O’Toole a welcome contrast to Trudeau

New Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole is a nice guy. As evidenced by the very early days of his leadership, he’s a forthright man with a friendly demeanour.

O’Toole isn’t the kind of man who would, say, lie about being friends with someone important, someone his government gives money to, in order to have a luxury vacation on that “friend’s” island. He isn’t the kind of man who would pretend to be one thing when he’s not by punishing a member of the opposite sex for insisting that he not interfere with the law. Nor, for that matter, does O’Toole seem like a man who repeatedly applies dark polish to his face for kicks.

Which is to say that Erin O’Toole is no Justin Trudeau. And while that might have counted as a liability at any time between 2015 and early 2019, it is now an asset. Or, as O’Toole put it: “The world still needs more Canada; it just needs less Justin Trudeau.”

Indeed, contrasting O’Toole’s plain-speaking and quintessentially Canadian decency against Trudeau’s growing mendacity could be a winning approach. And if mendacious seems too strong a word to describe Trudeau these days, please consider the prime minister’s behaviour over the past weeks.

Remember the sincere-sounding guy who promised, when running for the job of prime minister, to never shut Parliament down to avoid scrutiny? Well, that guy just shut ’er down. In the midst of a pandemic and global recession. In the middle of a scandal about money spent during that pandemic. Just after his finance minister resigned for doing largely what he did in that scandal. But only after ritually humiliating his minister by leaking stories about him in the press. Move over Frank Underwood, there’s a new villain in town.

And that’s before we consider how the husband of the prime minister’s chief of staff stuck his nose in places it shouldn’t be during the early days of the coronavirus crisis, allegedly lobbying the now ex-finance minister for corporate favours, despite not listing himself in the lobbying registry (something the lobbying commissioner is now looking into). From the top of this government to its swelling bottom, we’re a long way gone from the sunny ways of yore.

Even Trudeau’s supposed acts of transparency belch out smoke now, as evidenced by the recent WE Charity document dump. Instead of the documents confirming the Trudeau narrative, as the government insists they do, they shred it.

Remember how Trudeau said he pulled WE from the cabinet agenda on May 8 because he wanted assurances about the choice of WE as a partner? Documents released by the Treasury Board reveal a public service panicking that the Canada Student Service Grant wasn’t “fully cooked,” i.e. ready for cabinet sign-off. Indeed, other than WE as the delivery vehicle, nothing else was nailed down in time for its rendezvous with cabinet. The item had to be pulled.

The same goes for the government’s story about the public service coming up with the idea of WE as the delivery partner. The documents reveal it was multiple ministers’ offices which were pushing WE, and that WE had reached into the Prime

Minister’s Office for “assistance” with timelines before cabinet made its decision.

But forget the details. The point is that Trudeau went to testify at the finance committee knowing all of the above, and then told the public nothing about any of it. Instead, the man welcomed as a hero by the public service when he became prime minister spent 90 minutes hiding behind his bureaucrats. Mendacious, indeed.

The challenge for O’Toole is that Trudeau will double down and buy his way out of his troubles, and he will do it under the mantle of “building back better.” And despite Trudeau’s many personal stumbles, a plurality of Canadians still believe in his party and response to COVID-19.

O’Toole will therefore have to win on substance, not style. But by being forthright in his criticisms of the recovery program and civil in his delivery of them, O’Toole will get himself slotted into the conversation, and that’s a start. It is the time for mature adults, not mendacious politics.

Andrew MacDougall is a London-based communications consultant and ex-director of communications to former prime minister Stephen Harper.