Travels are leveraged for votes at home
Trade missions to India aren’t just about competing for new business abroad. They’re also about the business of competing for votes back home.
As Kathleen Wynne sets off on her first trip to the subcontinent, she is mindful — and miffed — that Opposition leader Patrick Brown beat her to it. Ahead of the premier’s departure this Thursday, the Tory whirling dervish pre-empted her with a whirlwind trip on Indian soil.
Nothing brings out Wynne’s fiercely competitive streak like a political contest. When a reporter asked, tauntingly, if her PC rival’s head start had “stolen your thunder?” the premier fell for the bait at a public event:
“Patrick Brown has travelled as a private citizen to India — I’m going as the premier of Ontario,” she countered defensively.
And dismissively: “Patrick Brown can do what he chooses on his winter vacation, but what we are doing is . . . the business of the province.”
That boastful put-down bespeaks the high stakes for the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives: Reaching out to Indian business may one day pay dividends for Ontario’s economy, but courting Indo-Canadians could also reap rewards in the next provincial election.
Despite Wynne’s jab, Brown’s juggernaut was hardly a leisurely winter jaunt, nor a junket at taxpayer expense. His eight-city tour culminated with a coveted invitation to meet India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi — rarely bestowed on mere opposition leaders from the provinces (as premier, Wynne will also meet him).
But there are clear differences in their travelling styles. While Brown paid his own way, Wynne and the half-dozen Liberal MPPs and two cabinet ministers travelling with her are travelling at public expense.
Another difference: Brown boasts that this was his 16th trip to India as a parliamentarian. By contrast, this will be Wynne’s first time setting foot on the subcontinent.
Ontario’s formal ties began with the opening of a provincial trade mission in India in 1987. But it has been an inconstant relationship — the office was shuttered several years later, then reopened as a less costly trade desk within Canada’s High Commission.
Despite the dynamic growth of India’s economy and its burgeoning middle class, economic ties have increased at a glacial pace. Annual two-way trade in goods is worth a modest $2 billion today — ranking about 20th on our list of global trading partners.
The elephant in the relationship — not to be confused with the elephant ride photo-op tweeted by Brown on his journey — is nuclear power. When India used technology gleaned from Canadian CANDU reactors to test its first-ever nuclear explosion in 1974, it broke a pledge to use our technology for peaceful purposes only.
And rupturing our nuclear trade. Just as those exports had dual-end uses, so, too, Ontario’s current political activity is being repurposed.
The Liberals have long cultivated ties to Ontario’s 700,000 IndoCanadians. Former premier Dalton McGuinty exploited his own trip to India by inviting — and then underwriting (with $12 million in public funds) — a Bollywood awards ceremony to Toronto, conveniently held just ahead of the 2011 election.
Until recently, ethnic outreach hadn’t been a Tory priority, given the provincial party’s largely rural, white makeup. Few of its MPPs ever showed up at Indo-Canadian events.
Now, Brown is profiting from his close ties to community organizers who helped him win the PC leadership last year, hoping to translate his core support into a broader movement before the next election. While he deserves credit for at least trying, it’s unclear whether his relentless pursuit of such voters will pay off — or turn off people who view it as pandering (it didn’t work for the federal Tories in the 2015 election).
Each side is pressing its advantage: The PC leader is calling in his IOUs with Modi (Brown cultivated India’s PM when he was the embattled chief minister of Gujarat, under a cloud after the 2002 massacre of Muslims on his watch). And Wynne is maximizing her pending MOUs — Memorandums of Understanding that are the stock and trade of any trade mission (though such memos are more aspirational than operational).
Amid the competing IOUs and MOUs, naked political ambitions are cloaked as lofty trade missions. Either way, the rival party leaders are leveraging their travels abroad to vie for votes at home. Martin Regg Cohn’s political column usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn