Watch: Author and journalist Susan Delacourt, and media consultant Barry McLoughlin offer strategy and image advice to three federal party leaders in the lead-up to next year’s election.
OTTAWA — New year, new election campaign … New focus and priorities from the leaders?
Leaders of the three main parties have given some indication of the policies on which they’ll campaign in the sprint to election day in 2015.
Recent polls show the Liberals under Justin Trudeau still lead the Conservatives in voter preference, though that margin has been reduced in recent weeks.
While Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have been catching up the party is still polling second.
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How might the prime minister ensure he remains competitive as the race quickens?
“He’s not on a bad path right now,” Susan Delacourt, a columnist with the Toronto Star said in a panel interview on The West Block with Tom Clark.
“But I think he was on to something with the idea that you don’t have to like me, but you should respect me.”
While he’s done well in the past with that philosophy, battles with the Supreme Court, the public service and criticisms around the zeal for centralizing power and increasing partisanship have all damaged it, Delcaourt said.
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“If he wants people to respect the institutions of government, including himself, he’s got to show that to the other institutions,” she said. “So I would say, put those things back together again … He steals his own thunder with all these attacks on institutions.”
Barry McLoughlin, from the media and crisis communications firm McLoughlin Media, pointed out the Conservatives already held a “dress rehearsal” for the campaign trial.
“He has positioned himself as the friend of the middle class,” he said on The West Block with Tom Clark. “You saw his announcement on income splitting. Perfectly orchestrated, it was a great dress rehearsal for what they’re all going to look like on the election campaign.”
Unfortunately, McLoughlin pointed out, the prime minister has faced recent blows on files upon which he built his brand: the military and a balanced budget.
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Falling oil prices might hamper the Conservatives’ planned and promised balanced budget in 2015, and Veterans Minister Julian Fantino has a lot of work to do to iron out the government’s relationship with the country’s men and women in uniform, McLoughlin said.
As for Justin Trudeau, Delacourt said he has some finessing to do as well, despite the fact he’s topped the polls since becoming leader.
His popularity with voters has stopped climbing and, rather, has stagnated in recent months, she pointed out.
“Harper is coming back, and it’s at the expense of Trudeau,” she said. “The one thing I would tell him … is learn the difference between a platitude and a policy.”
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Far too often, Delacourt said, Trudeau states the obvious as opposed to offering real substance, and seems to drone on about the same topic without anything new.
Echoing the Toronto Star columnist, MacLoughlin said the biggest thing Trudeau has to work on in the lead-up to the October 2015 election is policy.
“I think the challenge for him is he is policy light,” he said, recalling Trudeau’s previous claim he did not want to reveal his party’s platform too early. “But right now, other than marijuana and … he didn’t want to go into Iraq, it’s hard to define in really clear terms what he stands for.”
The official Opposition, meanwhile, has been polling in third place. McLoughlin said leader Tom Mulcair is among the best prosecutors the country has seen, consistently holding the government’s feet to the fire in the House of Commons — but he hasn’t gone beyond that.
In Delacourt’s opinion, the Opposition leader’s task for heading into 2015 is rather simple: get his party to stop whining.
Journalists often hear from Mulcair’s staff if a Liberal is quoted higher in an article than a New Democrat, Delacourt said.
“I think the NDP has spent a lot of time thinking of the media as its enemy, spending way too much time obsessed with the Liberals. I would say stop whining, start realizing that the Conservatives are your enemies, not the Liberals, and pull yourself together.”
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