Scheer’s ‘positive message’ lost
Party appears to be looking back instead of ahead
All through the Conservative leadership race, Andrew Scheer kept talking about the “positive message” he was promoting. Since becoming leader, he has carried on in much the same vein. Positive tone, positive approach, positive alternative, “positive Conservative solutions to get Canada back on track” — the air is fairly thick with positivity. “We have such a great, aspirational, positive message,” Scheer says. “I love looking forward.”
Yet as Parliament resumes, we’ve yet to see much of that vaunted positivity from Scheer. He has let it be known his party will be focused on three things in the fall sitting: the settlement of Omar Khadr’s lawsuit against the government, at a cost of $10.5 million; the recent influx of asylum seekers from the United States, primarily in Quebec; and proposed changes to the taxation of private corporations, the subject of so much recent vitriol.
It isn’t that there are no legitimate questions in each. The Khadr payout struck many as excessive, even acknowledging the government’s complicity in what the Supreme Court ruled was a violation of his Charter rights.
The most sympathetic advocate of the rights of asylum seekers will concede they should be discouraged from trying to cross the border illegally, and it is fair to ask whether Justin Trudeau’s famous message of welcome might have signalled the opposite.
And of course there is much that can be criticized with regard to the tax proposals.
It’s just hard to make these add up to a positive message. Rather, what is common to the Conservative position on all three is that they are easy and popular, allowing the party to raise maximum fuss at minimum risk, especially in the absence of any constructive alternative.
It is the easiest thing in the world to oppose the Khadr payment — polls show it is wildly unpopular — but is that really the most crucial issue facing the nation, two months later? And can the Conservatives say with any certainty that fighting the case to the bitter end would have saved any money?
The asylum-seeker issue, likewise, appears already to be fading: the rate of inflow has fallen from nearly 300 a day to fewer than 100. And while it’s certainly possible it could flare again, we have yet to hear a plausible solution from the opposition.
It’s fine to talk about expanding the number of official entry points covered by the Safe Third Party Agreement, for example, but the thing about an agreement is that it takes both parties to agree. The Trump administration shows even less sign of interest in such an amendment than its predecessors.
As for the tax ruckus, there are any number of valid conservative critiques that could be offered: the government’s proposals are too complex, too intrusive, too costly and so on.
If the party were feeling extra adventurous, it might even offer, you know, positive alternatives: perhaps reducing the incentive to incorporate, by closing the gap between the small business rate and the top personal rate, or a more broad-based reform of the tax system that would address a number of distortions and inequities at one go, rather than picking just one.
But that is not what we have heard from the Conservatives on this. What we have heard instead is a fullthroated roar of protest at the very idea of asking the owners of private corporations to pay the same tax as their unincorporated counterparts earning the same income, coupled with a transparent and sadly successful effort to persuade the entire small business sector, incorporated or no, that they are under “attack.” On this issue, as on the first two, the temptations of cheap demagoguery have apparently proved overwhelming.
I know, I know: it is the duty of the opposition to oppose. No one is suggesting they shouldn’t. Perhaps they are under no obligation even to propose their owns solutions, as cynics insist, but discharge their duty merely by slamming the government’s. Fine — but if you do, you cannot also ask to be congratulated for your “positive message.”
Scheer’s pandering on these issues might be more easily dismissed if it was not of a piece with his other dalliances with expediency, whether his defence of supply management in Quebec — he may well have won the leadership on the votes of a few hundred dairy farmers who joined the party for the purpose — or his batty proposal to take the GST off home heating oil (it is not enough, apparently, to oppose taxing carbon: people should be given a tax incentive to burn it).
It is true that he was at length persuaded to disown the conspiracy-mongers, Muslim-baiters and worse at The Rebel, but he cannot have been unaware of the kind of message they were promoting in the past when he was more than willing to give interviews to them. And while that presents a welcome break with Harperera populism, it is disturbing to hear Scheer and other Conservatives spouting protectionist talking points on trade negotiations with China (“We don’t want to see Canadian manufacturers, Canadian workers put on a completely uneven playing field”) and Mexico.
It’s early days yet. Some of Scheer’s shadow cabinet appointments are encouraging, suggesting the Conservatives may yet rediscover their conservatism in time for the next election. But if Scheer wants to persuade Canadians he’s learned the lesson of the Harper government’s defeat, he needs to start showing it. There’s more to a positive message than a smile and a dimple.