Nobody knows — maybe not even the prime minister — whether he will lead the Conservatives into the next election.
Since April of 2013, when Justin Trudeau won the Liberal leadership, he has been ahead of Stephen Harper in the polls. Trailing politicians always point out that the only polls that matter are the ones on election day, but such blithe assurances often conceal stomach-curdling anxiety.
Harper may have a secret plan to win the next election, or to avoid being bested by young Trudeau at the ballot box, he may declare victory and pass the reins sometime in the next 12 months.
He can’t signal his intentions, though, since his restive backbenchers and ambitious cabinet ministers would start grandstanding and straining at the leashes held by Harper’s minions.
To prevent that, Harper is signalling firmly that he’s in control, rallying his team behind him by lashing out at his opponents.
A new phase started last week, before the Liberals met in Montreal, when Defence Minister Rob Nicholson sent out two uncharacteristically partisan statements attacking former general Andrew Leslie — who has signed on as a Trudeau adviser — for $72,000 in moving expenses when he left the Canadian Forces.
During the convention, Trudeau appeared on Quebec’s Tout Le Monde En Parle, making a stupid joke about how the situation in Ukraine was “even more worrying now that Russia lost in hockey and will be in a bad mood.”
The Tories pounced, sending out links to the interview and savaging Trudeau, which was fair enough, until he eventually, sensibly, apologized.
But when the government sent a delegation to Ukraine for talks with the fragile new coalition government there, the Conservatives pettily refused to let NDP or Liberal MPs to go along.
When Liberal MP Marc Garneau asked in the House what message this sent to the Ukrainians about multi-party democracy, David Anderson, a Conservative parliamentary secretary, said the Liberals treat Ukraine like a joke and the NDP refused to pick sides. A statement from the Prime Minister’s Office made the same ugly points.
Harper won points for statesmanship when he invited opposition MPs and former prime ministers with him to Nelson Mandela’s funeral. He deserves to lose those points for this petty nonsense.
On Thursday, the Aga Khan, hereditary leader of the world’s Ismaili Muslims, addressed Parliament at the invitation of the government, telling MPs about the value of pluralism.
Opposition MPs complained, though, that they couldn’t get tickets for the big government-organized Aga Khan event at Toronto’s Massey Hall on Friday.
This week we also learned that Conservative MP Mark Adler, showing no class or sense, intervened to prevent Liberal MP Irwin Cotler from attending a Canadian reception during Harper’s trip to Israel.
It’s clear the government is trying to use foreign policy to connect with key voting groups in advance of the election, and it doesn’t want to share the spotlight with opposition MPs when it does so.
There’s something cheap about this, and you have to wonder if the Tories don’t risk outsmarting themselves.
The Conservatives managed to win a majority government in 2011 based largely on their patient wooing of ethnic groups that the Liberals had long taken for granted.
In the Chretien era, the Liberals succeeded —often quite unfairly — in painting the Reform Party as a party of rednecks.
When Harper became prime minister in 2006, he made Jason Kenney the minister of multiculturalism and immigration, and sent him glad-handing in banquet halls across the country.
The government worked hard to connect with Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Jews, Italians, Ukrainians, Poles and Hindus, offering better access to ethnic journalists, for instance, than parliamentary journalists enjoy.
In 2011, the Conservatives reaped what they had patiently sown, making significant advances. An Ipsos Reid exit poll showed the Tories won 28 per cent of the vote of immigrants who had arrived in Canada more than 10 years ago, which is pretty good for a party with a rural, western base.
The Liberals had a big advantage with Muslims, and the NDP did best with newer immigrants and visible minorities, but the Tories were winning with many groups — they got 52 per cent of the Jewish vote, for example — or losing by a lot less, which is almost as good.
Now it appears that, like the Liberals before them, the Tories are trying to make their message of incumbency into a message of sole legitimacy, which looks creepy.
One of the encouraging things about the Conservatives’ success with ethnic voters over the past decade is that it showed that multiculturalism is a Canadian value, not a Liberal value, which is what the Liberals had long pretended.
The Conservatives are not the only party that can represent Ukrainians, Jews or Ismaili Muslims, or any other group for that matter, and if they spend too much time insisting that they are, they’re going to look like authoritarian weirdos.
Original Article
Source: canada.com/
Author: STEPHEN MAHER
Since April of 2013, when Justin Trudeau won the Liberal leadership, he has been ahead of Stephen Harper in the polls. Trailing politicians always point out that the only polls that matter are the ones on election day, but such blithe assurances often conceal stomach-curdling anxiety.
Harper may have a secret plan to win the next election, or to avoid being bested by young Trudeau at the ballot box, he may declare victory and pass the reins sometime in the next 12 months.
He can’t signal his intentions, though, since his restive backbenchers and ambitious cabinet ministers would start grandstanding and straining at the leashes held by Harper’s minions.
To prevent that, Harper is signalling firmly that he’s in control, rallying his team behind him by lashing out at his opponents.
A new phase started last week, before the Liberals met in Montreal, when Defence Minister Rob Nicholson sent out two uncharacteristically partisan statements attacking former general Andrew Leslie — who has signed on as a Trudeau adviser — for $72,000 in moving expenses when he left the Canadian Forces.
During the convention, Trudeau appeared on Quebec’s Tout Le Monde En Parle, making a stupid joke about how the situation in Ukraine was “even more worrying now that Russia lost in hockey and will be in a bad mood.”
The Tories pounced, sending out links to the interview and savaging Trudeau, which was fair enough, until he eventually, sensibly, apologized.
But when the government sent a delegation to Ukraine for talks with the fragile new coalition government there, the Conservatives pettily refused to let NDP or Liberal MPs to go along.
When Liberal MP Marc Garneau asked in the House what message this sent to the Ukrainians about multi-party democracy, David Anderson, a Conservative parliamentary secretary, said the Liberals treat Ukraine like a joke and the NDP refused to pick sides. A statement from the Prime Minister’s Office made the same ugly points.
Harper won points for statesmanship when he invited opposition MPs and former prime ministers with him to Nelson Mandela’s funeral. He deserves to lose those points for this petty nonsense.
On Thursday, the Aga Khan, hereditary leader of the world’s Ismaili Muslims, addressed Parliament at the invitation of the government, telling MPs about the value of pluralism.
Opposition MPs complained, though, that they couldn’t get tickets for the big government-organized Aga Khan event at Toronto’s Massey Hall on Friday.
This week we also learned that Conservative MP Mark Adler, showing no class or sense, intervened to prevent Liberal MP Irwin Cotler from attending a Canadian reception during Harper’s trip to Israel.
It’s clear the government is trying to use foreign policy to connect with key voting groups in advance of the election, and it doesn’t want to share the spotlight with opposition MPs when it does so.
There’s something cheap about this, and you have to wonder if the Tories don’t risk outsmarting themselves.
The Conservatives managed to win a majority government in 2011 based largely on their patient wooing of ethnic groups that the Liberals had long taken for granted.
In the Chretien era, the Liberals succeeded —often quite unfairly — in painting the Reform Party as a party of rednecks.
When Harper became prime minister in 2006, he made Jason Kenney the minister of multiculturalism and immigration, and sent him glad-handing in banquet halls across the country.
The government worked hard to connect with Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Jews, Italians, Ukrainians, Poles and Hindus, offering better access to ethnic journalists, for instance, than parliamentary journalists enjoy.
In 2011, the Conservatives reaped what they had patiently sown, making significant advances. An Ipsos Reid exit poll showed the Tories won 28 per cent of the vote of immigrants who had arrived in Canada more than 10 years ago, which is pretty good for a party with a rural, western base.
The Liberals had a big advantage with Muslims, and the NDP did best with newer immigrants and visible minorities, but the Tories were winning with many groups — they got 52 per cent of the Jewish vote, for example — or losing by a lot less, which is almost as good.
Now it appears that, like the Liberals before them, the Tories are trying to make their message of incumbency into a message of sole legitimacy, which looks creepy.
One of the encouraging things about the Conservatives’ success with ethnic voters over the past decade is that it showed that multiculturalism is a Canadian value, not a Liberal value, which is what the Liberals had long pretended.
The Conservatives are not the only party that can represent Ukrainians, Jews or Ismaili Muslims, or any other group for that matter, and if they spend too much time insisting that they are, they’re going to look like authoritarian weirdos.
Original Article
Source: canada.com/
Author: STEPHEN MAHER
No comments:
Post a Comment