On the stump, it feels normal
QUEBEC CITY • If Erin O’toole bucks the polls and most predictions and winds up prime minister this autumn, he will not have done so with a traditional campaign kickoff. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was seen in the streets of Papineau Sunday at remarkably close quarters with his constituents, many of whom were unmasked. He posed for the usual selfies and greeted the usual infants, though doesn’t seem to have balanced any on his palm. On the same day, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh marched in the Montreal Pride Parade.
As of Wednesday, O’toole hadn’t done an event in public, or even outdoors — though he did greet a few people in Quebec City, unplanned, on the way back from a 21st anniversary lunch with his wife Rebecca. (On Wednesday evening, he finally pressed the flesh — which is to say bumped elbows — at a beer garden near the airport.) The strategy is appropriate, perhaps, for an election that O’toole insists is a reckless undertaking during what he calls the “Trudeau Fourth Wave Pandemic.”
Still, who comes to Quebec City and makes an announcement in a conference centre lobby (albeit one with a half-decent view)? The place is chock-a-block with gorgeous backdrops for speeches and press conferences. Andrew Scheer may not have much to remember fondly about the 2019 campaign, but there are some lovely shots of him and his wife Jill on a footbridge, with the picturesque Old Port and Seminary in the background.
There are 32 days left to go, of course. Barring some epidemiological, natural or international disaster that demands the federal government’s full attention — and there are several candidates, unfortunately — the controversy over why we’re having an election will fade and the usual issues and melodramas will seize the agenda. And indeed, one of the salutary effects of this objectively unnecessary election is that it has helped knock the pandemic off the front page — literally.
Pandemic-related stories made the front page of the Toronto Star each of the five days leading up to Sunday: “Fourth-wave ‘most definitely here.’” “Ottawa clears vaccine passports for takeoff, but Ontario unmoved.” A front-page editorial — the legacy print-media equivalent of going nuclear — assailed Ontario Premier Doug Ford for dithering and time-wasting in the face of the Delta threat.
COVID hasn’t cracked A1 since the writ dropped. And as perplexing as Delta is, that’s good news. Abacus Data released a poll Wednesday in which a quarter of respondents felt the worst of the pandemic is yet to come, with only a third feeling the worst is behind us. That’s far more pessimistic than in July and June, and that stands to reason, given the rising case counts both here and (far more so) in the United States. But unless your conception of “the worst” somehow excludes ongoing mass death and soldiers being deployed to long-term care homes, I think those Abacus pessimists need to go out for dinner, go shopping, take a trip. I suspect many still-apprehensive people would be surprised how easily one can slip back into a safety-enhanced but relatively normal social routine, and just what a delight it is.
O’toole’s platform has some nice offers on that front. The December “GST holiday” for retail shopping, which O’toole unveiled in Toronto in front of a giant pile of children’s gifts, and the month-long 50 per cent rebate for dine-in meals on Monday, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, have a whiff of vote-buying about them. Canadian Federation of Independent Business president Dan Kelly called the GST holiday “gimmicky” (though he praised other parts of the Tories’ small-business platform). They certainly aren’t pandemic-recovery dealbreakers: University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe estimated the average family might benefit by $180.
But restaurants and mainstreet retail — where O’toole suggests we spend our tax holiday, though the policy as written applies to “all purchases made at retail stores” — could sure use a break, especially in Ontario and Quebec, which made them suffer harder and longer than almost anywhere in the world. The hospitality industry’s hiring woes ought to abate once CERB winds down, and there’s no way a nationwide wing night, three days a week, isn’t going to put diners in seats.
The Conservative tour itself, despite its somewhat cocooned beginning, is also remarkably normal. There is mandatory self-testing every morning; a press secretary wipes the microphone down between each reporter’s question; subject to local restrictions, proper rallies will be few and far between.
But that might be a benefit in the end; if O’toole does pull this off, it could go down as a landmark moment in political strategy. A virtual town hall is no substitute for a rally on any level, traditionalists will argue: it doesn’t galvanize the base or hype up the volunteers; it doesn’t project momentum onto the nation’s television screens every night. But in the right hands, they can also be much more serious and personal: O’toole has blended folksy responses to (carefully vetted) questions with policy talk quite well in his townhalls thus far.
Goodness knows there is serious policy to be debated and voted on. But no one party is offering anything more game-changing for Canadians than simply getting back to normal life will be. After 18 months, anything halfway normal almost seems doing for its own sake.