It would appear that conservative leader Erin O’Toole does not intend to “Go gentle into that good night.” He does not seem to be Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’ sort of guy. In O’Toole’s case, the death is to his dream of leading this country.
It is not as simple as O’Toole tried and failed and it is time to move on. The problem is that he tried everything and failed his party. He promised victory and glory and he delivered stagnation.
But it was how he did it that was the rub. The problem was that, from the beginning, he stood alone. In that cold and forbidding studio in downtown Ottawa, he transitioned from pamphleteer to panderer. If this promise does not work, let’s try another.
Nobody can label the O’Toole leadership of his party in opposition. In parliament last week, we wondered where the yelling went? From the vindictiveness and vitriol, parliament entered a time of cooperation and cohesion. It passed a conservative motion unanimously. It did. Really. It confused and bewildered but worked. The bill against conversion therapy promptly went on to the Senate for that body’s approval. For a bill that could still raise one or two human rights questions, it was given short shrift in the Commons.
It is that nobody is sure just what this new approach will cost O’Toole? It left many people wondering just how he is going to square this with the conservative right wing. He can hardly send them over to Maxime Bernier’s peoples’ party. He cannot afford to lose them.
He had succumbed to the pleas of the conservative party’s fiscal right when he gave Pierre Poilievre back his finance criticism platform. Nobody needs to tell O’Toole that Poilievre is a loose cannon with his own agenda. That “Justin-flation” that the Carleton MP coined is being picked up by other members of the caucus and the speaker is going to have to call it what it is: unparliamentary.
But it will be after the pandemic is over that economics will once again impact on Canadians’ concerns. Until then Poilievre’s plaints are just chatter.
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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