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Category: Chairman’s Desk

Alberta still the Wild West when it comes to election predictions

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This editorial first appeared in the Toronto Star on Sunday March 24, 2019.

You might think a province that can count the number of changes in government in its history on one hand would be one where predicting election outcomes would be easy.

But if there is one thing the last three Alberta elections have taught us, it’s that all is not as it appears in the sunshine province.

For those of us observers in the rest of Canada, much of the challenge in predicting the horse race results of Alberta elections lies in the outdated perception we have of both Alberta and Albertans. In 2019, the province is much more Nenshi and much less Klein; a shift that’s been driven in part by net-migration — from within Canada and abroad.

At various times in Alberta’s recent history, the pundits and pollsters have ended up tying their shoelaces together; politicians have staged improbable comebacks; while voters have flirted with the notion of change, only to return to the status quo at the last moment.

And so, I watch with interest as Albertans prepare to go to the polls April 16.

That anything can happen in a campaign is a cliché for a reason: because it is true. And it is especially true in Alberta.

Back in 2008, pundits obsessed over lingering bad blood from Ed Stelmach’s leadership race against party stalwart Jim Dinning. His government was destined to collapse from majority to minority status, or so went the conventional narrative.

But Steady Eddy proved the talking heads wrong. He ran a consistent, focused campaign that doggedly reminded Albertans that he “had a plan” and relentlessly hammered away at the shortcomings of Alberta Liberal Leader Kevin Taft. In the end, he proved the smart people wrong: the PCs picked up a dozen more seats.

Fast forward to 2012, when Alison Redford went into campaign season lagging by 22 points. As the Wildrose opposition took the lead, and media exposed details of a government committee that hadn’t met in years yet paid its members handsomely, the PCs faced an almost certain rout. Considering the party had been in power for 39 years at that point, many voters thought a rout was exactly what the PCs deserved.

But as the public turned its attention to the Wildrose bench, they discovered a team that wasn’t yet ready for prime time.

One candidate described how gays will burn in a “lake of fire.” Another Calgary-area candidate claimed that he had an advantage in the ethnically diverse riding “as a Caucasian.” The party’s leader questioned the science of climate change – hardly a deal breaker in oil-dependant Alberta – but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

In the end, the PCs were returned to majority status and managed to stem their losses to five seats.

And then there was Jim Prentice’s 2015 roll of the dice when he tried to seek a mandate from voters to support his unpopular budget. This after he had engineered a mass floor-crossing of Wildrose MLAs to eliminate the province’s only effective opposition.

To say these antics left a bad taste in voters’ mouths would be an understatement and polls began to indicate that voters were looking elsewhere – namely, at Rachel Notley’s NDP. Yet, pundits remained skeptical.

Today, Premier Notley finds herself heading into her first re-election campaign facing a united and re-energized opposition. The PCs and the Wildrose have merged to create a Jason Kenny-led United Conservative Party that’s a formidable challenger.

The UCP, which has been leading in the polls for a year and a half, has started the election as the victim of its own self-inflicted wounds: candidates with sketchy pasts, an exposé in Maclean’s recounted a tale of skulduggery surrounding a “kamikaze” candidate who worked with Kenney to sabotage an opponent’s leadership campaign. All of a sudden, there are shades of the internecine warfare that was supposedly meant to doom Stelmach along with mutters of history from either 2008 or 2012 repeating itself.

But the UCP still maintains a commanding lead, and it is laser-focused on the issues — pipelines, jobs, and the economy — which will define the race.

While it is too soon to say whether its focus will pay off, this election may prove that campaigns do matter, after all.

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

Grounding Boeing 737 Max 8 a lesson in leadership — both good and bad

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This piece originally appeared in the Toronto Star on March 17, 2019.

Despite the conclusions you might draw from an “if it bleeds, it leads” approach to media coverage, there has never been a safer time to fly. What’s more, the objective truth is that commercial aviation is, by far, our safest form of transit.

In 2017, airlines recorded zero accident deaths on passenger jets.
That number was higher in 2018, largely owing to an accident involving a Boeing 737 Max 8, in Indonesia. And, following last weekend’s tragic crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, involving the same model of aircraft — higher still in 2019.

Historically, the number of fatalities has been so low that even a single accident, has skewed the numbers. The result? The industry enjoys a high level of trust among its passengers.

But two crashes, bearing even a hint of similarity, become more than enough to frighten regulators and the public alike. That mounting fear, coupled with “new data,” proved sufficient evidence for Transportation Minister Marc Garneau to ground Canada’s fleet of Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft this week.

It could hardly have been an easy decision. Air Canada, alone, relies on the aircraft to safely ferry 9,000 to 12,000 customers, per day. The economic cost to Canadian carriers has been estimated at $100 million in the first 10 days. As a consequence, Air Canada has cancelled earnings guidance.

But these accidents are now so rare that they are almost always “black swan” incidents — improbable confluences of events that can take years to untangle. They are so rare precisely because every expectable, even remotely plausible risk has been pre-empted and eliminated through the gradual imposition of safety measures over many years. This slow and steady approach is an example of government doing its job.

With every misstep and every tragedy, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, in lockstep with peers at other national aviation authorities, have inspired confidence by making incremental progress and considering important stakeholders.

For years, the United States’ Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been at the forefront of efforts to ensure safe travel. But that appears to be changing.

Nineteen hours after that crash in Ethiopia, the first country to ground the apparently problematic Boeing 737 was not the United States, not the EU, but China.

That day, FAA acting administrator Daniel Elwell issued a “continued air worthiness notification,” and said there was “no basis” to ground the aircraft. Meanwhile, as investigators recovered the black box and cockpit voice recorder, these crucial pieces of evidence were not sent to the Americans, but instead to the French Bureau of Inquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety. By this point, only Canada and the United States were still allowing the 737 Max 8s to fly.

U.S. media was quick to point out that Boeing has been carefully cultivating President Trump for some time. The company is a major military contractor, and donated $1 million to his inauguration committee, not to mention some $15 million spent on lobbying efforts. CEO Daniel Muilenberg has visited Mar-a-Lago and spoke to Trump personally early in the week.

Eventually, when every single country except for the United States had grounded the plane, the FAA had no choice but to do the same, leaving the United States to “lead from behind.”

Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler observed on Twitter that, in his years of covering airline safety, he “cannot remember a time when the FAA was so alone among world regulators on a serious safety issue. When a major accident like this happened, global aviation authorities conferred with the FAA — which took the lead.” But as with so many American institutions, in the age of President Trump, the FAA has seen its moral authority eroded.

On Wednesday, Minister Garneau was asked whether Canada’s delayed action was the result of pressure from Boeing or the American government. His response was that this decision required him to remove his “politician’s hat,” and don his “engineer’s hat,” removing politics and emotion from technical analysis.

His remarks reminded me how lucky Canadians are to have the steady, rational hand of a former Navy combat systems engineer and astronaut on the policy rudder.

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

A theory on Justin Trudeau’s lack of contrition

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This op-ed first appeared in the Toronto Star on March 10, 2019.

How different this week could have been if Gerald Butts’ testimony was a springboard and not a trial balloon.

On Wednesday morning, the prime minister’s former principal secretary, who is among his closest friends and confidants, did exactly what was required to change the arc of the story. He established himself as a credible and personable actor with a different interpretation of the events that led to the cabinet resignations of Jody Wilson-Raybould and Dr. Jane Philpott.

After all, as the adage goes, there are three sides to every story: Yours, mine and the truth.

Most persuasively, Butts advanced the argument that all cabinet members have an “obligation” to inform the PM of concerns that rise to a level that necessitates one’s resignation.

Furthermore, “If it is a question of law and that minister is the attorney general, the obligation to inform the prime minister is of an even higher order. And it ought to be in writing so that its significance isn’t lost.”

Butts also contrasted the volume and frequency of interactions – 10 phone calls and 10 meetings over a period of almost four months – to the hundreds of meetings he personally attended in consideration of the government’s purchase of the Trans Mountain Pipeline or Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement negotiations.

It’s not a stretch to suggest Butts’ testimony allowed the Liberal Party, cabinet, caucus, staffers and supporters alike, the opportunity to exhale and breathe a sigh of relief for the first time in a full calendar month.

By sundown that day, the government found itself in a materially better position.

And things looked like they were going to get a lot better. The media were summoned to a most unusual daybreak news conference at the National Press Theatre in Ottawa on Thursday.

According to so-called “well placed sources with knowledge of the prime minister’s thinking,” contrition was to be on the day’s agenda.

But that was not to be. In fact, the prime minister stopped well short of an apology. Instead, he would only acknowledge that “there was an erosion of trust between my office, my former principal secretary and the former attorney general.” There was no suggestion that his office had made a mistake; no suggestion he was willing to utter the words so many had waited to hear: “I’m sorry.”

His only regret? That, “situations were experienced differently.”

Whatever progress Butts had made for the government was undone. By the end of the half-hour media availability, Team Trudeau found itself stuck in the same mud in which it has been mired in since l’affaire SNC-Lavalin leapt into the national consciousness.

If such thin gruel was all that was to be on offer, why summon Canadians’ attention at all? Why not let Butts’ testimony stand on its own.

Instead of acknowledging impropriety, announcing further staffing changes, or making a decision to separate the attorney general portfolio from that of the minister of justice, there was only an astonishing display of hubris.

Even before he was elected, the criticism of Justin Trudeau was that he was all style and no substance. Whether or not you agree (and I don’t), this week’s performance did nothing to dissuade his detractors.

So why on Earth could the prime minster not bring himself to apologize? Especially given we Canadians apologize so frequently it has been deemed part of our national character.

The explanation may well lie, or at least be rooted, in the psycho- and physiological effects of stress that we sometimes encounter in times of crisis.

When confronting threatening or uncontrollable situations, our body’s endocrine system is programmed to produce changes in our central nervous system. It is what makes us more alert, more ready to fight or flee. It’s what elevates our heart rate and causes both sleeplessness and those pesky butterflies.

It also influences our cognitive processing, compromises decision making and contributes to errors in judgment. We are programmed to be reactionary, not considered. We limit the options at our disposal and revert to old habits – just when we need to do the very opposite.

I have a hunch that’s what happened in the very highest levels of our government this week.

Jaime Watt is the executive chairman of Navigator Ltd. and a Conservative strategist.