the 1971 Bowmanville High School, or rattling around in the attics of grey-haired Conservatives who routinely attend those packed meetings to listen to their Member of Parliament drone on about whatever weekly local issue people are up-in-arms about. This time there was no big meeting. No special events scheduled. Just O’Toole and his inner circle quietly hunkered in the back of the Tim Horton’s on Bowmanville Ave., discussing why he was going to forgo a run for the federal Conservative leadership and instead try and save the provincial Progressive Conservatives as Premier instead.
The mood was oddly positive considering the former Veteran’s Affairs Minister was likely the frontrunner if he ran. He had the cabinet experience, the support, and he had previously served as interim leader in the aftermath of Stephen Harper’s defeat and exit as party chief. The caucus trusted him. But O’Toole was frank with his team; he was probably too close to Jason Kenney and couldn’t reflect the growing frustration and populism coming from the base of the party. His political roots had been in the Ontario PC Party, where his father has served in the government of Mike Harris. It just felt like a more comfortable fit for him and his family.
Besides, running for the Ontario PC leadership meant he’d probably clear the field. Running for the federal leadership would mean going through some pretty nasty characters.
So, who was the frontrunner in the race to replace Jason Kenney? As always, it depended on who you asked.
If you were a Red Tory who longed for the days of Joe Clark or had voted for Paul Martin in 2004, the frontrunner should be Jean Charest. The former Quebec Premier had been narrowly booted from office in 2012 after almost a decade of running the province. Before that he was the guy who bragged about saving Canada during the 1995 Quebec referendum. Yeah, he abandoned the Progressive Conservatives for the Quebec Liberals, but he had done that to save the country even further. Honest. Just don’t ask him about his dealings with China.
Charest was a longshot at best. But he was hungry for one last political knife fight and had nothing better to do.
If you thought that Canadians wanted another staunch conservative ideologue like Stephen Harper, but with a weirder smile, you had former House Speaker Andrew Scheer or Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre.
Poilievre was familiar to most Tories as the firebrand former Democratic Reforms Minister who enjoyed pissing off Liberals and journalists alike. Voters might remember him as the guy embroiled in the infamous 2011 Robocalls scandal. Or maybe as the guy who some Tory candidates and MPs were planning to install as the Prime Minister had Jason Kenney managed to win enough seats to form a government in the 2021 campaign. Many in the outgoing leader’s office still blamed him for the party’s defeat at the polls. Controversy was the guy’s bread and butter.
It was going to be a very crowded field; MPs Joel Etienne and Marilyn Gladu, Mayor and former Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown, former Quebec candidate Eric Duhaime, and businessman Bryan Brulotte were all expected to make bids for the Tory’s top job. Even Caroline Mulroney was rumoured to be kicking the tires. Each of them claimed to be the solution to the party’s woes in Ontario, Quebec, and urban Canada. None of them were explaining how.
Running-up the numbers out West wasn’t going to cut it anymore. If the Conservatives wanted to win, they needed to win in Toronto, Vancouver, and out in Atlantic Canada. The talking heads said that in order to do that the party needed to win back those Liberal-Conservative switch voters who had handed Harper his majority in 2011. They needed a plan on the environment, a plan for dealing with COVID-19, a plan to deal with rising gun crime. As it stood, current party policy on those issues was anathema to voters in urban Canada. Unless the party modernized and became a little bit more like the old PCs and a little less Reform, the pundits claimed they’d keep losing.
Not according to Doug Ford. Yes, that Doug Ford. The brother of that other Ford. Yes, the deceased crack-smoking former Toronto mayor.
The former Toronto city councillor had been busy reinventing himself after two failed bids for his late brother’s old job, losing both times to John Tory. Two years after his 2018 defeat, Ford got elected in the 2020 Ontario Coronavirus campaign that handed Vic Fedeli a slim majority and got the plum job as Ontario’s Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade. Since then, Doug had been busy learning French, building his connections to the province’s business community, staying in public view, and making it clear to his friends and family he was still interested in seeing how far up the political ladder he could climb.
Yes, polls showed that most voters in Ontario didn’t think very highly of the elder Ford. He was a loud-mouthed populist. A bull in a China shop. A thug. But Ford also had a bit of what Stephen Harper and Mike Haris had; the unnerving sense that they believed things. No matter what you thought about Doug Ford, nobody could say he wasn’t authentic. Ford certainly wasn’t going to tailor his message to any one particular interest group.
He was for the folks, and the folks wanted to smash the system and piss off the establishment.
They were tired of being told what to think, what to do, and how to vote.
The Freedom Convoy, as it was dubbed, rolled into Ottawa at the end of January, demanding that the Governor General or the Queen, whoever was available at the time, remove Tom Mulcair and the socialist, freedom-taking NDP from power, and hold an election. They were 250 vehicles and 1,500 people strong and were prepared to shut-down the country’s capital to get it done. These folks wanted an end to COVID-19 restrictions and were leveling threats to anyone they thought apart of the system, even if it was just some random citizen of Ottawa wearing a mask. Pat King, one of the movement organizers, was telling people that Tom Mulcair and his government were hellbent on depopulating the Anglo-Saxon race. No everyone at the convoy was racist, violent, or interested in upending Canadian democracy. But a lot of them were. These people had been feeling let down for years by the promises of globalization, free-trade, and a changing economy that didn’t really offer much for people like them, and were tired of waiting for the benefits to finally kick-in. COVID was just the straw that finally broke the camel’s back.
If you were running or interested in running for the Conservative leadership, you were going to have to make the pilgrimage to these folks.
Both Andrew Scheer and Pierre Poilievre were pitching themselves to these folks as fellow agents of chaos. They’d scrap just about everything that the NDP had done while in power, except for maybe the popular childcare program, and end those pesky COVID restrictions.
Problem for Poilievre was his campaign was already running out of money. His campaign manager, Jenni Byrne, had expected for the party's right-wing to coalesce around her candidate in short order. Instead, it closed its Newfoundland office and volunteers in Ontario were drifting away to work for either the provincial leadership race or rival campaigns. Privately a lot of Conservatives worried that Poilievre, who had yet to fully come clean about how much he knew about the efforts to undermine Jason Kenney, and whether he had orchestrated the entire thing from behind the scenes. Even worse for the Poilievre campaign, there were persistent rumors of an email that implicated Jenni Byrne in the plot. In a late-night Twitter rant, Byrne accused the media of orchestrating the story, and that it was being promoted by Ford’s team, including Kory Teneycke and Nick Kouvalis. The next minute she was blaming Andrew Scheer. Then it was because of a deal between Erin O’Toole and Doug Ford to support one another in their mutual bids. There was no candidate the government wanted to run against more than Doug Ford. It was bullshit, she wrote, and was just an attempt by Red Tories and Liberals to undermine Pierre.
Then came the actual email, leaked online by an anonymous Twitter account. Good rule of thumb is never outright deny something you know exists. You’re just daring them to use it against you.
Several denials and threats of legal action later, Byrne was out as Poilievre’s campaign chief, replaced by former Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird.
Suffice to say, Byrne didn’t take the situation kindly. She had been loyal to Pierre and had expected loyalty in return. So, she quietly moved her resources to Eric Duhaime while nobody was looking.
At the end of the night on May 21, the last Conservative standing in the Shaw Centre in downtown Ottawa was Doug Ford. For the whole campaign, candidates had largely been responding to him, and the leadership ballots showed it. The anti-Ford forces just couldn’t unite behind a singular candidate in time. For the first four ballots, it looked like Andrew Scheer, with his support from evangelicals, social conservatives, and anti-abortion activists, would emerge as Ford’s main competition. Then Eric Duhaime overtook him on the fifth ballot, promising his own brand of populism completely distinct from Doug Ford’s. Full disclosure, it wasn’t, but at least he had Byrne and her team in his corner. For a brief moment it even looked like Patrick Brown, what with his chaotic coalition of multi-ethnic Canadians, Red Tories, and conservative immigrants, would wind up in the final two.
Poilievre was eliminated on the seventh ballot, barely two percentage-points behind the eventual runner-up, Duhaime. It was a humiliation for a guy who had entered the race as one of the loudest frontrunners.
For all the attacks against him for being from Quebec, for being Gay, and for having never held elected office before, Duhaime had assembled an impressive team of Quebec nationalists, Western patriots who saw kinship in his plan to devolve responsibility and powers back to the provinces, and Libertarians who just wanted to be left the hell alone. Even if he didn’t win, he had a future in the party, and that was enough for him. Although he hadn’t really advertised it much during the campaign, him and the new Tory leader had actually become pretty close friends.
Ford’s victory suggested that the Conservatives weren’t interested in softening their edges in the lead-up to the next campaign. They didn’t want to moderate their image or try and appeal to those swing voters the pundits kept talking about like they existed. They wanted to be sharp, loud, and proud. Doug Ford was going to blow up the Ottawa establishment and take the NDP, and whoever ended up succeeding Tom Mulcair as Prime Minister, to the woodshed. He was going to go to the union events and Pride parades and reach out to the folks. Never voted Conservative before? Well Ford was going to convince you to give it a try.
Doug Ford was no Stephen Harper, nor was he a Brian Mulroney. He wasn’t a strategist or a philosopher. Despite having a dad who served as an MPP, he wasn’t apart of either the legacy of the old Progressive Conservatives or the Reform Party. He was a happy warrior, armed with corny Dad-jokes and politically incorrect humour and he was going to change the way things were done in this country.
Welcome to Ford Fest, Canada.
The mood was oddly positive considering the former Veteran’s Affairs Minister was likely the frontrunner if he ran. He had the cabinet experience, the support, and he had previously served as interim leader in the aftermath of Stephen Harper’s defeat and exit as party chief. The caucus trusted him. But O’Toole was frank with his team; he was probably too close to Jason Kenney and couldn’t reflect the growing frustration and populism coming from the base of the party. His political roots had been in the Ontario PC Party, where his father has served in the government of Mike Harris. It just felt like a more comfortable fit for him and his family.
Besides, running for the Ontario PC leadership meant he’d probably clear the field. Running for the federal leadership would mean going through some pretty nasty characters.
So, who was the frontrunner in the race to replace Jason Kenney? As always, it depended on who you asked.
If you were a Red Tory who longed for the days of Joe Clark or had voted for Paul Martin in 2004, the frontrunner should be Jean Charest. The former Quebec Premier had been narrowly booted from office in 2012 after almost a decade of running the province. Before that he was the guy who bragged about saving Canada during the 1995 Quebec referendum. Yeah, he abandoned the Progressive Conservatives for the Quebec Liberals, but he had done that to save the country even further. Honest. Just don’t ask him about his dealings with China.
Charest was a longshot at best. But he was hungry for one last political knife fight and had nothing better to do.
If you thought that Canadians wanted another staunch conservative ideologue like Stephen Harper, but with a weirder smile, you had former House Speaker Andrew Scheer or Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre.
Poilievre was familiar to most Tories as the firebrand former Democratic Reforms Minister who enjoyed pissing off Liberals and journalists alike. Voters might remember him as the guy embroiled in the infamous 2011 Robocalls scandal. Or maybe as the guy who some Tory candidates and MPs were planning to install as the Prime Minister had Jason Kenney managed to win enough seats to form a government in the 2021 campaign. Many in the outgoing leader’s office still blamed him for the party’s defeat at the polls. Controversy was the guy’s bread and butter.
It was going to be a very crowded field; MPs Joel Etienne and Marilyn Gladu, Mayor and former Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown, former Quebec candidate Eric Duhaime, and businessman Bryan Brulotte were all expected to make bids for the Tory’s top job. Even Caroline Mulroney was rumoured to be kicking the tires. Each of them claimed to be the solution to the party’s woes in Ontario, Quebec, and urban Canada. None of them were explaining how.
Running-up the numbers out West wasn’t going to cut it anymore. If the Conservatives wanted to win, they needed to win in Toronto, Vancouver, and out in Atlantic Canada. The talking heads said that in order to do that the party needed to win back those Liberal-Conservative switch voters who had handed Harper his majority in 2011. They needed a plan on the environment, a plan for dealing with COVID-19, a plan to deal with rising gun crime. As it stood, current party policy on those issues was anathema to voters in urban Canada. Unless the party modernized and became a little bit more like the old PCs and a little less Reform, the pundits claimed they’d keep losing.
Not according to Doug Ford. Yes, that Doug Ford. The brother of that other Ford. Yes, the deceased crack-smoking former Toronto mayor.
The former Toronto city councillor had been busy reinventing himself after two failed bids for his late brother’s old job, losing both times to John Tory. Two years after his 2018 defeat, Ford got elected in the 2020 Ontario Coronavirus campaign that handed Vic Fedeli a slim majority and got the plum job as Ontario’s Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade. Since then, Doug had been busy learning French, building his connections to the province’s business community, staying in public view, and making it clear to his friends and family he was still interested in seeing how far up the political ladder he could climb.
Yes, polls showed that most voters in Ontario didn’t think very highly of the elder Ford. He was a loud-mouthed populist. A bull in a China shop. A thug. But Ford also had a bit of what Stephen Harper and Mike Haris had; the unnerving sense that they believed things. No matter what you thought about Doug Ford, nobody could say he wasn’t authentic. Ford certainly wasn’t going to tailor his message to any one particular interest group.
He was for the folks, and the folks wanted to smash the system and piss off the establishment.
They were tired of being told what to think, what to do, and how to vote.
The Freedom Convoy, as it was dubbed, rolled into Ottawa at the end of January, demanding that the Governor General or the Queen, whoever was available at the time, remove Tom Mulcair and the socialist, freedom-taking NDP from power, and hold an election. They were 250 vehicles and 1,500 people strong and were prepared to shut-down the country’s capital to get it done. These folks wanted an end to COVID-19 restrictions and were leveling threats to anyone they thought apart of the system, even if it was just some random citizen of Ottawa wearing a mask. Pat King, one of the movement organizers, was telling people that Tom Mulcair and his government were hellbent on depopulating the Anglo-Saxon race. No everyone at the convoy was racist, violent, or interested in upending Canadian democracy. But a lot of them were. These people had been feeling let down for years by the promises of globalization, free-trade, and a changing economy that didn’t really offer much for people like them, and were tired of waiting for the benefits to finally kick-in. COVID was just the straw that finally broke the camel’s back.
If you were running or interested in running for the Conservative leadership, you were going to have to make the pilgrimage to these folks.
Both Andrew Scheer and Pierre Poilievre were pitching themselves to these folks as fellow agents of chaos. They’d scrap just about everything that the NDP had done while in power, except for maybe the popular childcare program, and end those pesky COVID restrictions.
Problem for Poilievre was his campaign was already running out of money. His campaign manager, Jenni Byrne, had expected for the party's right-wing to coalesce around her candidate in short order. Instead, it closed its Newfoundland office and volunteers in Ontario were drifting away to work for either the provincial leadership race or rival campaigns. Privately a lot of Conservatives worried that Poilievre, who had yet to fully come clean about how much he knew about the efforts to undermine Jason Kenney, and whether he had orchestrated the entire thing from behind the scenes. Even worse for the Poilievre campaign, there were persistent rumors of an email that implicated Jenni Byrne in the plot. In a late-night Twitter rant, Byrne accused the media of orchestrating the story, and that it was being promoted by Ford’s team, including Kory Teneycke and Nick Kouvalis. The next minute she was blaming Andrew Scheer. Then it was because of a deal between Erin O’Toole and Doug Ford to support one another in their mutual bids. There was no candidate the government wanted to run against more than Doug Ford. It was bullshit, she wrote, and was just an attempt by Red Tories and Liberals to undermine Pierre.
Then came the actual email, leaked online by an anonymous Twitter account. Good rule of thumb is never outright deny something you know exists. You’re just daring them to use it against you.
Several denials and threats of legal action later, Byrne was out as Poilievre’s campaign chief, replaced by former Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird.
Suffice to say, Byrne didn’t take the situation kindly. She had been loyal to Pierre and had expected loyalty in return. So, she quietly moved her resources to Eric Duhaime while nobody was looking.
Poilievre was eliminated on the seventh ballot, barely two percentage-points behind the eventual runner-up, Duhaime. It was a humiliation for a guy who had entered the race as one of the loudest frontrunners.
For all the attacks against him for being from Quebec, for being Gay, and for having never held elected office before, Duhaime had assembled an impressive team of Quebec nationalists, Western patriots who saw kinship in his plan to devolve responsibility and powers back to the provinces, and Libertarians who just wanted to be left the hell alone. Even if he didn’t win, he had a future in the party, and that was enough for him. Although he hadn’t really advertised it much during the campaign, him and the new Tory leader had actually become pretty close friends.
Ford’s victory suggested that the Conservatives weren’t interested in softening their edges in the lead-up to the next campaign. They didn’t want to moderate their image or try and appeal to those swing voters the pundits kept talking about like they existed. They wanted to be sharp, loud, and proud. Doug Ford was going to blow up the Ottawa establishment and take the NDP, and whoever ended up succeeding Tom Mulcair as Prime Minister, to the woodshed. He was going to go to the union events and Pride parades and reach out to the folks. Never voted Conservative before? Well Ford was going to convince you to give it a try.
Doug Ford was no Stephen Harper, nor was he a Brian Mulroney. He wasn’t a strategist or a philosopher. Despite having a dad who served as an MPP, he wasn’t apart of either the legacy of the old Progressive Conservatives or the Reform Party. He was a happy warrior, armed with corny Dad-jokes and politically incorrect humour and he was going to change the way things were done in this country.
Welcome to Ford Fest, Canada.
Ready for Change - Appendix 3.H (2022 Quebec general election & 2022 New Brunswick general election)
New
CanadianTory
WALZ 2028
- Location
- The Loyalist Province
- Pronouns
- He/Him
