Last night, I was invited by a friend to a fascinating presentation
about the Canadian political scene.
The speakers, who will remain nameless, are two of Canada best know
political commentators and have both been active in Federal and provincial
elections (elected, holding office and nominated as ministers). Both are well know in Canada’s two solitudes
for their knowledge of their respective market (Ontario and Quebec). The tone was collegial (Cannot say the same
for several guests present…) before the presentation I had the
opportunity to talk to many of those present and I was amazed (mostly high net
worth individuals) bottom line they take the American view: “All politicians are corrupt, crooks, liars
and don’t understand anything”. The
strongest reactions I got from two individuals in particular who had never held
a “real job” they managed their family’s money.
Now there’s nothing wrong with managing your money, they’ve
gone to good schools, but it’s also true that as “the shareholder” and “manager”
they’ve never had to make suboptimal decision because they have all the same
interest. First, was their view that the
Quebec scandal on the construction industry needs to be “reviewed in public”,
there is here some desire to see who were the crooks, but the reality is that
the public “shaming” events are generally useless, first because the guilty never
go to jail, they get immunity. Moreover,
whatever is said in the witness stand becomes “The Truth” just because the
speaker has nothing to lose (no one considers that these people may have some
accounts to settle). When I tried to mollify their view with the
nature of Quebec’s construction industry – it’s a cartel with few players – and
that’s not about to change (since the Quebec government is prohibited from
hiring “out of state” contractors (BTW that’s not exceptional to Quebec it is
true everywhere), but because Quebec is small it gives rise to collusion
between the players… I got nowhere, they were convinced that something could be
done – funny enough they thought “the incompetent” politicians would find the
answers, go figure.
There were essentially four topics: Toronto politics, Ontario Politics, Quebec
Politics and Federal politics. The first
was that Rob Ford (the current mayor of Toronto won his elections because of
his four word slogan: “We will cut waste”), Torontonians are discovering that
(as is Rob Ford) that there’s not that much waste to cut so as one speaker said
“he’s cutting the left arm of the city” he’s not cutting fat he’s cutting basic
services – that’s not the platform on which he ran. This win by the conservatives in Toronto has
now harmed the Ontario Conservatives who started the election (October 6th)
process with a lead of nearly 20% on the Liberal (government). Ontarians now understand that when the
government talks about cutting fat, they mean cutting services (that Ontarians
actually like their services). Ontarians
have made that leap and don’t like the cuts that the conservatives are
proposing. So today two weeks before the
elections the conservative and liberals are neck and neck…
In Quebec, the situation is even more interesting a Leger
Marketing poll that came out this morning (20/09) showed that Francois Legault “movement”
gets 38% of the vote, the Liberals get 28%, the PQ gets 17% and the ADQ gets
8%. This is an unmitigated disaster for the
separatist movement in Quebec, the blow of losing the Block Quebecois in Ottawa,
and this could spell the end of the Quebec separatist movement (great) and
change the conversation. As one of the
speakers mentioned Quebec’s Love affaire with the NDP is a “one night stand”
Quebecers don’t know who or what the NPD is and what it stands for. At the Federal level this is a tremendous opportunity
for the government (or the Liberals) if they can seize the day.
There is a large body of opinion that the
Conservative have no interest in Quebec – first because they won a majority
without the province, secondly because 30 new seats will be created in
Parliament to adapt for changing population trends – none of them will be
created in Quebec, the Conservative will focus their energies on these
seats. Finally, and most damming is that
so few “counsellors” to the prime minister are from Quebec, in fact the vast
majority are from Ontario (contempt for Quebec) and the West (even more
contempt for Quebec). They don’t know the
place; they don’t like the place (often they don’t even speak the language of
the place). This is a terrible wasted opportunity
for the Conservatives. The Liberals may be able to capitalize on this (it is
almost certain that the NDP will not)
there are more than 55,000 members of the NDP across Canada and only
1,700 in Quebec – Thomas Mulcaire cannot win the leadership race, so even if ¾ of
all NDP members in parliament are from Quebec someone else will win the
nomination). In fact the real issue is
how long will it take for the Liberals and the NDP to merge.
So this was a fascinating conversation. It was scheduled to end at 8:30, if finally
ended just short of 10, as the two speakers had to catch flights to Toronto.
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