The sad state of Canada’s left wing

OAKVILLE, ONT.—According to recent media reports, Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer supposedly blundered when he secretly met not too long ago with oil company executives to plot a grand strategy aimed at ousting the Liberals from power. Why was that meeting seen as a blunder? Well, in ordinary times, such a move would certainly cause Scheer’s anti-capitalistic leftist opponents to pounce on him, since, after all, such a meeting plays beautifully to their propaganda, which paints the Conservative Party as being in the back pocket of rich, corporate fat cats. But keep in mind, these are not ordinary times. In fact, I’d argue we’re living in a time when Canada actually doesn’t have a left-wing political party with enough credibility to assail Scheer over things like him plotting with a bunch of corporate capitalists. To see what I mean, let’s first consider the supposedly left-wing Liberals. Yes, to be sure, they were quick to denounce Scheer’s clandestine meeting with those oil company executives. As a matter of fact, Canada's federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna stated on Twitter: “Straight from Harper's playbook: Andrew Scheer has been caught scheming behind closed doors with wealthy executives to gut environmental protection laws, silence critics, and make pollution free again.” Certainly, that’s tough language, but what takes the sting out of McKenna’s words is that her own Liberal government also likes to play lovey-dovey with wealthy, corporate executives, i.e., it has doled out huge subsidies to Bombardier, it recently handed over $12-million to the super-rich Weston family so it could buy new environmentally friendly freezers, and, most notably, it has twisted itself into ethical and moral knots to keep its friends at SNC-Lavalin out of deep legal trouble. Plus let’s not forget that the Liberal government is also now the proud owner of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline, which I guess sort of makes Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself somewhat of a wealthy, corporate executive. At any rate, my point is, the Liberal Party of Canada doesn’t exactly come across these days as the champion of the worker or as the bane of corporations; so for the Liberals to criticize Scheer for cozying up to rich business executives certainly seems hypocritical. So that leaves us with the New Democratic Party, which, of course, is officially socialist. Yet, the NDP of late hasn’t exactly been waving the red banner of socialist revolution; actually, it hasn’t been waving any banners, red, or otherwise. And for that, the blame must fall on the shoulders of NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who for the past year or so has basically been missing in action. As columnist Justin Ling recently noted: “Full of ideas in his leadership race, he now appears to have dropped any idea of forward-thinking in favour of saying, doing, and believing nothing at all.” So given this political environment, where Trudeau’s ideology is hopelessly compromised and Singh is totally ineffective and invisible, why should Scheer fear an attack from the left over his alleged corporate connections. Indeed, I suspect old-fashioned “Left vs. Right” ideological battles, the ones pitting socialism against capitalism, will play only a minor role in the upcoming federal election. If anything, the usual stereotypical roles will be reversed, with the Liberals branding the Conservatives as dangerous populists out to destabilize the capitalistic status quo, and the Conservatives denouncing the Liberals as incompetent, out of touch, corporate-loving, elitists. Meanwhile, the NDP will attack both the Conservatives and Liberals as out of touch, corporate-loving elitists but, alas, nobody will listen. So Mr. Scheer, go ahead and book another meeting with those corporate bigwigs. You’re totally in the clear. Gerry Nicholls is a communications consultant. The Hill Times