OTTAWA: What to expect as House returns
With MPs back in the House Monday, here is a thumbnail guide to what we can expect from the Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats in the days and weeks ahead. Top-line hint: Steady as she goes.
Stephen Harper’s call to humility
The prime minister and his party were rocked hard last year by the Senate expense scandal. In response, the Prime Minister’s Office doubled down on its attack strategies. Harper’s relationship with the media, never good, grew worse. Ontario MP Paul Calandra, chippy to a fault, became the new face of the government in the House of Commons. Through the latter half of last year the Tories steadily lost ground in the polls and Harper’s personal popularity tanked.
There is a view that the PM could do himself much good by engaging more freely with the media and striking a more humble tone this year. There was rumbling in the Tory caucus last fall that the PMO needed to be less controlling, less rabidly partisan and more amenable to the aspirations of backbench Conservative MPs. And, we can all agree, Harper should bench the charmless Calandra.
What he’s likely to do instead:
All indications are that Harper’s not about to change — and that the more pundits insist he must, the less likely he is to do so. His new video series, 24-Seven, is clearly intended to soften and humanize his image, as are the repeat musical performances. We can expect controlled engagement — speeches or Q&A sessions, and possibly a more matter-of-fact tone from MPs in the House. But the closer, as always, will be a calculated appeal to the financial interests of the middle class. This will be a year in which the Tories try to avoid giving egregious offence multiple times, while they line up a small budget surplus and the goodies, such as income-splitting, that will flow from it. That’s their charm offensive.
Thomas Mulcair’s lunge for the centre
Public opinion polls, including one this month by Abacus Research, show that Mulcair personally has been well received by Canadians. As he has grown more relaxed in the Opposition leader’s role, it’s fair to say he’s become the dominant personality in the House. On a good Mulcair day, the Tories could do little but duck for cover.
His problem, as reflected in the byelections last November, is that a plurality of Canadians, especially in Ontario and parts westward, don’t believe his party can mind the store. Mulcair, a former Quebec provincial Liberal, could change this by shoving his party gently but firmly toward the pragmatic middle, especially as regards energy. Specifically, he could embrace the Alberta oilpatch and become its enthusiastic partner in seeking environmentally sustainable growth, rather than its ideological adversary.
What he’s likely to do instead:
Mulcair puts on a friendly face but has shown himself to be as dogged as, yes, Harper himself, in ignoring pundits’ wagging fingers. A significant group within his party opposes pipeline development outright and believes public opinion is turning against it. There’s also a view that his strength on the Senate file makes him the obvious alternative to Harper, and that his ferocity as a debater is a trump card to be played in the 2015 campaign. Consequently, there’s no sense of crisis within the NDP. They like where they are, well ahead of where they’ve ever been before between campaigns, and will continue playing the long game.
Justin Trudeau’s excellent policy adventure
Trudeau is coming off the best year of any politician in Canada in recent memory. Nearly 60 per cent of those surveyed by Abacus this month said they think he has “good ideas for the future of the country.” More than half, including 27 per cent of declared Conservatives, said they think he has “sound judgment.” Nevertheless, Trudeau has faced persistent criticism from his rivals, and from media pundits, that he’s all hat, no cattle. Trudeau could offset this, and his occasional bouts of foot-in-mouth, by giving a few detailed speeches on the economy, in which he persuasively explains why Canada’s middle class is in trouble, then persuasively explains what he plans to do about it.
What he’s likely to do instead:
Since before he became Liberal leader, Trudeau’s strategy has been to offer a broad direction in policy areas that have symbolic heft, such as supporting the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, legalizing pot or opposing Quebec’s proposed values charter, but avoid going into granular detail, particularly on his core issue of income inequality and the middle class.
The official reason is that the policy must be generated from the ground up. The practical reason is that income inequality is an extraordinarily tricky thing to tackle, in a tax-averse society, and the Liberals haven’t quite got it figured out. Moreover, they’re leery of policy theft of the kind they perpetrated on Reform and the Canadian Alliance in the 1990s. Trudeau’s lead places zero pressure on him to change tack, for now. Therefore, he won’t.