Canada: Erin O'Toole's economic populist/working class strategy

[DC Al Fine]

Erin O'Toole is appealing to the "left behind" working class with populist messaging and saying nice things about private sector unions, championing pipelines and the resource sector as a job strategy, combined with some cultural conservatism about "wokeness", Canadian nationalism etc.

Some more orthodox conservatives are apparently calling him "Bernie O'Toole" while liberals and the left are saying he is "taking from Trump's playbook."

Will it work?

I'm not sure if it will work, but we have to try *something*.

The Tory coalition, while substantial, isn't quite big enough to put them over the top most of the time. We need to pick off an underserved group from another party's coalition. In a perfect world, that would be rural Quebecers but:

a) I don't think the Bloc is underserving them
b) We've been trying to crack that nut for over a century, with very little lasting success.

On the other hand, when I watch the NDP and Liberals, I don't get the impression that they're serving their traditional blue collar base particularly well. Liberal and NDP messaging over the past several years seems to have shifted more towards the priorities of the educated, white collar progressive voter. Given trends in the rest of Anglosphere, I think it's worth a shot to try and pick off some of those blue collar voters.

On a personal note, social conservatives and other parts of the Tory coalition have spent the past couple decades being told by the business conservatives that we need to put our priorities on hold in favour of business concerns for the sake of electability... so I'm quite amused to see pundits like Andrew Coyne and large chunks of that National Post opinion page rend their garments at the prospect of their priorities being sidelined in favour of a more nationalistic Tory agenda.

[DC Al Fine]

I'd also add O'Toole's hawkishness on China as a good example of where his shift can make gains. The Liberals have been pretty weak on this issue, and it's the sort of line that can attract new voters and keeps his base happy.

[DC Al Fine]

Coyne voted for Stockwell Day's Alliance in 2000, Michael Ignatieff in 2011 and Tom Mulcair in 2015.

Lol, that makes the handwringing even funnier.

[DC Al Fine]

That is not really a necessity though?

Like if the Conservatives + Bloc managed to get a majority between the 2, wouldn't that be enough to get a Tory minority government through? In that scenario, the Conservatives do not need to win most of rural Quebec to get into power. They just need the Bloc to do it for them.

Or are the differences between the 2 parties impossible to bridge?

Stephen Harper survived two minorities by taking advantage of Liberal weakness and sometimes appeasing the Bloc. When he smelt blood, he called an election and won a majority the second time.

To add to what Exnaderite said: we could technically do what you described, but under FPTP, everyone treats minorities as an inconvenience and majorities as the real prize.

[DC Al Fine]

Begging or not, I really have to question the opposition's wisdom in forcing an election when the government is *checks wiki* at 39% in the polls

[DC Al Fine]

Although Doug Ford now has a positive approval rating.  Yes fallen back a bit, but still way higher than in 2019.  Now yes tough to say if it holds, although I would think vaccination and rebounding economy would help provincial premiers too.  I think 2023-2025 is going to be the tough part for incumbents as bills will come due and that will mean tough and unpopular choices regardless of political stripe.

The OLP leader is a complete nobody. Yes, a complete nobody did beat Doug Ford's idol, but June 2022 will be a different world. If your forced me to predict the next Ontario vote, I would choose another Ford majority.

Still, Trudeau is now rolling out major expansions in government programs, with the pandemic as an excellent opportunity. He can use the next federal election to contrast himself with the stingier premiers, the biggest one (literally and figuratively) being Ford.

The wild card is, as you mentioned, with finance. It's not a problem now when interest rates are rock-bottom (in fact it's criminally insane not to binge-spend on investments when interest rates are at zero). It won't even be a problem when all the world's major economies are simultaneously at zero interest rates. But we're in for a rude shock if inflation suddenly picks up.

Knowing this I think Trudeau once vaccinations complete will want to go soon so he can spend a lot and not have to worry about deficits being a political risk.  And if they do he has a majority and probably his last term anyways so no worries about re-election.

Two thoughts:

1) I'd go a little sooner than that depending on the speed of the recovery. If it's mid 2022, we're all vaccinated and unemployment is still 9%, the concern might just be old fashioned being blamed for a bad economy rather than deficit concerns.

2) To what MABA said, it occurs to me, that the Feds have A LOT more fiscal wiggle room than the provinces. The federal deficit day of reckoning might be a long ways off, while the provincial ones (particularly Alberta and Newfoundland) might be closer than we think.

[DC Al Fine]

Interesting. But O'Toole is hardly a SoCon. Didn't he say something about supporting the LGBT+ community after he won?

True, but I think real challenge for Conservatives is those who don't want to see them gain power will always take most extreme elements and then try to paint whole party like that and it usually works.  Its why Conservatives have such a tough time winning.  I don't know many on left who vote conservative, but know lots on right on who won't even if their views align as they buy all the negative stereotypes.  Problem for Tories is they are big on free speech so trying to limit dissent goes against ideology, but makes it easy for opponents to paint them with a negative brush.

My earlier take:

The "mean" CPC MP represents a constituency in a western province, and/or outside a major city. The party imagines itself as a big-tent encompassing everyone from the religious right to pro-business conservatives.

The CPC has a national floor of about 30%, and its way to power requires winning 40% of the popular vote and breaking through the suburbs of both the GTA and Metro Vancouver.

About 10-15% of the Canadian population can be considered social conservative, mostly Christian. This small minority becomes influential among the party base, and the last two leadership elections saw the "establishment" candidate defeated by a candidate who won the support of social conservatives on subsequent ballots. Conservative leaders naturally come with the dilemma of having to please social conservatives to win the leadership, while appealing to suburban, socially moderate voters to win power.

Harper did it, thanks in large part to Liberal disarray. He was also very effective at controlling the wingnuts in the party.

Scheer failed. He actually Hillary'd/Gore'd, as he ran up the score in the prairie provinces while narrowly losing dozens of suburban seats.

It's still early for O'Toole, but he hasn't been good at controlling his Fox News-watching wingnuts.

We got a rare glimpse into Tory MP's social ideas, with the recent vote on liberalizing our assisted suicide laws further. 103 Tories voted against the bill, while 16 voted for it. The 16 were the majority of the Quebec caucus plus a smattering of Anglos. One Liberal also voted against the bill; Marcus Powlowski of Thunder Bay.