Conservative ‘nobodies’ paving the way to Liberal dynasty

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Pierre Trudeau famously said that opposition MPs are nobodies 50 yards from Parliament Hill – and today it’s a handful of Conservative nobodies who are laying the foundation for another Liberal dynasty in Ottawa.

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Floor-crossings from the Conservatives to the Liberals by Michael Ma last week and Chris d’Entremont after the Liberal budget in November – hardly national figures – put the Liberals at 171 seats, one-seat shy of a majority government in the 343-seat House of Commons.

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Both announcements were timed to do the most damage to the Conservatives.

D’Entremont’s blew Conservatism criticism of the Liberals’ November budget out of the news cycle, focusing instead on his defection while Ma’s – coming out of the blue as Parliament was adjourning for Christmas – reignited the issue of internal dissension within the Conservative caucus, after it had died down.

With everyone now on alert for the next Conservative defection, the Liberals could form a majority government not as the result of the April 28 election, but through a floor-crossing by one more disaffected Conservative MP.

Failing that, another opportunity will arise when Prime Minister Mark Carney calls a byelection in the Alberta riding of Edmonton-Riverbend, now held by Conservative MP Matt Jeneroux, who has announced his intention to resign following widespread speculation he was about to join the Liberals after a reported meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney.

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Another Liberal majority government – the first since their 2015 election under Justin Trudeau, followed by Liberal minorities in 2019, 2021and 2025 – would mean an uninterrupted 14-year Liberal dynasty until at least 2029, regardless of whether Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre survives as party leader in his January leadership review.

That this would result not from an election, but because of disaffected Conservatives handing the Liberals a majority government, would reduce the Conservatives to a party of nobodies for the foreseeable future, or as Pierre Trudeau, then Liberal prime minister, put it during a debate to adjourn the House of Commons on July 25, 1969:

“The opposition seems to think it has nothing else to do but talk. They say: if there is a problem, we will talk. If there is a difficulty, we will talk about it. If the government is going too slowly, we will talk about it. If there is a real problem in some part of Canada, we will talk about it. That is all they have to do. They do not have to govern, they have only to talk. The best place in which to talk, if they want a forum, is, of course, parliament. When they get home, when they get out of parliament, when they are 50 yards from Parliament Hill, they are no longer hon. members – they are just nobodies, Mr. Speaker.”

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That’s pretty much the same argument Carney makes about the Conservatives today.

Indeed, Carney demonstrated Pierre Trudeau’s  point when he incorrectly introduced Ma, the former Conservative, now Liberal MP from the Ontario riding of Markham-Unionville, as, “the MP for Union-Markhamville” to wildly-cheering Liberals at their annual Christmas party on Thursday.

In fact, the riding of Markham-Unionville is arguably more famous, or infamous, than Ma.

It’s the riding where former incumbent Liberal MP Paul Chiang resigned heading into this year’s federal election.

This after it was revealed he told Chinese-language media that Joe Tay, a Canadian human rights activist who at the time was seeking the Conservative nomination in Markham-Unionville (he eventually ran in former Liberal MP Han Dong’s riding of Don Valley North where the Liberals won) that he should be handed over to the Chinese consulate in exchange for a bounty offered by police in Hong Kong.

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Oddly, Carney didn’t demand Chiang’s resignation, saying he had apologized and that his “terrible lapse of judgment” was a – heaven help us – “teachable moment.”

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However in light of the controversy, Chiang resigned and was replaced by Peter Yuen as the Liberal candidate, who was defeated by Ma by less than 2,000 votes in the April 28 election.

Because of Ma’s defection, Markham-Unionville is now back in Liberal hands.

In response to Ma’s floor crossing, Liberal house Leader Steven MacKinnon said Friday there are other Conservative MPs frustrated with Poilievre’s leadership, contemplating crossing to the Liberals, to which the Conservatives responded that “Mark Carney is running a government like a shady backroom deal-maker rather than a principled leader.”

But why wouldn’t Carney make deals with Conservatives – the substance of which we don’t know anything about – if opposition nobodies are prepared to abandon the voters who elected them and defect to the other side?

lgoldstein@postmedia.com

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