The riskiest of Tory leadership hopefuls
When federal Conservatives convene at the end of the week on Toronto’s airport strip they will — finally — be settling a family battle over who gets to lead this party in the post-Stephen Harper era.
But they will have another task at hand.
This marathon that drew yawns from most Canadians jolted awake only briefly by bolts of curious policy proposals ranging from values tests to soldiers at our borders and a cameo walk-on from a unilingual TV personality who seemed to have wandered onstage by mistake, is really about choosing someone they believe can beat Justin Trudeau in 2019.
And that’s where the disconnect comes in with the candidacy of former cabinet minister and libertarian Maxime Bernier.
In the Brexit/Donald Trump era, political predictions are best left to fools or those who have lingered too long in the midday sun.
The vagaries of a ranked ballot with 13 candidates also makes it difficult to discern how Bernier has been anointed as the candidate-to-beat when the votes are counted Saturday.
There is one unmistakable sign of Bernier’s strength.
No one has worked longer or harder for this job than Bernier and he has raised more than $1 million during the campaign, double that of anyone else still in the race.
Only Kellie Leitch, Erin O’Toole and Andrew Scheer have raised more than $400,000.
The only other candidate to raise more than $1 million was the departed Kevin O’Leary, who supported Bernier as he fled the stage and has been promised a post as economic adviser in a Bernier-led opposition. Either of those things may carry some weight, but likely very little.
This is a Conservative party that is in good shape, with almost 260,000 members, a fat bank balance and a caucus that has pivoted nicely to provide strong opposition under the softer, competent, more rational interim leadership of Rona Ambrose.
To listen to this leadership field, one would think this is a party that has been out of power for 10 years, not a party that had just recently led this country for almost a decade.
Two years from now, Trudeau should be vulnerable on his progressive bona fides, on issues ranging from electoral reform to climate change.
There should be fertile territory to his left to be exploited by a federal NDP under fresh leadership which should resist the self-defeating urge to move to the middle and try to pass itself off as a quasi-Liberal party, allowing the Liberals to outflank them.
At midterm, it also appears that the Trudeau Liberals, barring some unseen turnaround, could also be vulnerable on the economic front.
Why then would Conservatives move to the riskiest of leadership candidates?
Bernier would shrink the federal government, which he believes has unnecessarily overreached into the lives of Canadians and reduce immigration numbers, tying them to manpower need and skew them younger to avoid the social tensions he says come from mass immigration.
He would beef up spending for the RCMP, CSIS and Canada’s border security agents to provide for more background checks and face-to-face interviews to protect the cultural character and social fabric of this country.
He would review foreign aid with an eye to using that money to help our indigenous population and cut taxes at home. He would cut corporate taxes. He would end the supply management program for the dairy industry which, if laudable, aligns him with Trump and will cost him support at home in Quebec.
But it is Bernier’s position on health care that has Liberal and NDP strategists silently gleeful.
He has called for an end to the “taboo” of private health care and he wants to end federal transfers in exchange for tax points, allowing the provinces to raise their own money to design their own health-care systems.
How the provinces could protect the principles of our public health system if they were no longer beholden to Ottawa for funding is unclear, but the last thing the Conservatives need with a new leader is another round of chicken with a political third rail.
Our present health system may be flawed, but Canadians like it.
If Bernier wins this race, there would appear to be two possibilities. He would go to the Canadian electorate with policies that seem unsalable or he would have to moderate his policies to make them more palatable.
The first option would upset Conservatives who did not vote for him. The latter would upset Conservatives who did. Tim Harper writes on national affairs. tjharper77@gmail.com, Twitter: @nutgraf1
Out of all his promises, it’s Maxime Bernier’s position on health care that has Liberal and NDP strategists silently gleeful