Category: Chairman’s Desk

By focusing on the centre, the Liberal leader has cleared space for a New Democratic Party that at one point looked lost. The 2019 incarnation of the DNP should not resemble the centre-left, anti-deficit, pro-business party that was pitched to Canadians in 2015.

Times have been tough for the federal New Democrats.

They entered the 2015 election as contenders for the big prize but, as a result of a series of unfortunate decisions, on election day voters returned them to their traditional third-party role.

It didn’t take long for many New Democrats to publicly denounce their leader. The result was as inevitable as it was predictable: polls reported the party found itself, for a time, within the margin of error of the Green Party.

And like 7 year olds playing soccer, pundits, as a whole, rushed to write the party off.

However, it would appear NDP fortunes are starting to change. The party’s leadership campaign is gaining media attention, high-profile leadership candidates are beginning to emerge, and its polling numbers may, just may, finally be turning around.

At the same time, the Liberal government also appears to be turning a corner. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent difficulties — including the bungled electoral reform promise, the cash-for-access scandal and the fallout in provincial relations over health care — have begun to disappear from the front pages.

The Prime Minister is once again making headlines for his savvy in international relations.

Many feared Trudeau would not match up well with U.S. President Donald Trump, someone who is brash, self-interested and easily offended.

However, after Monday’s unremarkable and conventional meeting in Washington, Trump gave his word that Canada’s historic relationship with the United States would only become stronger.

Monday’s meeting could not have gone better for Trudeau and for Canada; it was a performance the entire country should applaud.

Add to this, a series of smaller victories: Canada added 48,300 jobs to the economy in January, dropping the national unemployment rate to 6.8 per cent. In Quebec, Trudeau delivered on his promise to assist Bombardier. And in the coming weeks, he will announce a series of infrastructure projects, marijuana legislation that will rally and excite the millennial base, and progress on the Keystone XL pipeline that will appeal to moderates in Alberta.

The Liberal Party clearly has a firm grip on the centre of the political spectrum. In recent times, this could be counted as a political victory. However, in today’s political climate, moderation is viewed as the elitist status quo. Centrists are often viewed as indecisive on the big issues of the day and indifferent to the plight of ordinary people.

Internationally, centrist political parties have had little electoral success of late. Instead, it is candidates and leaders on the fringes who have gained political steam and attention.

By focusing on the centre, Trudeau has cleared space for a New Democratic Party that at one point looked lost. Trudeau’s policies and decisions — his enthusiasm for pipelines, embrace of Harper-era greenhouse gas emission targets, perceived failures on improving the lives of indigenous Canadians, and cynical abandonment of electoral reform — have given the New Democrats the lifeline they needed.

The 2019 incarnation of the New Democratic Party should not resemble the centre-left, anti-deficit, pro-business party that was pitched to Canadians in 2015.

Rather, the NDP should select a protest candidate who will invigorate the left and stand as a stark contrast to the current Prime Minister.

Regardless of who becomes the next leader of the federal NDP — whether it is Charlie Angus, the hardworking, well-liked, Northern Ontario MP, Peter Julian, the anti-pipeline, 99 per center, or Jagmeet Singh, the GQ-featured, suburban whisperer Ontario MPP — they will be free to seize the space on the left and rebuild their party.

Federal politics in Canada has been a race to the centre for a long time. As a result, Canadians have bemoaned their lack of genuine political choice. Everyone understood that while the colour of the drapes might change, that no matter who occupied 24 Sussex Drive, the fundamentals of life in Canada would be relatively unchanged.

In the 2019 election, this theory will be tested. Will Canadians, like voters around the world, vote for a candidate who panders to the far right or left, or will they opt for one who owns the middle ground?

Trudeau is betting on history — a history that favours the Canadian way, that favours that glorious promise of peace, order and good government.

I think Canadians likely will too.

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

The Trump and Trudeau campaigns also proved that what politicians do still matters — both on the campaign and in government.

To say that election campaigning has changed significantly over the years is to state the obvious. And nothing has propelled campaign teams to grow more sophisticated and develop sharper insights than the rise of technology.

At one time, local campaigners would stand in front of the local Tim Hortons and meet every voter who came by. Now, campaigns mine data bases to find the three people on a given street most likely to vote for their candidate and go talk just to them.

It’s a whole new world. Big data has given political parties a greater understanding of not only who votes for them and why but how they think and feel as well. Facebook clicks, tweets, and TV-watching habits are parsed by campaign teams. Knowing your favourite TV show allows them to predict your opinions on climate change policy.

By and large, this new world order works: Former U.S. President Barack Obama’s campaign’s ability to do a superior job of mining information propelled it to victory. The Stephen Harper Conservatives were masterful in targeting their voters and hammering home their message, ignoring the distractions of the media.

Both campaigns successfully, and with intention, spoke to voters who were open to their message and to their policies.

Both also had an important understanding of the shape of the electorate.

Both campaigns delivered wins based on their strategic appeals to specific segments of the population.

But, as anyone who has experienced a computer meltdown knows, technology is not always king.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and the Republican party that chose Donald Trump as its presidential candidate are very different: one party prides itself on its evidence-based approach and thoughtful co-ordination, while the other stakes its claim on brash talk.

But both have similar electoral roots. Donald Trump’s victory relied on blue-collar white voters across the Midwest who had grown increasingly conservative in their outlook over the course of the last two decades, but who tended to stay home on election day.

Before the election, the media and the Democrats seemed to think states such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio would all remain part of the Democratic coalition simply because many disaffected white voters would simply sit out the election and not vote. The states were discounted by media and the Democrats as part of an immovable ‘blue wall’ that would see them remain part of the Democratic coalition for years to come, in spite of the disaffection that was swirling within them.

Justin Trudeau’s victory relied on young voters, whose voting participation was historically far below that of middle-aged and older Canadians. Their views, which were stridently out of touch with Harper’s, were discounted. As people who conventional wisdom said would never vote, they were simply of little concern to the Conservatives.

The 2015 Canadian election and the 2016 U.S. election delivered stunning rebukes to those who believed citizens who were unlikely to participate in elections never would.

One of the under-reported facts of the last Canadian federal election is that the Conservatives lost few actual voters. Instead, the Liberals’ margin of victory was in large part due to the large turnout of young voters who had been discounted as non-voters.

Hillary Clinton’s lumbering, data-heavy campaign was similarly overtaken, against all expectations and prognostications, by a surging white vote.

The campaigns proved that, for all data can account for, it can’t account for passion.

The campaigns also proved that what politicians do still matters — both on the campaign and in government.

When Donald Trump announces a travel ban against people from seven countries, it may enrage media pundits, but only cements his political future, because as much as it upsets some of the electorate, it makes it much more likely that those former non-voters will become ongoing members of his voting coalition.

When Justin Trudeau announces a marijuana policy that ignites criticism from social conservatives and older Canadians, it doesn’t hurt his government: rather it reinforces the idea that he is something new and exciting for young voters and helps ensure they will return to the polls in 2019.

In fact, Trump and Trudeau have to govern in a way that keeps the faith of their target voters. Should they fall in to the trap of the same old politics that led their target voters to sit out previous elections, they risk losing the enthusiasm they generated with the result that those newly animated voters will return to their La-Z-boys.

It’s a data-driven world, to be sure, but these two transformative political figures have demonstrated that organic enthusiasm can still trump cynical technocracy.

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

In this era of shrill, untested and unverified political extremes, we need to amplify voices in the middle and to represent clearly and fairly what is balanced and reasonable and true.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s political career started with a lie. He emerged on the political scene by repeatedly questioning whether then-President Barack Obama had been born in the United States. The highest-profile ‘birther’ is now the leader of the free world.

Consider how far he has departed from reality. His spewing of ‘alternative facts’ or more appropriately termed ‘bald face lies’ include saying Obama founded Daesh, also know as ISIS or ISIL, calling the Clintons literal murderers, and declaring false numbers for the size of the crowd at his inauguration.

In Trump’s mind, if he believes it, it must be true.

Politifact.com, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking initiative, currently lists as entirely true only four per cent of the statements Trump has made since the election. Fully 17 per cent are listed as ‘pants on fire,’ Politifact.com’s most egregious grade. For comparison, on his last day in the Oval Office, PolitiFact graded 21 per cent of Obama’s comments as ‘true,’ and only two per cent as ‘pants on fire.’

Otto von Bismarck, the 19th century German chancellor, famously said: ‘People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.’ This is now truer than ever.

In what is being called ‘post-truth politics,’ politicians frame the debate largely by appealing to listeners’ emotions and without addressing the factual underpinning of a policy. Then, when confronted with factual rebuttals from credible sources, these politicians simply repeat their talking points and ignore the facts.

The digital world makes it easier for politicians to get away with this behaviour. Social media outlets allow people to get news from sources that echo their own opinion; to surround themselves on social media with commentary that affirms their biases. The result? The traditional value attributed to evidence, consistency and scholarship is both weakened and diminished.

In fact, citizens have now told politicians that they have had enough of experts.

But in throwing out the experts, we have thrown out the fact checkers. The holders-of-feet-to-the-fire. And in doing so have, perhaps, made the rise of a politician like Donald Trump inevitable.

The Trump administration’s corrosive, deliberate lying is very different from the usual broken promises we have experienced from politicians, of all stripes, in the past.

A broken promise impacts the future. A political lie impacts our perceptions of the past.

In Canada, countless prime ministers have been elected and have then broken promises. Take, for example, Jean Chr’tien’s promise to do away with the GST, Pierre Trudeau campaigning against imposing wage and price controls and Stephen Harper running a deficit.

On the other hand, Trump dismisses facts. He alters his positions on a whim, and depending on the audience, declares that which will guarantee him the most attention and the loudest applause.

The consequences of this practice will be far-reaching. His administration has already begun destroying American credibility internationally.

When Trump is, inevitably, forced to respond to an international confrontation, America’s ability to rally support will be diminished. Its allies will doubt America’s intentions and facts on which those intentions are based.

Sadly, post-truth politics is not confined to the United States. Other international leaders are trying to make gains by lying to their electorates.

Britons voted to leave the EU in June on a campaign largely based on false information. Among the lies is that EU membership cost the UK 350 million pounds a week; money that would be better spent on such things as the National Health Service. It was also falsely propagated that Turkey was guaranteed membership in the EU by 2020.

The era of post-truth and alternative facts is not going away anytime soon. The refrain ‘just because you can, doesn’t mean you should’ has been lost on political leaders and campaign managers everywhere.

In consequence, in this era of shrill, untested and unverified political extremes, we need to amplify voices in the middle and to represent clearly and fairly what is balanced and reasonable and true.

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

Typically, we’ve had to read between lines of speeches to gain an understanding of American policy positions. Not so with Donald Trump.

It was as contentious a beginning to a presidency as it was inauspicious. With the world already on edge, Donald Trump’s administration spent much of its first week arguing with the media and, by extension, the public over the size of the crowd at his inauguration compared to that of the one at Barack Obama’s.

In a spectacular display, Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer was sent out on Saturday to insist to a crowd of disbelieving journalists that their eyes had deceived them and that they had, in fact (or perhaps in ‘alt fact’), witnessed the largest crowd ever seen at an inauguration.

It was blatantly untrue. In actual fact, it was a bald-face lie. Watching Spicer haplessly try to convince a room of experienced journalists — from the presidential press secretary’s lecturn, no less — of what both he and they knew to be a fabrication was as surreal as it was disorienting.

It was pure Trumpian politics.

But as we have come to expect in this Trump era, petty spectacle over optics occludes other far more significant stories. In the days since the Jan. 20 inauguration, Trump has issued a number of executive orders that fundamentally alter long-standing positions of the U.S. government.

A wall between Mexico and the U.S. has been authorized. The Keystone XL pipeline has been revived, along with the Dakota Access Pipeline. The U.S. has immediately withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Funding has been withdrawn from international groups that perform abortions or lobby to legalize or promote abortions.

And there is more. Late Friday afternoon, Trump announced that the issuing of visas to people from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen will be suspended for 90 days.

Each of these is a significant and abrupt policy shift from the Obama era. But none should be a surprise. After all, Trump had made it clear again and again that this is exactly what he would do as president.

Trump’s actions may well be belligerent, but they are transparent as well. Transparent in way we have never seen before.

In the past, we have often been left guessing as off-the-cuff remarks from former presidents have set the world on edge. Now, we have a president who cheerfully offers every thought to open scrutiny. His tweets act like a window into his mind, a roadmap to his policies.

This presents Canada with an advantage we’ve not had before. Typically, we’ve had to read between lines of speeches, parse conversations, and spend hours analyzing congressional positions to gain an understanding of American policy positions.

In fact, the Obama administration was one of the most opaque in recent memory. Led by a man who defined himself by being measured and even-tempered, it operated in a manner that kept its opponents and allies guessing as to its true intentions.

Take, for example, the Obama administration’s slow push against Israel, which developed over the course of eight years. Only in its dying weeks did the administration truly unveil how much it believed Israel to be hampering the peace process, implicitly supporting an unprecedented reprimand of Israel at the United Nations that represented a major break with historical U.S.-Israel unity.

A second example was Obama’s approach on the Keystone XL pipeline, which provided significant challenges for the Canadian government. For close observers of the deal, it was obvious that his administration was always uncomfortable with its approval. In spite of this, Obama delayed making a decision for years out of a desire to avoid making concrete commitments. Only in his last days in office did his administration formalize its opposition and kill the process.

Viewed through the prism of traditional government communications, Trump’s administration can be seen, in one sense at least, as a breath of fresh air. His pettiness and aggressive use of Twitter offend the senses of many — for good reason, of course — but such a novel approach lends clarity for the purposes of figuring out the administration’s view on any given piece of public policy.

There is rarely a question on where Trump stands on an issue. A quick scroll through his Twitter history reveals his thoughts on an entire range of topics.

As Carl Bernstein says, it provides an ‘MRI of his brain.’ It lets us understand his temperament, the way he thinks and, ultimately, his policy positions.

For the Canadian government, it is akin to playing poker with all of the cards face-up on the table.

And that, regardless of what we think of the man personally, provides a never before seen advantage to Canada in dealing with our single most important bilateral relationship.

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

The Trudeau government has navigated the challenges well thus far, but a Trump presidency fundamentally alters the waters.

It’s perhaps ironic that it is an iconic quote by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s father that sums up the situation that confronts him today.

Pierre Trudeau once remarked that living next to the United States was ‘in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly or even-tempered is the beast ﾅ one is affected by every twitch and grunt.’

Trudeau’s relationship with former President Barack Obama was often compared by the media to Brian Mulroney’s infamously close relationship with Ronald Reagan; his relationship with Hillary Clinton, once cast as the inevitable successor to Obama, was no less warm.

Together, this promised a golden era of Liberal and Democratic rule in North America that would include increased environmental regulation, a focus on growing the social safety net, and, increasingly, aligned foreign policies that would emphasize brokering international peace rather than imposing it.

Friday’s inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States has suddenly, abruptly, rudely ruptured that idyllic vision.

The elephant isn’t so much twitching as having full-body convulsions.

Following its election in 2015, the Liberal Party mapped out a four-year guide to re-election. They did this thinking they would have an American counterpart marching in lockstep on major policies.

Instead, the Liberals now face a president with plans antithetical to core components of their platform.

That said, the Trudeau government has shown it understands the enormity of the challenges it faces. The irascible St’phane Dion has been shuffled out of the global affairs portfolio in favour of Chrystia Freeland who, in addition to having performed well at international trade, knows the United States well. A team specifically focused on U.S./Canada policy, led by Brian Clow, the very capable former chief of staff to Freeland has been drafted. High-level staff members have been dispatched to Trump Tower to meet with Trump administration officials.

And yet the enormity of the challenge has only begun to present itself; a challenge that will come in three principal forms.

The first is environmental policy. Carbon pricing grew increasingly popular with the Democratic establishment as the U.S. election approached. It is very possible that increased environmental taxation would have been a top priority for Hillary Clinton. But that reality does not exist: President Trump is uncompromisingly opposed to any increase in business regulation for environmental purposes, a position at odds with the Trudeau government’s decision to enact carbon pricing.

With a president who opposes environmental policies he sees as harming business and who favours reducing taxes, the Trudeau government could be forced to reconsider its commitment to a policy that will handicap Canadian businesses. Already, there has been pressure from our business community wary of the challenge.

The second challenge surrounds foreign policy. Again, the Trudeau government had found itself largely aligned with the less aggressive positioning of the Democratic establishment. A reluctance to be drawn into commitments on regional conflicts, support for increased consensus-building, and support of international institutions defined both the Obama and Trudeau administrations.

As Trump moves into the Oval Office, that harmony moves out. Even during the few, short months following the election, he has demonstrated a belligerent, anti-establishment approach. NAFTA, the European Union, and the UN find themselves under attack by a president who dismisses them as either useless or malicious. For a multilateralist like Justin Trudeau, the problem will be standing up for such institutions while trying to remain in the Trump government’s favour.

Finally, personality may itself be a challenge. On the international stage, Trudeau has been framed as an inspiring figure, the personification of a new generation of hope and promise.

Trump, on the other hand, has been positioned as a throwback to a time when America was meaner, smaller, more insular and selfish.

Should that narrative take hold, Trudeau will risk developing an adversarial relationship with a president who has demonstrated time and again that he has not only a fragile ego coupled with a narcissistic personality, but who takes up all the available oxygen in a room.

The Trudeau government has navigated the challenges well thus far, but a Trump presidency fundamentally alters the waters. No longer are we in an age of North American liberal ascendancy; instead, many of the underpinnings of such an agenda are under direct attack.

The ability to adjust to real life circumstances while keeping strategic focus is at the core of the challenge of governing. In 2009, Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty, elected on — and believing in — a platform of strict fiscal conservatism, found themselves deciding to run a deficit. They adapted to circumstance for the good of the country. Whether Trudeau can do the same may decide the fate of his government in 2019.

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