Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau speaks to the media at the Liberal Party of Canada's National Winter Caucus meetings in London, Ont., on Tuesday. Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Dave Chidley Here is the irony, and perhaps the risk, in the Conservative party’s placing so much emphasis on attacking Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau: If the emerging Liberal strategy succeeds, the leadership horse race may not be the driving issue of the 2015 campaign at all. The economy, with Ontario on point, could trump everything.
This, in a nutshell, is why Trudeau’s Grits are gathered in London, Ont. this week and not, say, Sherbrooke, Que. or Brandon, Man. As Southwestern Ontario goes, so goes the nation, may be overstating it. But only just.
The reason is this: Ontario is where the swing voters reside, in their teeming millions. The province, population 13.6 million, will be home to 15 new ridings this year, mainly in suburban areas around the Greater Toronto Area. That makes for 121 Commons seats, up from the previous 106.
Southwestern Ontario ridings such as Essex, Chatham-Kent-Essex, Sarnia-Lampton, Lampton-Kent-Middlesex and Elgin-Middlesex-London have gone blue in the last decade. But those roots remain shallow; and thus, Liberal strategists figure, they are prone to uprooting, given the right circumstances.
One such circumstance would be that the country’s former economic powerhouse is now a net recipient of federal equalization. That’s mostly because its traditional manufacturing economy, clustered in the Toronto hinterland and in a narrow belt along Highway 401 towards Detroit-Windsor, has been decimated by offshoring.
Further, as in the rest of Canada, Ontario’s population leans toward middle age: According to 2011 Census data, the median age in 2013 was 40. In 2041, it is projected to be 45. Ergo, most voting-age Ontarians remember better times.
Add to that the purely political: The Conservatives are nowhere in Quebec, with just five seats. And they retain a stranglehold on the Prairies. The Harper majority is, at root, a union of Alberta and Ontario grassroots conservatives, in which just one pillar is assailable.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau speaks to Liberal Members of Parliament and nominated Liberal candidates in Ottawa in a file photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
Combine all these factors — population, economics, demographics, politics — and you have an explanation for why Trudeau and his advisers seized upon the narrative of middle-class decline two years ago. It would be shocking if the Liberals’ economic plan, when it finally lands, does not include measures to boost manufactured exports, accelerate trade, and a major tax package designed as a broad-based foil to the Conservatives’ income-splitting pledge. If the message finds a ready ear anywhere, it will be in Ontario.
Events appear to be conspiring in the Liberal leader’s favour.
In a speech in London Tuesday evening, Trudeau was expected to take a sharper line than he has previously in attacking the Prime Minister’s economic record. The opening for that gambit, of course, is the recent slide in the price of crude oil, which has caused Finance Minister Joe Oliver to delay his spring budget and has thrown the government’s marquee tax-cut and balanced-budget promises into question.
Tuesday, The Canadian Press reported that an anonymous “federal official” had slapped down assertions by employment minister Jason Kenney that the government may consider spending cuts, if this is necessary to balance the books this year. No spending cuts are in the offing, CP reported the official as saying, even if that means dipping into the government’s $3-billion contingency reserve.
For Kenney, among the government’s most powerful ministers, to have his wings clipped in this way, suggests a degree of internal ferment not seen since last February, when then-finance minister Jim Flaherty broke with his colleagues over income-splitting. As the Commons resumes sitting next week, the Conservatives are wrong-footed on the very file they consider their greatest selling point — the economy.
Their obvious play here would be to undercut the Liberals as they did in 2009, by setting fiscal conservatism aside, and blaming factors beyond their control. But this may not be palatable to the Tory base, given how cabinet members and the PM have all but tattooed the balanced-budget promise on their foreheads.
And here’s what’s perhaps most curious in all this: Dauphin Trudeau, who has been peppered with rotten fruit for months over his refusal to speak words that sound anything like a detailed economic plan, is now in the position of waiting and watching, as the government tacks back into the wind and the New Democrats, already on the hook for a $5-billion national childcare proposal, no doubt do the same.
The Liberal leader’s policy reticence, dismissed as gap-toothed vacuity, now begins to look prudent. He’s the only leader of a major federal party who hasn’t made spending promises that, in light of the new reality, may soon appear reckless. Since there will be no spring election, as we know from the delayed budget, the Liberals also now enjoy the luxury of time. They can spend the spring honing a package that has already been months in the making, looking over their opponents’ work as they do so, and fine-tuning it for Ontario ears.
Not for the first time, Trudeau’s opponents must be wondering where he gets his luck. The collapse of crude, which no one foresaw, has changed the board again — in his favour.
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