Erin O’Toole

Friday July 9, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday July 9, 2021

Trudeau denies it, but signs point to early election in Canada

Covid-19 cases are down in Canada and some are interpreting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cross-country travel this week as a surefire sign of an imminent election.

September 10, 2019

Trudeau’s whistle stop in Calgary on Wednesday started with a blunt question from RED FM host Rishi Nagar, who noted the prime minister’s back-to-back pit stops in Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan and in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., to make a C$420-million funding announcement to help Algoma Steel phase out coal and create jobs.

“All this shows that you are in an election campaign mode,” Nagar said. Trudeau rejected the characterization.

“Actually, it doesn’t. It shows that we are getting things done,” Trudeau said in this first in-studio interview in 16 months. “I’ve been taking advantage of the fact that our case loads are now lower that people are getting vaccinated, to be able to travel a little bit more and make the announcements on things that we’ve been working on for many, many months.”

Nearly 78 percent of eligible Canadians have so far received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. Forty-four percent are fully vaccinated. Growing in parallel to Canada’s vaccination rates is speculation about the timing of a federal election — and anxiety over how it could be as early as late summer.

June 2, 2021

Political watchers have been viewing everything through an election lens: the return of Trudeau’s clean-shaven look, inflation climbing to its highest rate in a decade, the anticipated timing of the Canada-U.S. border reopening, a free one-time check for seniors timed for the week of Aug. 16, an increased number of in-person funding announcements, and, according to former Liberal strategist David Herle, the fact Liberal MPs have been nudged to take their vacations in July.

The country’s attention is split. Many in Canada are focused on securing second doses and family reunions, grief over the discovery of more than 1,000 remains in unmarked graves on the grounds of former Indian residential schools, and the extreme heat that saw hundreds of “sudden and unexpected deaths” in the western province of British Columbia, triggering renewed focus to climate change.

On Thursday, the prime minister’s plane landed in British Columbia where he announced a new C$3.2-billion agreement with the province to cut child care fees in half by the end of 2022.

“We’re making your life easier and more affordable,” Trudeau said in the campaign-style announcement. He said the agreement would see the creation of 30,000 high-quality spaces over the next five years. “This is what it means to be a feminist government.”

April 22, 2021

Trudeau is teasing news about the promise of a national child care and early learning system. It’s an anticipated update to a marquee proposal from this year’s federal budget that will have the attention of parents across the country, especially in vote-rich southern Ontario where there are 45 seats to be won. Annual child care costs in Toronto are the country’s highest, topping C$21,000, according to the Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives.

“I’m very much looking forward to making big announcements on child care in the coming weeks,” Trudeau said Wednesday.

Trudeau wields power in a minority government, which means he needs the support of opposition parties to pass legislation. As prime minister, it also means he has the power to call an election.

Recent polls have placed the Liberals in single to double-digit leads, throwing open a window for Trudeau to dissolve Parliament in an attempt to turn his minority government — which has been functioning throughout the pandemic — into a majority.

The next fixed election date is Oct. 16, 2023. But under Canada’s constitutional monarchy system, the prime minister can request to dissolve Parliament at any time to trigger an election. For an incumbent government, that ability to choose a date and prepare is an advantage.

May 30, 2017

“For the Liberals, it’s the question of whether the current trends will hold into the fall,” veteran polls analyst Éric Grenier told POLITICO. Grenier, who recently launched The Writ, said Liberals will have to take stock of the political environment as the pandemic subsides.

The longer the Liberals wait, the more they risk squandering the opportunity to take advantage of the Conservatives’ polling numbers, which Grenier said are lower than those pulled by former leader Andrew Scheer in the lead up to the 2019 federal election.

“There are also some municipal elections in fall, that could complicate things,” Grenier said. “I don’t think that would be enough necessarily to prevent them from calling an election.” (Politico) 

 

Saturday March 27, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday March 27, 2021

Week in Review: Stuck things

Crews are working to clear a traffic jam at Egypt’s Suez Canal, the world’s busiest trade route, after the massive container ship “Ever Given” ran aground. Global News explains what this could mean for oil prices. 

March 23, 2021

Meanwhile, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole is sticking with his long-standing view that a federal carbon price is not the way to tackle the growing threat of climate change across the country, following a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada authorizing its constitutionality.

In an interview on CTV News Channel’s Power Play on Thursday, O’Toole said his approach would focus instead on partnering with provinces and bolstering the economy to get emissions down, though he didn’t provide exact details about how doing so would achieve his stated goal.

“The court said what we all know — that climate change is real and it’s important for us to have a serious approach,” he said.

May 14, 2019

“I want to have a plan that Canada can meet its targets. I’ve also said I’d like to see a net-zero approach plan, a made-in-Canada net-zero approach plan over the longer term, which is the 2050 timeline, but to do it without taxing people. As I said the carbon tax impacts our competitiveness and it hurts people in the margins the most. I think it’s backwards to be honest.”

In a 6-3 decision, the top court decided on Thursday that a price on pollution is entirely constitutional and that Ottawa has a right to set minimum pricing standards for greenhouse gas emissions in the provinces.

May 27, 2017

“The undisputed existence of a threat to the future of humanity cannot be ignored,” wrote Chief Justice Richard Wagner.

The case brings a legal end to a years-long battle between Ottawa and many provinces over the carbon price, and prompted Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe to start looking at a homegrown carbon-pricing mechanism and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney to nudge open the door to doing so too.

Saskatchewan, Ontario and Alberta challenged the Liberal government’s 2018 Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act in court, arguing it was a federal overreach into provincial jurisdiction over everything from taxes and the environment to natural-resource development.

O’Toole said his party would target large emitters of greenhouse gas emissions and respect the individual carbon reducing frameworks already in place in some provinces.

During the party’s policy convention over the weekend, delegates notably voted against a resolution that would have included the line “climate change is real” in the party’s official policy document.

Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said the Supreme Court’s decision on carbon pricing is a “good day for Canada.”

“Read the academic literature, go talk to an economist. They will tell you it’s the most efficient and effective way to reduce emissions and to incentivize innovation,” he told Power Play. (CTV)

“That cargo ship wedged in the Suez Canal may be a disaster for international trade, but it’s been a boon for political cartoonists. And it being an international incident, lots of people get to chip in, like Canadian Graeme Mackay, who likens it to the Conservative Party’s environmental stance”

Tuesday March 23, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday March 23, 2021

O’Toole’s pitch to get Conservatives to embrace ‘change’ may be off to a shaky start

Erin O’Toole told Conservatives this weekend that their party must change — because if it doesn’t, he said, it won’t be able to win the votes necessary to defeat Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in the next election.

May 2, 2019

And if the Liberals do win, he added, they’ll be able to implement their own changes — changes that O’Toole cast as frightening and potentially ruinous.

But O’Toole didn’t tell Conservatives exactly how they need to change. And then delegates delivered a potentially damaging vote on climate change policy that suggests his party base might not be ready to move very far.

O’Toole is on solid ground when he says the Conservative Party needs to try something different. His own polling numbers make that obvious. But so did the last federal election.

In 2019, Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives ran on an implicit promise to return to the policy agenda of Stephen Harper’s government. Scheer promised to smile more than his predecessor did but stopped short of offering a new approach — particularly on climate change.

June 23, 2020

The Conservatives won 34 per cent of the popular vote in that election. That was two points better than the party’s performance under Harper in 2015, but its national result in 2019 was inflated by the massive Conservative turnout in Alberta and Saskatchewan. In Ontario and Quebec — where 199 of the country’s 338 ridings are located — the Conservatives actually lost ground under Scheer.

A year and a half later, O’Toole’s Conservatives are sitting at 30 per cent nationally. And O’Toole’s personal approval rating might be even more of a problem.

August 25, 2020

According to survey results released by Abacus Data last week, 23 per cent of Canadians are committed to voting Conservative in the next election and another 23 per cent would consider voting Conservative.

But as the Abacus numbers point out, the differences between those two groups are substantial. Compared to those who have decided already to vote for O’Toole’s party, those potential Conservative voters are younger, more diverse, much more concerned about climate change and much less angry about Justin Trudeau.

September 1, 2020

O’Toole said his party must have a “serious” and “comprehensive” plan for climate change. But he doubled down on his criticism of the current federal carbon price and fell back on a framing that casts “the environment” as a discrete issue — as opposed to a broader view that sees climate policy as intertwined with almost all other areas of public policy.

“As important as climate change is, getting our economy back on track is more important,” he said.

In his prepared remarks, he said he wanted to defeat the “lie” that the Conservative Party is a party of “climate change deniers.” On Friday night and then again during a question-and-answer session with party members on Saturday afternoon, O’Toole declared that the “debate” over climate change is over.

But in between those two pronouncements came the news that Conservative delegates had rejected a resolution that would have declared that “climate change is real” and “the Conservative party is willing to act” — while committing the party to targeting high emitters and supporting innovation.

The headlines generated by that vote might be a serious setback to O’Toole’s goal of rebranding his party. Liberals will no doubt be happy to remind him of that vote at every opportunity in the weeks and months ahead. (CBC)

Sketch of being pulled back from the big kids’ pool

 

Thursday March 18, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday March 18, 2021

Erin O’Toole’s problems largely his own making

Regardless of your political stripe, it is tempting to feel some empathy for Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole as he heads into this weekend’s party policy convention — virtually, of course.

August 25, 2020

Since his election to lead the Conservative Party of Canada, O’Toole has repeated over and over that his objective is to make the party a bigger tent, to be more relevant to moderate Canadian viewpoints, to focus on the economy and stay away from hot button social issues. He did not make the mistakes his predecessor made by being evasive about his own views. He has repeatedly stated he is pro-choice and has no interest in reopening the abortion debate. O’Toole has been much more candid than Andrew Scheer was, and that should count for something.

And yet, on the eve of the first significant policy convention under his leadership, O’Toole is facing an internal rebellion from the social conservative wing of his party, which wants to reopen the abortion debate by inserting language in the party’s constitution that states life begins at conception.

May 15, 2019

Here is where we should put the brakes on that empathy. O’Toole is in this situation because he courted, strongly, social conservatives including the anti-abortion movement. He is in good company in this regard. Premier Doug Ford would not have won his party’s leadership had he not courted and won over social conservative groups, including the one headed by Charles McVety, now trying to get public accreditation for his religious college. Ford was able to keep his social conservative supporters at bay. O’Toole may have more trouble doing so. 

In the leadership race, Canada’s biggest anti-abortion group, Campaign Life Coalition, claimed it swayed the outcome by recruiting more than 26,000 new Conservative members. It also claimed social conservatives accounted for 35 per cent of all votes cast in the leadership contest.

May 25, 2019

After O’Toole’s victory, Campaign Life said in a statement: “We expect that Erin O’Toole will ensure that social conservatives are respected and their values represented within the party going forward … Everyone knows you can’t win a general election without your base.”

RightNow, another anti-abortion group, claimed it recruited 10,000 party members for the vote, and said O’Toole would be upholding the same policy on abortion as former leader Scheer. O’Toole told the group that “social conservatives” would be repaid for their support with a “seat at the table.”

He also said: “Basically, for the pro-lifers in our party, they will know two fundamental things about me … I value them in our party and I respect their important role in our movement.”

November 5, 2016

So it’s really quite simple. O’Toole, like Ford, needed social conservatives to support him in the leadership race, and now, not surprisingly, they want to see the payback for that support. There is nothing wrong with that — quid pro quo is a staple in politics. 

But O’Toole’s problem is fundamental, perhaps even existential. The more he accommodates the social conservative agenda, which centres largely around less gun control and putting restrictions on abortions, the more he hurts his party’s chances of pulling itself out of the 30 per cent of public support territory it has inhabited since Scheer took over leadership from Stephen Harper. And 30 per cent public support does not win elections. 

Nor do issues like less access to abortion services and less control over guns play well in urban centres, including the 905, Toronto and urban Quebec, where the Conservatives really need to increase their support to challenge the Liberals in the next election. In short, it’s a sticky wicket, but it’s one that O’Toole himself put in place. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Tuesday March 2, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday March 2, 2021

Partisan chess games in times of the pandemic

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he doesn’t want a pandemic election. Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole has shown signs he wants any election call to be later rather than sooner. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has said he will not help to topple the government until the vast majority of Canadians are immunized against COVID-19.

October 8, 2020

So why are there more signs nearly every day that we are heading for the polls late this spring or at latest next fall? 

The short answer is because we cannot believe any of the main party leaders. They all know Canadians, by and large, are too preoccupied with the pandemic to be distracted by an election campaign. They know, too, that a campaign and national vote during the pandemic is bound to carry more risks than in normal times. None of them wants to wear that, so they are all saying the right thing.

But they are politicians, after all. They have watched while voters went to the polls in New Brunswick on Sept. 14 and rewarded Premier Blaine Higgs for rolling the dice. B.C. Premier John Horgan did the same and it paid off on Oct. 24 when he was soundly re-elected. Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe did it and voters ultimately rewarded his Saskatchewan Party with a fourth majority mandate. So it turns out there may well be partisan benefits for political leaders who gamble on pandemic elections. 

September 1, 2020

Not always, though. Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey called an election for Feb. 13, but COVID-19 had other plans. After variants caused several outbreaks, in-person voting was cancelled and the election was delayed for more than half the province. The results are still unknown. 

The Newfoundland and Labrador election mess should serve as a reminder to federal party leaders that if the country goes into a COVID crisis during the campaign, their partisan gamesmanship could turn into a political nightmare. In that respect, only the NDP’s Singh as actually saying the right thing: No election until Canada has achieved herd immunity.

It would be a pleasant change if both Trudeau and O’Toole came out publicly sharing Singh’s position. They could then legitimately say they were putting the interests and welfare of Canadians ahead of partisanship. It would also be nice if COVID-19 mysteriously disappeared around the world. The two things are about equally likely.

January 22, 2021

But if they know that an election is riskier than usual — consider what would happen to the leader who forced an election if a Newfoundland and Labrador scenario unfolded nationally — what are the two leaders and their inner circles thinking?

O’Toole and his brain trust are probably not in a hurry, but they will play an election and play it hard if it happens. Their fundraising has been strong so their war chest will be full. They know Trudeau’s brand has been battered somewhat by the slower than promised acquisition of COVID vaccines. What they also know but would be unwilling to acknowledge is that O’Toole is struggling to establish a leadership brand Canadians find appealing, especially in Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes and to a lesser extent in B.C. And they are stuck at about 30 per cent support in opinion polls, which is the same as when Andrew Scheer led the party.

December 5, 2020

As for Trudeau, he has seen his popularity slide, but he also sees support for his party remaining strong, especially in central and eastern Canada, which means they would win an election if it was held today. But could they eke out a majority? And if they don’t, why force an election at all? 

History has shown that minority governments can work. Trudeau and O’Toole might want to consider that as they play high-stakes partisan chess. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)