Last month's election is finally becoming yesterday's news. Yes, the Liberals won a decisive victory; yes, many progressives, both orange and red, are excited for the new government's ambitious agenda; and, yes, the cabinet appears to be filled with intelligent ministers. But as the honeymoon period of sunny ways ends, the Liberals are having to face tough choices, and their decisions will be expertly criticized by the Official Opposition, the Conservatives.
A lot of fat was cut from the Tory's bench last month. Sure, some promising members, even a few rising stars, were kiboshed by the Red Wave. But from a platform that appeared to be anything but conservative, to candidates across the country that were clearly under the Tory banner for all the wrong reasons, the Tories earned their reprimand from voters and supporters.
Unlike many, I don't believe Stephen Harper is solely to blame. The entire Tory leadership had forgotten their roots, a fact that became clear as bills like C-51, C-24, and C-42 were touted as successes even as they alienated huge swaths of potential supporters.
The strategists and short pants brigade pushed to double down on fear instead of standing tall with a vision for Canada in the 21st Century. And that gave Trudeau the opening he needed.
However, Prime Minister Trudeau might well have bit off more than he can hope to properly chew, having placed his party left of the NDP on several issues and promising deficit spending before knowing the state of government finances. Ironically, Trudeau might well have to be more conservative than he was expecting in his first 18 months of government, and unlike previous Liberal governments, he has a more experienced opposition to face.
This is key. Yes, the Conservatives suffered a significant loss, but no one could call it a collapse in any serious sense.
Furthermore, their benches are full of former ministers and parliamentary secretaries who know their portfolios and can speak from experience. As dark clouds begin to obscure the sunny ways of the Trudeau government, you can bet that the shadow government will be all too ready to point out costly missteps and tokenistic policies.
And what of the Tories themselves? Really, they couldn't be in a better position to a certain extent. The power-obsessed and unprincipled pragmatists that dominated the staffing ranks from the PMO to the party headquarters have been forced to find patronage elsewhere for a time, as both party funds and government slush are in short supply. This opens up the rare opportunity for the Tories to refocus and bring core conservative principles to the fore again.
What are those core principles? In brief, National Post columnist Andrew Coyne wasn't too far off when he summarized conservative thought as "a belief in the need to limit arbitrary power." I for one would argue this can also be a positive mission: devolving power locally as much as possible. There are obvious caveats to this - international trade, defense, infrastructure, etc. But on the whole, devolving power is very much what the 21st century and conservatism are all about.
What handicapped the last government was its constant harping on what it didn't do, an uninspiring motif to say the least. Using the devolution principle however, the opposition Tories can set a new tone of "proactive conservatism" that seeks to give provinces and municipalities more authority. Case in point, had the last government facilitated and funded a shift in responsibility for the census to cities, I'm certain Trudeau couldn't bring it back to Ottawa.
The new government has plenty of good will directed towards it for now, but it is vulnerable on several points, especially as it plans to centralize more authority in an age where everyone is trying to cut out the middleman.
And that's an opening the defeated Tories can use.
