Canadians want authenticity in their political candidates

OTTAWA—The Conservative byelection victory will mean different things to different people, depending on their political allegiance. To most Canadians, however, it means that politics in Canada has lost its bearing. To Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, the surprise win by Don Stewart in Toronto-St. Paul’s, Ont., likely suggests that the party is on the right track to win the general election, as long as Poilievre stays the course. That may be a premature conclusion. Indeed, before the results came in, his senior adviser Jenni Byrne acknowledged the Conservatives expected the riding will “probably stay on the Liberal side of things.” Similarly, the Liberals may be spinning into a funk. It’s a riding they’ve held for over 30 years. The calls may come out for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to vacate his position as leader of the party, or risk complete slaughter at the polls in the election next year. Those who were previously timid may now become more outspoken to get rid of him. That, too, would be the wrong conclusion. The pundits of the mainstream media will, needless to say, reiterate variations of these same points. Those aligned with the Conservatives will relish in their smugness; those who are not will find faults with the Liberal leadership. Spinning the story into a simplistic soap opera of personalities will keep the readers glued for the ever-so-critical bait-and-click-through ratios. It's good for business. There are alternative explanations. They require a deeper inspection of party politics and an analysis of three critical aspects of any byelection: quality of the candidate; grasp of the local issues; and a connection with the people in the riding. Exploring these aspects may tease out future electoral implications and possible forewarnings for where we may be headed as a country. The Liberals offered candidate Leslie Church as a “champion for a better future in Toronto-St. Paul’s.” Were the Liberals not doing exactly that for the last 30 years? The first lines of her biography present her as “an experienced private and public sector leader and community advocate.” She ticked off all the boxes, but only in vague generalities. She promised, for example, to fight “to make Toronto-St. Paul’s transit work, so traffic works too.” Contrast this to how the Conservatives unveiled their candidate. We were asked to “Meet Don.” We got to know his curriculum vitae and how it qualifies him for the job. He’s a finance guy. He worked for BMO and Morgan Stanley. He is an army reservist. Yes, he wants to axe the tax, but his style and demeanour were of someone showing up for a job interview with humility. While the Liberals were playing it safe and avoiding specifics, Stewart, it would appear, was direct and honed-in on getting the vote out. The extrapolation, as the Liberals have shown in Toronto-St. Paul’s, is that political candidates who come across as caricatures fashioned by consultants and marketing machines will lose. Canadians are tired of it. We don’t care for generic automatons with meaningless speaking points. We want real humans, representing our real interests in Parliament. This doesn’t mean that we agree with them all the time. It only means that we value their authenticity. The flip in Toronto-St. Paul’s shows that a cogent understanding of the local public interest is also critical in a byelection. It would appear that the Liberals attached their campaign on one issue—to win the Jewish vote. They rushed to list Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist entity, when a Conservative motion on the topic had passed by 248-45 votes back in 2018. Then, they floated the idea to appoint pro-Israel MP Anthony Housefather to some vague position to fight antisemitism. According to the 2021 census, the Jewish population of Toronto-St. Paul’s is sizeable at 15.1 per cent. The riding is also 6.3 per cent South Asian, six per cent Black, five per cent Chinese, and 4.5 per cent Filipino. After English, the most spoken languages are Spanish, Portuguese and Tagalog. Furthermore, Jewish voters, like other Canadians, are not a single-issue stereotype. They may worry about Iran and Israel and antisemitism, but they also have local preoccupations like public transit, homelessness, and health care. Reducing complex human aspirations and citizenship to one-offs may win votes, but it is not good politics. Politicians who cater only to a single-issue agenda, get forever locked into pandering to that demographic. This is where Trudeau might have got it wrong. Perhaps the Conservatives won the riding not because of the Jewish vote, but because of the Catholic vote. Nearly 41 per cent of the riding is Christian, with 21 per cent Catholics. Did sudden hints of anti-abortion talk from Conservative backbenchers help swing that vote? The byelection outcome should not be viewed in the context of a Liberal stronghold gone Conservative. That’s just the media story. It should be viewed in the context of the decay of politics in Canada. It is a people’s story. Canadians are fed up with party politics. A massive cohort of 75 candidates in Toronto-St. Paul’s, in fact, had no party affiliation. The cumulative message to the Liberals is clear—modesty and being genuine matters, with or without Trudeau. You work for us. The message to Poilievre is also clear–as much as this win is about your candidate, it is also a vote against the system that manipulates the public, plays loose with ethical consistency, and takes us for fools. Perhaps Stewart as the new MP can help change that. He certainly has his mandate. Bhagwant Sandhu is a retired director general from the federal public service. He has also held executive positions with the governments of Ontario and British Columbia. The Hill Times