Andrew Scheer is working to ally himself with a raft of rising small-c conservative leaders in the provinces, but he’d better be wary. Those allies won’t always help him.
The Conservative leader spent much of last week forging those ties, paying homage to Ford Nation in a photo-op with Ontario Premier Doug Ford, then bringing a promise of a new bridge to Quebec City when he visited new Premier François Legault.
It was a chance to portray himself as riding a rising wave – one pushing back against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s efforts to impose his federal Liberal agenda on the provinces, on carbon taxes, immigration, and so on.
The problem is that Mr. Scheer can’t keep giving those provincial allies what they want, and it can be dangerous to try.
Of course, it can be a good sign for Mr. Scheer that he now has small-c allies in the premier’s office in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec, with New Brunswick Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs poised to try a government in Fredericton and Alberta United Conservative Leader Jason Kenney way ahead in polls, only months from a spring election.
Mr. Scheer can do something like what Mr. Trudeau did: in opposition, the Liberal Leader argued that then-prime minister Stephen Harper didn’t listen to the (mostly Liberal) premiers. Now, the balance is shifting, and provinces are taking issue with Mr. Trudeau.
But it can also be dangerous for Mr. Scheer.
For starters, it has appeared that provincial politicians are leading. Mr. Ford and Mr. Kenney seemed to lead the carbon-tax charge. His photo-op with Mr. Ford had a whiff of role reversal: the Premier talked about defeating Mr. Trudeau while Mr. Scheer nodded. Which was the national leader?
That’s just image, but Mr. Scheer’s allies don’t always have the same interests at heart, or his.
Mr. Ford, Mr. Kenney, and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe have led the charge against Mr. Trudeau’s carbon tax. The political squeeze between conservative provincial leaders and Liberal Ottawa led Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister to abandon his own carbon-tax plan. But Mr. Legault will keep Quebec’s cap-and-trade system – it would be political folly in Quebec to appear to abandon an emissions-reduction plan.
And Mr. Scheer isn’t going to find it easy to put forward a real climate plan that pleases his allies. Ontario is planning to issue one this month that will argue the province is already doing its fair share to meet Canada’s emissions-reduction targets – which, by implication, places more of the burden on Alberta and Saskatchewan to cut emissions. How will Mr. Scheer craft a national plan?
Dealing with Mr. Legault, whose Coalition Avenir Québec is right of centre, is not going to be easy, either.
The biggest issue is Mr. Legault’s plan to cut Quebec’s immigration target from 52,000 to 40,000.
Mr. Legault left his meeting with Mr. Scheer last week saying that the Conservative leader was willing to discuss what he wants – but Mr. Scheer had better shut down that suggestion before Conservative voters catch on to what the Premier means.
Quebec already gets to select economic-class immigrants under a decades-old Quebec-Canada immigration accord. It calls for Quebec to take in the same proportion of immigrants, based on its population, as the rest of the country. In return, Ottawa sends money to Quebec for immigrant-settlement programs, with a guarantee that the annual sum will never decline.
But Quebec’s immigrant numbers have already slipped below its share, while “compensation” from Ottawa keeps going up. The province gets twice as much for resettlement per immigrant than programs in the rest of the country, and it is more than it spends. Now, Mr. Legault wants to cut immigration by 20 per cent and keep the money. You can bet Conservatives in the rest of Canada won’t like the sound of that deal.
It’s fair game for Mr. Scheer to fuel the notion that provinces are in conflict with Mr. Trudeau. But he’d better not promise everything they want, either – he has to look like a national leader at the head of the train, not like he’s just hitching his wagon to provincial allies. They won’t always be travelling in the same direction.