By SHEILA COPPS

First published in The Hill Times on Monday, May 1, 2017.

OTTAWA—Kevin O’Leary is not the first business person to stare politics in the face, and back away.

And he most certainly won’t be the last.

The annals of history are littered with the remains of high rollers lured from business or academia for a short-lived political flirtation.

In some cases, defeat was inflicted by the electorate. Former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff had all the credentials of a winner.  

Bright, articulate, and photogenic, he was convinced to leave a prestigious job at Harvard University because political operatives convinced him he could be the next prime minister.

Like Ignatieff, O’Leary was living in the United States when he fell victim to the lure of politics.

He, too, had deep Canadian roots, and was convinced that his business background and pedigree as an outsider was enough to put him in the running to become the next prime minister of Canada.

Unlike Ignatieff, O’Leary had zero command of the French language, but he naively insisted this would have no effect on his leadership bid.
 
But after little more than three months on the hustings, O’Leary took a second look at his political standing and bowed out. In doing so, he left behind thousands of new Conservative members who had signed up on line with the expressed purpose of making him their next leader.

O’Leary was widely touted as the Donald Trump of the North. In Trump’s case, he parlayed his outsider status into a plus, surprising the pundits and the world by winning the American electoral college, and thus securing the presidency of the United States.

In O’Leary’s exit statement, he claimed that his reason for stepping down was that he could not see a clear path to victory against Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau.

With almost one-quarter of the country made up of francophones who would not appreciate his unilingualism, O’Leary decided to throw his support behind Quebecer Maxime Bernier.
 
Less than two months ago, the two were sparring partners, with Bernier accusing O’Leary of being “a tourist in Quebec” and arguing that you can’t “govern Italy without speaking Italian.”

Last week, the final numbers were in and Bernier was proved right. O’Leary knew exactly how many members he had recruited and realized that his supporters were not numerous enough to win the leadership.

So rather than lose, O’Leary dropped out, citing the electability factor and suggesting that he was doing the Conservative Party a favour by exiting the race instead of losing a national election.

Only three months ago, O’Leary was singing quite a different song. In his opening online statement, he was blunt:  “With the election of Donald Trump to our south, Canada’s largest trading partner is headed by a businessman with an aggressive strategy that could hurt the Canadian economy. Trudeau doesn’t stand a chance, and we deserve better.”

His time on the hustings must have given O’Leary an up-close and personal view of politics that few business people get to see.

The long hours, the countless rubber chicken dinners, the multiple coffee klatches with prospective delegates are a lot less sexy than getting powdered up for a televised edition of Dragon’s Den, or its American counterpart, Shark Tank.

In many respects, the job of a politician is much more demanding for much less money than most private sector ventures.

And O’Leary the business man is all about return on investment.

He discovered that political life is really a lot more difficult than most business people realize.

O’Leary’s parting claim that he was unlikely to beat Trudeau does not bode well for any Conservative leader.

With his notoriety, and business credentials, O’Leary might have become a formidable foil for the current prime minister.

Instead, the libertarian mantle has now been passed on to Bernier, who has a reputation as a smooth communicator with deep political roots in Quebec.

When it comes to policies, Bernier’s views are even more radical than O’Leary’s. Sell the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, dump supply management, and deny climate change are just a few of ultraconservative positions that Bernier espouses.

He does not believe government should ever give money to business, opposes equalization payments to have-not provinces, and believes most federal services should be decentralized.

His pared-down platform resonates with former O’Leary followers, and will probably propel Bernier to party victory.

But winning the country is another story. O’Leary revealed his decision to step down was based on the belief he could not beat Trudeau.

Bernier should heed O’Leary’s blunt analysis.

Canadians don’t elect extremists.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

By SHEILA COPPS

Published first on Monday, January 23, 2017 in The Hill Times.

OTTAWA—The politics of language and the language of politics are as Canadian as hockey.

Last week, the Liberals and Conservatives were both facing heat on Quebec’s hot-button language issue.  

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in trouble for speaking too much French, and Conservative candidate Kevin O’Leary for not speaking enough.

Both were defending their language choices for different reasons. Both faced the wrath that can only be unleashed by the politics of language in Canada.
 
Trudeau, in Sherbrooke, Que., on his cross-country tour, waded into the language issue, by answering all questions during the town hall debate in French, even those that were asked in English.

He prefaced his language switch with a comment in English that “since we’re in Quebec, I’ll respond in French.” Trudeau had obviously decided in advance to stick to the preferred language in every province.  

He spoke mostly English in provinces that are designated as unilingual English, and vice versa in Quebec. The only Canadian province designated bilingual is New Brunswick.

But federal language policy guarantees every Canadian the right to receive federal services in the language of their choice, regardless of where they live.

In pursuit of that right, at least two people have taken the prime minister to task by filing complaints with the official languages commissioner. Those complaints guarantee that this issue is not going to go away any time soon.

It also puts the prime minister in the enviable position of defending his use of the French language in Quebec. This politics of language may actually reinforce support amongst francophones who criticize Trudeau for not being French enough. With a francophone father and an anglophone mother, Trudeau is truly comfortable in both languages but has been denigrated publicly for thinking in English and being less  fluent in his father’s mother tongue.

Holding any political event in Quebec always puts the language issue under the spotlight. Had Trudeau simply responded in the language of the questioner, he might actually have spent more time speaking English, which could have caused a different kind of political flak.

His team obviously calculated that, in the long term, risking the ire of Quebec anglophones was less dangerous than appearing too English in Quebec. He does, however, run the risk of falling short on his avowed support for bilingualism.

If that ever-present language dilemma is all too complicated for politics, Trudeau has a less intractable problem than that of Conservative leadership candidate Kevin O’Leary.

The television host announced his candidacy the day after after the party’s only French-language debate so he could avoid exposing his ineptitude in Canada’s official Gallic tongue. Montreal-born O’Leary professes his love for Quebecers but doesn’t believe fluency in French is a sine quae non for political leadership.

His answer when questioned about the importance of French is that he speaks the language of jobs, and that is what Quebecers want to hear. But fellow Tory candidate and fluent French speaker Maxime Bernier challenged that contention during another recent debate. “Sure, Quebecers are happy to speak English to tourists. But that doesn’t mean you can govern Italy without speaking Italian.”

With one-quarter of the delegates to the Conservative leadership coming from Quebec ridings, mastery of French is a must. Seventeen years older than Trudeau, O’Leary grew up in a different time. But O’Leary attended school in Quebec, and even credits McGill University with curing his dyslexia. The fact that a native son cannot even speak the majority language is puzzling.

And to assume that his inability to speak French is a non-issue reflects a deep  misunderstanding of Quebec and Canadian politics. O’Leary’s refusal to acknowledge the importance of fluency is a political mistake of gargantuan proportions. Perhaps the reality that the candidate has spent most of his adult life living outside the country has distorted his political judgment.

Even before O’Leary entered the race, fellow candidate and former minister Chris Alexander put the issue bluntly. “One cannot understand Canada and one cannot prepare to govern Canada without understanding Quebec,” said Alexander, a former Immigration minister.

Now that O’Leary is officially in the race, language will loom large in Conservative conversations over the next few months.

Trudeau made a mistake in not responding to a question in the town hall participant’s language of choice. But his language problem pales in comparison with that of O’Leary.  

For a native-born Quebecer to speak too much French in his home province is explicable. To speak no French at all is not.
 
Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era Cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

By SHEILA COPPS

Published first on Monday, January 9, 2017 in The Hill Times.

OTTAWA—Lisa Raitt’s campaign to stop Kevin O’Leary was brilliant.

It vaulted her to the front of the news cycle during a January political lull. It also set her up as a foil to the Trump-like tendencies of some of the Blue Tories who are already in the race or thinking of joining.

It would be folly to assume that Raitt does not want O’Leary in the race.

A good part of her message last week targeted Kellie Leitch, and the controversial proposed citizenship test of Canadian values.

Raitt needs O’Leary in the race to split the Blue Tory vote.

If that sounds complicated, two voting rules guarantee a campaign roller coaster ride in the months leading up to the May vote.

First, the Tories have adopted preferential balloting, which means that voters will actually rank their preferred candidates.

Ironically, that same system was one of the options proposed to replace the first-past-the-post general election vote, without much support from the Conservative Party.

The new system means the winner may not be the first choice of the greatest number of voters, but rather the second choice of the majority.

If this sounds complicated, it is one of the reasons that most people exit the conversation when the subject of electoral reform is broached.

But the peregrinations are compelling for political animals who follow leadership conventions with the same passion the rest of us reserve for hockey championships.

The greater the number of leadership candidates, the more Raitt needs to divide the vote in order to come up the middle. 

In other words, she needs the blunt force trauma that O’Leary’s candidacy would ignite to limit the potential migration of Blue Con votes to Leitch.

During multiple press appearances, Raitt spent more time railing on Leitch than on O’Leary, reinforcing her real intent in launching the Stop O’Leary website.

The site will also permit her supporters to get immediate access to email data of potential Conservative voters who don’t align with the values of O’Leary, and coincidentally, Leitch.

Raitt’s team followed up her press appearances with the purchase of a pop-up ad on social media flagging the Stop O’Leary website on all national news apps.

That data mining will be golden in recruiting more members and mobilizing an anti-O’Leary movement with the hopes of converting it to a pro-Raitt force.

The second element that makes the Raitt strategy so smart is the party’s decision to give equal electoral weight to every riding in the country, regardless of the number of registered Tories entitled to vote.

Raitt is one of only two Conservative candidates with ties to Atlantic Canada. She was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia to a family which shared a passion for business and unions. That could explain her visceral reaction to an O’Leary vow that, if in government, he would outlaw unions.

The other Conservative with Atlantic roots is fellow Ontario contender Erin O’Toole. He served in Shearwater and attended law school in Halifax during his career in the armed forces as a regular and reservist.

Even though the Tories were wiped out in Atlantic Canada in the last election, they have deep roots and strong provincial organizations in every province.

East coast ridings have as much weight as vote-rich Alberta, so anyone who can sweep Atlantic Canada has a good chance of being toward the front of the pack on voting day May 27.

Raitt’s bold move will allow her to recruit Red Tories who have a deep connection to the party and do not want to see it go down the same path as the Republican extremism south of the border.

Many Atlantic Conservatives yearn for the time when they used to be progressive, and there are plenty of Tory icons, from Flora MacDonald to John Crosbie, who never supported the Conservatives’ shift to the right under Stephen Harper.

Raitt is banking on social media technology and new recruitment techniques, to swell Red Tory, anti-O’Leary ranks within the party with online recruitment. In so doing, she is well-positioned to become everyone’s second choice.

That is where the likeability factor can have an influence

The risk in launching such a public attack on O’Leary and Leitch is that Raitt may bruise her reputation for likeability.

It requires a delicate balance to trash colleagues with a smile.

If she succeeds in establishing herself as the most viable progressive Conservative choice, she may be able to eclipse the neo-cons in the race.

Raitt’s move is a political game changer.

 
Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era Cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.