Big win for PM, but no political panacea

Afree trade deal linking Canada and Europe, even in the absence of a final text, is a historic win for the federal Conservative party and for Prime Minister Stephen Harper personally. It could not have come at a better time, from a Tory political perspective. Nevertheless it may not be enough to get the governing party reelected in two years’ time. The reason is Canada’s newly monochromatic political culture, in which everyone agrees, more or less, about everything that matters.

It has been intriguing to observe the shakeout since Friday, when the Harper government unveiled details of its Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, which represents the culmination of every argument Conservatives like to make about their brand. In a nutshell, most everyone’s happy with the deal. Granted, Unifor, the country’s largest trade union, is disgruntled; left-leaning website rabble. ca is displeased; the Council of Canadians is concerned. In the nether regions of Twitter, the tinfoil helmet set is girding for war. But in the political mainstream? It’s steady as she goes, punctuated by yawns.

“We are broadly supportive of CETA, though we have yet to see its details, as this is only an agreement in principle,” Liberal leader Justin Trudeau said in a statement.

“However, CETA stands to remove trade barriers, widely expand free trade between Canada and the European Union, and increase opportunity for the middle class.”

In 1988, you may recall, then-Liberal leader John Turner made a jihad of his opposition to free trade with the United States. In the federal election that year he criss-crossed the country like Chicken Little. Our culture would vanish, he warned; our way of life would disappear. But Turner lost. North American free trade arrived and Canada flourished. Between 1993 and 2008, Canadian merchandise exports to the U.S. grew at a compounded annual rate of more than six per cent, while the value of two-way trade in services more than doubled, creating some four million net new jobs, according to federal government data. And the country’s identity is stronger now than ever.

That liberalized trade spurs growth and creates jobs, thus raising general living standards, is no longer a subject of serious debate. It’s a given. That’s probably why the New Democratic party’s tune has also changed, quite dramatically, since those old debates. “New Democrats welcome progress toward a comprehensive new trade agreement with the European Union,” said the party’s trade critic, Don Davies, in reaction to the CETA news. “The NDP has long maintained that Canada should have deeper economic relations with the European Union, democratic countries with some of the highest environmental and labour standards in the world.” If there were ever an opportunity for the NDP to make a clear break with its old, stridently anti-trade roots, this was it. It seized it.

This isn’t to say the federal government gets an absolutely free ride on CETA between now and 2015; but the criticism will be worlds apart from that faced by Brian Mulroney in the ’80s and early ’90s, in that it will concern edits, revisions and proposed improvements. No one wants to rip this one up. And if CETA is followed in short order by accords with India, Japan and the TPP, points of contention will dwindle further. Liberalized trade will be the new normal.

Why is this not necessarily the electoral fairy dust the Conservatives wish it to be? First because, in its very broad-based reasonableness (based on my reading of the document Opening New Markets in Europe — an overview) and desirability, free trade with Europe is an atypical Harper Conservative issue. Unlike, say, a “wasteful and ineffective” federal long-gun registry, it creates no wedges. It is not a basegalvanizing issue. It would only become one if the Liberal and New Democrats were opposed, which they fundamentally won’t be, as the deal moves ahead.

Reason two, related to the first; with this agreement, Canada has moved even more firmly into its strange, postpolitical phase. Each of the three major parties is now vying single-mindedly for the same centre-right suburban swing voters — people who form no party’s base and have the demographic muscle to determine the outcome in 2015. This is having a levelling effect and creating, bizarrely, consensus politics, in the most bitterly partisan House of Commons anyone can remember. Name any major issue: The three main parties are singing variants of a single melody, not different tunes.

This unanimity is no friend to the Conservatives because, as policy converges, the race comes down to tone, as I have argued previously. Both Justin Trudeau and Opposition leader Tom Mulcair are positioning their parties as potential inheritors of CETA, rather than its disassemblers. That makes this deal, grand Conservative achievement though it is, uniquely vulnerable to theft. It won’t be enough for Harper and his MPs to chirp “jobs, jobs, jobs” from now till 2015. They will need to address their political problems — which will remain, after CETA moves to Page 23 of the business section.