Tories offer Liberals support, with conditions
Critic says Conservatives will offer help only if government focuses on jobs, economy
OTTAWA— Attack mode, says the Conservative party’s new foreign affairs critic, will not be the Opposition’s first instinct when dealing with the Liberal government’s renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Conservative MP Erin O’Toole says his party is willing to offer non-partisan support to the Liberal government during the continuing NAFTA renegotiation, which is in its second round in Mexico City.
But the offer holds only as long as the Liberals keep the focus on job creation, securing market access and levelling a playing field that he says has given Mexican labour an unfair advantage.
O’Toole said the Tories have no time for the “virtue signalling” on gender, Indigenous and environmental issues the government has also raised as bargaining priorities.
If the government takes those priorities too far, O’Toole said he will lead the Conservatives back into political battle.
“For me, I don’t always lead with the attack if I don’t need to. I’m very capable and very effective at the attack if it comes to that,” O’Toole said in an interview.
It’s a position that’s been crafted in discussions O’Toole said he has had with his new leader, Andrew Scheer. And it comes one month after the Liberals and Conservatives traded some partisan barbs over NAFTA.
“There is a lot of goodwill for us to work on it,” O’Toole said. That’s because trade is the Conservative legacy — the original free trade deal with the U.S., NAFTA, the Canada-EU pact, were all instigated by Conservative governments. NAFTA and the Canada-EU pacts were finalized by Liberal governments.
“We want it to be a positive. We know how critical it can be to jobs in our economy.”
The Liberals did not react kindly to O’Toole’s comments, taking to Twitter on Sunday to denounce them.
“Ensuring NAFTA isn’t a race to the bottom on the environment isn’t ‘virtue signalling,’ ” wrote Environment Minister Catherine McKenna.
Trudeau’s principal secretary, Gerald Butts, wrote that Scheer recently said the environment and economy “go hand in hand. That lasted a week. It’s still Stephen Harper’s party.”
In the interview, O’Toole also said he has great respect for his prime political opponent, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, who is also in charge of NAFTA and Canada-U.S. relations.
“We have a friendship; I admire her a great deal.” But that warmth does not extend to other members of Trudeau cabinet, or the prime minister.
“What I want to see out of Canada is less of the virtue-signalling type of approach where we put the centrepieces of Justin Trudeau’s image building — the gender equal cabinet, the reconciliation — they’re all important but this is an economic trade agreement,” O’Toole said.
“I don’t think anyone who’s had a casual observation of the Trump administration will suggest that their priority is going to be environment, Indigenous and other things like that.”