National Post (National Edition)
O'TOOLE'S GAMBIT
Why Erin O'Toole is gambling on building a new, union-friendly Conservative voting coalition
The Conservative party has a big problem when it comes to winning federal elections, and Erin O'Toole's team knows it.
While the party reliably draws about a third of the popular vote every election, it has little hope of ever consistently winning majority governments without substantially raising its voter ceiling.
`Conservatives have essentially run the same campaign over and over again since 2006,' one O'Toole adviser said. `Strategically, the differences between the campaigns have been marginal... If we want to win, we have to do something different.'
So O'Toole is indeed trying something different, as has become strikingly apparent in his speeches and political ads since being elected leader in August. His goal is to expand the pool of people who vote Conservative, finding new voters among the working class and lower middle class who have drifted away from the left and become disengaged from electoral politics.
IT MAY SURPRISE YOU TO HEAR A CONSERVATIVE BEMOAN THE DECLINE OF PRIVATE SECTOR UNION MEMBERSHIP. BUT THIS WAS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF THE BALANCE BETWEEN WHAT WAS GOOD FOR BUSINESS AND WHAT WAS GOOD FOR EMPLOYEES. — ERIN O'TOOLE
If it works, it will reorient Canada's political landscape. But O'Toole also risks alienating his existing voter base and party caucus.
To get into sustainable majority territory, the Conservatives need to find another five per cent of voter support, boosting them into the range of 39 per cent of the popular vote.
Since the modern Conservative Party was formed in 2003, only one thing has been proven to work: a strong NDP that saps Liberal strength from the left. This was the case in 2011, when Stephen Harper's Conservatives won their majority. But in the five other elections, nothing the party tried has gotten their vote share high enough. Peeling off Liberal voters in large numbers is hard to do from the right; if a voter wants Liberal-like policies, they will probably just vote Liberal.
Simply put, when the NDP vote is weak, it spells trouble for the Conservatives.
“Conservatives have been agonizing for as long as I've been involved in politics about what, if anything, we can do about that,” said one person working on O'Toole's campaign strategy, who asked not to be named so as to speak more freely. “We need to break out of that. It's a convergence of things completely out of our control, and you can't depend on that. That's not a viable basis for a winning strategy.”
Hence, the unconventional speech O'Toole gave to the Canadian Club of Toronto two weeks ago that raised eyebrows across the country.
“It may surprise you to hear a Conservative bemoan the decline of private sector union membership,” said O'Toole. “But this was an essential part of the balance between what was good for business and what was good for employees. Today, that balance is dangerously disappearing. Too much power is in the hands of corporate and financial elites who have been only too happy to outsource jobs abroad.”
The speech said Canadian workers used to be able to expect full-time employment, a steady salary and a pension, but that now feels like a “bygone era.”
“Do we really want a nation of Uber drivers?” O'Toole said. “Do we really want to abandon a generation of Canadians to some form of Darwinian struggle? A future without the possibility of home ownership? A sense of inevitability? While some benefit, millions are losing hope and resentment is growing.”
He questioned Canada's trading relationship with China, and said his party will put more emphasis on the national interest. “Free markets alone won't solve all our problems,” O'Toole said.
Afterward, a panellist on CBC said O'Toole sounded more like Bernie Sanders than a Conservative leader. But the strategy behind O'Toole's comments is based in part on what's already worked in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, where right-wing parties have been picking up working class votes — and winning elections.
“Look, I think the writing has been on the wall for actually quite some time on this,” said Patrick Muttart, who was instrumental in shaping the campaign strategy for Harper's Conservatives in their string of victories from 2006 to 2011. He spoke with the National Post from London, England, where he now works in the private sector.
In 2005, Muttart started using intensive polling data to segment the Canadian population and pinpoint voters to target through tax breaks and tough-on-crime policies. But as he created an ideological map of Canadian voters, he found there was a “white space” made up of voters who are economically moderate or even left-leaning, but culturally conservative.
“They're not socialist, but they may have left-of-centre instincts on certain things, and are driven more by economic performance rather than economic ideology,” Muttart said.
“But they do tend to be quite culturally conservative in that they believe in the idea of Canadian identity, they believe in the idea of strong, controlled borders, they certainly believe that the justice system needs to be tough but fair,” Muttart said. “And they also have a problem with pervasive political correctness, cancel culture, those sorts of things.”
Muttart, who is not advising O'Toole, said Harper made some progress in recruiting these voters, but it wasn't a main focus.
“I think under Harper it was more about making traditional conservative economics relevant to the working class, or more white-collar middle class,” he said. “It was selling the agenda to this community. Whereas I think O'Toole is trying to do it the other way around. He's putting the voter group first and looking to build out policy from that, so the policy is relevant to them.”
Harper's message was centred on small government, free markets and free trade. Compare that to a video O'Toole released on Labour Day, where he promised a “Canada First” economic strategy that “fights for working Canadians.”
“The goal of economic policy should be more than just wealth creation,” O'Toole said in the video. “It should be solidarity and the wellness of families — and includes higher wages.”
A few big questions arise out of this. One of them is: who exactly are these voters? The “working class” is a very broad term, and some of the people O'Toole hopes to attract aren't necessarily in it.
At least one group of voters O'Toole is targeting are trades workers, such as people who belong to construction unions. As Conservatives sometimes point out, it's unionized workers who build the pipelines and natural resource projects championed by their party. But the party's stance against organized labour may be turning away people who would otherwise vote for them.
As one example, there are well over 50,000 construction workers belonging to LiUNA (Laborers' International Union of North America) in the Greater Toronto Area alone. When O'Toole talks about the importance of private sector unions — as opposed to teachers' unions or government workers — this is the type of worker he has in mind.
There are other voters in suburban areas that Conservative strategists believe they could pick up with a more moderate economic message, including in immigrant communities and among white-collar office workers in middle management. These are people who may be culturally conservative by temperament, but more skeptical about rigid free market ideology. Such compromises aren't completely new ground for the Conservatives; even under Harper, the party defended supply management in the dairy sector, for example.