During COVID-19, I’m rooting for Scheer, and you should too

In the nervous days of “Team Canada” and the extraordinary policy response to COVID -19, it takes guts to be the skunk in the room. Who wants to be the spanner in all of the public works being erected to shield us from the effects of novel coronavirus?

It’s no doubt a short list; the world is in the market for strongmen taking strong action. That’s why we should all be cheering Andrew Scheer, the leader of the Official Opposition, in the temporarily reconvened House of Commons. Right now, Canada needs Scheer to show some guts on oversight and raise a stink about the government’s plans.

It’s a bizarre turn of events.

The last time Scheer’s guts were in the news, they were all over the floor after party insiders gutted him for excessive spending on the company card. This bit of opportunistic hara-kiri came as Scheer was already wounded, struggling to explain his lacklustre election performance against a weakened Justin Trudeau. Scheer eventually took his cue and resigned his post.

And yet … he’s still here, in the midst of the biggest crisis Canada has seen in decades. And for a while, too, with the Conservative Party now having paused its leadership contest. It will be Scheer and his team who hold the government to account over its response to the crisis, a job as important as any the government is now doing.

Anyone who doubts the utility of those assigned the constitutional role of standing athwart history and yelling “stop,” should take a look at what Team Scheer (and the other opposition parties) have already achieved. Tucked into the Trudeau government’s first coronavirus legislation was a dangerous bit of overreach: dictatorial spending powers that would have made Liberals blanch had Conservatives proposed them in the 2008 financial crash.

The bill was eventually amended, but it took another Conservative, Pierre Poilievre, to notice that the government’s legislation on wage subsidies couldn’t do what the Liberals claimed it would, necessitating the drafting of new legislation to fix the gaps, and the resulting recall of Parliament. This is what happens when policy is done at light speed. It’s why scrutiny matters.

And it matters even more when you consider how flimsy and uncertain the government’s response has been at times. Shutting borders was useless until it wasn’t. Stopping illegal crossers couldn’t be done until it was. The Quarantine Act wasn’t needed until it was put into force. When the history of this crisis is written, the Canadian response will have been judged — much like the global one — to have been a step (or 10) too slow. Riding herd on the government in these trying times isn’t, therefore, a sin; it’s righteous. It’s patriotism in all of its glory.

The government will surely bristle at each criticism, especially this government, which doesn’t seem to believe anyone is ever entitled to question its methods or motive, so convinced is it of its unerring sense of what’s right for Canada. But it should listen. It will take maturity for the Liberals to lower their partisan defences and engage constructively with Parliament, but the outcome for Canadians will be improved if they do. Because neither they nor the bureaucracy have the monopoly on wisdom.

Bureaucracies both tend to and like to respond in the way they know how. Sometimes that’s akin to generals fighting the last war, as we’re seeing with some of the current difficulties getting new programs in place using existing structures. The bureaucracy is putting in a furious shift but the current economic crisis isn’t like that of 2008 and 2009. It will take some new thinking and new approaches to beat it back.

This is the other essential role the opposition must play: the development of alternative approaches. It’s not enough to simply point-score or oppose; one has to propose. Here, too, the opposition is putting forward fresh ideas on questions like support for small businesses.

For these reasons alone, the prime minister should find a safe way to reopen Parliament and give legislators a chance to mark his government’s work. Who knows, it might even be good for morale to see some politicians bickering at each other again.

Andrew MacDougall is a London-based communications consultant and ex-director of communications to former prime minister Stephen Harper.