For those who actually endured viewing the whole of it, which would I guess comprise the total membership of the watching-paint-dry community, the Conservative leadership count tested the outer limits of tedium and insipidity.
For those viewing the proceedings on television, delayed votes can be a pain and a strain, as broadcasters’ capacity to improvise even remotely relevant comment after the first hour seriously declines, and the temptation to start telling family anecdotes, or musing on air about vacation plans, seriously presents itself.
I recall a St. John’s, Nfld., municipal election years ago, when we at the local CBC scheduled a 30-minute special (from 10 to 10:30 p.m.) to give the results. The count was to have been done by 9:30. The planned half hour was just to give the numbers and do a little of what TV producers always optimistically call “colour” (is bland a colour?). I was there as a chatterer with no less than the mighty Bob Cole as anchor.
In short, we blew through our 30 minutes with no results whatsoever. After city hall promised the results would be there in minutes, the call came from the studio try for another 30. Yet after that, there were still no results.
At 2:30 a.m., Cole rebelled. We went off the air after four and a half hours of back-and-forth between just the two of us, and absolutely no results to broadcast. By the second hour, I was writing Cole notes, giving him questions to ask me, and he was writing answers for me to give him. By the fourth hour, viewers were phoning in asking if someone should call a doctor for either or both of us.
I forget the last thing we were discussing, but I think it had something to do with the Peloponnesian War and its tenuous connection with the breakwater in Ship Cove, Nfld.
“Is this relevant?” I hear you ask. Of course not, but I cannot easily foresee another occasion when I will have the chance to offer this anecdote.
Monday morning’s Conservative leadership results were, I suppose, a bit of a surprise. I say “suppose” only because unless one is fairly entrenched in the actual campaigns. Most outside opinion ends up being pure guesswork, or projections on lazy assumptions that are untested by any real knowledge. Peter MacKay’s public image, from a fairly long time on the scene and some standing in previous Conservative politics (and leadership campaigns), probably made him the public’s best guess. But the inner dynamics of party contests cannot be read from the outside.
Erin O’Toole outplayed him and was nowhere near as prone to some of the awkward missteps and off tone displayed in the early days of MacKay’s bid. Aside from his own skilled campaigning, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s endorsement probably gave the O’Toole campaign the extra lift it needed to bring him past MacKay.
But there were actually two winners on Sunday night: O’Toole, as he is now leader of the official Opposition at a time when that position has very much to offer; and the genial, intelligent and commendably resourceful Leslyn Lewis, who is now a first-class Conservative star.
Lewis will be a welcome guest or speaker in any Conservative riding in the country. Furthermore, she will now be sought both frequently and with some ardour by all the Canadian talk shows and panels, which, up until Monday morning, seemed fixated by some other candidate in another country running in a different election.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s prorogation might have an element of backfire to it. True, he didn’t need to resort to prorogation, save that the WE jumble and all its entanglements was doing deep injury to himself and the Liberal brand. But the stall he has put on Parliament — the little we have had of it — also provides a period for O’Toole to find his pace, establish an accord with both Lewis and MacKay, and work out a formidable relationship with and other Conservative frontbenchers.
Come the return of an actual Parliament, there will be more opposition to the Opposition. And the stalling on the WE affair may actually give time for a deeper look into the questionable intimacies the organization has enjoyed with the Trudeau Liberals. The return of Parliament will put a very sharp termination to the long holiday that Trudeau has taken from real scrutiny and challenge.
And even more, there is now a foundation for the Conservatives to mount a challenge to the latest “big shift” the Liberals have been hinting at: that recovery is going to take the form of a “green new deal.” As Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said so curiously on Friday, “I think all Canadians understand that the restart of our economy needs to be green.” And where, oh where, did she pick up that strange understanding?
O’Toole and his new band will have to immediately contest the idea that COVID-19 has somehow been converted into a mandate or a license for Trudeau to continue with his ideological fantasies of turning Canada into what amounts to a Green party experiment. And that seems to be the strategy: as Trudeau said last week, “Canada needs to seize the rebuilding opportunity afforded by the pandemic to become greener.”
There is much more to be said on this. But for now, it is enough to note that, given the economy has already been savaged by a plague, there is no rationale for introducing another savaging via the delusions of greening what is left of it. Over to you, Mr. O’Toole.
National Post
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2020
