O’TOOLE’S TIME TO SHINE
How new leader took Tory crown
‘To the millions of Canadians still up who I’m meeting for the first time: Good morning, I’m Erin O’Toole.” The new Conservative leader might have been exaggerating the size of his live audience, given he gave his victory address in the middle of the night. But he was more accurate in his acknowledgment that many voters couldn’t pick him out of a police lineup. One poll by Ipsos said more than two-thirds of Canadians did not know enough about O’Toole to form an opinion about him. The number was over 50 per cent even among Conservative voters.
The same poll said only seven per cent of respondents believe he can beat Justin Trudeau in an election that O’Toole admitted might come as soon as this fall.
However, the new leader is possessed of a rare self-assurance — and who can blame him, after defeating the more fancied Peter MacKay to the Conservative crown.
He didn’t just beat MacKay — he thumped him, taking 59 per cent of the votes and 57 per cent of the points available. There can be no complaints from losing candidates this time around.
Former Conservative staffer Regan Watts helped with MacKay’s debate preparation but was forced to concede that the O’Toole campaign outperformed the former justice minister’s team on every front — strategy, communications and fundraising — while the candidate himself ran a better race. “(O’Toole) won it fair and square,” he said.
While MacKay did not seem to know why he was running, beyond the fact the prize was there, O’Toole’s desire was palpable.
It brought to mind a vignette from Larry McMurtry’s sweeping western, Lonesome Dove, where the former Texas Rangers Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call are discussing leadership. “It ain’t complicated,” Gus maintained. “Most men doubt their own abilities. You don’t. It’s no wonder they want to keep you around.”
O’Toole never seemed to doubt his own abilities and, for now, he has been vindicated.
Most Conservative leaders become prime minster — 13 of the 20 party leaders since Confederation.
But, besides his inconspicuousness, O’Toole faces some formidable obstacles before he joins those exalted ranks.
For one thing, he owes his job to the supporters of social conservative candidates Leslyn Lewis and Derek Sloan, who flocked to his campaign in disproportionate numbers in order to keep the more openly moderate MacKay from the leadership.
As was the case with Andrew Scheer's election in 2017, the party is flush with members and cash. There is no groundswell to do things in radically different fashion.
MacKay was deemed by many to be proposing a break with the Stephen Harper era with his proposal to create “an inclusive, modern party with clear, modern policies.”
The appraisal by some that MacKay was not conservative enough is ironic, given his history as co-founder of the party. But to many party members, particularly in the West judging by the first ballot results, he was an unacceptable choice.
As “blue” Conservative candidates like John Baird declined to run, support coalesced around O'Toole as the “hedge play” — a candidate who might not win a general election but one who would not rip the party apart. While not flashy, he was not obnoxious to anyone.
MacKay won the support of 47 current MPs and 47 former MPs, including 15 ex-cabinet ministers. Yet, despite holding three of the most senior offices in the land during nearly a decade in cabinet, he could never shake the feeling that he was too “red.”
O'Toole, in turn, portrayed himself as a “true blue” Tory, pitching for second and third ballot support from social conservatives like Lewis and Sloan.
It worked like a charm, except that O'Toole is not a social conservative. In fact, the Campaign Life Coalition deems him a candidate who is “not supportable” because of his pro-choice beliefs and his willingness to march in gay-pride parades.
The two social conservative candidates garnered 40 per cent of the votes cast in the first ballot — CLC noted it recruited more than 26,000 members to support the Lewis and Sloan campaigns. There is an expectation of payback.
CLC president Jeff Gunnarson, said he expects O'Toole will ensure social conservative values will be represented as the party moves forward. “If he disrespects the tens of thousands of grassroots members who voted for Lewis and Sloan, he will definitely lose the next election,” he said.
O'Toole may be able to deflect Liberal blows over value issues more easily than Scheer, who could not disown his pro-life views.
In his witching hour speech, the new leader did his utmost to pivot from the menu of red meat he has been throwing to his more carnivorous supporters. Outgoing leader Scheer offered a mean little speech that decried “mainstream media bias” and the machinations of “establishment elites” — as if they, rather than his own deficiencies, were the reason he lost the last election.
Scheer advocated the “Conservative values and ideals that have stood the test of time” and an end to big government intervention, as if COVID is as much a chimera as he seems to believe climate change is.
By contrast, O'Toole appeared to grasp that we are at an extraordinary moment, where the old shibboleths no longer apply. Shrinking the size of government and balancing the budget, however desirable, are not feasible options at the moment.
A reset that spends public money wisely and productively is a more marketable proposition for the new leader. The public tends to trust the Liberals to make spending cuts for the same reason they often feel more comfortable with Conservatives opening the chequebook — they simply enjoy it less.
Yet too often, O'Toole appeared like an angry man yelling at clouds — prompting MacKay to ask him during one debate: “Why are you so angry?”
His plan to cut funding for CBC's English television service by 50 per cent, as the lead-up to privatization, likely won him support from MSM-hating Conservatives but it is less clear it will be popular among the less caffeinated.
Most who know him speak to O'Toole's affability, and it was that guy who claimed victory in the wee hours of Monday morning.
He said that opposition means more than just pointing out the failings of the Trudeau government, albeit he couldn't resist noting that the Liberals still tried to help their friends in the midst of a national crisis.
But he talked repeatedly about “rebuilding” Canada, which does not suggest an austerity program. He could do worse than borrow from Lewis's impressive performance, where she adopted an upbeat approach to issues like COVID and Black Lives Matter, presenting them as an opportunity to make everyone's lives better. She should be an essential part of O'Toole's team, if she can get herself elected.
The new leader was more unequivocal than at any point during the campaign about the need to build a broader coalition.
“Whether you are Black, white, brown or from any race or creed; whether you are LGBT or straight; whether you are Indigenous or joined the Canadian family three weeks ago or three generations ago; whether you are doing well or barely getting by; whether you worship on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday or not at all, you are an important part of Canada and you have a home in the Conservative Party of Canada,” he said. “It's time for many Liberal and NDP voters to socially distance themselves from those out-of-touch parties.”
O'Toole presented himself as someone who can provide the serious leadership the country needs, as it faces unprecedented challenges.
We are in a twilight period and it is hard to gauge how bleak things are going to get. What is clear is that there will be massive transition in large parts of our economy that are still protected by government subsidy, but which cannot be indefinitely.
I'm skeptical whether any of our current crop of political leaders are capable of rising to that challenge.
Yet O'Toole, like his great hero Winston Churchill, is in no doubt that the hour and the man have met.