Liberal, Tory miscues benefit Mulcair
The NDP stands to benefit from Trump’s rise
As MPs head home for the holiday, New Democrat leader Thomas Mulcair — for that is what he remains, caretaker status notwithstanding — has a new gleam in his eye. It’s curious to see in a politician who, less than a year ago, stood humiliated and shorn of his job before the NDP’s leap-manifesting convention in Edmonton.
To look at current poll standings, you’d get little sense of any shift. Public support for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government remains high, just shy of 47 per cent, in the aggregate measured by ThreeHundredEight.com.
The Conservatives, led by interim leader Rona Ambrose, are dug in at 27 per cent, still clinging to their base. The Dippers enjoy just 13.5 per cent support — below their traditional floor of about 15 per cent. It’s a rotten recipe, you’d think, for a festive year-end at Orange HQ.
But appearances are deceiving. Recent events in Washington and in Ottawa are rather suddenly conspiring in the NDP’s favour.
For starters, the Trudeau government has latterly hit a rough patch, one of its own making, over issues critical to its credibility; ethics and basic honesty. This has yet to show up as a pattern in polls but can be expected to in the New Year. The first marker was a survey last week by Forum Research that showed Liberal support plummeting nearly 10 points nationally in a month.
The cause of this disturbance in the Force was evident in the Commons foyer Thursday, as the prime minister fielded questions about his cash-for-access problems from reporter Robert Fife. Fife asked repeatedly how Trudeau could possibly continue justifying his habit of selling access to himself for a $1,500 individual contribution to the Liberal party. Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson has called the practice “unsavoury,” and is investigating. Would there be a change in policy?
But as in his formal yearend news conference earlier this week, Trudeau wasn’t for turning. He responded with the same mystifying word salad we have heard from him and from Government House Leader Bardish Chagger in question period for weeks on end; an ode to the toughness and transparency of federal fundraising rules, and assurances the Liberal party’s integrity is above reproach. In other words, “trust us.”
Although Trudeau has conceded he is lobbied at these events — in violation of his party’s own stated rules — and although his own guidelines for “open and accountable government” preclude even the appearance of trading access for donations, neither he nor any other minister has attempted to address the question, though they’ve had weeks to do so. Rather than revisiting the policy, or scrapping the guidelines and explaining themselves, they’ve trotted out messaging so repetitive and nonsensical it verges on contempt.
This recalls nothing so much as the efforts of former Conservative question period enforcer Paul Calandra, who made an art of evading questions to the point it brought him into disrepute and, eventually, to tears. There have been no cashfor-access tears yet on the Liberal side of the aisle, but there have been plenty of glum faces. These MPs, not a few of whom were intimately involved in the takedown of the Harper government over Senate spending, and who are not unfamiliar with how this works, know they’re getting hammered.
What’s been mystifying — and gratifying to Mulcair, who excels at the cut and thrust of question period — is how very weak the government’s response has been.
The Conservatives, as the official opposition, are mounting their own assault on the Liberals’ integrity, of course.
Ambrose has been solid and Manitoba MP Candice Bergen, outstanding. But here too Mulcair has an opportunity, for the Tory caucus and party are deeply divided.
Donald Trump’s rise in the United States has unleashed a cascade of me-tooism in Conservative ranks, with Trump-inspired nativists (Kellie Leitch, Steven Blaney) battling it out with pluralists (Michael Chong, Deepak Obhrai) and the lone libertarian, Maxime Bernier. The character of the Conservative party-to-be is thus a black box. Strategically, this presents a vacuum.
Into that breach, the NDP is poised to go. Several candidates for leader are expected to announce early in 2017. They face an environment in which they can benefit from Trump’s rise — the part of his program that is anti-free trade, anti-globalization, proworking class and populist — and rail against its xenophobia, simultaneously. They also have an opportunity to make considerable inroads in southern B.C., hitching themselves to the anti-pipeline movement.
In short, the Dippers will begin 2017 with a big stateside lift to their economic cant, a dragon they can challenge, a philosophical fissure among Conservatives, and ethical disarray among Liberals. It’s a big step forward from where they stood just six weeks ago. And, because Mulcair is no longer his party’s permanent leader, he has nothing personal to lose. He’s enjoying his job. It shows.