Power of authenticity
I TOOK ON A CONSERVATIVE PARTY POPULIST AND GOT SQUASHED
When the next federal election rolls along in October 2019, one of the country’s most controversial MPs will once again be running for the Conservative party — despite my best efforts earlier this year to stop her.
Cheryl Gallant has represented the rural eastern Ontario riding of RenfrewNipissing-Pembroke for 18 years. While she’s won reelection five times, she has also been a frequent source of controversy for the party thanks to her inflammatory public statements and erratic behaviour. She’s earned national headlines for making intemperate remarks on the floor of the House of Commons about another MP’s sexuality, for likening abortions to the beheading of hostages during the Iraq war, and for a whole lot more.
After a career as a top executive at a global consulting firm, I had backed Kevin O’Leary’s aborted leadership bid, agreeing to chair his campaign. But when he withdrew from the race I was disappointed the party wouldn’t have the opportunity to consider a candidate who wasn’t a career politician, someone who’d spent time in the real world. That was when the idea germinated to challenge Gallant for the Conservative party nomination.
In the 1990s my wife Maureen and I bought property on the riding’s Centennial Lake, and about 12 years ago we built our retirement house on it. I had come to feel at home in a part of Canada that is resistant to outsiders. Meanwhile, Gallant was starting to look a little too comfortable in the job. I thought it was time I put my conviction about career politicians to the test. I would end up getting an education in the nomination process at a local level, and insight into the populist trends sweeping North America.
“Andrew doesn’t owe her any favours,” one of the party’s leading organizers told me over lunch. It was early summer, and no sooner had Andrew Scheer won the Conservative leadership than Gallant once again made headlines, becoming the only MP in the House to vote against a motion reaffirming Canada’s support for the Paris climate accord.
The move was typical Cheryl Gallant. Surely, I thought, the riding was ready for someone new.
Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke stretches northwest from the National Capital Region up the Ottawa Valley. Its residents are a collection of what Stephen Harper called “old-stock Canadians” — lots of Irish, Scottish and English ancestry mingled with some French, Polish, German and Dutch, and encompassing the Pikwàkanagàn Algonquin reservation. People are as independent as the various communities that dot the riding and loyal to their heritage and Christian faith.
Globalization has not been kind to the valley. Virtually every factory has either shut down or been relocated to China or the U.S. The interests of producers — farmers, lumbermen — have become secondary to those of urban consumers.
“When was the last time the CBC had a regular show on farming,” one of my supporters would complain. Why is broadband and cell coverage so poor just an hour’s drive from Parliament Hill? With the railways removing the tracks that used to pass through this part of the valley, the region’s poor two-lane stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway has become a bottleneck to economic development.
People feel they are being left behind because they have been. Urban Canada gets most of the attention from government, and from industry. The push for urban density and the mass transit that supports it depletes funding that could otherwise renew the infrastructure necessary for rural economic development. Layer on a carbon tax when producer margins are already thin and you begin to understand why political conditions in rural Canada are similar to those that led middle America to vote for Donald Trump.
The hardest part of becoming an MP often isn’t winning in a general election, but securing a party’s nomination — particularly if you are running against an incumbent. The partisan activists in a riding usually number in the hundreds to low thousands. Their loyalties to individuals and causes are direct and personal, and they’re often not representative of the community at large. Star candidates try to avoid nomination battles because they are so unpredictable; incumbents, meanwhile, lobby the leadership for rules that protect their position.
Before announcing my candidacy in December, I placed a courtesy call to let Gallant know I’d decided to run against her for the nomination. The conversation started out warmly and ended coolly.
With nearly two years to go until the next general election, there seemed no reason to rush the nomination process. The team I had assembled was preparing for a late March or early April nomination, with plenty of time to recruit new party members and build a profile. But on Jan. 11, the party made a surprise announcement: the race was on. Gallant had wanted the vote held as soon as possible to limit the time I would have to sell memberships. It was a smart move.
We would have just 21 days to sign up new members to vote in the nomination contest, and another 24 days to persuade the riding’s other Conservatives it was time to give someone else the job.
Despite the advantage of incumbency, some chinks had started to appear in Gallant’s armour. Her vote had been down in each of the last two federal elections. In a poll my campaign team commissioned in early December a majority in the riding — including Conservative voters — expressed dissatisfaction in her performance as an MP. Fully 80 per cent said they wanted to see a contested nomination.
My campaign manager, Chris Rougier, and I decided that to challenge her, my differentiator would have to be credibility on the economy and jobs. Lots of politicians knew the riding, but very few had the business and political network to bring the rest of the world to the valley.
But the local candidate nomination committee showed little interest in my reasons for running. “Mike, this is a retirement community,” one committee member scoffed. “You’ll never bring business here ... An MP can’t do anything about the local economy. Besides, the riding is already blue — why risk change?” For many members, in the end, this became the ballot question.
The campaign moved fast. I toured the riding extensively, holding meetings in virtually every significant town. I stayed clear of criticizing Gallant so as not to alienate her supporters and focused instead on my message.
I quickly gained an ally in the local media. Gallant rarely granted interviews, so to valley reporters anyone who challenged her was a pleasant change. But her avoidance of traditional media was more than offset by her use of social media, particularly Facebook, where her base of loyal supporters was happy to spread her message.
In the 21 days allotted to me I signed up close to 500 members, and met hundreds more. Mayor after mayor told me they supported my candidacy or endorsed me publicly. But I was starting to fully understand the challenge of going up against an incumbent, even one as controversial as Gallant.
While our research showed the economy was overwhelmingly the top issue in the riding, we knew that Gallant would try to win on the strength of the base that for nearly 20 years had given her a stranglehold on her job.
Beyond her efforts to cultivate a relationship with the military community around CFB Petawawa, she has always had the support of three very influential groups within the riding: firearms owners, the local arm of Campaign Life Coalition and landowners who are aggressive in their defence of private property rights.
The importance of gun ownership was a key reason the formerly Liberal riding had become a Conservative fortress after the government of Jean Chretien introduced a national long-gun registry. I was a gun owner, and quickly boned up on the issues. I spoke at a gun club near Westmeath, but the larger Pembroke club withdrew its offer to have me appear, saying it didn’t want to politicize its meetings. As an honorary member, however, Gallant made sure to attend one of the club’s meetings during the nomination race. While I was scrambling to sell memberships, Gallant took time out from the campaign to attend a gun show in Las Vegas. Later in the campaign I learned of the spread of a rumour — inaccurate — that I was against the spring bear hunt.
Meanwhile, within 24 hours of my courtesy call to Gallant in December — and before I publicly announced my candidacy — Campaign Life circulated a letter to supporters urging them to protect the incumbent against a “progressive” challenge. No one at Campaign Life ever contacted me to discuss my views, and yet this group falsely labelled me an abortionist. One pastor was even overheard to have referred to Gallant as “our saviour.” Many times in my campaign I was asked to which church I belonged, and more than once I got the feeling that my answer — Anglican — wasn’t good enough.
Finally, the head of the local landowners association — a committed but often misunderstood lobby group that defends private-property rights — issued a rather testy opinion piece questioning my motives about running. I was branded a “globalist,” a term Trump supporters use to identify rich elites who support the internationalization of our economy. Unlike Campaign Life, the landowners gave me the courtesy of a meeting. I think I was successful in convincing them I was not a threat to their agenda, but it was also clear they wanted someone who would vote for their issues regardless of the party’s position. I told them I couldn’t promise this, because breaking faith with the party risked losing influence in caucus, which would ultimately hurt the riding.
The candidate nomination committee had set a weekend vote, with three polling stations open throughout the weekend in Renfrew, Pembroke and Barry’s Bay. The Saturday began well, with a huge turnout in Renfrew, our voter identification suggesting we had probably won the vote at that station. We were optimistic as we headed to Barry’s Bay for the afternoon vote that later we would affectionately call our Saturday afternoon massacre.
In that town of 1,300 there is a Roman Catholic college for students of divinity, and in nearby Combermere, Madonna House, an apostolate for priests and lay members. At the polling station I watched while a succession of priests smiled gently at me as they escorted their followers to the voting booths. Members asked me constantly about my generally pro-life position, and I was told over and over again that I had to conform to the “from-conception-tonatural-death” line. I later learned that Campaign Life had circulated a note that day misconstruing something I’d once written about another politician’s support for abortion. I listened as two voters debated the merit of killing doctors who performed abortions. By the end of the afternoon I knew I was cooked.
We put on a brave face in Pembroke the next day, but in the end Gallant won by a clear margin, 866 votes to 522.
The riding would seem to be in Gallant’s hands as long as she wants it, and beyond my firsthand lesson in local politics, I also got a taste in the forces that are fuelling populism.
Authenticity is the calling card of a populist. Authenticity is in demand everywhere, but especially in the parts of the continent that feel left behind. As outrageous as some of Gallant’s comments are, she represents her base loyally; her supporters are willing to tolerate her missteps in exchange for having a representative they can rely on to speak for them. I think that limits her effectiveness, and hurts the valley, but perhaps that’s me being — dare I say it — an elitist.
While there is a longing in Renfrew-NipissingPembroke for better days, most felt it wasn’t worth it to gamble on somebody promising to work on economic development instead of the sure bet of someone they knew. The rules of the nomination process aided the incumbent, but Gallant won the race fair and square. That’s why she will be our candidate in the next election, and why she will almost certainly win her seventh term as an MP. And despite it all, on election day in 2019, I will vote for her.
PEOPLE FEEL THEY ARE BEING LEFT BEHIND BECAUSE THEY HAVE BEEN.