New Year for new leaders: what do Scheer and Singh need to do in 2018?
Conservative leader Andrew Scheer is brushing off the loss of two seats in recent byelections in 2017, insisting voters are connecting with his party's opposition to the Liberals' tax plans.
"I continue to believe that the Liberal approach to taxation is going to drive more people away from them," Scheer said in an interview with The House.
"The Liberals have moved so far to the left that they've basically co-opted the NDP, and I believe that leaves a lot of people in the centre who voted Liberal because they thought that they could trust them with aspects of the economy. People in that position, I think more and more of them are realizing that the Liberals are not their party any more."
The Conservatives spent the fall using Question Period to attack the proposed tax changes for small, privately-owned businesses, and Finance Minister Bill Morneau's failure to disclose all of his holdings as required under conflict of interest rules.
Public opinion polls suggest none of that has dampened voter support for the Liberals. But Scheer said the pre-Christmas ruling by the federal ethics watchdog that Prime Minister Trudeau violated four provisions of the Conflict of Interest Act by vacationing on the private Caribbean island of the Aga Khan provides more fodder for the Conservatives when the Commons resumes.
He also downplayed the notion that Canada's robust economic growth in the past year will make it difficult to attack the Liberals' record.
"I believe most people believe that (the economy is growing) despite Justin Trudeau, not because of him. I believe a lot of the success in the economy is thanks to the fundamentals that the government got right under the Conservative party. We signed new trade deals that opened up new markets, we attracted investment."
Scheer said that's the message he will take to voters in the new year.
The challenge may be even greater for the leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Singh.
His convincing leadership win on the first ballot has been followed by a string of disappointing byelection results.
In the last round of contests, NDP support dropped in all four ridings that were in play.
But those results haven't changed Singh's mind. He's in no rush to seek a seat in the House of Commons.
"I'm comfortable where I'm at right now and I'm open, though, to an opportunity that arises that I have a genuine connection to," he told The House, before listing Brampton, downtown Toronto and Windsor as examples of places he feels he has a connection to.
As he spends time away from Ottawa, touring the country, the former Ontario MPP also wants to reshape the party to match his vision.
"I want to transition the party from being a party that just opposes," he said.
"I want to go beyond opposing to proposing."
Singh stayed away from specifics, but talked about electoral reform, climate change, inequality and national pharmacare program has files he would like the NDP to focus on.
UN ambassador explains Jerusalem vote abstention
Canada's ambassador to the United Nations says it was in Canada's best interest to abstain from a controversial vote on the decision by the United States to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
The UN resolution critical of the move passed 128-9 last month, with Canada among 35 countries that abstained from voting.
"The right thing to do in the interest of Canada and Canadians was to abstain," Marc-André Blanchard told The House.
"The Canadian position has been actually very, very appreciated by all parties involved," he said.
Ahead of the vote, the U.S. representative to the UN sent a letter to delegates that the United States. would be taking note of everyone's votes.
"As you consider your vote, I want you to know that the president and U.S. take this vote personally," Nikki Haley said.
Blanchard said Canada abstained because the resolution didn't advance the prospects for peace, not because of the Trump administration's threats.
"This is an approach that is not a traditional approach at the UN. But this is the approach that they are choosing as a country and it's their right," he said.
UN researcher Richard Gowan, an associate fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, characterized it differently.
"This was pretty crude diplomacy. And frankly it was silly of the Americans to push so hard because it was always clear that the U.S. was going to lose this vote by a big margin," he said.
Gowan said the U.S.'s pre-vote tactics might have persuaded some countries, including Canada, to abstain, but comes off as a weak moment in Haley's diplomacy so far.
"I'm sure that Canada was very sensitive to the pressure from the U.S, but it is true that Ottawa has always been skeptical of these votes in the general assembly concerning Israel and Palestine," he said.
The other countries who voted with the U.S. were Israel, Guatemala, Honduras, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, the Marshall Islands and Togo.
The Insiders look ahead to 2018
What will the 2018 political year look like?
We asked Insiders David Herle, principal partner at the Gandalf Group, Kathleen Monk, principal at Earnscliffe, and Jaime Watt, executive chair of Navigator Ltd, to look into their crystal balls.
On Trump and trade:
Jaime Watt: "The government's challenge is to keep moving forward in other files, in other dossiers, while managing this very unpredictable negotiating partner."
David Herle: "The guy (Trump) is obviously, as we saw, not even dealing on a factual basis about what the trade relationship actually is, demonstrating that he thinks the United States has a trade deficit with Canada when it doesn't. So I don't know that's there's going to be any room to do anything with him. So therefore, we're going to see how successful the other efforts about working with governors and working with members of Congress, and building business alliances across the United States, something that the government of Canada has worked on assiduously... the question is whether that coalition can encircle Trump, and prevent that trade relationship from falling apart."
Kathleen Monk: "The question is will we even get a deal? We all know that there's the Mexican election coming up and the midterms in the States. I think that Canada's done a good job at putting the 'Canada First' policy forward and introducing some of those elements of more progressive trade: environment, labour, gender... All of those things are really important, but whether we'll get a deal by spring is very unlikely."
Impact of provincial elections in 2018:
DH: "The Trudeau government, since coming into office, has had the most congenial possible federal-provincial arrangement, with even people of other stripes like Rachel Notley who are in office being essentially on the same page in terms of both values and ideas and policy direction. So if you start looking at changes in Ontario and in Quebec, and then a year later perhaps a change in Alberta, along with a tough Mr. Horgan in British Columbia and Pallister in Manitoba... All of a sudden you've got a very different configuration and a much more difficult and less harmonious federal-provincial environment."
KM: "I think the most interesting race to watch, not only because I live in Ontario, but just because of the dynamic. That government has been in power for close to fifteen years, and obviously change is in the air. We have in Andrea Horwath a leader who is very well-liked, but who has already run two elections and lost, and so... she's got to win this one. We have Patrick Brown, a new leader, not a lot of policy under his belt, unknown really to many Ontarians, but has sky-high numbers, so it'll be one to watch for sure."
JW: "The federal government really has been opposition-less on all fronts. The other two parties have taken a while to get their new leaders. And on the federal-provincial front, we've forgotten how acrimonious those relationships can be. We've forgotten what they've been like in previous years when the provinces and the feds were at each others' throats. One or two of those going another way, you could see a very different dynamic and a lot of indigestion for Mr. Trudeau and the federal Liberals."
What the federal parties need to do in 2018:
KM: "Jagmeet Singh needs to get out there and get known by Canadians. He needs to take up more oxygen in terms of the media. He needs to make more headlines. He needs to insert himself into political stories. New Democrats will have a convention in February, and that will be his real coming out where hopefully we'll see his election plan going forward. They need to figure out what their policy take is going to be going into 2018 and 2019."
JW: "Mr. Scheer is trying to be a more congenial, softer, more agreeable flavour of Conservatism. Well, how's he going to do that and remain distinctively different than what the Prime Minister has on offer right now. At the moment the Prime Minister is occupying a chunk of of that centre swath that transverses both sides of the left-right equation, and he hasn't left much, skillfully hasn't left much, for these new opposition leaders, so I think the best thing for both of them to do is to get out, get known, but forget about Ottawa because I can tell you - everyone will say the Liberals did not have a good fall in the House and look at the polls... It didn't matter a whit."
DH: "What the Liberals have to do in 2018, it's all going to be about the economy. It's all going to be about managing this NAFTA issue, managing the fallout from NAFTA, creating confidence. And one of the big things they're going to have to do to os weather that whole storm is rebuild the credibility of Finance Minister Bill Morneau so they look like they've got a strong hand at the economic till."