WHAT HAVE SCHEER & SINGH DONE WITH THIS CHANCE? NADA.
TRANS MOUNTAIN MESS A ‘TIME OF TESTING’ FOR ALL THREE FEDERAL LEADERS
The turmoil of one party is the moment of opportunity for another. This is axiomatic in democratic politics. Currently in Ontario the long-simmering tribulations of the Liberals, not at all surprising after holding government for a decade and a half, are basically a gold-leafed invitation to the Conservatives to form the next government.
They likely will, too, even after the superb clown car crash they managed to stage just weeks ago — the bumbling, precipitant, messy ejection of leader Patrick Brown. There followed the unparalleled comedy of his resigning and not resigning, running for his own leadership and not running, and finally the determination by the party he had just led that they wouldn’t have him, even as a candidate. And I haven’t even mentioned that during this typhoon of lunacy and mischief, a gentleman by the name of Doug Ford simply walked in, promised to cancel the carbon tax and took over the party.
The turmoil of one party is the moment of opportunity for another. Well, almost always. These days the federal Liberals are in a deep trough of their own excavation. The world’s most glamorous social-justice warrior has most definitely stepped off one of the longest political honeymoons in many a year. His inspired coinage of “peoplekind” earned him a wavelet of scornful chuckles, even from such dedicated vendors of progressivism as the tame comics of American late-night TV. About the Indian odyssey, with its assassin on the invitation list and the immortal free-form Bhangra shuffle, now in YouTube eternity, no more, without tears, can be said. But these were mere follies, dips into bad form and worse English.
Then comes the pipeline war, the two NDP provinces, B.C. and Alberta, glaring at each other across the Rockies, threatening each other’s liquid assets — wine and oil — followed by the great Sunday night bombshell from Kinder Morgan. The time for dancing was done. Suddenly there was a call for substantive national leadership. Justin Trudeau was facing a challenge that set clearly in focus the abiding question of his leadership: Was it just image? Was there anything beyond the smooth glamour and sweet nothings?
This is the moment of the Liberals’ turmoil. So the easy question follows whether either Andrew Scheer or Jagmeet Singh have done anything, of their own initiative — that is the key phrase — to mark them as Mr. Trudeau’s necessary replacement. Mr. Trudeau has done his bit, it is true. But what have they done to help themselves?
Not a lot, or hardly anything at all. The NDP leader, in contrast to Mr. Trudeau, had one of the shortest honeymoons in Canadian political history. It was actually confined to the single fact that he won. Since then he has played evasive on the question of Sikh political violence and has been distressingly flat as a political performer. He’s not in the House and, as opposed to Jack Layton, whose example he professes to follow, he has not made himself a presence in national news.
Mr. Layton made himself a name in the lobby of the House of Commons during the days he was not sitting in it. He was there after every question period and always ready with a comment and a clip. Mr. Singh, though set up by his party as a “cooler” answer to the “cool” Justin Trudeau, hasn’t fit that bill. He’s out of the Commons, and save for mainly selfgenerated controversy, out of the news, too. On the Kinder Morgan issue he has displayed no ability to use his NDP ties to mollify, or bring together, his provincial cousins, Rachel Notley and John Horgan. His one notion of tossing the affair to the Supreme Court is not impressive.
Mr. Scheer is in the Commons and he is the leader of the Opposition. But despite both of these advantages he has played no standout role in this showdown. It’s easy to offer pinpricks in question period, but he has not made himself present in the debate on the ground in either British Columbia or Alberta. If there is a time for articulating the national interest, for setting this dispute in the context of the values of Confederation, proposing the terms and role of a genuine mediator, this is it. What is Mr. Scheer’s idea of a “just balance between the environment and the economy” as opposed to the much-iterated notion of Mr. Trudeau’s? This would be a great moment to hear it, and how it is truly to be distinguished from his rivals.
Both Mr. Scheer and Mr. Singh are probably very much at ease watching Mr. Trudeau as he goes through what many are rightly calling his moment of truth or “time of testing” as a leader. It’s just as much theirs, though it’s not very clear they realize it.