Roundup: Looking beyond mediocrity

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It’s Manning Networking Conference time again, and with a leadership contest in the offing, you can bet that some possible leadership hopefuls are starting to lay out a few markers (even if Nigel Wright wants them to focus more on policy). Jason Kenney is again “contemplating” a run after apparently recovering from burnout after the election (and it does bear noting that he’s only just started showing up to QP again). Peter MacKay thinks that the Conservatives can beat Trudeau of they’re smart about it, while others like Michael Chong and Diane Watts think the party needs to do better on issues like the environment. But all eyes, of course, were on Kevin O’Leary, who said a few outrageous things as he is wont to – that he wants a national referendum on pipelines, that he thinks it should be the law that a prime minister has to have run a business before they can lead the country, or that he thinks the party system is becoming doomed in the wake of a mass populist movement where people wants politicians to solve their problems regardless of political brand or label. Of the many things he did say, one that I thought merited a little more attention was his calling out the Conservatives for having become a party of mediocrity, and I do think that’s true, as it built itself around the personal brand of Stephen Harper post merger. Despite the NDP using phrases like “Bay Street buddies” in their references to the Conservatives over the past decade, there was really very little of that kind of branding to the party. It wasn’t about wealth (despite their policies actually benefitting the wealthy) or aspiration, or even markets once you really broke it down, but rather about this attempt to appeal to the suburban nuclear family in all of its messaging and the way it built programmes (but again, while they appeared to be for these suburban masses, the benefits disproportionately went to the top). Harper himself cultivated the image of being some minivan driving hockey dad, despite the fact that he was both a career politician, and it soon became clear that his kids weren’t much into hockey either (though his son was apparently quite the volleyball player, for what it’s worth). For O’Leary, whose brand is about greed being good, and a certain conspicuousness to his wealth, it’s pretty much anathema to the suburban image that Harper was crafting, and that his ministers followed suit in embodying. The closest they got to any Bay Street types was Joe Oliver, but he again was less about materialism or consumerism than he was about parroting approved Harper talking points. It is interesting that this is something that O’Leary has picked up on and would certainly be pushing back on should he decide to go ahead and pursue a leadership bid, because that would certainly be a radical shake-up for the party.

Good reads:

  • After years of being frozen, MPs have voted to increase their office budgets (which again, let’s be reasonable about and not succumb to cheap outrage).
  • The Liberals are not promising pardons for people convicted of marijuana possession once it is legalized (at this point, in any case).
  • Despite Brad Wall’s protests, it sounds like a national carbon price will be on the table when first ministers meet next week.
  • The former head of the Public Complaints Commission Against the RCMP will be an independent overseer of the investigation into the latest RCMP abuse allegations.
  • Liberal Senator Art Eggleton wants the government to go ahead on a guaranteed basic income pilot project.
  • Our “signature project” in Afghanistan, the Dahla Dam, is pretty much a bust because Foreign Affairs didn’t listen to advice on the ground.
  • Oh, look – another gimmicky plan to try to get more women into politics, without doing the real work to do so.
  • It’s the end of Hy’s, with reminisces from CBC and Susan Delacourt.
  • Kady O’Malley offers an approving look at the changes happening in the Senate.
  • Former Harper PMO comms staffer Sara McIntyre lays out a vision of renewed conservatism that is actually quite principled and grounded.
  • Maclean’s offers up a cautionary tale about how the ranked ballot system has been gamed in Australia to the detriment of their senate elections.

Odds and ends:

Here’s Catherine McKenna’s slip in QP that elicited many laughs.

2 thoughts on “Roundup: Looking beyond mediocrity”

  1. The Maclean’s article about Australia is a bit confused and simply wrong at times. The Aussie Senate is elected using STV, which isn’t at all the same as the Canadian Liberals’ preferred ranked ballot system, which is what Australians use to elect their Lower House. It gets a few other things wrong too (e.g. not all six Senators/state are elected every three years — it’s more like the US Senate where different Senate seats have different election dates, except in the case of the very rare double dissolution). An actual Australian commented on the article pointing out some of the article’s flaws.

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