This week, John Ivison is joined by regular panelists, Ian Brodie and Eugene Lang, to discuss the fall-out from the French language debate on Wednesday night and to put it in the context of the race to elect the 45th Canadian Parliament. Brodie is a former chief of staff to prime minister Stephen Harper, and Lang was chief of staff to two Liberal defence ministers.
Lang said that Liberal leader Mark Carney didn’t dominate the debate. “But he didn’t need to. He needed to get out of there without being really beat up badly. And I don’t think he was beat up badly,” he said.
Brodie conceded that Carney emerged relatively unscathed. “He’s at a disadvantage since he obviously doesn’t really speak French. And he’s at a bit of a disadvantage (because) he’s also in his first televised leaders debate at this level … I thought he was on the defensive, but nonetheless, didn’t really speak to any serious policy issues. He had to say: ‘Sorry, I’m not Justin Trudeau. I just showed up here.’ But didn’t really have an answer to how the team and the program is any different from what we’ve had over the last 10 years.”
There have been some Conservative commentators suggesting that Carney’s admission that “I’ve just arrived” was the equivalent of John Turner’s admission in the 1984 leaders’ debate with Brian Mulroney that he “didn’t have an option” but to proceed with Pierre Trudeau’s patronage appointments. Ivison asked if disassociating himself from Justin Trudeau’s government works for Carney?
Brodie said he doesn’t think that’s a plausible argument. “I think that when we get to the ballot box, Canadians are looking to make a judgment on the last 10 years of a country that’s poorer, weaker, and more divided. For better or for worse, he’s the guy who’s leading that party. And over the course of the past three weeks, we’ve seen all these folks who were major figures in the Trudeau government, who had planned to retire, now coming back to sign up for Mr. Carney’s team.”
Ivison suggested that Carney is still trying to straddle being the agent of change and being the defender of Trudeau policies like dental, pharma and daycare.
Lang said that is an inherent contradiction.
“I guess what he’s trying to say is the leader of the Liberal Party changes everything in the Liberal Party, even if the leader of the Liberal Party doesn’t fundamentally change the cabinet, because the cabinet hasn’t fundamentally changed. And there’s a lot of policy continuity. They’re keeping a lot of the things in place, apart from the apparently hated carbon tax. So there is a tension there at a minimum, if not a contradiction.
“But it doesn’t seem to be hurting because he has the right demeanour for the times. I think that’s really his great strength. In a normal election, I don’t think this demeanour would work very well. Normally we measure leaders around intangibles like charisma and personality. None of that seems to really matter this election because of the crisis (with the U.S.)
“He has a very even temperament, seems for the most part, or a calming sort of bland, almost bureaucratic tone that normally I don’t think would work very well, but seems to be fit for the moment,” he said.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre attempted to appear amiable, avoided the slogans that have been so prominent in his campaign and concentrated on the affordability issue.
But he was often on the defensive, not so much because of the other leaders, but because of questions that asked him about imposing pipelines on First Nations, returning Haitian refugees, cutting international aid and abolishing the CBC.
Brodie said Poilievre faced challenges at two levels. “One, he had to continue to prosecute the case that we’ve had 10 years of poor, weaker, divided (government). ‘Do you want four more years of that?’ And I think on that front, he actually did pretty well. I’m not sure that Carney had great answers about how much of a change his next four years, if he got them, would be.
“And, secondly, there’s the prosecutor case on the individual issues. I know some of the questions were not in Mr. Polievre’s wheelhouse. But I think he did well considering these are probably issues he doesn’t really especially want to talk about. But on housing, cost of living, and on getting our own economic house in order to go toe to toe with Trump for the next four years, I thought those were good answers. He didn’t lose his cool….(and) his advantage in the language, I think, showed through,” he said.
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh did lose his cool with the moderator, Patrice Roy, at one point, complaining that he wasn’t being given enough time to talk about healthcare, which was not a designated topic on the night. But his team was happy with the way he went after the other leaders — attacking Carney for being the chair of Brookfield Asset Management when it bought rental housing units and then jacked up prices; going after Bloc Québecois leader Yves-François Blanchet for being as “useless as the monarchy” in voting against dental and pharmacare; and for challenging Poilievre for wanting to make Canada more like the U.S.
Lang said he wouldn’t be doing any high-fives if he were Singh, given the NDP’s precarious position in the polls.
“But you’re right, he did have to show a bit of fire in the belly, maybe a bit more energy than the others…He tried to really get people to engage on the subject of health care a number of times when they were discussing subjects that had nothing to do with health care. He’s trying to get that on the agenda because he believes, I guess, that they have some brand strength and some credibility on healthcare that the other parties don’t have. It was the usual kind of NDP shibboleths, if not ideology around healthcare, there was nothing new there at all. But clearly he sees that as an issue where maybe he could make some gains. I’m surprised he didn’t try to take more credit for this allegedly popular dental care program,” he said.
Brodie said Singh’s attack on Carney over buying up low-cost housing and that, as chair of Brookfield, he then jacked up the rents, was the attack line of the evening. “I thought that was the best single point with a proof point, probing at one of Mr. Carney’s weaknesses. I wish he’d led with that at the beginning of the campaign. It might be doing better if he had shown that kind of focus off the top of the campaign,” he said.
On healthcare, Brodie said the NDP has a specific interest in healthcare because it relies on healthcare unions for support. “They have to talk about what a great system it is because their supporters are the only people who still believe that. Everybody else is looking for some bigger change here in order to get just basic access to basic tests, as those wait lists continue to grow and people find their health is suffering. I’m not surprised that the Liberals don’t want to talk about healthcare. It doesn’t work for them the way that it used to. It really only works for the NDP because they have to keep those healthcare unions (happy). They are the only people who think the current system is working because after all, it is working for them,” he said.
Ivison said Blanchet had a couple of good moments — one, when he called Carney’s fiscal plan “a Harry Potter financial framework,” and again when he said Ottawa’s intervention at the Supreme Court on Quebec’s Bill 21 means “Quebec taxpayers are paying to oppose a Quebec bill in a Quebec jurisdiction.”
Lang said the jurisdictional issue may not work as well in this election than in previous ones.
“But I thought he had the best substantive critique of the night, with his reference to the Harry Potter magic that would be required to make not just the tax cuts affordable, but all of the numbers add up. I noticed that the media is criticizing the Liberals and the Conservatives for not releasing costed platforms before the debates. (That) is very strange. If you’re releasing an election platform on the Saturday of Easter weekend, you really don’t want a lot of scrutiny paid to it. What they’re both (Liberals and Conservatives) offering, and Blanchet was driving at this, is what I call ‘the trifecta’ — significant tax cuts in the case of Mr. Poilievre, non-trivial tax cuts in the case of Mr. Carney; significant spending increases on the part of Mr. Carney and non-trivial spending increases on the part of Mr. Poilievre; and, reduced deficits in both cases, all in the context of no material cuts to government programs. So no pain for anyone. All in the context of the worst trade war in a hundred years.
“This is the trifecta, or as Van Morrison would say, The Great Deception. This kind of thing has never been achieved by any federal government. It’s probably not achievable in any context, especially in the current context, where the projections are that the Canadian economy is probably going to go into a recession, when tax revenue will go down and the automatic stabilizer expenditures on things like Employment Insurance are destined to go up,” he said.
With 10 campaigning days left, Lang said the polls appear to be converging, as the Conservatives eat into the Liberal lead.
“But (they’re) running out of time. Maybe if you had another six weeks, those lines would continue to naturally converge and you could have a competitive election. If those polls are correct, the election day will not be a competitive election unless something happens over the next 10 days. I don’t think Poilievre can fundamentally change that dynamic. I think it would take an exogenous force or a scandal in the Liberal campaign to really change it,” he said.
The polls do suggest a narrowing in the race, but most still give the Liberals a six point lead. Carney remains more popular than Poilievre, and Donald Trump’s desire to make Canada the 51st state remains a live issue. None of that is good news for the Conservatives.
Brodie said he was surprised that in the past week, Poilievre chewed at Carney’s lead, half a point a day.
He attributed that to Trump staying out of the campaign and the continual reference to 10 years of poor Liberal government.
“I don’t think there’s a need for a knockout punch (in the English language debate),” he said. “What I think (is needed) is five or six lines of attack against Mr. Carney that can be replicated over social media and traditional media over the next seven days to accelerate that kind of half-point a day erosion of Mr. Carney’s support. He has to be able to accelerate that kind of half-pointed day for the next 10 days. If he can move half a point a day for the next five days, he comes very close to tying in the popular vote. And if he can accelerate that to three quarters of a point, he wins.
“The challenge in this debate is not to throw a 50-yard pass down the field, to use a terrible sports metaphor. He’s got to move that little piece every day where people start to have doubts about: ‘Yeah, who is this guy Carney? What is his plan for the future of the country? The Trump thing looks like it might be more manageable than we thought three weeks ago’.”
“He’s got just enough time, if he can speed up the erosion of Mr. Carney’s support, to pull that off for election day. It’s a different campaign than the Conservatives were planning before Christmas, needless to say. It’s a different campaign than they would have run in January. But I think it’s the campaign that they’re faced with right now.”
