The most reasonable Opposition leader in the upcoming Parliament is an avowed separatist who would very much love to break up the country. The other two federalist opposition parties on the other hand are being silly, on the part of the NDP, and acting more like the Bloc Quebecois of old in the case of the Conservatives. I guess that would qualify the current political scene as wacky.
Of course the two federalists parties are doing this because they have very serious problems that they are trying to distract people from examining too closely.
In the case of the NDP, they have been reduced to the fourth party in Parliament and they are desperate to appear relevant. So Mr. Singh talks big, like the mouse that roared. There are two possibilities for why Mr. Singh is appearing so belligerent.
One reason put forward by many is he is inexperienced and a lousy tone deaf politician who does not realize just how irrelevant he is.
The second possibility is Mr. Singh notices the parallels between the NDP election platform and the Liberal election platform. So he will make all sorts of noise about voting against the Throne Speech now so that when the Throne Speech contains alot of promises similar to the ones pushed by the NDP he can "grudgingly" vote for it and claim that it was his tough stance that "forced" the Liberals to make those promises. It really is one of the oldest tricks in the book in minority government situations. Of course, it would be BS but our media would not point that out and the NDP would seem relevant for a short time. Unfortunately, it would only work once and only on a aspirational document like a Throne Speech. Once it came down to the nitty-gritty details, following the passing of the Throne Speech, recklessly taking a tough stance would risk an election that the NDP certainly does not want.
So which is it? Is Mr. Singh a fool or is he pursuing a canny strategy to give the perception that the NDP "wins" an early victory in the new Parliament? We will know in a few weeks.
Mr. Scheer knows that his leadership is on the line and you can already see the outlines of a strategy for him to hang onto it. He is going to join the Premiers of Saskberta in their bitching about what a raw deal they are getting from Canada so that he can sew up the votes of Conservatives in those provinces. He will also continue to cultivate the social conservatives in Central Canada to push him over the 50% he will need in April. And that will be a victory for him in his mind. If he wins 50% +1 he will call it a victory and stay on as leader, even though such a result would indicate a deeply divided Conservative Party.
Such a strategy has a good shot of succeeding because there is no obvious successor to him besides Mr. Mackay.
Mr. Kenney is the premier of a province where Conservative governments have been rogering ordinary Albertans for more than 50 years and where those same ordinary Albertans always say "Thank you sir, can I have some more?" Mr. Kenney has the power to exercise his ideological Conservative instincts with virtual impunity for the next four to eight years and I find it very unlikely that he will give that up for a less than 50/50 chance to become PM of a government that would have to be much less Conservative because of the nature of running a country as culturally and geographically diverse as Canada. He would have to water down his Conservatism as PM where he can keep it in its pure form as Premier of Alberta. As well, his statements and actions against Eastern Canada is making him more unelectable by the week in Eastern Canada. If he keeps this up for the next six months, his chances of becoming the PM would likely be much reduced even if he were to win the Conservative Party leadership.
Mr. Ford is the Premier of Canada's biggest and richest province. If he were to run as leader of the Federal Conservative Party he would have to give that up. Running Ontario is too big of a job to be done part-time, even for just a few months. Again I cannot see him doing that for a less than 50/50 chance of being PM. He is becoming increasingly toxic in Ontario which is exactly the province where the Conservatives have to make a breakthrough in order to win an election. Like Mr. Kenney, he has a good thing going in Ontario and he is the favourate to win the next election in Ontario. His government will lose seats for certain but probably not enough to remove him from government.
In the case of both of these men it may be a case of a "bird in hand being worth more than two in the bush."
So that leaves who? Mr. Mackay, Ms. Mulroney, Mr. Chong?
If Mr. Scheer is removed and one of them wins the outrage in Western Canada towards the Conservative Party would be quite the sight to see. That might make the nascent Wexit Party a force in the next election. The irony of the Conservative Party of Canada being kneecapped by a new "Reform" Party would be funny. The irony of Mr. Mackay being shafted by another "Reform" Party again would be delicious.
Then again, if Mr. Scheer's strategy succeeds it will only be after Canadians have watched him play head cheer leader to the Kenney and Moe show, for six months, which will reduce the Conservatives chances of making the needed breakthrough in Ontario and points East during the next election. So, he might hang onto to the leadership but at the price of severely damaging the electoral chances of the Conservative during the next election.
Personally I believe he will hang onto his job for one big reason. Mr. Harper takes politics personally. He was greatly disappointed in losing to a Trudeau in 2015. The apparent front-runner for the CPC if Mr. Scheer is removed is Mr. Mackay, Mr. Harper's main rival for the leadership of the Conservative Party when it was formed. I would hazard a guess that Mr. Harper still believes the Conservative Party is his party, as it has been since its inception 15 years ago. His fingerprints were all over the Conservative Party platform during the last election and I believe he would not be pleased to see Mr. Mackay take over "his" party. The reason would largely be personal but as well, unlike Mr. Scheer, Mr. Mackay cannot be trusted to maintain the purity of the Harper brand of Conservatism. He might just change it so that it will no longer be the Harper Party. So, it would not surprise me that behind the scenes Harper operatives are working to assist Mr. Scheer in his goal of maintaining the party leadership.
Minority government always lead to wackiness in Canadian politics as the various parties try to adjust to the new reality. So far the two federalist opposition parties are the ones showing the most strain in making that adjustment while the governing Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois seem to be taking it in stride. That could change in the coming months, which can happen in a minority government, so the next few months will be interesting to watch.
2 comments:
But MacKay was rewarded with a spot as Deputy PM under Harper for his betrayal of David Orchard and the PCs. I could be wrong but that would seem to me like MacKay was being groomed as Harper's successor until the upset victory from Trudeau in 2015. So that would seem to indicate that if Scheer has been such a disappointment, Harper might be clearing the path for his heir apparent. The cons must figure they can run a blue painted rock even if it's more palatable to what remains of the "Laurentian" PCs, because they have the prairie cult vote locked in. I don't see Wexit going anywhere even with Kenney's surreptitious blessing and Manning's money, because the organizers are so spectacularly incompetent. The PPC was supposed to be the new Reform but then fizzled out as a dud.
Another point in MacKay's column is that there is talk, apparently, of Trudeau being met with a concerted effort to appoint Freeland as deputy PM and perhaps even to run as leader in the next election against MacKay. She has, for some time now, been thought of as Trudeau's eventual successor down the road, but nobody expected the damage to his "brand" to come so early in his tenure. If the Liberals think they, too, have a better chance with a fresh face -- and a female one at that, particularly as the U.S. again gears up for the possibility of its first female president in Elizabeth Warren -- that could be a sign that Trudeau is on his way to an early exit. Two terms, like his friend Obama, despite Canada not having term limits. Reluctant but gracious nonetheless.
A Freeland in the leadership post could mean the Conservatives back off of MacKay and opt for someone like Michelle Rempel or even Caroline Mulroney (not Hollywood Ben as some idiotic Sun columnist floated about), despite the latter's association with the toxic Ford and the former being well known as a gun nut, a Fox News gadfly and a habitual Twitter blocker. But at least she doesn't hate gay people, apparently, so that's "progress" if you're a conservative.
The concern I would have if I were the Liberals is that women do not tend to do well in leadership posts in Canada despite ostensible progress and Trudeau's well-stated position that he wants Canada to be a feminist country. Trudeau might then face a dilemma: that he, personally, does not want to see the Liberals lose to the Conservatives if the polling shows he has become too much of a lightning rod to carry them through, but doesn't want Freeland to be set up to fail the way Mulroney Sr. threw Kim Campbell under the bus in 1993.
Freeland is also often talked up by the NDP as a "war criminal" personally spearheading some of Canada's foreign policy initiatives that they don't like. Trudeau seems like the type to fall on his sword (an actual chivalrous knight who walks the talk), and probably would not want to see Freeland face the same evisceration by purist progressives as Hillary Clinton did against Bernie Sanders espousing the same rhetoric. "Crooked Chrystia" even rolls off the tongue better. I hope she doesn't have a personal email account.
Again, all of this is speculation well far off into the future. But I have a feeling that there is a distinct possibility all the parties might have new faces in the next election (even the NDP), except for the Quebec separatists themselves. Then again, if things stabilize or improve for the Liberals after a bruising past year, and Trudeau's strategy of more or less avoiding the hostile media pays off for him, all this talk could be moot.
Stephen Harper did not have a deputy PM throughout his time in power. I remember how many commentators expressed surprise in that fact. Mr. Harper was a control freak and he did not want anyone else in a position to build a power base within the Party or Caucus. He made Mr. Mackay Deputy Leader and gave him a very prestigious cabinet post during this first term as a sop to the remaining Progressive Conservatives that stuck with the new Conservative Party of Canada. Stephen Harper wanted and needed them for a time while he was consolidating the Reform Party takeover of the PCPC. When he was no longer useful Mr. Mackay was shuffled to Defence which is where political ambitions go to die in Canada. Mr. Harper does not want Mr. Mackay to be leader of the CPC for the reasons I stated. He has a nice puppet in Andrew Scheer and I believe he will be working to keep him there.
I doubt Mr. Trudeau is going anywhere. He won a second term by trouncing the Conservatives, only being denied a majority by the Bloc. The Liberals are in good shape to win a third. Ms. Freeland may be the probable successor for the Leader of the Party but that will not be for some time.
My guess is, with the exception of Ms. May, all of the current political party leaders will be fighting the next election.
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