THE WEST BLOCK
Episode 7, Season 5
Sunday, October 25, 2015
Host: Vassy Kapelos for Tom Clark
Guests: Ralph Goodale, Lewis MacKenzie, Joe Oliver
Unpacking the Politics: Mark Kennedy
Location: Ottawa
On this Sunday, a new government in Ottawa: Justin Trudeau ran on a promise of real change. We talk to a member of his team about what the near future will look like for Canadians and an expert who sees challenges on the road ahead.
Then, the Conservative Party resets: Stephen Harper will no longer lead and many MP’s lost their bid for re-election. We talk to Joe Oliver about what went wrong and where the party needs to go from here.
Plus, we unpack the politics of our new political reality.
It’s Sunday, October 25. I’m Vassy Kapelos sitting in for Tom Clark. This is The West Block.
Vassy Kapelos: A lot can change in a week and it did. Canadians elected more Liberal MP’s than any other party. Justin Trudeau will be prime minister facing Conservatives in the Opposition benches with the NDP knocked back to third party status.
The transition is already underway. Trudeau and his cabinet will be sworn in November 4th and that’s when major change begins. Liberals made a long list of promises in this election and many could be in place soon. There’s a tax cut for the middle class and a hike for the richest in the country. The party says it’ll cancel the Universal Child Care Benefit and bring in a new Canadian Child Benefit. Marijuana will be legalized. The military will not buy the F-35. Canada will withdraw from the air campaign against ISIS and Liberals say they’ll bring in 25,000 government sponsored refugees by the end of the year. And those are just some of the pledges made in the Liberal’s platform.
Joining me now to understand how it all gets done is Saskatchewan MP Ralph Goodale. Mr. Goodale, thanks for joining us. Congratulations on your win.
Ralph Goodale: Thank you very much.
Vassy Kapelos: What will priority number one be for your government?
Ralph Goodale: Well the priority right now is obviously putting the government together. Mr. Trudeau is working very hard at that. He has a caucus of 184 people; 150 of them are brand new. Obviously pulling the caucus together and then making the choice of a cabinet and having a new government to take office on November the 4th, that’s priority number one. And once that’s done then obviously there is a lot of hard work that remains ahead.
Vassy Kapelos: A number of campaign promises of course throughout the election campaign. Timelines are always important when it comes to promises. A lot of Canadians, and Canadian parents, watching this wondering when will those Universal Child Care Benefit cheques stop coming and the Liberal version of them, the Canada Child Tax Benefits, start?
Ralph Goodale: Well, Mr. Trudeau indicated that his first legislative priority once we have a Parliament and it can actually pass legislature would be the middle- class tax cut. That is a very important centrepiece of the campaign, to reduce the tax burden on middle class Canadians by a very significant amount. And coupled with that of course is the new Canada Child Benefit that also assists parents in raising families with children and the improvements in the investments in public infrastructure. Those are the core economic elements of our platform and they remain very firm commitments. We will start with the legislation that’s necessary on the middle-class tax cut.
Vassy Kapelos: Do you expect that to happen before Christmas?
Ralph Goodale: Well, we’ll have to see what the government actually has available before it. I would think a meeting of Parliament before Christmas is unlikely, just given the timeframe, but that remains to be seen. That will be up to the new government to determine.
Vassy Kapelos: Let me move to another promise, during the election, your party pledged to bring in 25,000 refugees from Syria by the end of this year which is of course just two months away. Given the kind of security vetting that’s needed, is that promise realistic right now?
Ralph Goodale: Well, we made the promise and we intend to fulfill the promise. And we’re certainly encouraged by the other experts who have said that this is doable in the timeframe that’s available. I think of General Hillier for example, and General Dallaire, both of whom have extensive experience in matters of this kind and they are logistical experts. They have said that this is possible. Obviously that is our commitment and we’re working very hard to achieve it.
Vassy Kapelos: The day after the election, Mr. Trudeau said he spoke to President Obama and reiterated his campaign commitment to pull out of the combat mission fighting ISIS. I’m wondering — do you expect that pullout to happen before the expiry of the mission at the end of March?
Ralph Goodale: Well, the commitment was made to change the nature of the Canadian participation. Obviously we are anxious to use Canadian resources in the highest and best way possible to carry on the world-wide campaign against ISIS. We made the argument that as opposed to the combat mission, there are other more effective, more important things that Canada can do in terms of humanitarian relief dealing with refugees and of course training, which is a particular Canadian expertise. The prime minister and the new minister of National Defence will obviously be discussing the exact timing, but our commitment is clear that we will not participate in the bombing because that is not the highest and best use of Canadian resources. We will obviously participate in other ways, including humanitarian relief dealing with refugees, and especially that particular Canadian expertise on training.
Vassy Kapelos: Would you like to see though the CF-18’s removed immediately or do you think it makes sense to fulfill our commitment ‘til the end of March?
Ralph Goodale: Well, the prime minister and the minister of National Defence will take that decision as soon as the new government is in office. They obviously have a variety of important pressures to bear in mind, but the right public-policy decision will be taken once a government is in place.
Vassy Kapelos: You also stressed there the training aspect of things. I know Mr. Trudeau has spoken about that at length before. Right now, there are about 69 Special Forces on the ground. Do you expect, or do you leave open the possibility of, increasing the number of Canadian Special Forces over there?
Ralph Goodale: Well, that is potentially a possibility. Obviously that’s a decision for the prime minister and the minister of National Defence. Our commitment is clear that we will participate in training and use the expertise that Canada has demonstrated in many other circumstances around the world that this is something that Canadian Forces do particularly well and that is a way that we can make a very substantial contribution. The prime minister and the minister of National Defence will obviously make the precise decisions with respect to the timing that relates to that training activity and the number of resources that it will take to do that job.
Vassy Kapelos: Okay great. Thanks very much for joining us Mr. Goodale, and congratulations on your win.
Ralph Goodale: My pleasure. Thank you very much.
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Vassy Kapelos: Joining me now is Retired Major-General Lewis MacKenzie. He had nine peacekeeping tours of duty and led the United Nations Protection Force in former Yugoslavia. Sir, thanks for being here, I appreciate it.
Lewis MacKenzie: My pleasure.
Vassy Kapelos: We just heard from Mr. Goodale about the promise, his insistence that the Liberals can keep their promise to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees in just the next two months, is it realistic?
Lewis MacKenzie: It’s possible. I think it’s possible. I guess you’re governed by, it’s better to do it well than do it fast, so I don’t think it should necessarily be a race. I don’t think anybody’s going to be terribly upset if on the middle of January there’s only 20,000. But it’s very ambitious. You call in 1999 when we brought refugees from Kosovo, 5,000 in three weeks. If you extrapolate that number, that makes about 12,500 by the end of December. The problem of having them processed really isn’t that strong as long as you can bring back a whole bunch of retired immigration officers and get them over there into the camps, the camps in Turkey in Jordan. There are no camps in Lebanon; the people are spread all over the country. And those people have already been processed and cleared. There’s great concern about the security and I don’t think there should be.
Vassy Kapelos: Why not?
Lewis MacKenzie: I can get rid of the security problem with one order, and that is find all the widowed mothers and their children, all the single mothers and their children, bring them over. With over 3 million refugees, there’s lots of women, lots of mothers with kids and there’s no husbands there and bring them over.
Vassy Kapelos: That’s a pretty broad view to take.
Lewis MacKenzie: Yeah.
Vassy Kapelos: Is there — you know, I’m not sure the government would take on that view. What might they do to maybe get through the security vetting? Because security is obviously an issue, as we heard the former government talk about often.
Lewis MacKenzie: Sure, and it’ll be impossible to do it thoroughly because what are you going to do, go to Damascus and ask for the personal files of the people? I mean the records just aren’t available, and that’s why you have to depend within the camps themselves where the Syrians are because a lot of these refugees are not Syrians that are outside the borders and coming across into Europe. Where the Syrians are, there’s been some processing done by UNHCR and contrary to popular opinion, I’ve worked with them and been to camps where they’ve been operating and they do very well, and they’ve done the processing. And if you focus on the women and the kids more than — you know when the Kosovo refugees came here, most of them were young males in their mid-20’s for heaven’s sakes. You know, how did they jump to the head of the cue in front of mothers and kids?
Vassy Kapelos: Let me move on to the combat mission to fight ISIS and what we heard Mr. Goodale talk about. Not a lot of timelines, do you think we should stick around until at least the end of March when the mission expires?
Lewis MacKenzie: I think that should be the case for certainly the reconnaissance and the refueling capability. Our reconnaissance aircraft, the Aurora’s, they have a capability for identifying targets for the coalition air better than anything the Americans have, better than anything in the coalition force. I think our tanker has actually provided 18 tonnes at last count of fuel to coalition aircraft. The Americans would maybe not publicly be more upset if those resources were withdrawn and leave the F-18’s. There’s lots of bombing aircraft over there and the air campaign cannot be successful, by that, I mean eliminating ISIS or even reducing their territory if you don’t accept civilian casualties. It’s a horrible thing to admit. The Russians aren’t quite as careful as we are in avoiding civilian casualties. The majority of our missions come back not having dropped their bombs because they have an indication that there are some civilians in the area and actually ISIS is enveloped by civilians. They hide within civilian areas, in mosques or whatever. So, longwinded answer to your question is, it would be possible to do that and get away with it, but if it’s politically necessary to bring something back from the combat mission, you can bring the F-18’s back.
Vassy Kapelos: Are we going to hurt our relationship with our allies and specifically of course the US by pulling out of this mission?
Lewis MacKenzie: We have nothing to be ashamed of. We’ve paid our dues over the last 20 years in blood and gold and lives, so I don’t think so. As far as the F-18’s go, there are so many aircraft on bombing missions over there, ISIS won’t notice that we’ve gone and that’s the important thing because the bombing will continue at the same pace with other coalition aircraft, the French, the Brits, the Americans.
Vassy Kapelos: Well it’ll be interesting to see how it happens and how fast this removal or this withdrawal from the mission takes place. Thanks for joining us sir, I really appreciate it.
Lewis MacKenzie: My pleasure.
Vassy Kapelos: Still to come, we’ll unpack the politics of this historic week with Mark Kennedy. But first, reflecting on what went wrong. Reduced to 99 seats and without a leader, members of the Conservative Party look to the future and there are already rumours of unrest.
Vassy Kapelos: Welcome back. Shortly after the Conservatives were reduced to Opposition status in last week’s election, party members across the country were offering their opinions about the loss. Next month, caucus will meet to plan their future but already there appears to be disagreement about who will participate in the meeting.
Joining me from Toronto is outgoing Finance Minister Joe Oliver. Mr. Oliver thanks for making time for us. Just wondering if those reports we’re hearing about MP’s who lost their seats not being invited to the last caucus next month, are those reports true?
Joe Oliver: Well, I haven’t been invited to a caucus meeting. I of course have never participated in this kind of event so I didn’t know and don’t know whether that’s the normal thing, but I haven’t received an invitation.
Vassy Kapelos: Would you like to participate in sort of the farewell caucus that talk about the future of your party?
Joe Oliver: Well look, I think it’s up to the party and the leadership to decide. I of course have very strong relationships with my colleagues. I really valued the opportunity of working with them and it would be great to get together again, but that’s a different issue.
Vassy Kapelos: Looking back on what happened on Monday night, we’ve spoken to some of your colleagues over the week of course and they said — what I seem to gather, is that they say the major pitfall in the campaign was the tone of it. Do you agree with that assessment?
Joe Oliver: Well, I think tone was part of it. Look, what we’re confronting is the fact that we had a rock solid base of 32 per cent but we couldn’t grow beyond that and we needed to obviously. So we have to take a look at the policies. We have to take a look at communications and some internal issues about training and how people are engaged to maximize our communication outreach. So there’s quite a number of issues, but broadly based, I think we have to make sure that our party is representative of a good section, a good cross-section of the Canadian population from coast to coast and that’s of course what we’ve always wanted to do and what we’ll be focusing on in the years ahead.
Vassy Kapelos: Maybe I’ll ask you just on that point, a couple of your colleagues earlier this week, I’m thinking of Michelle Rempel for example, talking about how women in leadership roles in the party might face some resistance, at least that’s her take. Do you agree with what she’s saying there? Do you feel like women are adequately represented in the party as a whole but also the leadership of the party?
Joe Oliver: Well, I think that women have always been very welcome in the party. Michelle Rempel is one of a number of women who were in cabinet. You know they’re very bright, able, talented people and they’ve contributed a lot to the party and I certainly expect that they’ll continue to provide leadership going forward.
Vassy Kapelos: When we talk about hat leadership and the leadership race that the party is about to embark on, what kind of leader or how different of a leader than Stephen Harper do you think is needed?
Joe Oliver: Well, I don’t want to get into an analysis of the prime minister, but it’s clear that as I said, we need to broaden our focus and I think the new leader will be thinking about how he can have a broader message, a message that communicates Conservative values in a way which are alluring to the Canadian public. Look, I believe we had an excellent government. I think we had policies that worked for the Canadian population. I think we perhaps didn’t communicate that as well as we needed to and I think there were some policies that may have sent signals that were less welcoming, but that’s the sort of thing we’re looking …
Vassy Kapelos: Not to interrupt, but what policies do you think sent that signal?
Joe Oliver: Well I don’t want to get into individual policies, but I think sometimes it was a question of communication. I mean for example — you know that’s something that I was involved in, on the expansion of the tax free savings account, somehow a narrative was developed that it wasn’t really reaching out to lower and middle income people. In fact, it does, the vast majority of the benefit goes to middle and lower income people. I’m not going to go through all the statistics again, but we have to make sure that we get out the message when we believe that the policy is right for the population.
Vassy Kapelos: If the message about those policies, and I hear you saying that a lot throughout this interview, the message or the communication is what lacked, it wasn’t getting out in the way you think it should have, who was holding it back or what was holding it back to getting it across to Canadians because the outcome of the election I think clearly shows that it didn’t necessarily get across.
Joe Oliver: Well I think, I’m not going to attribute to any individual or group of people, but we just have to, going forward, take a look at why it was that while we had a rock solid support from 32 per cent of the population, we weren’t able to make it grown. And part of it of course, as we all know, was that the government had been in power for nine and a half years, resentments build up and it’s perfectly normal that it becomes increasingly difficult for a government that’s been in power that long to get re-elected and that’s been the history of Canadian politics.
Vassy Kapelos: Thanks very much Minister Oliver, I appreciate your time today.
Joe Oliver: You’re most welcome.
Vassy Kapelos: Up next, Justin Trudeau promises a new tone in Parliament, but we’ve heard that before. Mark Kennedy is here to help us unpack the politics of what to expect.
Vassy Kapelos: Welcome back. Justin Trudeau promised he would set a new tone if his party became the next government. What does that mean and what changes can we expect to see on the Hill? Joining me now to break it all down is Mark Kennedy, Parliamentary Bureau Chief of the Ottawa Citizen. Mark thanks for being here.
Mark Kennedy: Great to be here.
Vassy Kapelos: We’re supposed to expect a new tone in Parliament. We’ve heard that before, is it doable?
Mark Kennedy: It can be. It has to be. Listen, Justin Trudeau got elected on a platform of change. I think in many respects, one of the reasons Canadians turned their back on Stephen Harper wasn’t necessarily because of what he stood for but how he governed. They became tired of what they perceived to be an element of meanness and cynicism in politics. Trudeau has talked about that endlessly so he has to come to Ottawa. You know, I sat in his office about a year and a half ago and I said to him how are you going to campaign? How are you going to win the election? He said he wouldn’t go negative and at the time I said, well why? How? Because that’s usually how elections are won. He said the place had become so cynical, politics had become so cynical. It was time to break that. I believe that he believes it and I think he’s going to try for it.
Vassy Kapelos: Is it hard to accomplish though given the nature of partisan politics. We’ve been in many Question Periods where a sound bite is what makes the news, is there any way to reverse that idea?
Mark Kennedy: Listen, I think there’s a way of standing up and giving substantive answers to substantive questions. The question will be as we head towards the next election, can that be sustained? One of the promises that the prime minister — the soon-to-be prime minister has made will be a reflection of what they do in the mother of all parliaments. It’s called a Prime Minister’s Question Period. We don’t have a lot of details about how often it would happen. But imagine this: once a week, suppose, Justin Trudeau handles every question in Question Period for 45 solid minutes. That could be a real improvement potentially in the way that place operates.
Vassy Kapelos: Since we’re talking about tone and changes, let me move to the Conservatives. We were in that room together on Monday night. It was a pretty solemn crowd. They seemed to expect it a bit. Now we’re heading towards what will be an interesting leadership race. How do you see that playing out?
Mark Kennedy: It’s fascinating. Let’s not forget that this party basically was born out of the ashes of the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance/Reform Party. It only had one leader and that was Stephen Harper. The party essentially was a reflection of Stephen Harper, his character, his way of doing politics, his ideology. They’re now starting from scratch and I think they’re going to want to have a vibrant debate about who they are, what they stand for, whether they’re the party of the Progressive Conservatives of past generations, whether they’re the party of the Reform Party of 1993 or somewhere in the middle. That’s a necessary vibrant discussion to have. The question will be: will it become nasty?
Vassy Kapelos: And let me just ask you on that point, we’ve seen even this week, different MP’s with different takes. Someone like Michelle Rempel saying hey, we’ve got some work to do. Meanwhile I talked to Diane Finley this week and she said hey, the Conservative brand is really strong. How do you rectify the two camps?
Mark Kennedy: Well listen, any time you lose an election you can’t walk away and say everything is fine because it’s not fine. There’s no doubt their core is still there. They still did get 32 per cent of the votes, so that’s not bad. They’re still strong in certain regions, but nonetheless, they still lost the vote. Four years from now, if Trudeau is still doing fine, they may be still looking at defeat so they have to come out and they have to tell people what it is they stand for. I think one of their problems in this campaign is Canadians didn’t know what a Conservative Party would do for them in the next four years. That is something they have to define for themselves, for the Conservative Party and for the country.
Vassy Kapelos: It sure will be interesting watching them define that and that race unfold. Thanks so much for being with us Mark, really appreciate it.
Mark Kennedy: Thank you.
Vassy Kapelos: That’s our show for today. We’re always eager to hear from you. You can find us online at www.thewestblock.ca and you can also reach us on Twitter and Facebook. Thanks for joining us today. We’ll see you back here next week for another edition of The West Block.
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