NDP Leader Tom Mulcair holds a press conference in Ottawa on Tuesday, October 14. The New Democrats are proposing a national child-care program that would cost no more than $15 a day per child. Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick After two years of fruitlessly battling the rising tide of Justin Trudeau’s popularity, Tom Mulcair has an opportunity to knock a hole in the Liberal leader’s skiff. The question is whether he will seize it.
Wednesday, as the opposition leader took advantage of a lull in the parliamentary calendar to appear on CTV’s daytime talk show, The Social, there were chuckles all around. Here was the grizzled slayer of dragons in the Commons giddily chit-chatting about true love and the perils of wearing socks with sandals. Some would say it was an ignominious descent into frivolity, by a leader who has branded himself as not that.
The hook for the appearance, though, was pure politics; the NDP’s proposed $15-a-day national childcare plan, which is modelled on Quebec’s $7-a-day plan, and which steals a page from the Liberals of a decade ago, who proposed something virtually identical, but never managed to get it off the ground.
Whether you favour publicly funded, universally accessible daycare, or prefer the Conservative approach of cutting taxes to allow parents to better manage such choices themselves, there is no question but that Mulcair is offering voters a clear choice. As with his party’s positioning vis-à-vis the war against Islamic State in Iraq, he has a policy and he articulates it thoroughly and persuasively.
The contrast with Liberal leader Trudeau, and the Red Team’s continuing reluctance to outline its policy intentions in any but the vaguest terms, is suddenly rather more stark. Trudeau’s greatest point of vulnerability – his tendency to blurt silly things — has been obvious for more than a year. Yet he continues to step in it at regular intervals. This, despite the fact that his exposure to unscripted melees has been limited to a few strategic interviews here and here, such as with George Stroumboulopoulos, radio host Michael Enright, or most recently Carol Toller in Chatelaine magazine.
Beyond Trudeau’s plan to legalize marijuana and his strongly pro-choice stance – which is laudably forthright but can only take the Grits so far, since no federal political party is about to re-legislate abortion – Canadians still have no idea what he would do with power, other than that policy would be recognizably within the fiscally conservative, socially liberal tradition established during the Jean Chretien years.
Meantime, other pieces are moving. The two biggest policy issues standing in the way of an NDP breakthrough in Ontario – Mulcair’s ill-judged promise to re-write the federal Clarity Act, and his dogged opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline project – are off the board, at least between now and election time. Quebecers nullified the first issue in their most recent provincial vote. President Barack Obama did the honours for the second by shelving Keystone, likely until after the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The upshot is that the New Democrats now have a relatively clear field in which to persuade Ontario swing voters – whose support ultimately tipped the scales towards Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2011, and who will hold 15 additional seats in the next government – of two things; first, that the Mulcair-led NDP can be more than a Quebec-based regional rump; second, that it can competently manage a G8 economy.
The ideal lever for that conversation is TransCanada Corp’s Energy East pipeline proposal, which the NDP has long supported as an alternative to Keystone. The plan is to ship Alberta bitumen 4,600 kilometres to Eastern Canadian refineries, using a combination of a repurposed existing natural gas pipeline, and new connecting lines yet to be built.
Energy East will, of course, spark increased opposition from environmental activists and the U.S. climate change lobby, as it comes closer to fruition. Already in Quebec there are concerns about the effect on beluga whales of exploratory drilling at Cacouna, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence. There’s no reason to believe this pipeline will have an easier time of it politically, once its exact route is set, than previous proposals.
What Energy East can grant Mulcair however – should he choose such a path – is a credible pretext for articulating policy that is broadly pro-development, proffers well-paying manufacturing jobs in Ontario, and supports industry.
If this annoys some on the left enough to cause them to hurl the odd brickbat at the NDP leader, so much the better for him. A left-wing party leader who is ideologically rigid and married to anti-corporate dogma can be off-putting to hardworking soccer moms and dads in Markham. One who acknowledges pragmatic necessity, and can read a balance sheet, would be more palatable entirely.
Ironically, it’s Trudeau who first began highlighting income inequality and middle-class income stagnation, two years ago. That discussion has gone a long way in Ontario, where manufacturing has been hammered by offshoring and plant closings.
As a consequence, the province is now ripe for ambitious, sensible, detailed and costed proposals that might boost the creation of good jobs. Trudeau has yet to offer any. It will be no surprise if Mulcair does, sooner rather than later.
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