THURSDAY,OCTOBER24,2019 | THEGLOBEANDMAILO A
OPINION
T
he results of Monday’s fed-
eral election have set off a
debate within Conservative
circles over whether Andrew
Scheer or Doug Ford is most to
blame for the party’s failure to
win government despite a vul-
nerable Liberal incumbent.
On the face of it, the question
seems absurd. As leader of the
party that was on the ballot, Mr.
Scheer must automatically ac-
cept responsibility for Monday’s
loss – which he nevertheless
tried to spin as a technical win
because the Conservatives won
the popular vote.
The truth is, both the Liberals
and the Conservatives perform-
ed poorly in Monday’s vote. Nei-
ther party was able to rally much
more than a third of the electo-
rate, though the Liberals bene-
fited from a more “efficient” dis-
tribution of votes in seat-rich On-
tario. With a different leader and
more inclusive message, howev-
er, the Tories would not have
had to settle for second place.
There is no doubt that Mr.
Ford, Ontario’s Progressive Con-
servative Premier, hurt the feder-
al party where it mattered most- in Toronto’s inner and outer
suburbs. Pockets of Ford Nation
may still exist somewhere on
this planet, but it is comical to
suggest, as former Ford cam-
paign manager Kory Teneycke
has, that Mr. Ford was an asset
rather than a liability for the fed-
eral Tories. That the Ontario Pre-
mier had gone into hiding dur-
ing the campaign speaks for it-
self.
Mr. Ford owed his 2018 elec-
tion victory far more to the un-
popularity of Kathleen Wynne’s
Liberalgovernment than to any
populist wave. Either of Mr.
Ford’s centrist challengers for the
PC leadership, Caroline Mulro-
ney or Christine Elliott, would
likely have led the party to a big-
ger victory in the general elec-
tion. Indeed, plenty of life-long
Tories, with memories or knowl-
edge of former Ontario premiers
John Robarts and Bill Davis,
could not bring themselves to
vote for Mr. Ford.
In this election, Mr. Scheer
and Mr. Ford were faces of a Can-
adian Conservative movement
that has become narrow-mind-
ed, anti-intellectual, vindictive
and retrograde in the minds of
too many voters. With each elec-
tion, the proportion of Cana-
dians that would consider voting
Conservative seems to shrink.
While the party’s base remains
intact at around 30 per cent of
the electorate, increasingly few
Canadians outside that circle
would even give it a look.
Still, with a 21st-century ver-
sion of Mr. Robarts or Mr. Davis
as their leader – with modern,
constructive and pragmatic
views on economic, environ-
mental and social issues – the
federal Tories could have over-
come the Ford factor in Ontario.
Enough swing voters had grown
tired enough of Liberal Leader
Justin Trudeau to make them-selves “available” to the Conser-
vatives.
But it took one look, maybe
two, for them to rule the Tories
out. With Mr. Scheer at the helm,
the Conservatives didn’t deserve
to win on Monday. They provid-
ed no good reason to oust Mr.
Trudeau unless you think killing
the federal carbon tax is the
country’s most pressing issue,
when on the contrary, some
form of carbon pricing is fa-
voured by most Canadians.
An even larger proportion of
voters – 70 per cent, according to
an Angus Reid poll released Oct.
18 – supports the construction of
at least some new oil pipelines.
The suggestion that most voters
did not get what they wanted out
of Monday’s vote is inaccurate.
They want both carbon pricing
and at least one new pipeline to
tidewater, as the Liberals have
promised.
Even if Mr. Scheer had taken
the same stand, however, he
would still not be prime minis-
ter-designate today. He delivered
a consistently terrible perform-
ance. He was incapable of con-
ceding that a woman’s right to
choose and the right of any citi-zen to marry the person of their
choosing are non-negotiable.
Anyone worthy of the job of
prime minister in 2019 must sup-
port those rights and not just
grudgingly tolerate them. The so-
cial-conservative faction within
the Conservative Party is not
worth pandering to if it means
alienating everyone else.
Mr. Scheer became leader of
the Conservative Party in 2017 –
and barely at that, squeaking
past Maxime Bernier on the final
ballot – because no A-lister was
interested in the job.
Mr. Trudeau was still riding a
wave andthe stench of Stephen
Harper was still too strong
among most voters for pundits
to think the Tories could win in
2019.
Mr. Scheer has had his chance
to prove the pundits wrong. He
has failed miserably, considering
the possibilities. He should spare
his party the task of holding a
leadership review next April –
which he stands to lose, anyway- and allow a worthy successor
to find her or his footing in time
to wage the next electoral battle.
It might come sooner than any-
one thinks.
AndrewScheermustgo
ThefederalToryleader
failedtoofferCanadians
aninclusive,desirable
alternativetothe
vulnerableLiberals
KONRAD
YAKABUSKI
OPINIONNEWS |A
fter United States Vice-
President Mike Pence was
sent to Ankara to meet
with Turkish President Recep
Tayyib Erdogan last week, Turkey
announced a five-day truce in its
incursion into northeast Syria
and its fight against Kurdish-
backed forces. In his usual bom-
bastic way, U.S. President Donald
Trump took credit for orchestrat-
ing this temporary truce, but the
five-day window was just enough
time for Mr. Erdogan to go and
make a deal with the real king-
maker on Syria: Russian Presi-
dent Vladimir Putin.
At the Black Sea resort of So-
chi, where Mr. Putin was vaca-
tioning, the Turkish President
came to discuss the future of Sy-
ria with a key backer of Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad. De-
spite that fact that Mr. al-Assad
and Mr. Erdogan have been in in-
direct conflict since the Syrian
revolution broke out more than
eight years ago, Mr. Putin has re-
markably kept a strong working
relationship with both countries’
leaders.
After the failed 2016 coup at-
tempt in Turkey, Russia’s rela-
tionship with Mr. Erdogan was
strengthened as Mr. Putin was
one of the few world leaders who
showed his immediate support
for the holed-up Turkish Presi-
dent in his darkest of hours. Mr.
Erdogan also appreciates Russia’s
continued no-nonsense ap-
proach to regional politics as well
as its reliability. Mr. Putin has
consistently delivered on Rus-
sian promises. This is in contrast
to the malleability of Mr. Trump’s
opinions and tweets, and the in-
consistent American messaging
coming from the U.S. administra-
tion, the Pentagon, and Congress
on everything from trade, weap-
on sales and U.S. policy on Syria.
Most importantly perhaps, Mr.
Erdogan and Mr. Putin see eye-
to-eye on the desire to keep Sy-
ria’s territorial integrity intact.
While he may be unsure aboutthe United States’ long-term ob-
jectives, Mr. Erdogan can trust
that the Russian President wants
to preserve the current interna-
tional borders of Syria and pre-
vent the establishment of a Kur-
dish statelet on the Turkey-Syria
border.
Stopping a Kurdish state from
forming in Syria prevents the
emboldening of Turkey’s own
Kurdish separatism. Moreover,
many of Syria’s Kurdish leaders
ally with militias that can be
traced back to Turkey’s chief
nemesis, the Kurdistan Workers’Party, or PKK as it is known. Pre-
venting the PKK terrorist group
from controlling northeastern
Syria was the key goal and out-
come of Mr. Erdogan’s visit to the
czar in Sochi.
Turkey and Russia agreed to
divide up control over northeast-
ern Syria with predominantly
Kurdish-inhabited border towns
of Manbij and Kobani under Rus-
sian control and predominantly
Arab-inhabited towns between
Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ayn under
Turkish control to what the Turks
call a safe zone for Syrian refu-gees to return. Syria’s Kurdish
fighters will have no choice but
to accept the Putin-Erdogan deal
and seek protection from the As-
sad regime. They have been left
out to dry by their former ally,
the United States, and must now
wait for another day to realize
their dream for self-determina-
tion in an area the Kurds call Ro-
java.
Mr. al-Assad will whine about
the Sochi deal, but his Russian
backers have likely consulted
with Mr. al-Assad’s only other al-
ly, Iran. The “Butcher of Damas-
cus” will begrudgingly accept the
deal, despite having to contend
with the Turkish presence for
now, knowing he is one step clos-
er to regaining Syrian territory
from the Kurds.
Is this a grand bargain that sig-
nals the end of the Syrian con-
flict? Sadly, no. The battle be-
tween Turkish-backed forces and
the Assad regime in Afrin, Idlib,
and now Tel Abyad and Ras al-
Ayn will eventually rear its ugly
head, at the cost of potentially
millions of more lives. Mr. al-As-
sad and the troops provided to
him by Iran and Lebanon’s Hez-
bollah are war-tired and cash-
strapped. They will need to re-
group and fight to regain the re-
mainder of Turkish-occupied ter-
ritory on another day.
Mr. Erdogan wins by prevent-
ing a Kurdish statelet. Mr. Putin
wins by increasing Russia’s influ-
ence in Syria, establishing new
military bases and expanding
ports, and bolstering his per-
ceived image as a global power in
a time of declining real Russian
capabilities. Syrian civilians,
Kurds and Arabs alike, have lost.
The Syrian tragedy of displace-
ment, death and destruction is in
its final act, but sadly not yet
over.Syriandeathanddestruction:Awin-winforPutinandErdogan
BESSMAMOMANI
OPINIONProfessor at the University of
Waterloo and a senior fellow at the
Centre for International Governance
Innovation and the Arab Gulf States
Institute in Washington
TurkishPresidentRecepTayyipErdogan,left,andRussianPresidentVladimirPutinshakehandsinSochi,
Russia,onTuesday.TurkeyandRussiaagreedtodivideupcontrolovernortheasternSyria.ASSOCIATED PRESSW
ith Donald Trump in the
United States and Boris
Johnson in Britain, why
does the re-election of Justin Tru-
deau leave us all feeling so emp-
ty?
He is a nice enough fellow, a
relief after the lugubrious Con-
servative government that pre-
ceded him. One cannot doubt the
sincerity of his commitment to
gender equality and protection
of minorities. He is getting better
behind a lectern. We can hope
that recent revelations of his past
may calm his ardour for sharing
the pieties of political correct-
ness. He is a masterful retail poli-
tician, an artist who surfs on the
30-second encounter, selfie in-
cluded.
He is not hard to like, but he is
hard to respect. He leaves us hun-
gry for some depth and some
gravitas, and, it would seem from
the evidence, he leaves his minis-
terial colleagues in the same
state.
The first requirement for a
prime minister in a Westminster
system is to keep his cabinet and
his caucus together, all more or
less united and pulling in more
or less the same direction. But
our Prime Minister apparently
does not talk to his colleagues;
they have to deal with his staff in
the Prime Minister’s Office, who
apparently protect him from be-
ing unduly involved in his own
government, even while they en-
gage in the detailed policing of
ministers and MPs’ speech and
behaviour.
Whether one considers the
SNC-Lavalin affair a matter of
corruption or simply the product
of a well-meaning but clumsy at-
tempt to protect employment, it
clearly establishes one sobering
conclusion: the Prime Minister is
out of touch with his colleagues,
his government and his own
staff.
In his defence before the eth-
ics commissioner, he pleads ig-norance of his underlings’ ac-
tions and, indeed, of the progress
of the file in general. It is not, ap-
parently, his fault if they were too
keen in pursuing his objectives.
Instead of their falling on their
swords, he pushes them.So he just did not know. An-
other thing he apparently did not
know is exactly how damaging
such an admission is.
We’ve heard of ministerial re-
sponsibility. Mr. Trudeau is writ-
ing a new chapter in the unwrit-
ten Westminster constitution:
prime ministerial non-responsib-
ility.The entire unedifying SNC de-
bacle showed, first and foremost,
that he had no idea of the person
he had named as his minister of
justice, no sense of who she was
and how she thought and be-
haved. This is stunning.
It was not as if the crisis
emerged in the months following
her appointment. There was lots
of time and many occasions for
the Prime Minister to get to know
her. An intimate knowledge of
the character and personality of
fellow politicians is the bread
and butter of public life.
Mr. Trudeau’s political heri-
tage and his attractive persona
may have absolved him of such a
requirement during his political
apprenticeship; if so, this was an
unfortunate flaw in his prepara-
tion for higher office.
Advisers can palliate lack of
substantive knowledge. High po-
litical office involves such a di-
versity of issues that no one can
master any significant propor-
tion of them. We pay our politic-
ians to take expert advice and de-
cide how to reconcile it with a
myriad of other factors they must
legitimately consider, certainlyincluding public opinion, the
global environment, the legisla-
ture, the caucus and so on.
But only the politician can
evaluate the motivations, values,
reflexes, abilities and pressures
of other key political actors.
Here, the Prime Minister has
failed spectacularly.
Someone has to explain to Mr.
Trudeau that he is not the head
of state of a republic, whence he
can embody the nation while
floating above the gritty realities
of politics; rather, he is the head
of government and the captain of
a team deeply and necessarily
enmeshed in those same real-
ities.
Once Mr. Trudeau’s father,
Pierre Trudeau, was humbled by
a minority government in 1972,
he recovered. He brought some
important new personalities into
his entourage. He went on to be-
come one of our longest–serving
and most influential prime min-
isters.
Justin Trudeau will never have
his father’s intellect. He is indeed
our Prime Minister, but it re-
mains to be seen if he has the
courage to become a true leader.Hewon.NowJustinTrudeauhastodobetter
RICHARDFRENCH
OPINIONSenior fellow at the Graduate School
of Public and International Affairs at
the University of Ottawa. He spent
nine years as an MNA in Quebec.
Mr. Trudeau’s political
heritage and his
attractive persona may
have absolved him of
such a requirement
during his political
apprenticeship; if so,
this was an unfortunate
flaw in his preparation
for higher office.