FUREY: All of a sudden, Trudeau has conservatives boxed in
Anthony FureyMore from Anthony Furey
Updated: June 23, 2019 9:23 AM EDT
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer delivers a speech on the environment in Chelsea, Que. Wednesday June 19, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
Throughout the first half of the year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was against the ropes. He was hammered almost daily by first the China mess and then Lavscam and it even seemed – for a few days – that his political demise was imminent.
A lot of that is gone now. Yes, Trudeau's numbers dropped massively in the polls and remain that way. Yes, he could still lose the upcoming election. But he's no longer in a daily defensive posture. In some ways he's even back on top framing the debate again.
Case in point: Did Andrew Scheer actually want to release his climate change plan last week? Sure, he's long wanted to ax the carbon tax. But was drafting this 60-page plan about putting a cap on large emitters and reducing global emissions one of his driving issues, one of the things that spurred him to run for leader in the first place? That's doubtful.
More likely, the Conservatives released it because the Liberals pushed them to do it. Catherine McKenna and Trudeau had been going on non-stop about how Scheer and his team had "no plan" on our current – what's the phrase I'm now supposed to use? – "climate emergency." Scheer and his team must have felt at risk of being defined by their opponents. So they released the climate plan as one of their big policy pieces to assuage the concerns of swing voters preoccupied with climate issues.
Scheer has a lot of smart minds crunching the numbers for him so maybe it is indeed the case that there are enough swing voters distributed in such a way that offering up this exact plan will go a long way to beating the Liberals in October. Even if that's true though, there's only so much time you can spend placating your critics and enemies. They'll gladly keep you playing the game according to their rules if you let them keep you busy like that. There's a risk this could become a trend with Scheer.
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GOLDSTEIN: Andrew Scheer's fighting history, not Doug Ford
With Ontario Premier Doug Ford, it's worse. Ford's leadership win and then subsequent landslide election victory as premier gave the impression he would be an unstoppable and unapologetic wrecking ball determined to slash the deficit, reduce the size of government and overturn the most troubling aspects of the previous Liberal era, come hell or high water.
Instead, one year into his first term, we've got a premier who now appears afraid of his own shadow – failing to offer a path to a balanced budget for the entire term and repeatedly announcing poorly thought out policies and appointments only to later revise them following mostly legitimate public outcry.
For years the conservative movement in Ontario has been eager for a chance to govern the province. The feeder system of ideas from the various conferences, academics, think tanks and advocacy groups presented a slate of policy proposals to reform government in Ontario. Ford is advancing few of these ideas and when it comes to the things he is doing, there is no discernible guiding principles underlying it. A lot of it appears to be random.
They do have an excuse for this disappointing performance though, and it's a doozy. When the first budget was recently announced and there was no plan to balance the books until year five I pointed out that this was a swindle, given that Ford only has a four-year term. But, I was told by Ontario PC insiders, that it was brilliant strategy because it meant that there would be no major cuts for Justin Trudeau to vilify and use to say Andrew Scheer will do the same federally.
Yes, I suppose one good way to neutralize the Trudeau appeal is to just govern like Trudeau would. How embarrassing. It's not like it even worked either. The activists had already printed out their signs protesting budget cuts before the budget was even released. People who are determined to hate you will find a way to do it no matter what.
Scheer and Ford might as well just do what they truly want to do and then, if the going gets tough, work to pull public opinion towards them by arguing their case. This is what politics is supposed to be all about anyway.
Anything else just plays into their opponent's hands. And based on what we've seen recently, at this snapshot in time it seems like Trudeau has them boxed in.
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