Scheer settles the accounts
For all their efforts to play up the term “shadow cabinet” — it is not actually all that unusual in Canadian politics — there is no necessary correlation between the front- bench team the federal Conservatives unveiled Wednesday and the one that would govern should the party be elected in 2019. Times change, people retire, are demoted or defeated, while others are promoted or arrive with the next election.
Nevertheless, it is a useful exercise, if only as a signal of Andrew Scheer’s thinking: where he supposes the party’s strengths and weaknesses are, what qualities he looks for in his ministers, what direction he wishes to take the party and what image he wishes it to present. Scheer’s campaign for leader was notable for his unwillingness to signal much of anything; after a quiet summer, he is starting to define both himself and his party.
The first priority, of course, as for any new leader, was to settle accounts after the leadership race, deciding which of his rivals to keep inside the tent, and which to shut out. Lisa Raitt had already been given the role of deputy leader, a nebulous but presumably important assignment. Erin O’Toole, whose supporters proved decisive in Scheer’s victory, will bring his agreeable brand of common-sense conservatism to shadowing Foreign Affairs, while Michael Chong, one of the few Tories to have some traction in metropolitan Canada, will tackle the Infrastructure and Urban Affairs beats.
Taken together, the three put a softer face on the party than was its habit under Stephen Harper. That’s reinforced by the notable exclusion of two other leadership candidates: Kellie Leitch, who bet everything on an overt appeal to hard- right fears of immigration and lost badly, and Brad Trost, whose social conservatism is undoubtedly genuine, but who seemed determined to make it sound as alienating to others as possible.
That leaves, of course, Maxime Bernier, who came within an ace of defeating Scheer for leader. An asset and a liability in one, Bernier mixes a likable demeanour with policy boldness — a rare political double — yet time and again has sabotaged himself by displays of poor judgment: as in the last days of the leadership race, when he seemed to take victory for granted, and most recently by his public campaigning for the Finance critic’s post.
That he was denied it in favour of Innovation, Science and Economic Development — a rough analog to the Industry portfolio he held as minister in the Harper government — is probably just as well. It signals Scheer is not to be pushed around, keeps Bernier away from any sharp political knives, yet also sets him loose on an issue on which the two men are agreed: weaning corporate Canada off the subsidy teat.
And the Finance shadow minister? Why, none other than Pierre Poilievre, perhaps the day’s biggest winner. It was, to say the least, a surprising choice. As a junior minister under Harper, Poilievre established himself as the most eagerly obnoxious of the government’s spokesmen, give or take a Paul Calandra. No one doubted his intelligence, or his work ethic. It was his character, curdled as it was by ambition, that was in doubt: rarely has Canadian politics seen such an old young man.
Opposition, however, tends to be a chastening experience. It will be intriguing to see what he does with the trust Scheer has placed in him. He is seen as a hardline fiscal conservative; he may see himself that way; yet the memory lingers of him trumpeting the Conserva- tives’ pre- election increase in universal child benefits as “Christmas in July.” I suppose we will learn which is the real Poilievre: the boyish ideologue or the pliant mouthpiece?
It’s not hard to detect the message in Scheer’s choice of economic critics, however. In addition to Poilievre and Bernier, there’s Tony Clement at Public Services and Procurement and Gerard Deltell at Treasury Board: a solidly fiscal- conservative battery. Insiders during the leadership race insisted Scheer was more conservative than his occasional policy pronouncements — for supply management, against pricing carbon, for exempting heating fuel from tax — suggested. Perhaps this is a sign of things to come.
On the other hand, a shadow cabinet of 38 — larger than the cabinet it is supposed to track — hardly bespeaks a commitment to austerity, but rather the “all must have prizes” theory of cabinet-making that dominates Canadian politics: the notion, always a factor but now arithmetically precise dogma, that ministers should be chosen not for their individual fitness for office, but for their “representativeness” of various constituencies.
In that vein, Scheer will be criticized for including only 11 women among the 38 — out of a total of 17 women in the Conservative caucus — though they are nine of the two dozen who actually matter. Among those assigned the hottest files: Marilyn Gladu, newly promoted to shadow minister of Health; Michelle Rempel, at Immigration; Diane Watts, at Employment; Cathy McLeod, at Indigenous Affairs; and Shannon Stubbs at Natural Resources.
All in all, it suggests an encouraging reorientation of the party: less emphasis on narrow partisanship, more on policy substance, blending old and new, Scheer loyalists and supporters of other candidates. Whether they can close the gap with the governing Liberals remains to be seen, but this is at least a front bench that won’t scare the horses, which the Conservatives haven’t always been able to say.