If the Conservatives would ever like to see another PM among their ranks, they need to understand the road to victory involves reaching out to 37 million people, not 73 caucus members.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on February 7, 2022.

OTTAWA—Seventy-three people were able to vote out a leader who was chosen by 100,000 Conservatives. This is democracy?

Conservative leader Erin O’Toole’s departure was as hasty as it was dramatic. And in a touch of irony, the author of the private member’s bill that prompted O’Toole’s demise was one of the few people fighting for the leader to stay.

Michael Chong introduced his private member’s bill, designed to give more power to individual parliamentarians, in 2013. Everyone lined up in favour of the legislation in the belief that empowering members would lead to better leadership.

But in a bizarre twist for this strange law, each party is allowed to opt in to the system, or not, at the beginning of each Parliament.

Not surprisingly, the Conservative party was the only one dumb enough to sign on to a piece of legislation which is guaranteed to create chaos for any opposition leader.

The Conservatives have cycled through six leaders in six years, and O’Toole took them closest to power. His popular vote victory didn’t help much because so much of the weight in numbers came from provinces that could never yield a majority.

And O’Toole failed to make a breakthrough in two key provinces that are crucial for election victory, Ontario and Quebec.

O’Toole, an Ontario member, understood that the failure to make sufficient gains in that province was based on the extreme viewpoints taken by many of his team on social issues like abortion.

After the election, he moved quickly to reposition the party by supporting legislation banning gender therapy conversion in the first session of Parliament.

As for the Quebec vote, his Conservative caucus in that province was verbally supporting the legislation on Broadcasting Act amendments at the same time that Tory fundraisers were out trashing the legislation to buck up their coffers.

The bifurcation in the party was not caused by O’Toole. It was prompted by a party schism that has only been exacerbated because of his departure.

Deputy leader Candice Bergen, who enjoyed coffee with the truckers while the occupation of Ottawa’s downtown core was underway, is a well-known opponent of a woman’s right to control her own body.

It was no accident that she was the only leader to neglect to thank O’Toole in the House of Commons for his work as a four-term parliamentarian, until reminded by the prime minister.

Bergen is part of the right wing of O’Toole’s party who will guarantee that they lose the next election because of their refusal to embrace political moderation.

In the hours following O’Toole’s departure, most blame was aimed at the leader’s inability to manage the caucus and to keep people happy.

Negative comparisons were made with previous leaders like prime minister Brian Mulroney who managed to keep his troops onside even when his own popularity numbers were dipping into the teens.

But that comparison is not a valid one. Mulroney was operating from the prime minister’s chair, first among equals. And with that job comes many opportunities to reward and punish internally.

Mulroney also did not face the crazy Chong legislation that could hit any leader on a bad day. The ousters were working for weeks to collect the requisite number of 35 signatures to trigger a caucus vote.

One of them, Pierre Poilievre, is already being touted as a front-runner to replace O’Toole. He is squarely in the camp of the “stinking albatrosses” that former leadership candidate Peter MacKay characterized as the reason for the party’s failure to launch.

Unlike O’Toole, who embraced diversity in supporting the LGBTQ community, Poilievre actually once introduced a private member’s bill to ban health-care funding for transgender individuals, even though the issue is not federal jurisdiction. Other putative candidates include another social conservative, Leslyn Lewis.

But both of them will push the party further to the right.

Those 73 members who booted O’Toole out may not like his message. But upon his departure, he gave a speech which was a potential road map to victory.

The party could win by embracing diversity. The secret of success for leaders like Brian Mulroney was to embrace the Progressives in his party as well as the Conservatives.

As long as there is no place for progressive politics within the party, the Conservatives have zero chance of forming the government.

Instead of dumping O’Toole, the caucus should have heeded his message. Because the road to victory involves reaching out to 37 million people, not 73 caucus members.

Conservatives who are not progressive just won’t cut it.

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

Fiscal conservatism may be a Tory badge of honour, but Erin O’Toole’s challenge is to reach Canadians in the moderate middle.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on September 7, 2020.

OTTAWA—You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Erin O’Toole should have remembered that last week.

O’Toole has won the Conservative leadership. It is now his job to win the country. The decision to attack the Canada Emergency Response Benefit was downright dumb. It cast O’Toole in the image of a born-again tight Tory.

“Tory times are tough times” is a refrain that has haunted the party since forever. Fiscal conservatism may be a Tory badge of honour, but the O’Toole challenge is to reach beyond those members.

Most Canadians find themselves in the moderate middle. The current government has seen its popularity grow because of a robust financial response to an unprecedented pandemic. But in his first post-convention interview, O’Toole attacked the CERB, saying it undermined the employer wage subsidy program set up at the same time.

The amount of money paid out to unemployed Canadians was only $500 a week, but O’Toole felt it undermined employers who might have otherwise wanted to keep their employees on.

That interview reinforced the impression that the Conservative leader will be there for the money guys but not for ordinary citizens. How could he possibly attack a $500 a week payment that literally kept food on the table in millions of Canadian households during an unprecedented world pandemic?

The program was not perfect. But it was delivered in a timely fashion to a desperate nation.

The government is now considering a Guaranteed Annual Income to replace the panoply of support programs that currently litter the national and provincial landscapes. The conversation on a guaranteed income has been circulating in social policy circles for decades, but it took a real-life crisis to thrust the government into a temporary guaranteed income.

And It worked. With millions of Canadians applying for the benefit, computers did not crash, and benefits were distributed broadly and quickly. Why O’Toole would choose to attack that program in his first media interview demonstrates a clear lack of political antennae.

Much was written about his surprising victory against veteran Peter MacKay and many ascribed his win to political acumen. He certainly had the acumen to attract social Conservatives in his party, but that does not necessarily translate into a capacity to resonate with the general public.

His second move last week was the appointment of social conservative Candice Bergen as deputy leader. The photogenic Manitoba member was specifically tasked with tackling the issue of western alienation.

Bergen also happens to hail from the part of the party that he has to distance himself from if he has any intention of becoming prime minister. According to Campaign Life Coalition “Candice has a perfect voting record in the House of Commons on life & family issues.” That is code for the fact that every time she has had a chance to vote on abortion and gay rights issues, she has turned them down.

Notwithstanding her voting record, Bergen has spoken positively about LGBTQ rights, suggesting that she celebrates homosexuality, pansexuality and transgenderism. So, her viewpoint has been muddied by realpolitik. But the next Tory convention will undoubtedly face a push to approve the re-criminalization of abortion. And where will Bergen be on that issue?

Bergen’s appointment was also introduced as a way to reach out on the issue of Western alienation. With a former Tory Member of Parliament now running the Wexit Canada party, the Conservatives must guard their right flank. But the only way they can become government is by broadening their reach across the country.

O’Toole may have won the majority of Quebec votes in the leadership but his main opponent, Peter MacKay, had the support of most of the Members of Parliament.

That was because the social conservatism wave that rode O’Toole to victory is a non-starter in la belle province. O’Toole was smart enough to downplay his right-wing roots during the French debate. That was obviously enough to assuage his Quebec supporters. But an opening week focused on Western alienation and opposition to emergency COVID assistance is hardly a compelling appeal to Quebecers.

O’Toole’s mistakes were hardly fatal, but they do impart a flavour of just what kind of advice he must be getting. A Conservative spokesperson said he had incorporated some players from the MacKay team amongst his senior advisors. But he may not have been open to their advice. The “stinking albatross” comment may have cost MacKay his party’s leadership.

But the albatross in the O’Toole room is not going away any time soon.

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

If Erin O’Toole really wants to appeal to non-traditional Conservatives, he will have to cut ties with social conservatives and the far right.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on August 31, 2020.

OTTAWA—It would be a mistake to underestimate the electability of Erin O’Toole.

He has many things going for him, the first of which is that he is a relative unknown. These days, the shelf-life of a politician is generally one election. It used to be that if you were doing a decent job, voters might keep you around for a second term.

The longevity of a local politician is still in the double digits. Just ask Ottawa mayor Jim Watson how many ministers on the federal and provincial level that he has outlived. But party politics is one place where the more experience you get, the more people want to get rid of you.

Just look at how many people rabidly despised Hillary Clinton, even though she had more experience than any other candidate at the national and international level. She wore her husband’s warts, and then some.

Clinton was also suffering from the same swathe of sexism that came to the fore when Chrystia Freeland was recently named finance minister. Multiple journalists attacked Freeland’s lack of financial credentials. These same journalists never questioned the bona fides of lawyers cum finance ministers, like Jim Flaherty and Ralph Goodale. Freeland, like ministerial colleague Catherine McKenna, was dished up a particularly vitriolic dose of misogyny.

O’Toole has a chance to shape his brand, and in his early morning victory speech last week, he hit all the right buttons. He spoke at length about how to broaden the party base and invite those who have never voted Conservative to join him. He outlined his support of the LGBTQ community and his opposition to reopening the abortion question.

But O’Toole will also have to stickhandle the demands within his own party, as the radical right gained strength and visibility during the Conservative leadership race.

Tory pundits were lauding the fact that a Black woman surpassed Peter MacKay’s support in all western provinces. They claimed that the support for Leslyn Lewis was testament to Tories’ openness to diversity.

Hogwash. Lewis was a stalking horse for the anti-choice movement, which continues to grow deep and strong roots in the Conservative party.

The fact that a candidate for leadership, who could not speak French, would get 20 per cent of the party’s vote on a first ballot is truly frightening. When you couple her party support with that of Derek Sloan, the pair of proudly evangelical politicians garnered 40 per cent of the Conservative Party’s 174,404 voters. That is scary.

Lewis is now being touted as a new leading light in her party. That blows up O’Toole’s shout-out to inclusivity on election night. Her leadership transcendence was driven by those who would like to turn back the clock on issues like abortion.

Sloan had a 12-point plan on the issue. His first commitment was to promise to work with party grassroots to revoke Conservative Party policy No. 70. That policy, slimly endorsed at their 2018 Halifax policy convention, states that “a Conservative government will not support any legislation to regulate abortion.”

Lewis was ranked No. 1 on the voter’s list recommended by the anti-choice group RightNow. Sloan was ranked second. O’Toole was ranked third, and MacKay came dead last.

RightNow describes itself as the political arm of the pro-life movement and promotes a mandate to work full-time to secure nominations and elections for candidates who oppose abortion. No surprise that Lewis was their chosen candidate.

Like Sloan, she does not support abortion and is opposed to a government ban on conversion therapy, a controversial practice to modify the sexual orientation of gays and lesbians.

MacKay, who ran behind Lewis in all western provinces on the first ballot, was directly attacked by her for claiming that social conservatism was like a “stinking albatross” around the neck of party in the last election.

At some point during the race, one-third of Tory voters cast a ballot for Lewis.

Lewis, who has four degrees including a master’s in environmental science, opposes the carbon tax. She also received support during the race from the gun lobby. She and Sloan both oppose Canada’s current immigration policy and Lewis promised to roll back legalization of marijuana.

If O’Toole elevates her to a senior party position, he will be playing right into the hands of RightNow, whose stated intention is to re-criminalize abortion.

During his victory speech, O’Toole promised to reach out to a broad coalition of Canadians. To do so, he needs to visibly cut ties with his own party’s radical right.

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

Kamala Harris and Joe Biden will be an unbeatable ticket in the United States as Donald Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic has caused him continued erosion within his own party.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on August 17, 2020.

OTTAWA—Leaders came and went last week.

And the coming was so much better than the going.

Kamala Harris was revealed as the vice-presidential choice of Democratic White House nominee Joe Biden.

She ticked all the boxes. With a family tree straddling three continents, she can literally classify as an Afro-Asian American. She has political experience at the local, state and national levels and she represents the generational change that the American presidential race desperately needs.

The same day she joined the American ticket, Andrew Scheer spent his last day in Parliament as the leader of the Conservative Party.

And, oh, what a bitter exit it was. His final public statement was to challenge the prime minister to sue him, a reference to the heated campaign rhetoric when leaders were calling each other liars.

Scheer presented a rather sorry picture of a political leader who was wanted neither by his party nor his country.

It was a disappointing finale for a politician whose star seemed to shine brightly throughout his career.

An eastern-born westerner with a good command of French, he was the natural choice for House Speaker during the 10-year tenure of prime minister Stephen Harper.

The position came with its own set of perks, a house and a private apartment in Parliament. It also gave him a hospitality budget to wine and dine his fellow parliamentarians, preparing the way for his ascendance to the Conservative leadership.

All the while, Scheer was nurturing his brand as a smiling, softer Tory who managed to make friends on all sides of the House.

It wasn’t until he actually grasped the brass ring that we began to see the seedier side of Scheer.

His exit speech last week solidified that impression. Instead of using his time in Parliament to reflect on some of the positive things he was able to accomplish, the outgoing leader sounded like he was still on the election campaign. Painfully vitriolic was the tone of his final speech in Parliament, a far cry from the smiling young man who took his place as the youngest House Speaker in the history of Canadian politics.

Why would Scheer not follow in the footsteps of other outgoing leaders, with a gracious statement that unites people instead of dividing them?

It is to be expected that your first days in power are your best.

So, it is not surprising that Harris’ week in the news was a far cry from Scheer’s snarling exit.

She immediately hit the campaign trail with Biden and showed exactly why she was the perfect choice to be his running mate.

Donald Trump weighed in immediately, pointing out one of Harris’s few flaws; she did not do very well in the presidential runoff against Biden.

Trump hit the tweet scene to trash her. As one American commentator noted, the president seems to glean special pleasure when he gets a chance to trash-talk women, particularly women of colour.

But as others pointed out, Biden’s decision to embrace a former opponent also illustrates the glaring difference between the two presidential hopefuls.

Trump pushes every opponent away, even when they are public servants dishing up the advice that he appointed them to provide.

Just look at his relationship with Anthony Fauci.

Fauci speaks truth to power and Trump simply cannot abide someone who disputes his claim that drinking bleach can help clean out COVID-19.

Harris can expect some negative pushback from Trump supporters in the media, but they are becoming fewer and farther between.

Her selection will motivate women, uplift minorities and inspire a younger generation, all decisive players in the presidential election in November.

As for Scheer, his replacement will be voted on shortly and announced as soon as the complexities of the mail-in balloting system are conquered.

If it is Peter MacKay, you can expect Scheer’s standing in his party to diminish even further.

MacKay’s success will be dependent upon distancing himself from the Rebel right, and that was the crowd that Scheer cultivated so successfully to gain power.

If Erin O’Toole wins, Scheer will still enjoy a place of honour in a party with well-entrenched Western Canadian roots.

Meanwhile, Harris and Biden will be an unbeatable ticket in the United States as Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic has caused him continued erosion within his own party.

If the launch was any indication, Harris will be a positive force for Biden.

The same cannot be said of the outgoing Conservative leader.

He left Parliament with a bitter taste in his mouth.

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

Erin O’Toole’s fundraising in the second quarter was $1.24-million with Peter MacKay’s raising $1.16-million. The difference is not that great, but the momentum shift definitely favours O’Toole. The Conservative voting system also lends itself to surprises.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on August 10, 2020.

OTTAWA—In two shorts weeks, the Conservative Party of Canada will vote for a new leader.

If the recent uptick in fundraising numbers holds for Erin O’Toole, the race momentum appears to be shifting.

Internal and public polling put veteran Peter MacKay far ahead of the rest of the pack in terms of party and national support.

The race has been MacKay’s to lose. But like Donald Trump, MacKay has faced a few COVID-caused problems beyond his control.

The front-runner spot in any political race is a double-edged sword. People like to support a winner but if you are too far ahead, you become the lightning rod for all disgruntled party members.

If MacKay is too strong, all other leadership hopefuls will band together to blunt his momentum.

The unforeseen lockdown prompted by the coronavirus forced the party to suspend campaigning and delay the proposed vote by three months.

That spawned more all-candidate discussions, boycotted by MacKay. He attended the two official party debates, both held in Toronto, but declined a debate in Vancouver and another Toronto debate.

He also refused to attend a town hall organized by the Independent Press Gallery of Canada; an organization founded to counter the influence of what it characterizes as “the government-influenced Parliamentary Press Gallery.”

It is common for the front-runner to minimize debate appearances because the format tends to focus everyone’s attack on the leader.

His refusal to attend the Vancouver debate was spun as a spurning of the West.

O’Toole’s strength is certainly more western-centric, with the endorsement of Alberta Premier Jason Kenney bringing a broad swathe of elected officials into the O’Toole corner.

The delay appears to have worked slightly in favour of O’Toole, who raised the most money in the last quarter, and also spread the donations amongst a greater number of supporters than the MacKay fundraising efforts.

The candidate with the broadest range of donors is social conservative and Toronto lawyer Leslyn Lewis. She doubled her quarterly financial haul, increasing donations from $448,000 to $996,000.

Lewis also attracted the most individual donors this quarter with 10,000 contributors, compared to 8,900 for O’Toole and 6,800 for MacKay.

O’Toole fundraising in the second quarter was $1.24-million with MacKay raising $1.16-million.

The difference is not that great, but the momentum shift definitely favours O’Toole.

The Conservative voting system also lends itself to surprises.

The party votes on a points system by riding. With 100 points attached to each riding, divided amongst candidates, a constituency with 10 members has equal voting power to a constituency with 1,000 members.

That means a front-runner in the national popular vote does not necessarily win the election.

We witnessed that phenomenon when future Ontario Premier Doug Ford beat the front-runner in a race that was supposed to be Christine Elliot’s to lose.

Her team was so sure she had the upper hand that they refused a unanimous request by all other candidates to extend the membership deadline to accommodate more participants, and fix glitches in the system.

Ford managed to secure support in remote areas where a few votes actually turned the tide and delivered him the victory.

In reality, Elliott led in the popular vote within the party, but the strategic organizing by the Ford team won the day.

The same thing could happen in the federal race where the first candidate to reach 16,901 points in the race will be elected winner. However, the counting could take several days, because of the complexity of this election system.

MacKay’s campaign strategy to date has been very similar to that of American Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden. Say little and do even less.

Biden’s numbers have been climbing since he adopted the silence is golden strategy.

But the same cannot be said for the Conservative front-runner.

The quieter he has become, the more momentum has migrated to his main opponent.

The other element that will help O’Toole is age. The majority of his parliamentary endorsements are newer and younger members.

There is an old adage in politics that says the more experienced you are, the more you have to say and the less you have to do.

New Members of Parliament are out to make their mark and that means delivering as many votes as possible to their preferred candidate.

At this point, the parliamentary endorsements for MacKay and O’Toole are almost equal.

On the eve of the vote, MacKay’s front-runner status is no longer secure. A surprise may be in store.

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

Modern technology makes campaigns easier to organize but also easier to infiltrate.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on June 29, 2020.

OTTAWA—The internal warfare in the Conservative leadership is heating up.

Accusations of espionage surfaced last week when an unnamed student employee of Erin O’Toole was fired for allegedly leaking information to the Peter MacKay camp.

Modern technology makes campaigns easier to organize but also easier to infiltrate.

The alleged offence involved a claim that MacKay’s team secured videotapes of high-level Zoom meetings held by the O’Toole team across the country.

Neither side should be that surprised about a dirty tricks campaign.

Internal party nominations are always rife with malfeasance because the level of outside oversight is non-existent.

Only the party can investigate wrongdoing, and any party is hesitant to bring disrepute unto itself.

So political parties go to great lengths to deny or obscure internal shenanigans.

In the olden days, the strategy was to try and disrupt delegate selection meetings in each riding.

That involved doing your level best to encourage supporters to get to the meetings and doing everything possible to discourage other teams’ supporters from doing the same.

People would use every form of dirty tricks.

Some that have happened in the Liberal Party include disabling old-style telephone booths by plugging gum into the phone, supergluing the door locks of opponents’ offices on the day of the vote, and even bugging an opponent’s office to secure valuable confidential information. Hacking or even theft of computers has also been used to secure clandestine details about the opponent’s campaign strategy.

The new Zoom world makes it possible, even ridiculously easy, to garner information right down to the tiniest organizational detail by simply getting a full video of every meeting.

That security gap is one reason that many companies choose not to avail themselves of the Zoom platform but instead use encrypted offerings to manage the increasing number of post-COVID virtual meeting operations.

But political campaigns do not have the same financial leverage as large corporations. The Zoom platform is virtually free if the meetings end in less than 40 minutes, so they provide an ideal platform for cross country communications.

In the olden days, the biggest part of a campaign expense would-be long-distance phone charges. Now in the world of voice over internet protocol, it is virtually free to connect with all parts of the country.

But that also opens the door to more intraparty espionage.

And as the Conservative leadership vote is going to happen by mail, the opportunity to contact every voter early can be a huge advantage.

The deadline for the postal ballot is Aug. 21 and the opportunity to purchase a membership ended May 15.

From mid-May until voting day, all candidates will be trying to encourage switchers to come onboard.

So, access to information is obviously important in building targeted campaign messaging.

But an investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is probably not the sort of campaign messaging that the MacKay team was hoping for.

MacKay’s people insisted the violations were the work of a single individual, and not part of a larger strategy.

But O’Toole’s team countered with a question as to why two internet providers in Calgary and Toronto were involved in hacking and recording more than 140 separate Zoom videos.

The police will get to the bottom of the story. Whatever the outcome, there will be some damage done to the MacKay campaign.

Many party members are ideologues, who believe in the power of Conservative values, but vehemently oppose illegal activity.

Some of them will no doubt be raising eyebrows over the allegations.

MacKay supporters may simply discount the claim as sour grapes from a losing candidate. That is no doubt how the MacKay team will be trying to explain the issue internally.

But the ferocity of the dust-up also shows that Conservatives believe the winner could actually form a government.

The stakes are high, so both sides are baring their knuckles.

Not long ago, it appeared that the Tories were doomed to spend a decade in opposition. With Andrew Scheer at the helm, it was simple for the Liberals and New Democrats to tag Tories as anti-women and anti-gay.

The picture is much different with this leadership race. O’Toole made it very clear during the leader’s debate that he favoured a women’s right to choose and supported the rights of gays and lesbians.

MacKay unsuccessfully tried to cast himself as the only social liberal in the race.

Both are positioning themselves to move to the centre at the end of the Tory convention.

And that could spell trouble for Liberals.

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

Canadians would never support a prime minister who could not speak English. So why would we think it’s okay to elect a prime minister who fumbles his French?

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on February 3, 2020.

OTTAWA—Jean Chrétien did not speak a word of English when he was first elected to Parliament at the age of 30.

But he understood that to participate fully in Canada’s political process you need to speak both official languages.

In the end, his command of English opened up the top job in the country. While some said his language could be mangled, he knew exactly how to make it work.

During the height of the salmon wars between Canada and United States, then U.S. vice-president Al Gore had flown into Ottawa for an emergency meeting on the matter.

The prime minister hosted a small group in his dining room at 24 Sussex. It was summer and the air-conditioning was broken.

Brian Tobin, then fisheries minister, was hoping to bring Gore around to Canada’s point of view. The message was not exactly subtle.

The first course was smoked salmon, and the second was served on china featuring chinook salmon.

As the discussion grew more heated, the temperature in the room rose literally and figuratively. Gore was perspiring profusely as he and Tobin began to drill down to the details of their positions.

At one point, Gore raised his voice and shouted, “that is an outright lie.”

Chrétien jumped in with his mangled message to save the day. “Don’t worry,” he said to the vice-president. “We Canadians have had a hysterical claim to these waters for the past 300 years.”

Of course, Chrétien deliberately substituted hysterical for historical. But it was such a hilarious juxtaposition that everyone burst out laughing and the temperature between combatants went down about 10 degrees.

All that to say that thirty years ago, the prime minister knew the value of mastering a second language.

Which is why the Conservative backlash against the need for a bilingual leader is so bizarre.

Peter MacKay, the putative frontrunner in the Tory leadership race, was hoping for smooth sailing when he launched his campaign in his hometown of Stellarton, N.S., on a quiet Saturday on Jan. 25.

Family and friends were gathered, it was a MacKay love-in.

And with Jean Charest and Rona Ambrose officially out of the race, the show should have been a no-brainer.

MacKay had Tele-Prompters and beauteous prose. But he managed to massacre the few words of French that he had included in his presentation.

The mistake was not fatal. After all, MacKay’s first target audience is the membership in his own party, and some are decidedly ambivalent on the French fact in Canada.

Michelle Rempel Garner took to Twitter to complain there was really no need for a bilingual party leader.

Unlike Rempel Garner, MacKay understands the importance of a leader who can reach out in both official languages. The ability to bridge the two solitudes gave Progressive Conservative leaders like Brian Mulroney successive majority governments.

But perhaps, in his attempt to portray a relaxed, hometown feel, MacKay didn’t spend the time he should have in making sure that his few statements in French were grammatically correct.

It is also fair to say that, living in Toronto for the past several years, MacKay has not exactly been exposed to the French language to the same degree that he would in Parliament.

MacKay’s faux pas managed to make the front page of the Journal de Quebec. But in itself, that is not fatal. At least he is being talked about in the French media.

But what is disconcerting for his party is the continued insistence that it is fine to elect a unilingual English-speaker to the top job in the Tory party.

The late John Crosbie finished off his leadership chances back in the eighties when he compared speaking French to proficiency in Chinese.

Despite a great campaign team, and strong financial backing, he never got liftoff because of his inability to communicate in Canada’s second official language.

When one-quarter of the population claims French as a first language, it is evident that political leaders need to be able to master that language.

MacKay was on the Hill for 18 years before his recent hiatus. That was plenty of time to take advantage of the free private language classes offered to all Members of Parliament.

A unilingual Chrétien could never have been elected prime minister of all the people. Canadians would never support a prime minister who could not speak English. So why would we think it’s okay to elect a prime minister who fumbles his French?

MacKay has plenty of time to correct his mistake, but he better hit the books.

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

Decisions by Jean Charest and Rona Ambrose to stay out of the Conservative leadership race were met with huge sighs of relief on more than one front.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on January 27, 2020.

OTTAWA—The Liberal government of Justin Trudeau dodged a couple of political bullets last week.

Decisions by Jean Charest and Rona Ambrose to stay out of the Conservative leadership race were met with huge sighs of relief on more than one front.

The immediate beneficiary of the sorties was Peter MacKay, who now leaps to the position of frontrunner amongst progressives in the party.

He was closely followed by Pierre Poilievre who was working hard to solidify his support amongst the more right-wing members of the party until he dropped out of the race last week.

MacKay must be verily relieved that neither Charest nor Ambrose will be in the race.

Most of the media attention had been focused on Ambrose’s star status, but Charest would have been a tougher adversary.

Ambrose did a terrific job as interim Tory leader. But her ministerial record was anything but stellar.

Charest, on the other hand, introduced progressive environmental legislation and, under the leadership of prime minister Brian Mulroney, his government was the first to focus on going green.

Ambrose was the minister responsible for the controversial decision to for defund pro-choice women’s organizations. Post politics, she has been very active in promoting her private member’s bill to incorporate gender sensitivity training into the judiciary. But when she had the levers of power to accomplish that as a minister, she did not.

To be fair, both were dealing with constraints imposed by their leaders.

Mulroney wanted to capitalize on the world environmental reckoning which began at the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit. The meeting was spawned by a report entitled “Our Common Future” authored by Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland in 1987. Rio marked the beginning of a world consensus that we must “Think globally and act locally” to stem environmental degradation. Mulroney mirrored that message back to Canada, launching a $3-billion Green Plan in the leadup to the summit.

Mulroney supported the global consensus that we needed to start treating the planet differently.

Then-prime minister Stephen Harper went the other way. Like Donald Trump, he ignored the world climate change consensus, and spent most of his political capital on a rearguard action to blame the environmentalists. He also forced all ministers to delete gender analysis from their cabinet analysis and was probably the key driver in cutting women’s funding across the country.

The other element that would have put Charest squarely in the leader’s seat, should he have decided to run, was his ease of communication in both official languages.

A weak command of one of Canada’s official languages may not be the deciding factor in an in-house Conservative leadership campaign. But it certainly makes a difference when someone is wooing one-quarter of the Canadian population in an election campaign.

In Quebec, New Brunswick, northern Ontario and the southern shore of Nova Scotia, one cannot expect to get any support if she or he cannot speak to voters in their mother tongue.

But speaking both languages is not enough. The leader must also reflect the values of the country.

And that is where the current leadership race gets tricky. The entrance of Quebecer and social conservative Richard Décarie has provided the perfect foil for other would-be candidates to show their progressive side. Harper’s former deputy chief of staff is the self-described leader of the so-cons in the party. He claims to be the only voice representing the values that true social conservatives hold dear, including sanctity of heterosexual marriage and a ban on abortions.

Décarie told CTV news that being gay is a choice, providing an opportunity for other putative candidates to contradict him.

By the end of the week, the campaigns of Erin O’Toole and MacKay began to narrow the focus of delegate support.

Most are moving away from the social conservative constructs that proved fatal in the last election.

MacKay hails from the former Progressive Conservative party so he won’t fall into the trap of boycotting gay pride parades. Some are calling for an eastern-based choice for leader, so the party can finally make the breakthrough it needs in Ontario and Quebec.

In five short months, we will have the answers to all these questions. The result could well turn Canadian politics on its head.

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

But it is not good news for the minority Liberal government.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on December 16, 2019.

OTTAWA—Even in resignation, Andrew Scheer was unable to muster kind words for any party other than that of the Conservatives.

His smile masked a bitterness that seemed to permeate his final goodbye to Parliament as leader.

He had fine prose for the people in his own party, and much support for the sacrifices made by his family. But he couldn’t even find one good thing to say about any other leader or party, except to put the prime minister on notice about how the Conservatives will keep holding the government to account.

Usually when people say their goodbyes to political leadership, they try to find something nice to say about everyone, even their sworn parliamentary enemies. But Scheer’s refusal to do so was equally as stubborn as his post-election fatal promise that he would never march in a Pride parade.

Scheer’s departure is good news for his party. It is not good news for the minority Liberal government.

Scheer’s brand was irreparably damaged by his own intransigent social conservatism.

By refusing to embrace a woman’s right to control her own body and by shunning Pride parades in celebration of gay equality, Scheer was a 19th century leader in a 21st century Parliament.

His grinning, father knows best, persona did not resonate with Canadian voters, and there was little chance he would be able to turn that around without a personality transplant.

Scheer’s muddled position on social issues and his weak campaign performance were a gift that kept on giving for the Liberals.

During the election, Scheer could not move the dial on the two-thirds of Canadians who simply could not vote for his socially conservative perspective.

From a refusal to move forward on climate change to the negative tone of his attacks on the prime minister, Scheer simply succeeded in pushing people away.

Even after the election, his embittered tone did not appeal to voters outside his party core.

At the end of the day, his departure opens the door to a clean sweep in the Conservatives, with a number of potential candidates for the leadership.

From Peter MacKay to Jason Kenney, and including Erin O’Toole and Rona Ambrose, there are a number of high-profile Conservatives who could replace Scheer.

And, although leadership campaigns can become internally divisive, the minority Parliament situation will temper the tone on the Tory campaign trail.

The Conservative Party wants to win the next election, so it will try to minimize any cleavages that might split the party apart.

The social conservatives who initially brought Scheer to power will also be out in full force, not wanting to lose ground to party members who are social liberals and fiscal conservatives.

The last race attracted 17 candidates, although four dropped out before the end. This time, the party will likely discourage such a broad range of participation.

The race will likely attract three or four high profile candidates, and their debates will focus on attacking the Liberals instead of each other. They understand that, during a minority situation, the best chance they have of winning the next election is to remain united. Candidates must differentiate themselves, one from another, but the tone of the campaign must remain positive and not divisive.

Given minority government, a leadership campaign needs to be relatively short in nature. There is a chance that an election could come at any time, and a leaderless party is not in a good starting position.

The party will probably move to replace Scheer before next fall. Meanwhile, the status of Scheer as a lame duck leader will help the Liberal minority manage its’ parliamentary agenda.

The Conservatives cannot go into an election without a leader, so it will be unlikely to defeat the government on any issue in the near term.

In the long term, the Tories will have a new leader and newness in politics is a huge asset. It happens to be the only profession where the more experience you get, the more people want to get rid of you.

Justin Trudeau will be facing his third election. His own personal brand carried the party in 2015 but by 2019, it was the Liberal Party that carried Trudeau to victory. Trudeau’s wounds from the SNC-Lavalin affair were deep, but even with the blackface revelations, Scheer could not get traction.

The new Tory leader won’t have that problem. She or he will be facing a two-term Liberal government.

Scheer’s symbolic walk in the snow last week has definitively reshaped Canada’s political landscape.

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

The bottom line is that when you are literally one turkey dinner away from the vote, the last thing Andrew Scheer needs is public speculation about who will replace him when he loses.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on October 14, 2019.

OTTAWA—When a party starts public rumination about a new leader, it usually means it knows something the rest of us don’t.

The Globe and Mail’s front-page story last week about Peter MacKay’s potential move to replace Andrew Scheer could not have come at a worse time.

Canadians were chowing down on turkey and politics on the weekend, and families will likely be discussing differing viewpoints on the campaign and which party to support.

Some people like to vote for the party they think is going to win. Unless they are political ideologues, most people do not like to throw a vote away on a party that looks as though it is headed for defeat.

That’s why Elizabeth May’s retort during the last debate was the most devastating zinger of all, notwithstanding public spin on how Jagmeet Singh’s “Mr. Delay and Mr. Deny” quip posted the win.

May affirmed to the whole country that Scheer would not be prime minister, and when he protested, she offered to bet him on it.

If looks could kill, Scheer’s glare would have lasered May in half. But his own people must be giving him some of the same distressing numbers that May is privy to.

The media have been continually repeating that because of the closeness of the vote, the election is too close to call.

But for the past month, on any given day, the Liberals have been leading the Tories in seat count by at least 20 ridings.

The Globe and Mail’s front-page story on Oct. 10 about Peter MacKay’s potential move to replace Andrew Scheer could not have come at a worse time, writes Sheila Copps.

So even polling means a guaranteed Liberal win is in the offing for a week Monday. The Conservative leader’s own numbers are so strong in Alberta, and the Prairies, that anything close to a tie in popular vote means Scheer has zero chance of forming the government.

MacKay’s people must have made that calculation based on the party’s dismal numbers in Atlantic Canada. Notwithstanding the retirement of three popular Liberal incumbents, it looks like Nova Scotia is heading for a second clean sweep for the Grits.

There are similar possibilities in Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island. The only Atlantic province that appears to provide any hope for the Conservatives is New Brunswick, where the party is leading in almost half the seats. Some of them have been Conservative since Confederation except for the last election.

MacKay may also have been a little irked at the amount of ink that has been spilled in covering the Ontario campaign appearances of Alberta Premier Jason Kenney.

Globe columnist Konrad Yakabuski penned a piece last week, musing about how different the federal campaign would have been with Kenney at the Conservative helm.

Scheer did not join Kenney during his Ontario campaign swing, probably realizing that Kenney would overshadow him, making Scheer look weak.

The MacKay Globe story takes this potential East-West rivalry to a new level. It also sets the stage for a nasty internal battle between social conservatives, and any progressives who might be left in the Conservative Party.

After all, MacKay was a former Progressive Conservative when Kenney was happily pounding away at Reform Party and Alliance alienation themes.

Kenney has continued playing the alienation card hard as premier, even suggesting that Canadian unity could be at risk if the Liberals are re-elected.

The only potential hiccup in a Kenney return to the national scene is the current RCMP investigation into identity fraud in the team Kenney effort to merge the Alberta Progressive Conservative and Wild Rose parties into one United Conservative Party.

Five Calgary-area ministers in the Kenney government have been interviewed by the RCMP in connection with alleged fraudulent activities.

Last December, former Kenney organizer Tariq Chaudhry swore an affidavit with the office of the Alberta elections commissioner alleging irregularities. Chaudhry alleges he spent $27,000 on events and memberships for which Kenney personally promised a reimbursement that never came.

In a leadership race, it is not legal for someone else to pay for a party membership. Kenney has publicly mused about cutting the commission’s investigation budget in an upcoming round of belt-tightening measures.

Kenney’s current halo could well be tarnished by the time a national Conservative leadership rolls around.

And eastern Canadian party members might want to support a leader whose popularity extends beyond the oil patch.

The foregoing is entirely speculative but the bottom line is that when you are literally one turkey dinner away from the vote, the last thing Scheer needs is public speculation about who will replace him when he loses.

This campaign has been getting odder by the day.

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