Kelly McParland: Courting socons gave O'Toole the leadership, but also gives the Liberals ammunition

There’s not much evidence O’Toole buys the tenets of the socons. But that won’t stop Liberals from arguing he’s a sheep in wolf’s clothing

Aug 24, 2020 • Last Updated 6 hours ago • 6 minute read

Liberals will gain important ground if they can unsettle voters about new Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole the way they did with Andrew Scheer. Justin Tang/The Canadian Press/File

One thing the new leader of Canada’s official opposition will never have to worry about is the danger of being hacked by Russian evil-doers. A party that ends eight months of protracted leader-choosing by feeding mailed-in envelopes into letter-opening machines, removing the torn remnants and taping them together by hand needn’t be concerned with cyber-thieves breaking into the process to alter the results.

It wasn’t the Conservatives fault that COVID-19 forced a reconfigured and much-delayed virtual replacement race be whipped up out of nowhere, but perhaps its decision to resort to snail mail and taped-up ballots says something about the difference between Tories and their chief rivals. In the same situation, Liberals would have borrowed a billion dollars, phoned up the Kielburgers and asked them to invent a new means of counting ballots, operated by paid “volunteers.”

A party stumped by ballot-counting might find its credibility dented when it comes time to rail about the Liberals’ competence in running a country. By the time he finally got his chance to accept the burden of victory last night, well after midnight and a full seven hours after expected, Erin O’Toole must have been torn between celebrating his victory or falling to his knees and begging forgiveness from all 12 people still tuned in to the unfolding disaster.

By that time disconcerted viewers had been treated to outgoing leader Andrew Scheer’s final speech as Conservative boss, an address that neatly avoided any hint of uplift, sentiment or encouragement in favour of attacks on “establishment elites,” the mainstream media and conniving lefties keen on promising banquets for the masses while snatching the bread from their cupboards. “Establishment elites are doing everything to defeat us,” he charged, and “the mainstream media bias has never been more clear.” Liberals “are all candy before supper,” while “Conservatives believe in a balanced meal.”

It was hardly an uplifting moment for a party that could use some uplift.
“Millions of Canadians share our Conservative values, they just don’t know it yet,” he asserted before departing the microphone. He departed to dead silence, unable to shake any hands or share any embraces, presumably due to the dictates of health protocols rather than a reluctance to delay his departure.

By the time results were finally available, the pundits had grown grumpy and important deadlines had been missed. Former NDP leader Thomas Mulcair noted the high cost to the party in lost opportunity: millions of newspapers would be printed in the morning (yes they still do that) without a picture of the winner on the front page. “That’s unbelievably important free advertising that they’re all going to miss.”

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Too bad, because the results were compelling. Presumed frontrunner Peter MacKay far underperformed expectations, earning just 33.5 per cent of the votes, marginally ahead of O’Toole at almost 32 per cent. Leslyn Lewis, a little-known Toronto lawyer when the race began, drew a remarkable 20 per cent of the vote, even placing first overall in Saskatchewan.

It was curtains for MacKay, who’d been seeking at least 40 per cent. The only question was how the second-choice numbers would break. Judging by TV feeds from the contenders’ headquarters, only the O’Toole camp seemed eager to find out. A swifter organization might have quickly revealed the winner, but for whatever reason the Tories took another pause while the MacKay clan — the only ones wearing masks — sat watching pundits declare his performance a nightmare and his hopes dead.

And they were right. Lewis did startlingly well in round two, almost matching MacKay and O’Toole. But it wasn’t enough, and on the third ballot O’Toole took the prize with 19,271 points to MacKay’s 14,528.

For O’Toole the victory vindicated a strategy of targeting support from social conservatives, not because he entirely agreed with them but because he understood the role they’d play. On the hustings he was the “True Blue Conservative” whose tactical play for the right flank served as a contrast to MacKay, who never quite overcame his “stinking albatross” remark or his suggestion the party “park those issues for a time until we get the country moving in the right direction again.”

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There’s not much evidence O’Toole buys the tenets of the socons. He’ll march in Pride parades, won’t pretend to wage war on abortion, doesn’t seem uncomfortable with LGBT issues. As an official at an anti-abortion organization told the CBC, “O’Toole does not show the same level of hostility [as MacKay], even though he opposes all of our values.”

That won’t stop Liberals from arguing he’s a sheep in wolf’s clothing, a moderate easterner who mortgaged himself to hardliners. Does he believe them or does he not? Will they have important influence on policies? If not, why court them, and why pretend to be something he isn’t? It’s all about the uncertainty: Liberals will gain important ground if they can unsettle voters about O’Toole the way they did with Scheer. The fact he won thanks to supporters of the two authentic socons, Lewis and Derek Sloan, means Liberals already have significant ammunition at their disposal.

When he finally got his chance to address the country as leader, O’Toole was ebullient despite the late hour. “Thank you for being patient,” were among his first words. He was complimentary to his opponents and gracious to Scheer. His French was passable. He warned that attacking Liberals won’t be enough to win an election, but quickly went on the attack nonetheless.

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“Our country is more divided than it has ever been in my lifetime,” he charged. It is less respected abroad, and seen as a risk among investors.

“People are losing faith in Canada because of the ideological and out of touch policies from the Liberals,” he said, adding in a sly dig: “The world still needs more Canada, it just needs less Justin Trudeau”

It’s all about the uncertainty

O’Toole has an advantage MacKay didn’t enjoy. He already has a seat in the Commons, so, if it actually sits again before the Liberals manipulate the preferred moment to bring themselves down he will be able to bring immediate focus on their battered and beaten record, and have an opportunity to present the Conservative alternative in a forum offering maximum attention. Much as Trudeau has worked to marginalize Parliament and weaken it as a national institution, it provides the one place where leaders face one another on important issues and compete in what passes in Canada for open debate.

Trudeau has spent six months running the country from his doorstep; he doesn’t like being questioned, he doesn’t like being challenged, and he’s not quite good enough an actor to mask how easily critics get under his skin. That’s why he likes the scheduled scripts, the organized press briefings, the stages that let him perform without interference. O’Toole will have to upset his applecart without turning off urban voters in the process.

That means he better be planning to spend a lot of time in Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces, because those are the people he has to convince.

Canadians were tired enough of Trudeau to reduce him to a minority last year, and can hardly have been impressed with the stumbling performance since. Andrew Scheer, for all his terminal lack of charisma, drew more votes. A more engaging leader better skilled at deflecting Liberal target practice wouldn’t have to reinvent the world to gain ground with voters weary of the current regime. The country could find itself in an election very soon, O’Toole predicted, pledging the party will be ready. He had better be as well.

Mackay was their best shot. The party elites are letting down their own movement and they are too stuck in the Echo Chamber to understand why. They could have most of what they want with Mackay, but they want the "genuine" taste.

Unfortunately for them, most of Canada does not. Now Trudeau solidly and solely controls the middle, which will become wider if he plays his cards right.

The Liberal hardball is already headed for Erin O’Toole’s head

Campbell ClarkPublished August 24, 2020

Get ready for a whole new ball game, Erin O’Toole. The Liberals are going to throw the ball at your head. They were doing it even before you were elected leader.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s move to prorogue Parliament and come back in weeks with a Throne Speech and mini-budget wasn’t only about disrupting hearings on the WE controversy or marking the launch of the Liberals big pandemic-recovery agenda. It was about putting the new Conservative leader on his heels.

It means Mr. O’Toole, now Conservative Leader, has to make the biggest decisions on the direction of his party within weeks.

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When Stephen Harper was a minority prime minister, he regularly thrust divisive decisions on the opposition Liberals to sow disarray – like votes on the extension of the Canadian military mission in Afghanistan that split the caucus of Liberal MPs down the middle. Former Liberal MP Bob Rae (now Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations) described Mr. Harper’s tactics as “throwing the ball at your head.”

Mr. Trudeau is now doing a bit of that to Mr. O’Toole, forcing the new leader to make quick choices on strategy. The Prime Minister is doing it with the Throne Speech and mini-budget, each of which will lead to a confidence vote – and carry the threat that an election could come next.

Mr. O’Toole’s Conservatives don’t have the votes to defeat Mr. Trudeau’s government without the Bloc Québécois and the NDP, and, despite the usual bravado, the Conservatives won’t want a snap election so quickly. But if Mr. Trudeau sets out an expansive, big-spending recovery plan that requires high-stakes confidence votes, Mr. O’Toole is going to have to take a position.

Mr. Trudeau is claiming that the Liberal government will have Canadians’ back, with big packages of income and other supports for workers’ whose livelihoods are vulnerable. He is daring the Conservatives to say they would do less. He is daring Mr. O’Toole to call for restraint.

David Tarrant, a Conservative strategist who has worked for the governments of Mr. Harper and Ontario Premier Doug Ford, said that Mr. Trudeau made this tactic pretty clear. At a news conference with Mr. Ford last week, Mr. Trudeau put it this way: “There will be no doubt important debates to be had with parties who don’t think we should be doing as much as we will be doing.”

It would be unsurprising if Conservatives complained Mr. Trudeau is shovelling money out the door. The latest estimate of this year’s budget deficit is $343-billion. The Conservatives consider fiscal restraint part of their brand. As a leadership candidate, Mr. O’Toole promised a path back to balanced budgets, and a “pay-as-you-go rule” that would require cuts to fund any new program.

But Mr. Tarrant thinks there is a trap there the Conservatives must avoid. “Now is not the time to fight the battle on fiscal rectitude,” he said.

He argues the consensus on balancing budgets and lowering debt that existed 20 years ago is no more. Baby Boomers had lived through high interest rates and personal debt, but millennials don’t have the same learned fears of debt. Even the Conservatives’ voter base isn’t stuck on deficit cutting. And people are feeling vulnerable now, he said.

Conservatives, Mr. Tarrant said, should “expunge” any language that hints at blaming people who received benefits in the pandemic. They shouldn’t talk about benefits being a disincentive to work. Conservatives should come up with their own income-support policies that deal with uncovered gig workers without being a backdoor to a universal income, or a compassionate child-care plan that isn’t a big national program.

Essentially, Mr. Tarrant argues that when Prime Minister Trudeau dares Mr. O’Toole to oppose a big-spending agenda, the new Conservative Leader should refuse. Instead, Mr. Tarrant suggests Mr. O’Toole should acknowledge that Canadians are hurting, stress his party is on the side of ordinary folks, and argue he has better ways to help them.

That still leaves Mr. O’Toole, a brand new leader fresh off a seven-month leadership campaign focused on winning the right side of the Conservative party, with only weeks to figure out the elements of his own recovery plan. They will be high-stakes choices, framed by confidence votes, that might end up as his platform in a snap election campaign. The Liberals are already firing fast-pitch politics straight at him.

I agree. O'Toole is too socially conservative, and Mackay is socially liberal - but an asshole. Sloan was a bigger asshole, and Lewis, although a smart lady, wanted to re-open the abortion debate and wanted to limit MAID.

All of these things in opposition to the direction Canada is going.

They will remain an opposition party as long as they cling to these 1950's ideals.

I'm excited about O'Toole.

I honestly chuckle every time I hear someone says that the Tories are stuck in the past when the Liberals chose Trudeau as their leader because they wanted to live on their past glories. Canadians at their core are a people that pride themselves on mediocrity, shallowness, and fickleness. We can never hope to match the industrial, economic, or military might of the United States, China, Russia, etc. so we desperately cry out attention by embracing whatever trend catches our fancy at the moment. The days of being a middle power (if there were truly any) are gone. So are the days of peacekeeping under auspices of the UN, which the Liberals committed to half-heartedly for appearances sake.