Canadian politics: Each leader faces unique challenges

Beacon columnist Bruce Stewart all Canadian political leaders have flaws to address before the 2015 election. Photo: Stephen Harper/Facebook.

Each of the Canadian political leaders has a problem to solve in 2014

Between now and October 2015, Canadian politics will be dominated by jockeying for position heading into the next general election.

No party leader is able to coast. All five of the federal ones have liabilities they need to overcome — some personal, some drawn from their parties — or they’ll find them to be millstones sinking them when the 2015 election comes.

That’s right: all of them. And so, in alphabetical order:

Canadian politics – Restoring credibility is Job One for Stephen Harper

Stephen Harper at the 2011 Conservative Party of Canada convention. Photo: Conservative Party.

Stephen Harper: The Prime Minister’s credibility has taken a beating in the year just ending, and every bit of it is a self-inflicted wound. The “go on the attack first, admit nothing” style of the minority government days needed to be shelved, but wasn’t. As a result, as the Senate expenses scandal unfolded, the Prime Minister’s own words supporting, then castigating, his appointee Senator Duffy, and his then Chief of Staff Nigel Wright, have come back to make him look like an outright liar, and complicit in an attempt to cover up.

Perception is reality in politics, and the perception of Harper as a masterful tactician and as an honest man has been broken. He’s going to gave to fix that if he wants to stand any hope of succeeding when May 2015 rolls around.

That he may yet decide to step down remains in the cards (and the recent contretemps of Jason Kenney vs. Jim Flaherty was as much over leadership issues as over the embarrassment that is Toronto Mayor Rob Ford). Assuming Harper wants to stay on, he has to change the public’s views of his character — or be defeated.

Canadian politics – Party first, ego second

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May. Photo: Handout.

Elizabeth May: She may be feeling good about recruiting Bruce Hyer (Thunder Bay-Superior North) to her ranks, but as with Blair Wilson, the first “Green” to sit in the House of Commons, Hyer’s unlikely to win again under May’s banner.

The Green problem, in a nutshell, is this. Under May, the party has been about Tin-Ear Lizzie herself. Her participation in debates. Her views on everything (it doesn’t matter if WiFi is a danger or not, she came across as a loon in making it an issue).

May sits in the Commons not because she’s a Green, but because the national resources of a political party were used to put her there at the expense of the other 307 campaigns in 2011. She’s been a good MP and the party could probably concentrate its all on another seat in 2015 — but it’ll take centuries to get anywhere at that rate.

Can May stop putting herself first?

Canadian politics – Needs to pick his fights carefully

NDP leader Thomas Mulcair. Photo: handout.

Thomas Mulcair: 2013 was Mulcair’s year, with a superb performance in the Commons, almost single-handedly showing Canadians what Parliament could be, and with acclaim in public appearances growing. Yet Mulcair doesn’t have the numbers yet moving in his favour.

The big reason is that, every so often, Mulcair starts talking about some piece or other of party ideology that undoes everything good he’s doing.

Mulcair has it in him to be another Jack Layton — not just solid and competent, but beloved. To get there, he’s going to have to do as Jack did, and pick his topics with more care.

The NDP (like the Greens) have a lot of passionate members who expect their leader to reflect their views. Mulcair needs to thread the needle of focusing his party’s message while not going so far as to silence every dissenting view (to do as Harper did to the Conservatives between 2004 and 2005, but without the iron fist image).

Canadian politics – Who cares about the Bloc?

Daniel Paillé: The Bloc Québécois leader, whom we tend to forget about (he’s not in the Commons and his party’s not currently much of a factor) has the problem of finding a way to become “essential” to politics in Québec, or his party drifts into the same obscurity and death that the Créditistes faced in the 1970s. With Pailine Marois’ PQ in power in Québec City, and with the NDP in Québec equally good social democrats, the BQ is a party without a raison d’être for most Québécois voters. (This came clear with their poor showing in the recent by-election in Bourassa.)

Answering the “why the BQ” question is Paillé’s challenge this year.

Canadian politics – Time for some substance?

Federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau. Photo: Handout.

Justin Trudeau: The CBC’s premier political panel sees him as 2014′s big news maker, but if Trudeau carries on as he is now he’s as likely to be the man in the news for lunch-bag letdown as much as for his brilliance.

So far, Trudeau’s been able to coast. But 2014 will see both the NDP and the Conservatives gang up on him (neither wants the Liberals to “resume normal service”). The ability to speak vaguely, smile, look good, and provide an occasional well-planned provocation (think of the marijuana interview) will be tested again and again.

Trudeau’s banking on “time for a change” carrying him, as the “cool guy”, to a point of inevitability — the fewer concretes to be attacked, the better. But that risks having “shiny new toy” flip into “idiot, why did we ever choose him!” in an instant of credibility loss.

Can he demonstrate political nous and transition to someone known for substance as well as charisma? That’s Trudeau’s “roll the dice” challenge in the year ahead.

Five leaders, five flaws to fix. The outcome in 2015 is still very much up in the air.