National Post (National Edition)
Tories' future may lie with working class
There's been growing interest in recent weeks about the prospect of a political realignment in Canada and the extent to which new Conservative leader Erin O'Toole may be able to grow his party's support by appealing to working-class voters.
There's a certain logic to such a strategy. The Conservative party needs to expand its voting base if it's going to reliably compete with the Liberals to win elections and form governments. O'Toole's recent messaging on free trade, China and organized labour seems to bet that the path to victory runs through Canada's working class. It's not an unreasonable bet. As this column has previously discussed, O'Toole's strategy draws on experiences from the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere where we've seen working-class voters increasingly cross from the left to the right due to a combination of economic and cultural factors.
The most recent example is in the United Kingdom, where Boris Johnson's “red wall” strategy, which targeted working-class voters in traditionally non-Conservative ridings, produced a Conservative landslide in the 2019 election. Completing a similar realignment here in Canada could help to give the Conservative party (and its provincial cousins) the “missing five per cent” that's preventing it from winning elections.
But O'Toole and his team don't need to just look abroad to find examples. They can also draw lessons from his home province where Ontario's Labour, Training and Skills Development Minister Monte McNaughton is pursuing a similar strategy to build greater conservative support among working-class voters.
McNaughton, who was first elected to his municipal council when he was 20 years old, and then to the provincial legislature in 2011 at age 34, was shuffled to the labour ministry in 2018. It seemed like an odd choice at the time. McNaughton had distinguished himself in the early tumult of the Ford government as a solid cabinet performer. Moving him to Labour, which has tended to be a defensive file for conservatives, seemed like a misuse of his ambition and talents.
But McNaughton has applied those ambitions and talents to building relationships with organized labour and advancing a pro-worker agenda. He's making slow yet steady progress toward reshaping how working-class Ontarians think about conservative policy and politics.
His realignment efforts have manifested themselves in both symbol and substance. He was symbolically the first Conservative labour minister in recent memory to march in the annual Labour Day parade. And, substantively, he and his government have moved the training file to the labour portfolio, reconceptualized training and work as inextricably linked, and championed the skilled trades as a real alternative to the conventional post-secondary route.
These efforts haven't generated a lot of mainstream attention especially in light of the pandemic. But they've been noticed by labour leaders and others who are paying attention. McNaughton, whose own conservatism is more Main Street than Bay Street, seems to be making inroads.
His efforts have required outreach on two fronts. The first is with the unions and workers themselves. They'd grown suspicious of conservatives based on long-standing assumptions about conservatism. And in some cases these assumptions haven't been wrong. It's required plenty of phone calls and meetings to rebuild trust and goodwill.
The second is with his own party. Many modern conservatives have grown up in an ideological and partisan milieu in which unions are a chief political opponent. It has required a “culture change” to build the internal support necessary to pursue such a realignment strategy. Not everyone has always been on board, but early successes — including public support from such unions as UNITE HERE — have given McNaughton the political capital he's needed to move forward.
There's a lot here that the federal Conservative party can draw from. The early signs from McNaughton's efforts to build working-class support are promising. He should be rightly regarded for his policy and political entrepreneurship in this regard.
One thing to keep in mind though is that Conservatives cannot merely conceive of the working class using an old, industrial economy frame. The working class doesn't just work in suburban-based factories anymore. It's increasingly dependent on restaurants and hotels in the city. Consider that, according to Statistics Canada, employment in accommodation and food services is nearly as high as construction or manufacturing.
These workers' interests, aspirations and concerns will necessarily be different from blue-collar workers in the goods-producing economy. There's a much better chance that they're female to start. But, more generally, their priorities are more likely to involve health and drug benefits, workplace standards, childcare, public transit and other unique, city-based, service-sector issues.
Conservatives need to be ready to constructively respond. Non-answers amount to handing these issues to the left by default.
That would be a huge mistake. A conservative realignment strategy needs to target working-class voters according to their own place and circumstances. Monte McNaughton has made tremendous strides along these lines in Ontario.
Erin O'Toole ought to build on it in Ottawa. They're on the right track. The future of Canadian conservatism ultimately depends on their success.
NON-ANSWERS AMOUNT TO HANDING THESE ISSUES TO THE LEFT