Erin O'Toole makes play for the union vote with the "Canada First" campaign

This is the second time this week that I've linked to a video by David Doel. He does a good job dismantling O'Toole's claim to be on the side of the workers.

He doesn't utter the word union once.

I have a bad feeling about this.   I think this is the play to make for the Conservatives, they will have success if they get their messaging right.   Plenty of union members who aren't political or are outright conservative, if O'Toole can competantly talk out of both sides of his mouth they'll pick up some votes.    All he has to do is say "Give workers a seat at the table" without laughing, and he's gold.

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/the-unlikeliest-of-unions-conserv...

"And in that vein, new Conservative leader Erin O’Toole has been striking a distinctly different tone since taking control of the party last month, with overtures to Canadian workers and a promise of an economic plan that will put them ahead of “corporate and financial power brokers.  The movement reflects a global shift among conservative parties as they try to vacuum up working class votes left behind by progressive parties that increasingly target educated urban voters. The trend is most obvious in the United Kingdom where Boris Johnson’s Conservatives won a majority government by smashing the “red wall” of historically working class Labour seats.  Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency has also sparked an economic re-think among conservatives in the United States who are trying to translate his appeal into a conventional policy document. On Labour Day, a group of right-leaning U.S. intellectuals released an open letter encouraging conservatives to park their suspicion of unions and give workers “a seat at the table.”

“In a well-functioning and competitive market, participants meet as equals able to advance their interests through mutually beneficial relationships,” the letter reads. Without robust unions, they argue, this relationship fractures.

“Rather than cheer the demise of a once-valuable institution, conservatives should seek reform and reinvigoration of the laws that govern organizing and collective bargaining,” the letter reads."

This is a play not only for NDP voters but for Liberal union voters as well. After all Liberal victories, for example, in the Ottawa-Gatineau area, where the NDP is lucky to win one seat, are partly dependent on the civil service union members.

There are already union members who vote Conservative. One example is Doug Ford's appeal to some union members so there is a potential threat. However, O'Toole must appeal to union members from a somewhat different manner because his persona is different.  

While the media has played up O'Toole's military past and his father's connections to Oshawa and the auto industry, they rarely mention his career as a corporate lawyer. I think a review of O'Toole's record as a corporate lawyer could be quite revealing as to how sympathetic he is to union and workers issues, which  I suspect is a strong understatement. 

O'Toole graduated from Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University with a law degree in 2003,[7] and returned to Ontario. He articled at and later became a lawyer with Stikeman Elliott, a business law firm in Toronto.[8] During this time, O'Toole primarily practiced corporate law, insolvency matters, and energy regulation.

Between 2006 and 2011, O'Toole served as Canadian in-house counsel for Procter & Gamble.[9] He acted as corporate counsel for the Gillette healthcare, beauty, and paper business groups, provided commercial and regulatory law advice, and was counsel on issues relating to legislation and anti-counterfeiting operations in Canada.

In 2011, O'Toole joined the law firm Heenan Blaikie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_O%27Toole

Oh my gosh.  The next election, which we don't have a date for, will be decided in the last weeks but the Conservatives will shoot themselves in the foot many times before that. Policy matters not pretty words. That is why even soaked in scandal the Liberals are still well ahead. 

O'Tooles pretty words about workers are all about oil workers. We are back to the theory of funding the green transition through oil and gas. The oil industry already has it's hand out threatening to cancel projects if it doesn't get covid money. I hope they don't but the Liberals will probably give them something. Whether they do or they don't Canada did not want to buy Trans Mountain. If the oil industry is so profitable it doesn't need subsidies. Whether the Liberals do more or not Canadians are not going to be swayed by Alberta bleating "but western alienation"

O'Toole is talking about "the radical left" and a "culture war" and the country being divided. Newsflash. The culture war is over in Canada the left won. It isn't radical to be against growing the oil industry with government money. Canada is not "divided" just because Alberta is disgruntled. Alberta has to deal like the rest of the provinces. No special snowflakes anymore including Quebec.

Canada already exports more energy than we consume so I would say we are already energy independent.  Sounds like code words for Energy East. Maybe he thinks they have forced through TT and can do the same to Quebec but that is not happening. In Quebec separatism would rise high enough to threaten the union.

Does anyone doubt that September 23rd will include a new social program or maybe even two?

Conservatives are singing the same ol song. Covid has accelerated what was already happening so it is happening like a shock instead of slowly enough to get past people's guard. We are going to have depression era homeless without a lot of government help. The entire tourist season has been lost which is a major season for many stores. Not everyone will be going back to the office as both companies and workers have discovered working from home has major perks. Downtown office buildings are not going to refill to what they were before. People aren't buying office clothing or coffee in the morning or lunches or going for happy hour or picking up take-out on the way home. Universities are doing much more online. Between one thing and another transit use is way down. Christmas spending is going to be way down. A lot of jobs aren't coming back for years. Downtowns are going to be permanently altered for the better over the long run.

Funding a green transition and home construction provides many more jobs across the country than funding the oil industry. There seems to be support for funding clean up of orphan wells. Trudeau may do something more but people are not happy about owning TT so I wouldn't hope for too much more.

Folks, we got nothing to fear from the Conservatives. How do you think Kenny's solutions will impact Alberta? He can blame it on Covid and insufficient federal aid but he is the one stuck on cutting taxes and services as his solution. Canada is not going to look at that mess and envy it. B.C. may not be perfect but it is looking pretty good from the rest of the country.

Either the Liberals will get another majority or it will be a minority with the NDP holding the balance of power, too soon to say which. Place your bets.

Mighty Middle wrote:

Left Turn wrote:

The USMCA is a wretched neoliberal corporate rights deal, and should be opposed. Just because Erin O'Toole is criticizing it doesn't mean that we should stay silent on the matter -- or worse, give the impression that we actually support the USMCA.

Neoliberal corporate globalization and the race to the bottom that it entails in no alternative to far-right nativist xenophobia.

O'Toole is being dishonest in being critical of USMCA - and just doing this to poach votes, NOT to stand up against neoliberal corporate rights deal.

I know full well that O'Toole is being dishonest in his criticism of the USMCA. However, I've come across people online (both on babble and elsewhere) who argue that even the slightest whiff of protectionism puts people in the racist-xenophobic anti-immigrant camp. It doesn't.

It's not in the interest of working people for Canada to be governed by trade deals that prevent the government from nationalizing industries; and that don't allow for regulating and/or banning the import of products that we decide are detrimental to the health and wellbing of Canadians.

"Canada First"? Laughable empty rhetoric out of the mouths of any Canadian politician looking to become "leader" in this US and corporate colony.
The default position is that of the Liberals, doubled-down on by the colonial administration's Virtual Prime Minister Freeland, is "America First".

The US embassy in Ottawa boasted in a March 2017 memo, “Canada Adopts ‘America First’ Foreign Policy,” just after PM Trudeau appointed hard-line hawk Chrystia Freeland as foreign minister.

....The cable was authored just weeks after the centrist government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed Chrystia Freeland as foreign minister. The former editor of the major international news agency Reuters, Freeland has pushed for aggressive policies against states targeted by Washington for regime change, including Venezuela, Russia, Nicaragua, Syria, and Iran.

The State Department added that Trudeau had promoted Freeland “in large part because of her strong U.S. contacts,” and that her “number one priority” was working closely with Washington....

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/05/canada-adopts-america-first-foreign-p...

melovesproles wrote:

O'Toole seems a lot smarter than Scheer so far. The Liberal party is not as safe as Pondering thinks. See the last election where their percentage of the popular vote collapsed alongside their one term of majority rule. Not exactly a powerhouse performance. And that was before the WE scandal reinforced the perception that they are corrupt and out of touch.

I don't know how much smarter he is, but O'Toole certainly presents as more serious and Prime Ministerial than Scheer. I think it was bekayne who called Scheer "Andy Pandy", and that was about how serious he appeared to most people. There won't be any similar joke about O'Toole (or if there is, it won't gain any traction), who will have to be fought on the issues rather than personal presentation. Considering the weakness of the Liberals on many issues, combined with the increasing odour of corruption, he could well become PM.

Check out his platform.

https://erinotoole.ca/platform/

https://erinotoole.ca/rebuilding-canada/stability-in-recovery-plan/

1. Establish a Fiscal Stability Plan to bring the budget to balance on a prudent timeline. The plan would be marked by milestone measures and a closely monitored connection with the step-down of emergency COVID-19 benefits and other emergency measures.
2. Wind Down Emergency Benefits – the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) was intended to be a temporary measure to help in a crisis. It is not a replacement for Employment Insurance and it is certainly not a Guaranteed Annual Income.

Elsewhere he promises Covid money for small businesses, tax credits to remove Huawei 5G components. He also wants to cut taxes as well as simplifying them and flattening them. Removing interprovincial trade barriers (does this have to do with oil?). And look theres this: "First Nations have opportunities to participate in large resource projects — from the needed expansion of Canada’s electricity power grids to mining to oil and gas — "

Remember the energy corridor? Including electricity will not change Quebec's mind about EE and they will be very vocal about it through Blanchet.

Along with cancelling the carbon tax, who do you think this will be popular with:

1. Introduce a National Strategic Pipelines Act within its first 100 days in office to help bring certainty and speed of approval to pipelines in the national interest. National interest would be determined by lines providing access to global markets or domestic refinery capability, especially petrochemical refineries producing the materials essential to PPE production
2. Propose a North American energy strategy that includes ending the importation of oil from outside of North America.
3. Support our oil industry in continuing to make Canadian oil even greener by applying technologies like carbon capture and storage.
4. Support Canada as a research and development and production hub for Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), building upon Canada’s tremendous legacy as a pioneer and innovator in nuclear power.

Selling natural gas is on his list of ways to fight global climate change.

In contrast Trudeau will be playing Santa Claus. Provincial governments will prefer Trudeau because they are struggling and need money injected into their systems. All the provincial governments will be running deficits. They would far rather the federal government take it on.

So yeah, O'Toole is a very likeable relatable man. He is much more appealing that Harper and Scheer. Trudeau's looks didn't keep his numbers high. They dropped like a stone until he started releasing policy. Both elections were won on policy not likeablity.

Don't new leaders get an immediate honeymoon? Trudeau reeks of entitlement and scandal yet polls still show him winning. It has nothing to do with his charm.