So, it looks like the 100,000 job reduction plan was shopped around. In case you didn’t hear it, some MPPs and candidates and other peer reviewers saw the pledge as far back as 2013. This was a subject of CP news story out last week. And the Liberals, for their part, sent one of their cabinet ministers to link all current and potential leadership candidates to the 100,000 job cut plan. To varying degrees, they all commented on the story and they all tried to distance themselves from it. I suppose the interesting thing is that they would have all implemented the plan, had we actually formed the government, as cabinet ministers. Funny how behaviour changes between victory and defeat.
I have already lamented about the fact that the typical response from PC leadership campaigns seems to be that we need to be nicer and that the grassroots have been ignored. In the fullness of time, it will be determined that the consideration of whether or not we’re nice is more of a function of opponents trying to brand us as mean than any one particular policy. As well, the fullness of time may indeed show that the ideas in the Million Jobs Plan were actually shopped around quite extensively to everyone. Even the grassroots, who now feel that they were neglected and ignored, which happens when you lose, played a role in our election platform. Yes, it’s true. You attended breakfasts, BBQs, town halls, and voted on policy proposals. You may have not seen the 100,000 job proposal, but you did say that we should make this election about one thing (jobs) and you wanted to be a real alternative (not Liberal-lite) and you did say that you were tired of Liberal waste. You got the Million Jobs Plan. And caucus, who even if they didn’t all see the 100,000 job reduction policy before its release, were all committed to smaller government and Don Drummond’s recommendations that would have made government smaller if implemented. If any have since changed their mind, please tell me why. And if you think that, absent the 100,000 job announcement, we would have won the election, you would be wrong. If we weren’t specific, we would have had a hidden agenda to cut at least that many jobs, or so our opponents would have had people believe. Did you know the Liberals were positioning our plan as a set of “slash and burn” policies since the middle of 2013?
If the message you’re getting from what transpired in the last election is that we need to be nicer, and we need to further empower the grassroots, I don’t believe you understand the problems we face. As has been said before, the Liberals are a government that will say anything, do anything, and spend anything to get elected. If you’re not playing at that level, the likelihood is that you’re going to lose. In addition, if you’re not going to build an electoral coalition at least as big to compete against the PR machine that is the province’s labour movement, it doesn’t matter how nice and compassionate Tory leadership candidates think they are, they will be branded as a mean Tory who will hurt children.
As you can see, there is no incentive for Liberals to behave any differently than they have. The fact that they have a minister of the Crown already out trying to do that negative branding, however effective it may be, shows exactly what you’re dealing with. They want nothing more than the leadership candidates to trip over themselves while they are distancing themselves from the 100,000 jobs policy. The Liberals want nothing more than to stop Tories from talking about the future. Please don’t let them have their wish.
If we’re serious about returning to power, we need to abandon this double personality of doing a 180 degree turn after a losing election. We need somebody who is prepared to properly define who we are and what we stand for. Nobody has yet articulated what that is or what their vision for the future looks like on the basis of what defines us. If we don’t believe in ourselves, nobody will believe in our cause, and nobody will elect us.
Stay tuned for more on how we define who we are…