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Category: Chairman’s Desk

Canada’s political leaders must overcome international and internal strife

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Those of us who had hoped for a more placid year ahead are likely to be disappointed.

If anything, Canada’s closest allies are facing even more difficult and uncertain times than had been predicted.

Brexit, which by any measure was a monumental task, has grown more complicated and troublesome in recent weeks. Whilst once it seemed that Theresa May’s Conservatives could safely steer the United Kingdom out of the European Union with the support of a united government, that seems a stretch today.

May faces defections and resignations from her own caucus and cabinet on an almost daily basis. The opposition seems unlikely to provide her government cover, and allies in other parties are dropping like flies. No-deal on Brexit seems increasingly likely, as does an election — one that could see Jeremy Corbyn, the radical and divisive leader of the Labour Party, elected Prime Minister.

Stability in the United Kingdom is as hard to see as a polar bear in a blizzard.

The United States is in little better condition. President Trump has battled the media and critics since the beginning of his presidency. When the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, it signalled a whole new phase in the country’s internecine conflict.

It seems inevitable that Nancy Pelosi will take the speaker’s gavel. Under her leadership, the Democrats will formalize the opposition to Trump in a way that hasn’t been possible for two years. The democrats will wield subpoena power, chair committee investigations and erect roadblocks that will frustrate, if not freeze, Trump’s agenda.

The next two years of U.S. politics will largely be an acrimonious battle between branches of government, hindering their ability to move important government initiatives forward in a meaningful way.

This sustained period of international unrest presents challenges for Canada — particularly now that there is an increasing lack of ideological alignment between our provincial and federal governments.

The Trudeau Liberals have ushered in a number of policies that are cheered by progressives but jeered by conservatives. The challenge, much as in the U.S., is that opposition and partisanship are becoming far more entrenched. Right wing parties have been elected across the country in the last two years, and their leaders have made little secret of their distaste for policies originating from Ottawa.

The relationship, in particular, between Queen’s Park and the federal government has been strained and Doug Ford is joined by a host of premiers who seem to have little interest in idly accepting the policies the federal government is intent on implementing. These differences are real, differences based in policy disagreements fundamental to each government’s outlook.

That said, there are areas of cooperation that governments of all stripes and colours can find. What’s more, it is critical they do so to ensure the continued stability of Canada’s economy.

In that regard, there have been glimmers of hope in the apparent appetite for finding areas for collaboration.

Premiers have begun working proactively with one another to eliminate trade barriers between provinces. These barriers have been invisible anchors on the Canadian economy, stifling access, innovation and competition.

Perhaps just as importantly, an olive branch was extended when Ford indicated that he would be happy to work with the prime minister if the goal was to create jobs. There are other policy opportunities for the premiers and the PM to find alignment in and mutual benefit from — not the least of which is ensuring Alberta’s oil can find its way to market.

The Ontario government mentioned its commitment to helping solve Alberta’s heavy crude problem in its Fall Economic Statement, and the PM this week reiterated that the status quo cannot continue. After all, the Canadian economy is losing an estimated $80 million a day.

The Alberta question is approaching a boiling point. It is against this backdrop of international instability and internal strife that the federal government has requested a first ministers’ meeting next month.

All involved in this meeting would be well served to recognize the opportunity before them. With their eye on the international horizon, Canadians are watching that their governments deliver more than a lump of coal in their stockings.

Jaime Watt is the executive chairman of Navigator Ltd. and a Conservative strategist. He is a freelance contributor for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @jaimewatt

Olympic bid failure another sign voters reject elites’ big projects

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It was never all that clear whether or not Calgarians would approve of the city’s bid for the Olympics in 2026.

Polling predictions were mixed. A few years of slumping oil prices had taken their toll on a formerly Olympic proud town.

Though opponents of the bid successfully convinced the provincial government to force a plebiscite that would ask city residents for their approval, the wind was not exactly at their back.

Proponents put together a highly organized and well-funded effort to support it, arguing that it was a chance to showcase Calgary on the world stage and bring Canadians together in a burst of national pride.

Most community leaders and many councillors strongly supported the bid, advocating publicly in favour.

Yet, despite their best efforts, Olympic-boosters were never really able to get a whole hearted, full throated endorsement from the mayor. Although Mayor Naheed Nenshi came on board about a week before voting day, he never brought his legendary campaign skills to the fight.

And, so, when the votes came in, the opinions of those city leaders proved not to match those of Calgarians.

Residents voted no. It was likely the right decision — everyone knows that the Olympics, often promoted as a city- and nation-building exercise, are little more than an overpriced circus that almost always leaves its host cities burdened with debt for generations and infrastructure that not only goes unused but falls into disrepair as well.

Yet another example, in a litany of examples, of Canadian voters going against the wishes of elites.

Doug Ford’s election was much in the same vein. Though pundits and Ontario’s elites were aghast at the thought of Ford winning government, he did win — and handily.

Ford’s approach, and his down-to-earth manner of speaking were seen by some as not fitting of a premier.

But he was relentlessly focused not on grandiose policies but on the issues that matter to voters. Some may roll their eyes at buck-a-beer pricing, or at cutting the gas tax, but they’re issues that are tangible to voters.

Similar campaigns have found success across the country — Quebec, New Brunswick, and most likely Alberta before too long, are opting for the things that affect them, not big-thinking policies that feel remote and pinch their wallets.

That is going to continue to define Canadian politics for the next while.

Our leaders — civic, business and political — continue to be obsessed with big-picture ideas, and nation-building policies. Climate change battles. Transforming our electoral systems. Being an international leader on refugees.

All are ideas that have been pushed in recent years by those leaders. All are ideas that are celebrated as important exercises in building Canada, both here at home and as an international brand.

Many of these ideas appeal to me. Like many, I have committed much of my life to making Canada a better place; to projects that help foster social cohesion.

But the evidence suggests big-picture thinking, which the elites continue to put on offer, is not what Canadians want to buy.

Our society has turned inwards. Self-care is no longer just a buzzword — it’s a way of living. Our social circles are smaller. Our thoughts unchallenged by ideological opponents. Our lives organized to avoid unwanted interaction.

This isolation means that many Canadians are feeling more self-interested than ever.

Let me give you an example. Polling overwhelmingly shows that Canadians believe in climate change, and that something must be done.

But polling also shows that the “something” had better not affect them. If it costs them money that they would otherwise use to pay their bills or lengthens their commute and keeps them away from their families, for instance, that support quickly evaporates.

For today’s political leaders it does seem to be a new world; a world where it has been repeatedly shown that the focus needs to be on the little guy and not on big ideas.

For better or for worse, it is an adjustment that any successful political leader will need to come to terms with.

Jaime Watt is the executive chairman of Navigator Ltd. and a Conservative strategist. He is a freelance contributor for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @jaimewatt

U.S. midterm elections put USMCA in jeopardy

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Another day, another bump in the road for the Canada-U. S. relationship.

Spare a moment for Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland.

After years of arduous negotiations over a renewed North American trade agreement with a temperamental and fickle President Donald Trump, she had finally come to ground on what the government believed was an acceptable agreement.

The US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) may not have won friends among certain sectors of Canada’s economy but, by and large, Canadians were more than a little relieved to have escaped the renegotiation with just a few bruises and scrapes.

In the name of an assured and dependable trade relationship and the economic benefits that come with that, the country was willing to accept a deal that may not have been perfect.

But just weeks after the three countries declared victory, that fragile achievement may have been shattered.

The midterm results, delivered on Tuesday, bring with them the likelihood of disruption to American political life.

Despite the chaos that surrounds the president himself, the last two years have been a relatively predictable politically due to the Republicans holding both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Pitched partisan policy battles were more or less confined to the media, rather than to the process itself.

That changed on Tuesday.

While the Republicans actually gained ground in the Senate, the House of Representatives fell to the Democrats.

The result? Nancy Pelosi is likely to assume the speaker’s chair. Pelosi is a particularly formidable partisan foe; indeed, she is one of the few Democrats whose steely approach and steady nerves have won her Trump’s respect.

But even if the speaker’s gavel goes to someone else, the flipping of the House will cause major headaches for the president — and by extension, to his legacy projects, including USMCA.

The Democrats feel they have been given a mandate to fight the president tooth and nail on his agenda. They are diametrically opposed to his ideas almost across the board and have publicly indicated their intention to do everything they can to prevent the implementation of his agenda.

However, one of the only places the president and the Democrats seem to find some common ground is around their suspicion of free-trade agreements.

The Democrats have long eyed such agreements warily, seeing them as a way to undermine sovereignty, empower corporations and surreptitiously attack workers’ rights. While that wariness faded somewhat during the mid-’90s, it has not dissipated entirely. And it is a particular hobby-horse of the left-wing of the Democratic party, which finds itself in the ascendancy after this week’s results.

Add to that the fact it is no secret to anyone that Trump thinks little of the North American trading relationships as they currently stand.

This means that in an environment where the House of Representatives and the president strongly disagree on virtually every issue, trade agreements may be the one area of agreement that can be used to advance other agenda items.

Indeed, the presumptive chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means, Richard Neal, has publicly pooh-poohed USMCA. He has suggested that in order to garner the support of Democrats (a necessity for the agreement to come into force) there would need to be several additional assurances and he has also implied it may require changes.

Enter a pained Minister Freeland.

It will be up to the minister, who has spent months trekking back and forth to Washington coaxing the president’s team into the deal, to now sell the deal to an equally sceptical audience for wholly different reasons.

The chances that USMCA becomes a casualty of domestic policies are high — so Minister Freeland will need to work quickly to build a coalition of moderate Democrats and Republicans in the House who would be willing to advance the agreement quickly.

The minister, and her team, have been proven capable of doing that many times before — but it will take another level of adeptness to usher through a controversial deal in an environment as fraught and raucous as this.

But, just as before, her government’s fate depends on their success — and a collapse of the agreement just months before a federal election would almost certainly be a harbinger of more negative news to come.

Jaime Watt is the executive chairman of Navigator Ltd. and a Conservative strategist. He is a freelance contributor for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @jaimewatt

How a Democratic victory Tuesday may help Trump’s re-election

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On Tuesday, Americans will go to the polls to elect a third of the Senate and all the members of the House of Representatives in what’s known as the mid-term elections.

It is an American political tradition that the sitting President’s party is punished during these elections, with most tending to lose seats in Congress.

Today, the smart money says that President Trump, despite a vicious and divisive campaign against the Democrats, will experience a particularly sharp rebuke. Due to an electoral map that tilts heavily to rural, traditionally Republican parts of the country, his party looks set to hold the Senate. But the House of Representatives will likely return to Democratic control, under the leadership of one of the most formidable and longest-serving American legislators, Nancy Pelosi.

It will mark the Democrats return to power after being swept out resoundingly during former president Obama’s first term in 2010.

The Democrats are on a roll; they have found their voice. They’ve raised an astonishing amount of money. They have swung significantly to the left and adopted white-hot rhetoric that echoes the frustration felt by their supporters.

They are supported by an energized base furious at Trump and his supporters; a base who sees such a takeover as the only way to effectively stymy the president’s agenda.

And they just might be right — in the short term. After all, Pelosi has made a career of thwarting conservative ambitions.

Winning the House would let the Democrats use process to tangle up regulatory changes, vote down legislation and open investigations into the president and his team. It would allow them to distract the administration from its policy agenda and would expose them to major legal risks.

But, from the department of unintended consequences, it just may be that in doing all of these things to undermine the president, the Democrats will end up making Trump’s re-election case for him.

For the last two years, when it comes to national policy, the president has been the only show in town. With a Republican Senate, a Republican House, and Republicans holding a record number of governorships, the spotlight has been solely focused on the president’s party, as has the criticism that comes with it.

The Democrats, on the other hand, have been in the enviable position of being able to criticize with little requirement to present their own solutions.

And that has proven a tough place for the president to be. Indeed, the presidential approval rating almost always declines when voters don’t have an alternative against which to compare them. As a wise elder once said, “I don’t need to be perfect. I just need to be better than my opponent.”

As a result, the torrent of critical coverage of Trump over the last two years has taken its toll. His approval rating is significantly lower than his predecessors at this point in his presidency.

But those numbers may be deceiving. While, according to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight.com, polls show around 50-53 per cent of Americans disapprove of Donald Trump, those same polls also show an unshakable core of roughly 40-42 per cent of Americans who approve of him.

That is no small number. Consider those results in a Canadian context: according to the CBC’s comparable polling aggregator, in the last 10 polls, Justin Trudeau averaged approval of 40 per cent of Canadians, while 49 per cent disapproved of his performance — numbers that are, within the margin of error, the same as the president’s.

So, while polarizing, and perhaps even unusual, those numbers still provide a respectable base from which to launch a re-election campaign.

If the Democrats do indeed take the House, they will be able to hinder the implementation of Trump’s agenda but they won’t have been handed a silver bullet.

The president’s base will be energized, his fundraising turbocharged and, crucially, the contrast of ideas that he needs to win will be set up.

It just might turn out that the moment the speaker’s gavel is placed in Pelosi’s hands may one day be known as the day that Trump ensured his re-election.

Jaime Watt is the executive chairman of Navigator Ltd. and a Conservative strategist. He is a freelance contributor for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @jaimewatt