Category: Chairman’s Desk

On Tuesday, 90-year-old Margaret Keenan became the first patient outside of clinical trials to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, a few short days after the U.K. became the first country to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Keenan’s jab brought with it a collective sigh of relief from every corner of the world as the moment we have all impatiently awaited arrived at last.

Throughout the British Isles, the deepest sigh of relief came perhaps from Downing Street, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s political fortunes were reversed with the prick of a needle.

After nine months of a gruelling, unrelenting and frequently mismanaged battle with the pandemic, Johnson’s Conservatives have finally delivered Britons their first victory. What’s more, the start of vaccinations gave British Tories an opportunity to champion the National Health Service — the crown jewel in the welfare state their party is so often accused of wanting to dismantle.

Indeed, Johnson wasted no time in appearing at a London vaccination centre in front of the NHS logo, celebrating his country’s status as the first nation to receive the vaccine. This is a distinction he is unlikely to allow his party, his voters or his opposition in Parliament to forget anytime soon.

The victory arrives in the nick of time. This weekend sees his other priority project — Brexit — sliding toward the cliff edge with no deal in sight.

But if Johnson is the poster child for politicians riding the high of a vaccine — perhaps all the way to a general election — he is certainly not the only one.

In capitals around the world, political leaders have, with varying degrees of success, pinned their own political fortunes to the arrival and successful rollout of a vaccine. Who can blame them? After almost a year of unrelenting bad news, what politician wouldn’t want to own the solution, regardless of their limited role in it?

In the United States, President Trump has for months promised to develop a vaccine at “warp speed.” To his credit, many laughed when he said we would have a vaccine by the holidays

This week, Trump was elated to emerge from his self-imposed confinement in the White House to posture in front of his “Operation Warp Speed” signs. While he celebrated his incredible, fantastic, amazing efforts to bring a vaccine to American shores —single-handedly, it seems — he stunningly ignored the news that the total number of infected Americans passed 15 million.

The video introducing the event was an opportunity for Trump and his team to manipulate and decontextualize the words of vaccine timeline skeptics, like Dr. Fauci. In mocking his naysayers among the country’s top public health officials, the president managed to further undermine respect and trust in the very people responsible for rolling out a vaccine in the coming months.

Unsurprisingly, the people at Pfizer and Moderna — who we actually have to thank for the vaccine — declined the invitation to join Trump’s grotesque performance, which inevitably declined into bellyaching about the election that was stolen from him.

Befitting the spoiled brat he has proven to be, the president was unable for even an hour to recognize the struggles or celebrate the achievements of anyone but himself. So it goes.

If Johnson’s vaccine politicking constituted a shot across his opponents’ bow, Trump’s was a volley of cannons straight at their hull.

At home, it remains to be seen how our own political leaders will fare in their vaccine politics. Thus far, Trudeau and his cabinet seem reluctant to tie their fortunes to the successful rollout of a vaccine, except to say that every Canadian will be inoculated in due course.

After a confusing and rocky start, the Liberals seemed to get their sea legs this week with the news that Canada will become the third nation to begin inoculating its citizens. But the hard work of securing more doses and rolling them out has only just begun.

With a potential election looming just around the corner, Trudeau had better hope that his team sticks the landing — because there is no inoculation that can keep a minority government alive forever.

Amid all the bluster of Donald Trump’s persistent, pathetic and frankly anticlimactic simulacrum of a power grab, it is easy to forget just how much is at stake.

For weeks, we’ve seen the president and his attorneys wheel out their sock puppets to show-and-tell the nation their conspiracy theories of election fraud — with all the rhetorical and legal prowess of a fourth-grade holiday pageant. Even though they have been tossed out of court after court, the freakish tragicomedy of it all is causing real, lasting damage.

What’s more, unlike the damage Trump has wrought on some of America’s more resilient institutions (the courts, the Justice Department, the intelligence community), this farce strikes at the heart of an already weakened facet of public life: faith in democracy.

At a time when so many Americans feel either disillusioned or entirely removed from the process by which their leaders are chosen, the president’s campaign has further undermined the most sacred aspect of secular life.

Every few years, in democracies around the world, citizens of every walk of life journey to community centres, places of worship and schools to participate in a ritual that binds us all. In doing so, they pay testament to their belief in the promise of modern democracy. They believe that their votes, cast in those musty halls and church basements, will be counted fairly, without fear or favour — and that our leaders will accept the result.

That promise is an article of faith. The very bedrock of our democracy.

Yes, many Americans have changed the channel on Trump and Rudy Giuliani’s noxious lies. But as they spin malignant fables about Dominion Voting Systems and a conspiracy among Georgia Republicans, remember: voters are watching. America is watching. Perhaps worst of all, the world is watching

First, voters. Prior to the 2020 election, which saw nearly unprecedented voting figures, the U.S. had fallen behind most developed democracies in voter turnout. This trend has been driven by a number of factors, not least of which being the determined efforts of state legislatures to disenfranchise and disillusion certain voting populations — especially in urban districts and among Black Americans.

This reality is troubling in itself, but it also points to an incredibly fragile democracy which is further imperiled by Trump’s efforts to convince Democrats and Republicans alike that the election game — like so many others in his alternate reality of America — is rigged against them.

Second, the nation as a whole. As the U.S. enters a year that could present even greater challenges and cause for division than 2020, it needs resolute leadership and a federal government that can genuinely work to unite Americans. That will be no easy task for Joe Biden’s administration, but it will be made even harder by the implications of Trump’s fraudulent claims of a “stolen” election.

Recent polling shows that upwards of 70 per cent of those people who voted for Donald Trump genuinely believe that Biden’s win is illegitimate; that the election was, indeed, stolen from Trump. If that’s the case, Biden’s aims of unity and reconciliation are dead even before he raises his hand and takes his oath of office. Those voters will simply never accept him as their president. It will be Obama redux, with the result being even less appetite for bipartisanship and even less getting done in Washington.

Finally, the rest of the world.

It will take years to mend the damage Trump has done to international relationships, global co-operation and general comity among allies.

Since Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, U.S. diplomatic strength has relied on a sense of exceptionalism rooted in the morality and stability of American democracy. Now that the president’s actions are more befitting a Kim than a Kennedy, it will be that much harder for the State department to scold Russia, Iran or the many despots whose actions it routinely condemns in the UN. “Look,” they will say, “you’re just like us.”

In the end, we can take comfort in the fact that Trump’s efforts will fail. But we cannot lose sight of the very real damage he will have inflicted — and the work it will take to clean up his mess.

This article was originally published in the Toronto Star on November 29, 2020.

As the country plunges into the second wave of COVID-19, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has returned to hosting reporters from his favourite spot: Rideau Cottage. And why wouldn’t he? After all, it’s the location that, early in the pandemic, helped drive some of his highest approval numbers.

Back then, the prime minister and his colleagues correctly sensed that a good crisis was a terrible thing to waste. They rose to the occasion with lavish spending — to the tune of $225 billion — and with an equally lavish communications strategy.

Sadly, the same could not be said for then-Conservative leader Andrew Scheer.

Amid the fear and panic that marked COVID’s first wave, Scheer never quite managed to strike the right note. In his defence, wars and pandemics make life difficult at Stornoway. How to attack the government’s missteps, without undermining public health? How to calibrate criticism so as not to appear churlish and irresponsible at a time of national crisis?

But Erin O’Toole has now arrived, having prevailed in a Conservative leadership race that saw the party attract more than 100,000 new members. And he has brought with him a new strategy: tack towards the centre, and appeal explicitly to blue-collar, unionized workers.

That’s why the second wave of this pandemic may well be as much an opportunity for O’Toole as the first was for Trudeau.

With Ontario and much of the country back into lockdown, there is truly only one issue that voters care about. And that plays to O’Toole’s advantage. It provides him an opportunity to build a big blue tent, without having to worry about pesky social issues which chronically divide his party and keep it out of power.

So the question becomes, where should O’Toole and the Conservatives focus their criticism? My suggestion: government competence.

Nearly a quarter-trillion dollars has gone out the door in a matter of nine months. If there are not multiple instances of mismanagement, incompetence, abuse and fraud in all that, I will eat the newsprint this column is printed upon.

Early examples are already emerging. Take, for example, this week’s case of the Madan family. Between April and June, the Madans are accused of having stolen $11 million of COVID relief funds. “Money was just being shovelled out the door with little or no accountability,” one source told the Star.

The episode does not inspire confidence. And it provides an opening for conservatives to shift the discussion to ground where they can win: their ability as prudent fiscal managers.

However, even as the pandemic presents these kind of opportunities, it will be challenging to break through a grim daily news cycle and to be seen as contributing meaningfully to the country at a time of this generation’s greatest need.

True political success will require an unconventional approach that rises to meet this singular moment.

So here is an idea: we know that so many people are hurting and so many communities are struggling across the country. Why not have the Conservative Party mobilize their members, including the 100,000 new members who signed up to support O’Toole or other leadership candidates, and organize a national day of community service? A national neighbour-to-neighbour effort to help those who are suffering alone and isolated. A program that would appeal to all of our better angels just at a time when we, as a country, need it the most.

And here is another one. The conservatives raised a record-breaking $5.6 million in donations last quarter. How about they donate the party’s entire fundraising proceeds for December to a charity that has been on the front lines of this struggle, like the United Way or Centraide?

And if I were Erin O’Toole, I would announce all of this from the front steps of Stornoway. After all, we maintain an official residence for the Opposition Leader — in part, as an expression of the value we place on dissent, even in the gravest of crises.

During this long, dark winter of the second wave, all of us — individuals, companies, organizations and communities — will find it impossible to do “business as usual.”

Why should the Conservatives be any different?