O’Toole aims to build a bigger tent
Erin O’Toole gave a potentially gamechanging speech in Toronto last week. It did not get the attention it deserved. It did cause the usual pundits’ heads to explode at his apostasy. Less-blinkered observers saw it as a serious sign that Erin O’Toole may be preparing to do something no national Conservative leader has attempted for nearly four decades: build a big-tent political party.
Stephen Harper’s was a pup tent, anchored in Western Canada among small-town and rural voters — mostly white and affluent Canadians, with some growth among new Canadians. That base never grew over 10 years, but it did remain sufficiently loyal to elect two majority governments.
O’Toole appears to be looking further back, to build a new broader coalition for the future. His speech was full of bows to voters not associated with the Conservatives for a generation. Using rhetoric not heard from a Conservative leader since Brian Mulroney or John Diefenbaker on the trials of working Canadians, O’Toole said, “I want to grow the tent of who can be successful in this country. And I want to expand our definition of success.”
O’Toole comes from a different thread of conservatism. His political dad was of the generation of the Big Blue Machine’s triumphant decades. This already marks him out as the first national Conservative leader with those genes since Mulroney stepped down in 1993.
What is his vision? He laid out some broad strokes. “It’s time we Conservatives took inequality seriously,” he said, clearly implying some of his predecessors did not. Calling for a renewal of Canadian “solidarity,” he added, “We must change, or less-reasonable forces will do it for us.” I cannot ever recall the concept of social solidarity coming from the lips of any Canadian Conservative leader.
Astonishingly, he defended the essential role that private-sector unions play. Drawing on his family roots and background growing up in a workingclass community in the shadow of General Motors, where his father had worked, O’Toole said, “Too much power (today) is in the hands of corporate and financial elites who are happy to outsource jobs abroad.” With obvious conviction, he went on to denounce the “hollowing out” of the jobs and communities he grew up in, saying, “Do we really want a nation of Uber drivers?”
This was not a speech Andrew Scheer, Stephen Harper or Jason Kenney would ever give. It marks a Conservative leader who understands that the hard-edged conservative rhetoric of the past two decades is simply no longer a winning strategy. With no outreach to those suffering from the impacts of technology and globalization, there is no path to victory for Conservatives today.
The private reaction of Conservative MPs and activists to his bold effort to erect a bigger tent will be fascinating to watch unfold. How tough he is in insisting that this becomes their new more compassionate, more populist brand — one he dubbed as “Common Good Conservatism” — will define his leadership. If he fails to drive this new broader approach to political coalition building, so too will his leadership and his party fail.
This should be taken seriously by the Liberals. They have profited in having no competitor to their right, one who could be attractive to so-called “blue Liberals.” As John Turner discovered, running against a big-tent Conservative is tough for a centrist party.
New Democrats should be breathing a sigh of relief — O’Toole appears to be opening a more attractive second front on the right, forcing Liberals to tack right. Jagmeet Singh will have a much easier time defending his claim to be the real progressive.
However, all three will need to address the potential of the impressive new Green leader, Annamie Paul. The O’Toole team is reportedly working hard on a Conservative climate platform. They have a very difficult needle to thread between Kenney’s Big Oil obsession, and the climate demands of an entire generation of young Canadians. I’m betting O’Toole will take the risk of offending fossil-fuel orthodoxy by adding a strong green policy pole to lift his big tent.
Finally, Erin O’Toole has another asset not shared by any of his recent predecessors. He’s very likeable — not trivial in today’s celebrity-driven personality politics.