National Post (National Edition)
MacKay is right on Tory race
Conservative leadership candidate Peter MacKay is in the enviable position of being able to articulate something that is both objectively true and undeniably self-interested: he has suggested wrapping up the Conservative leadership race faster than currently intended. This is undoubtedly to his advantage. It’s also the right thing to do.
Although the party has, to date, said it intends to stick to the scheduled selection of a new leader in June, most of the declared leadership candidates have now said that is misguided. The majority of the candidates have called for the race to be postponed until after the current emergency. That’s a perfectly fine suggestion. But MacKay has the better one: he says it’s time to get it wrapped up — now.
The problem is the outgoing leader. Whatever the months ahead may bring, and I’m still cautiously optimistic that Canada may be spared the worst of the devastating scenes we have seen in Europe and seem grimly certain to witness in the United States, it is clear that we need to have a functioning federal government. Events of just the past day or so have driven that home.
The Liberal proposal, which was quickly abandoned in the face of widespread backlash, to invest enormous and sweeping emergency powers in the finance minister for a full 18 months is a stark reminder of the absolute necessity of an effective opposition in a free country. Though the Liberals did abandon their plan, it was alarming that they even thought to propose giving one man the ability to alter or impose taxes without any parliamentary oversight or control, and all the way until 2022. If that’s where the Liberals’ instincts take them in a crisis, they need effective democratic checks and balances, overseen by a competent and effective official Opposition.
That opposition should not be led by someone who has already quit. Unfortunately, that is exactly the situation we find ourselves in. In the midst of this national emergency, this global crisis, Canada’s leader of the official Opposition has already tapped out.
In December, with the past federal election not too distant a memory, after several months of speculation and no doubt more than a few knives into the back, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer told the Canadian people, plainly and understandably, that he didn’t have the heart to go on. He said that the cost to him and his family was simply higher than he was willing to pay. “In order to chart the course ahead, this party, this movement, needs someone who can give 100 per cent to the efforts,” he told the House in his resignation remarks. “And after some conversations with my kids, my loved ones, I felt it was time to put my family first.” So he stepped down.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with that. Indeed, for a lot of reasons, it was the right decision (even overdue — the last few weeks were hard to watch). But we need to remember that the man decided to spend more time with his family rather than face the burden of carrying on as Opposition leader in a minority Parliament before the country and planet was consumed by a vicious, deadly virus. I have no doubt that Scheer could rise to the occasion. But it doesn’t make any sense to take the guy who has already said he’s had enough, present him with a vastly more serious emergency to manage and ask him to stick around even longer. Especially when there’s a viable alternative.
Canada needs a functioning official Opposition. It needs a Conservative party with a new leader. And the party controls at least this part of its own destiny — there’s any number of ways it can come up with a new leader or, given the emergency, an entirely new process. That process doesn’t automatically have to be to Peter MacKay’s advantage.
It’s time to get this wrapped up and get a fulltime Opposition leader in place — not in June, not after the emergency, but as soon as possible. Any of the remaining leadership candidates would do a fine job. The party could also grab any other reasonably qualified person, including perhaps a serving MP, and frogmarch him or her into the role. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the job is too important to leave the outgoing guy in it for a moment longer than necessary. The current emergency isn’t a reason for the Tories to delay. It’s a reason to speed up, get it done and then turn 100 per cent of their attention to the pressing matters at hand.