Put the Tory leadership race out of its misery
O’toole, Mckay are capable of holding Liberals to account
On Monday, Erin O’toole issued the best tweet of any candidate so far in the Conservative leadership campaign. It noted that Canada currently has roughly as many cases of COVID-19 as Italy had on February 26th, in the mid-to-high 300s; it noted that Italy now has more than 23,000 cases; and it cautioned the following, lest Canada suffer the same fate: “Stay at home. Wash your hands. Do your part.”
It’s excellent advice, but it doesn’t exactly scream “O’toole for leader.” None of his competitors are advising us to snog random strangers. If anything, the tweet made the whole leadership campaign — a listless, almost idea-free affair thus far — seem rather inappropriate. Some of the candidates agree.
Also on Monday, long-shot candidate Rick Peterson, from Alberta, announced he was suspending fundraising efforts. “The Canadian economy, especially here in Western Canada, has come to a standstill,” he said in a statement. “We’ll not be asking individuals to send money to a political campaign at a time when every dollar counts.”
Peterson, along with fellow dark horses Rudy Husny and Marilyn Gladu, had earlier called on the party to extend the March 25th deadline for candidates to pony up $300,000 in order to join O’toole and Peter Mackay as “verified candidates.”
To do otherwise, Gladu suggested, would be “tonedeaf.”
“I don’t believe that soliciting our members at this time is the right thing to do,” Husny wrote on Twitter, “and will just make us look out of touch and frankly disconnected.”
Peterson, Gladu and Husny are correct. The party, which insists the campaign is full steam ahead with all hands on deck, is out to lunch. Delaying the process might be better than soldiering on. Better still, however, would be to abandon the campaign, refund everyone’s money and hold a vote for leader among the declared candidates as soon as possible.
There are eight nominal candidates in the race. In theory, six of them are still trying to raise the full $300,000. As Husny suggests, it is downright rude to be badgering people for money right now, or even hawking memberships. It’s also pretty much pointless. Not all the candidates were going to raise the full amount even before COVID-19 came along. The chances of anyone other than Mackay or O’toole winning were, and are, vanishingly small.
Fundraising issues aside, now might in theory be a great time to hold a leadership campaign. Many of us are cooped up at home all day, starving for diversion. It should be an opportunity to expand the tent, to showcase the talent and the ideas that might appeal to voters come the next election, once we’ve killed this bastard virus.
But this is Canada. On the vast majority of issues, Liberals and Conservatives disagree only on the margins. Bold new ideas are very rare birds. Nowadays the Liberals are more than anything else a tribe for people who hate Stephen Harper, and the Conservatives are more than anything else a tribe for people who hate Justin Trudeau.
Pre-pandemic, this wasn’t necessarily a problem. There was no shortage of criticisms to be fairly levelled at Trudeau and his government. But in times of crisis, there is a powerful social instinct toward solidarity: My email inbox is full of people taking umbrage at my criticisms of the Liberals’ incoherent border crackdown, announced Monday. That doesn’t normally happen.
O’toole beautifully illustrated the problem last week, when he called for an end to flights from COVID-19 hot zones and mandatory 14-day isolation for those arriving from high-risk areas. He ought to look prescient, and the Liberals ought to look confused — especially considering how forcefully Health Minister Patty Hajdu dismissed travel bans just on Friday. But what people likely remember about O’toole’s missive was his ridiculously over-the-top accusation that Trudeau and his government had “given up the fight against COVID-19.”
Partisans just can’t help themselves — and the giggling kids at Canada Proud, the online conservative activists to whom O’toole’s campaign wagon is hitched, wouldn’t help themselves if they could. On Sunday they mocked-up a fake still of a live newscast with the headline “PM’S IQ test results negative.” “With so many Canadian lives are (sic) at stake,” they sneered, “it’d be nice if we didn’t have a snowboard instructor running our country, eh?”
Liberals and Conservatives share this blind spot: Neither can comprehend how few non-partisans despise Harper and Trudeau, respectively. But a leadership race only exacerbates the problem, encouraging hyperbole and one-upmanship. It becomes difficult to criticize the government without coming off like an opportunistic jerk. Canada needs a non-lame-duck opposition leader who can soberly and credibly hold the government to account on some very pointed life-or-death questions. As uninspiring as O’toole’s and (especially) Mackay’s campaigns have been, either should be able to fill that role capably. And no matter what the timeline, no matter what the process, one of them is going to get the chance.
So call the question, hold the vote as soon as is feasible, and put this sad-sack campaign out of its misery. Real life demands everybody’s full attention.