STRANDED IN AFGHANISTAN
Canadians seek way out
Ottawa is pinning its hopes on the Kabul airport reopening as thousands of people with links to Canada found themselves stranded in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan on Tuesday following the overnight withdrawal of all American soldiers from the country.
Hours after the last U.S. soldier climbed aboard a military aircraft, marking the end of 20 years of Western intervention in Afghanistan, Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau revealed around 1,250 Canadian citizens, permanent residents and family members are believed to have been left behind.
“The main thing that we needed to figure out was how many Canadian nationals or permanent residents and family members were able to get out on some of our allies' flights,” Garneau said while appearing alongside Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino.
“And now that we have had a chance to look at the manifests from those other countries, we estimate that at the moment there are roughly 1,250 either Canadian citizens or permanent residents or family members that are in Afghanistan.”
A senior official speaking on background because they weren't authorized to comment on the record said the actual number of Canadian citizens still inside Afghanistan is less than 500. The U.S. says about 100 of its citizens were left behind after the last American plane departed Kabul airport.
The citizens, permanent residents and families are in addition to hundreds of former interpreters and support staff who previously supported Canada's efforts in the country and are now clamouring to escape with their families for fear of Taliban reprisals.
The end of Western evacuation flights from Kabul has left Canadian veterans, refugee advocates and others scrambling to find alternative ways to protect those former interpreters and local staff as well as their families — including whether to have people start heading to the border with Pakistan.
The government is reaching out to Pakistan and other countries neighbouring Afghanistan to facilitate the entry of people with links to Canada, said Garneau, adding he had a phone call scheduled with Pakistan officials after the news conference.
Yet Garneau noted the government is advising against such travel, and instead emphasized Canada's hope that U.s.-led negotiations with the Taliban would soon see the airport in Kabul reopened for people who want to leave the country.
“At the moment, our advice to Canadians and Canadian permanent residents in Afghanistan and vulnerable Afghans is to stay put, because the situation at this point is uncertain,” he said. “And obviously, we're also working on trying to get the airport open again.”
But the new leader saw that, if winning the affections of swing voters was important, it was even more crucial to find new voters, as the Liberals did in 2015.
Since crossing that Rubicon, he has made speeches bemoaning the fall in the union membership and issued a Labour Day statement calling for an economic policy that puts workers first.
The strategy has faced a strong internal backlash. If the Conservative Party doesn't stand for free trade, a market economy and small government, what does it stand for, the critics charged.
But O'toole has faced down the doubters in his own party and crafted an election platform brimming with measures aimed at appealing to people who may not be traditional Conservative voters — extending Employment Insurance sickness benefits to 52 weeks from 26; paying 25 per cent of salaries for new hires for six months; requiring federally regulated employers to include worker representation on their boards, and obliging gig economy employers to make contributions equivalent to CPP and EI premiums to a portable employee savings account.
Then there is the commitment to spend an extra $60 billion on health care over the next 10 years — a promise the Liberals have yet to match.
Health has typically been a defensive issue for Conservatives but the central message from O'toole's team was one of security and care (the campaign slogan is “Secure the Future”).
The promise to spend so much on health was designed to win the blessing of provincial premiers and to neutralize the concern that an O'toole government would slash and burn to balance the budget.
That health pledge mirrors Boris Johnson's commitment in the British election to provide more nurses and funding for the National Health Service.
There are key differences to the U.K. comparison — blue-collar workers were initially won over by Johnson's pledge to “get Brexit done.” The British Conservative leader also had the advantage of being up against Labour's Jeremy Corbyn, a leader many working-class voters viewed as unpatriotic, hostile to institutions like the military and the monarchy, and soft on terrorism.
But the appeal to economic nationalism and selective intervention by government was crucial to Johnson victory in places like Sedgefield, a former mining community in the northeast of England that had been held by Labour since 1935 (a win that was all the sweeter because it was Tony Blair's old riding).
The Canadian Conservatives have taken a similar gamble — the risk was that it might upset the party's voting base; the reward is that, if it works, it works everywhere.
The early signs are that the wager is paying off. A deep dive by The Writ's Eric Grenier into EKOS'S daily tracking poll suggests that since the election started, the Conservatives have seen big gains among less educated voters, particularly in the 50-64 age group.
Party sources are cautious but their polling is also showing growth among blue collar voters. If that trend continues, we could see some surprising results in parts of Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada that, like Sedgefield, might previously have been viewed as out of reach for the Conservatives.
The efforts to woo workers has not impressed Canada's big labour unions. Unifor's Jerry Dias said O'toole's proposals are a “grab-bag of gimmicks” and an ad campaign by the union warns working-class voters not to trust him — “new name, same old Conservatives.”
Can O'toole upend political convention? The Conservatives don't have much margin for error — even winning by four percentage points in the popular vote would not guarantee a plurality, such is the efficiency of the Liberal vote.
But the pre-election polls that suggested a country at peace with itself, happy with the direction the country is heading, with an opposition general leading his troops into the Liberal guns are all assumptions that have been proven wrong.
People are angry, they are worried about affordability issues and, it turns out, they are not repulsed by a Conservative leader who has carried himself as a reasonable, common-sense alternative to Justin Trudeau.
THE EFFORTS TO WOO WORKERS HAS NOT IMPRESSED CANADA'S BIG LABOUR UNIONS.
The traditional home for the blue-collar vote has been the New Democratic Party, but senior Conservatives argue the NDP has alienated many workers by prioritizing identity politics under Jagmeet Singh. The Conservatives have countered by trying to appeal to patriotic, “hometown” values and attempting to tie Trudeau and Singh together as leaders more concerned with gender politics than the economic worries of working families.
“There's a long way to go. A very long way to go. But these people are not voting Liberal. They're there for us — they've always been there for us. We just have to have the courage to change and be acceptable to them,” said one senior campaign official.