Leitch’s hollow values message
Little more than humbug and semantics
Rarely has so much ink been spilled over so much humbug.
Kellie Leitch has been condemned as anti- Muslim and a “karaoke Donald Trump”— and that’s just by her Conservative leadership rivals. But if you take a closer look at what she’s actually saying, it’s all tip and no iceberg.
Her crackdown on immigration amounts to proposing there would be more face- to- face interviews with would-be migrants.
Other than that, she would turn back the clock and adopt previous Harper-government policies on pot, a carbon tax and balanced budgets.
True, she spices things up by saying she would dismantle the CBC and bring in CSIS to investigate activists who disrupt natural resources projects. But her vaunted Canadian values crusade amounts to little more than saying she loves her country and its “shared values” of generosity, hard work, freedom, tolerance and equal opportunity.
Who doesn’t? Justin Trudeau has said something remarkably similar — that the country is defined by its “shared values: openness, respect, compassion, willingness to work hard, to be there for each other, to search for equality and justice.”
I asked her in an interview Tuesday the difference between what she has been selling and the Prime Minister’s appropriation of “shared values.”
“I can’t tell you. What you just listed sounds exactly the same,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s intolerant to talk about who we are — the envy of the world. Why would we not be proud as Canadians?”
She’s right. Leitch has been presented as a polarizing figure but, on closer inspection, there’s very little here to get excited or upset about. It would be like hating Tom Hanks.
I asked if she t hinks the immigration system is broken. “There are things we should be doing differently,” she said, without being specific. “I’ve talked about the process of doing face-to-face interviews with each immigrant and refugee.”
And visitors, I asked? “If you’re asking about tourists, we already meet tourists at the border.”
So no change then? “For tourists at the border, no.”
In face-to-face interviews, she explained, would-be immigrants would be asked questions about equality and working hard in Canada.
I suggested that any immigrant with an ounce of intelligence would give the answers the immigration officer wanted to hear. Jason Kenney, the former immigration minister, looked at some form of values test and dismissed it as an unworkable, unenforceable, empty exercise.
“But we’re talking about a face-to-face interview. When you applied for a job, did you just fill out your resumé, then show up and take a desk, or did you have an interview? When we see someone faceto-face, we learn more about them,” Leitch said.
“One example I give is someone who applies to come to Canada and says they are a tool-and-die maker. Obviously they would use their hands but if they show up at the interview and their hands are as pristine as mine, do you think they were telling the truth on their application?”
But this has nothing to do with values, I suggested. It has to do with improving the integrity of the system, something which all Canadians would doubtless agree is a good thing.
Face- to- face interviews have been gradually reduced over the past 16 years; under her plan they would be restored, in order to make sure immigrants are who they say they are. Not radical at all.
Leitch tries her hardest to keep her elbows up but it’s weak stuff. “If you decide to chain yourself to a Bobcat on a job site when someone is trying to do an honest day’s work, you actually should be incarcerated,” she said, with regard to her policy of increased penalties levied on environmental activists.
I wondered why a pediatric surgeon, who has built a career in health public policy, has no policies on health. Also, why a former minister for the status of women, who claims one of her proudest accomplishments was a women’s entrepreneur mentorship program, has no ideas to help women in business?
“I’ve published extensively on them. People know my positions on them,” she said. “The leadership race is about talking about issues that are top of mind today. Those issues are Canadian identity, immigration and the economy.”
The real answer, of course, is that these are not issues that poll well with the narrow base of the Conservative Party that her former campaign manager, Nick Kouvalis, identified as Leitch’s only route to the leadership.
The plan was to veer sharply to the right by implying, with a nod and a wink, that a vote for Kellie would usher in a Trump-like clampdown. (In fact, Leitch refuses to commit to cutting the number of new immigrants.)
The hope was that, should Leitch win, there would be enough time before the next election to deodorize her reputation with non- Conservative voters.
All of which suggests the Leitch campaign has been long on marketing veneer and short on authenticity. The latest Mainstreet tracking poll has her in fourth place, which indicates the tactic has worked tolerably well, though probably not well enough to win her the crown.
The suggestion about lack of authenticity prompts a burst of manufactured outrage. “If I really didn’t believe in Canadian values, if I really didn’t believe that we as Canadians have an identity, if I wasn’t really passionate about my country and the people in it, after barrage from the media and the negativity, don’t you think I’d have given up?
“I care passionately about my country, I care passionately about the kind of people we are and the kind of people we’re going to be in the future,” she said.
No one should rebuke her for being patriotic.
It’s like saying you love your parents — admirable, if hardly remarkable.
But it has been dressed up, with some subtlety, as a lone rear-guard action to keep the barbarians from the gate.
Yet behind the curtain, it’s a campaign built on nothing more than semantics and a handful of new immigration officers.