Conservative leader Erin O’Toole addressed the Canadian Club of Toronto yesterday, and the more I read of his speech, the more curious I become of just what it is he’s trying to say. For example, he spent part of the speech bemoaning the collapse of private sector union membership in the country, talking about how it was part of the balance between what was good for the economy and what was good for workers. That’s surprising considering that when he was in Cabinet, O’Toole supported anti-union legislation that the party put forward (under the guise of private members’ bills, naturally), and the party was having a field day before the last election trying to accuse the government of stacking their media bailout fund by allowing Unifor – the country’s largest private sector union – to have a seat at the table (given that Unifor also represents a lot of journalists). I’m sure the labour movement in this country has whiplash from this sudden reversal – though I would note that in his mouthing about the importance of unions the past couple of months, he is careful to distinguish between private and public sector unions, the latter he still continues to be evil. (And before anyone says those two anti-union bills were “about transparency,” you all know that’s a lie and can stop insulting our intelligence).

O’Toole argued that we have somehow completely de-industrialized as a country, which is news to the rest of us, and then went on an extended tirade about China, because he’s trying to frame this as a national security argument and not just populism hollowing out his party’s political ideology. He claimed that the Liberals were using the pandemic to launch a “risky experiment with our economy” around green energy, which is…not really true, and ignores how markets have moved to green tech with better economic outcomes for doing so. He also continued his protectionist bent, and made a few deeply curious statements like “Free markets alone won’t solve all our problems” (erm, his party is the one that rails about the evils of socialism, no? Is he proposing nationalizing industries? Or does he simply mean global trade when he talks about “free markets”?), and adding that that GDP growth is not the “be-all and end-all of politics” – which is odd because nobody has actually suggested that it is (but his predecessor was fond of attacking straw men as well). I’m also a bit puzzled by what exactly he’s getting at when he says “We need policies to shore up the core units of society — family, neighbourhood, nation. We need policies that build solidarity, not just wealth.” Some of this is thinly-veiled Thatcherism, but where it’s building in terms of his populist rhetoric I am a bit troubled.

And make no mistake – this is full-throated populism, particularly when he starts railing about political and business elites selling out the country (with mention about political correctness in there) – which he’s oddly making to an audience that is thought of as Canada’s business elites. But it’s also deeply hypocritical because of just who O’Toole is. He is the son of a GM executive (which he tries to obscure when he says his father “worked for GM” as though he were blue-collar), who went on to be an MPP. In fact, earlier in the week, O’Toole was tweeting about how he built himself up to leadership, conveniently omitting the huge leg-up he was given along the way. It’s like the “self-made” tech millionaires who got their start with loans from their millionaire fathers, and getting those fathers to buy their tech at their companies. More to the point, after O’Toole left the military, he was a Bay Street corporate lawyer, which is not exactly the image of the middle-class guy he’s painting himself as. When he rails about “elites,” he needs to look in the mirror because that’s exactly what he is. Of course, we’ve seen this story so many times in populist politics, where rich white guys turn themselves into the heroes for the “oppressed underclass” (of mostly straight white guys) who somehow believe that said rich white guy is a “man of the people.” And no doubt O’Toole is hoping he’ll dine out on this as well, but make no mistake, this speech was hypocrisy of the highest order.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau is encouraging Canadians to reduce their numbers of contacts to avoid a return to a more prolonged shutdown because of the pandemic.
• Trudeau announced another $204 million in pandemic supports for Indigenous communities around the country.
• While on a call with a radio station in Edmonton, Trudeau noted that many of the things that the federal government is aligned on the province with gets torqued.
• Marco Mendicino announced increased immigration targets as part of the federal economic recovery strategy (and to make up for lapsed numbers from this year).
• Here’s a look at how the government is being forced to prepare for the possibility of civil unrest in the US following next week’s election.
• The RCMP have responded to over 88,000 mental health cases this year, amid concerns of use-of-force and inadequate training for these calls.
• A survey of First Nations still under boil water advisories shows that some won’t have projects completed by the promised deadline, and they want more candour.
• Here’s a look at Sipekne’katik First Nation chief Mike Sack, who is running for re-election at the same time as the fishery dispute has been going on.
• Bill Morneau says that he was already thinking of quitting politics to run for the OECD job before the WE revelations happened. (If you say so…)
• Former Liberal MP Rodger Cuzner has been named the new consul general in Boston.
• There are more details on the tax evasion charges facing former Conservative MP Rob Anders, which includes failing to report more than $750,000 over five years.
• Susan Delacourt teases out the logic behind Jody Wilson-Raybould’s question about why Trudeau hasn’t used the Emergencies Act during the pandemic.
• Heather Scoffield wonders how Chrystia Freeland will deal with the biggest barriers to prosperity – like inequality – once we’re past the pandemic.
• My weekend column looks at Freeland’s major economic speech this week and how it might extend to this government’s expectations for “build back better.”

Odds and ends:

Colby Cosh recounts recent research trying to find the origins of the novel coronavirus that has caused the global pandemic.

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