Move over Maxime, there’s a new renegade in the Tory race.
Here’s how t he world has changed in the past half-year: Maxime Bernier, “Mad Max” to his admirers and detractors both, was supposed to be the renegade.
Bernier, the gregarious, marathon- running former industry minister and foreign minister ( until a brouhaha involving lost briefing papers and a former girlfriend with biker ties sidelined his cabinet career in 2008) had to have thought long and hard before setting out his policy positions.
A Conservative from Quebec, urging that Canada’s protectionist system of dairy supply management be scrapped? Unqualified support for oil pipelines? An end to subsidies for corporations? Privatization of Canada Post? The CRTC, banished from telecom regulation? Ottawa removed from health- care funding? The corporate tax rate, slashed to 10 per cent?
It’s a recipe for a libertarian, ideas-driven campaign designed to draw media attention and separate Bernier from the rest of the pack — which, with the addition of businessman and reality TV star Kevin O’Leary, now stands at 14.
Fourteen competitors makes it tough, by any measure. Even the conventional Tory politicians with track records of accomplishment, such as Michael Chong, Lisa Raitt and Erin O’Toole, have trouble setting themselves apart. As for former House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer, said to be the anointed of the party brass, he fades into the wainscotting.
So Bernier’s strategy has paid off, to a considerable degree. If not the clear front- runner, he’s in the top tier. He gets credit for championing consumers of milk and dairy products; for being clear about the need for pipelines, at a time when Enbridge’s Energy East proposal is bogged down by opposition in his home province; and for challenging economic orthodoxies across the board. Leadership contests are supposed to be incubators of ideas. The good, politically saleable ones sometimes get stolen, either by other candidates or by the government. Democracy is served.
But now, there’s O’Leary, who confirmed his candidacy Wednesday. And suddenly Bernier — along with 12 other politicians who are not American television celebrities — also fades into the wainscotting.
As I wrote here a year ago, O’Leary is an interesting personality, a proven investor and a blunt, pithy communicator. He is not the cardboard cutout Trump wannabe he has often been portrayed to be. For one thing, O’Leary is no social conservative — or, in some ways, any kind of conservative.
O’Leary’s foreign- policy views are isolationist and pacifist, more in line with New Democratic Party tradition that Tory. He’s OK with the legalization of marijuana. He’s not much concerned about social policy at all, in fact. And, in a worldwide climate of growing xenophobia, he’s not interested in immigration reform. O’Leary’s singular focus appears to be money. He is, ostensibly, a classical liberal. In theory, that should make him a useful addition to the race, an idea generator in the Bernier mould, and a pointed critic of Liberal economic policy.
In practice, as his moment of truth has drawn nearer, O’Leary has progressively taken himself down- market. In his speech to Conservative caucus members in December, he said little of conse- quence other than to cast himself as a human flamethrower, out to burn the Trudeau Liberals, presumably with Trump-style insults. He refers to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “surferdude.”
It’s a descent into juvenility that, O’Leary must believe, plays nicely on social media. Should he win the leadership in May, he’s not inclined to seek a seat in the Commons anytime soon because, he has said, that would be a waste of time. He will get the Canadian economy growing at three per cent annually, and create lots of jobs. He’ll bring the prized 18-35 demographic back to the Tory party, making a majority possible in 2019. And of course, he’s the only one tough enough to deal with President Donald Trump.
How any of this is to happen remains a mystery. Perhaps Canadian twenty- somethings are pining to hitch their stars to a middle- aged, trash- talking businessman from Boston? Maybe Trump will adopt trade policy favourable to Canada if he knows O’Leary is taking the helm three years hence? Stranger things have happened.
But now, astonishingly, O’Leary says nothing he has ever uttered in his capacity as a TV commentator about business should be taken at face value. That’s because, as he told The Toronto Star’s Alex Boutilier in an interview this week, “I explored thousands of ideas, some of them very controversial, some of them very interesting … (but) none of it’s policy.”
The problem this poses for Conservatives is simple. If nothing O’Leary has said in the past, even about his stated area of expertise, can be taken to indicate what he believes, then what does he believe?
The implicit, unspoken answer of his campaign, so far, is that this doesn’t matter, any more than does the House of Commons. In 2017 it’s all about TV celebrity, social media and insults. Bernier, the earnest policy maverick, has been upstaged — for the time being anyway — by a self- styled Darth Vader. If this becomes entrenched through May, the Conservative party will be the poorer for it.
O’LEARY’S SINGULAR FOCUS APPEARS TO BE MONEY.