Ready, willing and waiting
As Erin O'Toole takes stock of his first 100 days as Conservative leader, he is clear about one thing: It would not be “appropriate” to have an election in the middle of a health and economic crisis.
Canadians shouldn't head to the polls until the country has “rounded the corner” on the pandemic and its fiscal fallout, he said in a year-end interview with the National Post.
There are good reasons for the Conservative leader not charging his cavalry toward the guns. Public opinion polls suggest it would be a coin-toss whether the Liberals regain their majority, having won broad support for their handling of the pandemic — far and away the most important issue for voters.
If an election campaign kicked off tomorrow, the Liberals would enter it in better shape than they did in 2019, with a net positive approval rating. Meanwhile, O'Toole has failed to dent Justin Trudeau's personal appeal.
The Opposition leader landed in hot water this week when comments he made about the residential school system surfaced that seemed to suggest he believes the schools were designed to provide education, rather than assimilate Indigenous youth.
The comments provoked a social media storm and prompted the satirical news site The Beaverton to write that O'Toole had “somehow managed to surpass his predecessor, Andrew Scheer, in the all- important un-likeability category.”
In fact, the incident was an anomaly. O'Toole's personal favourability numbers are in positive terrain, if barely.
He has spent considerable energy consolidating his caucus and remains a relatively popular, stabilizing figure.
The residential schools comments were out of character for a leader who has been as cautious as a diamond cutter since his election, aware that he garnered the support of fewer than onethird of party members on the first ballot.
“Some of the criticism was valid,” he said. “I was a little too flippant and partisan on an issue that is very, very important and a sad chapter in our history … The Conservatives and the Liberals throughout our history have had a terrible record on this (residential schools).”
O'Toole said he is proud of how his team performed this fall, coming out of a leadership race in a pandemic. “It's been a crazy time but we've been united and quite professional.”
He pointed to motions on small business support, rapid tests and China policy that have forced the government to respond.
Yet these incremental shifts have gone all but unnoticed by voters.
There are some promising signs — for example, recognition that the party needs to find new support, in the form of its counter-intuitive pitch to “working families” and union members. “I need partners and union leaders want to build things as well. There's only one party that wants to keep their members working and that's the Conservative Party.”
There is also the prospect that, once the virus is contained, voters will survey the wreckage on the fiscal landscape and decide it's time for another party to rebuild the economy. O'Toole has said he will balance the budget within a decade of taking office, which is a firmer commitment than Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland's “fiscal guardrails.”
“She made up that term because she doesn't have a fiscal anchor,” said O'Toole.
Yet neither gambit is likely to pay off in time, if Trudeau precipitates an election next spring.
The potential breakthrough for the official Opposition was the prospect that the Trudeau government had botched vaccine supply and that Canadians would be looking on covetously, as Americans, Britons and even Mexicans were inoculated.
O'Toole said that Canada was “at the back of the line” and the government did little to dispute the charge — a rare occasion where the Liberals under-promised and subsequently over-delivered.
When vaccine was obtained, approved and distributed earlier this month, it left the Conservative leader open to the charge of political alarmism.
O'Toole denies crying wolf. “I think our pressure led to a better and faster response,” he said. “I knew our persistent pressure could lead to a small sample of vaccine coming early to help the government. That's great. That's the role of opposition, to push for a better, smarter, faster (response). I'm happy we have vaccine. I've said let's use this small sample to test our distribution systems.”
The Conservative leader also believes that his party's positioning on climate change persuaded Trudeau to roll out his carbon tax hike last week.
O'Toole said that in the debate on the net-zero emissions accountability act, Conservative critics made clear that the party is in favour of net-zero emissions by 2050, provided large-emitting industries can be protected. “Mr. Trudeau's tripling down on the carbon tax is a sign they know we are going to have a serious environmental policy at the next election,” he said.
O'Toole said he still views the carbon tax as “bad policy” that hits competitiveness in Ontario in particular. “We are bleeding jobs and investment to border states where there is no input tax for carbon,” he said.
But O'Toole knows that he needs more effective climate change policy than the fig leaf Scheer carried into last year's election, if he is to flip the suburbs that he claimed in the leadership race he was best placed to win.
He is obliged to heed those in his party and caucus hostile to climate-change-incurred costs. But new opportunities may be presented by a U.S. president-elect intent on investing $2 trillion in public transit, electric vehicles, carbon-free power and a border adjustment tax aimed at climate policy laggards.
O'Toole said Canada's climate change policy is currently “out of step” with the U.S., a big problem for integrated economies. “We have to be mindful of that,” he said.
But the same principle applies if and when the U.S. shifts gear on climate action.
The Conservative leader refuses to admit he is at a serious disadvantage to Trudeau when it comes to Joe Biden, who was invited to Ottawa for a state dinner during a December snowstorm in 2016, even after Donald Trump had been elected president. But, make no mistake, he is. The Liberal leader and the president-elect are unlikely to be out of step for long.
O'Toole sounds as if he is realistic about his place in the political firmament. He acknowledges that Canadians have “rallied around the flag” during the pandemic. “We've voted for many of the bills that have helped people, secured jobs and put the country first. That has been my mantra since I joined the military. At times of crisis, people come together,” he said.
But he said he sees early sprouts of green for his party — “or maybe I should say blue.”
Until voters feel secure enough about their health and economic situation to scan the landscape for alternatives, O'Toole is doing all any opposition leader can do in the circumstances: prepare and wait.
“I'm trying to position us as a government-in-waiting, professional and ready to lead and to build back after the pandemic,” he said.