Sunny in Ottawa. Mild and hopeful. As I head up the Hill, Iwill try a new tack this morning, to find a middle path upon which I can travel, hold my head high and still work with people whose destinies cannot help but be intertwined with mine.
All Conservative MPs will get my report this moring, hand delivered to their offices. I will tell this to the media as forthrightly as I can. I hope they understand my best chance at actually having these ideas turned into laws is to bring my colleagues in, rather than shutting them out.
Maybe they will cut me some slack. Maybe I’ll be slaughtered. At the minimum, it will surely be interesting.
I’ve decided to set up a working group in the riding when I get back tonight, and give the report to those members. I’d encourage them to have a couple of public meetings to go over the recommendations, and I will certainly share that with you. Then, after other MPs have done the same, or asked their own people in their own fashion, we can revisit this opus of mine.
Meanwhile, in two hours, the finance minister will get his from my hand. Autographed, from the people of Halton.
Was it just yesterday morning that I left a sleeping wife and a dog who crawled into my place, to come here? As every MP will tell you, this is a strange life. And mine ranks right up there. A day and a half ago I was playing dodge ‘em with the 18-wheelers on the 401, my trunk full of reports on the coming federal budget, thinking about how the next 48 hours would play out. Now I know. Not what I expected.
Today was defined in large part by last night. The speech I gave across the river in Quebec had a far wider audience than I could have imagined. It formed the basis of the Globe column this morning that praised, marginalized and condemned me, dissed my constituents and concluded that I am the future of Canadian politics. That melded into having a CBC television crew in my kitchen, and then an interview with a French-langauge daily on how webcasting from my new office studio is capturing political imaginations.
From there I went to listen to Stephen Harper speak at a rally of MPs, their staff and the media in a room packed with 700 or 800 people ringed with security. The PM was crisp, punchy, determined, focused and spoke like a guy who had a massive Parliamentary majority instead of a minority the opposition now threatens to blow up.
Ontario caucus was next, forty or so MPs and senators meeting for the first time, many veterans, many new, trying to figure out what around the tabled actually mattered. I had asked to present the findings and recommendations of the pre-budget report, which I did. And that unleased a torrent of comments which left me feeling far more shaken than I hope was etched on my face.
Immediately after I arrived at the CTV studio four blocks away, where Mike Duffy wanted to talk about Harper’s performance. It was, I thought and said, a kick-butt showing. Conservatives have a huge opportunity now, with the Liberals jockeying to find the best pick in a litter of leadership hopefuls, to actually get the major agenda items through. Child care. GST. Tax cuts. Health care wait times. It could be far different a year from now, so the next few months are critical.
Jack Layton was in the Green Room with me. Interesting guy. Big risks in this Parliament for him, too. Duffy also asked me about the conflict consuming the Hill right now between the PMO and the media. Harper’s guys are restricting access, holding cabinet meetings in secret and making no bones that they just don’t care about reporters. Asked how I felt, I said the media is no enemy, but rather a vehicle to communicate with Canadians. I know it is a sentiment most caucus members do not share.
But as I spoke the words, I thought about the radio reporter I met yesterday in my office, who spoke about his five-year-old son and how he loved to come and see “the castle that you work in, Daddy.†That, of course, the Parliament Buildings. Everybody’s castle. Buildings that do not belong to merely the MPs who pass through, or the government of the day, but just as much to the security guards, the carpenters, librarians, interpreters, guides and cleaners – and reporters – who work there. There does not need to be a war between anybody.
So, let me get to the news that matters today – at least for me.
As I had told you, and many people in my riding, tomorrow I would give Jim Flaherty his copy of the report I laboured over on budget suggestions, and then release it for general public comment and discussion. It is a piece of work I am proud of, and poured many hours into. The conclusions are reasonable and the suggestions for change appropriate. Driving here yesterday morning, my plan was simple. Clean. Just do it.
In the action-oriented atmosphere of Halton, and my constituency office, and my office at home, and the Town Halls; working with a human dynamo like Esther and being so driven by this project that grew arms and legs and a brain as it progressed; fed by fascinating comments from people in all provinces who encouraged me, and drove me, to give them voice – a sentiment I expressed so bluntly in my speech last night – well, I forgot a few things.
And the result was a trainwreck in the caucus room.
Now, I had decided in the aftermath to tell this differently. I even let Devin and Gisele know in the office in the hours following that my change in strategy would go like this: Other MPs were so interested in the conclusions of the report and the process that produced it, that they wanted not just a summary of the contents, but to read it, analyze it and be a part of it. So, to give even more Canadians voice, I would reopen the file and invite them to bring their constituents in as well. So, no media dump. No tomorrow.
But that’s not exactly true. Convenient, yeah. But there’s more.
Yes, all those other MPs are vitally interested in this project. Yes, I truly believe many will be working with me to make this broader, stronger, more likely to result in changes going forward. Maybe not this budget. Maybe the next one. But together we have a better chance of bringing in reforms like a Family Tax return and income-splitting. Or an after-tax retirement plan for people who missed the boat on RRSPs. Or the pooling of pension income for retired couples. Or a flat tax or balanced budget legislation.
But there’s more. The things I forgot, back there in Halton, where I promised I would always tell the truth, no matter how much crap I walked into. It became so clear to me today on several occasions just how much people in this place have been watching me, and reaching conclusions that my whirling dervish workaholic desperado personality did not pick up on.
The incidents are not important. The message is. My caucus colleagues have watched me through one end of a media telescope, and often intensely disliked what they saw. My actions have been decisively independent, even brazen. While they expected me to be satisfied and reliable in lining up behind the Conservative agenda, I have been running around the country asking people what they think. I have taken up causes nobody asked me to, and for goals which may run counter to what my own party wants to accomplish.
I have spoken about my own personal goals as an MP, about what I value and what I discard as meaningless, arrogantly assuming some eternal truths were involved. And, of course, there are none in this job. Every person in my caucus room made a sacrifice to get there, left a family at home to travel there, jeopardized a job to be there and now risks a future just trying to stay there. They do this, each one, because they are also driven. And it is dead wrong of me to assume whatever motivates me, motivates them. There is no corner on morality, ethics, principle, or honour.
So, I show up with a 20,000-word report on how to revamp the tax system and redesign the budget. I lay it on the caucus table. I stand. I present. And I see in forty sets of eyes something I had not contemplated yesterday, as I watched the mile posts click by between Kingston and Gananoque.
To the best of my limited capacity, I understand this. I did not mean to alienate some of these people. They did not ask it. Do not deserve it. And I well realize that my voters, my constituents and all Canadians will be better, more quickly served, if I can find a way of working with the tide that ebbs and flows across this strange Hill.
I am, after all, a Conservative. The label means a great deal, as it is the party of my family, and embodies those things which I cherish. Things, ironically, that drive me. Self-reliance. Work ethic. Populism.
Tonight – this morning, now – I have received the clarity I wrote about yesterday morning as the sun rose on my yard back home. I listened to the people. I was true to myself. I have not lied or compromised. But that’s a fair distance from being smart.
The article below is in today’s Globe and Mail. I thank the writer for his attempt to understand, and portray, the new reality I am trying to effect in the political system, and here on Parliament Hill. Being an agent of change, as I hope to be, is never easy nor well understood.
My chief regret is the way people in Halton – middle class taxpayers – are portrayed. They don’t deserve it. I think Mr. Ibbitson will soon be invited out for a Town Hall meeting…
Why Garth Turner is the future of politics
By JOHN IBBITSON
Here’s some really bad news: Garth Turner matters.
The newly elected Conservative MP for Halton delights in being a renegade. He is already a pariah within the party leadership, after publicly denouncing David Emerson’s recruitment.
He has developed budget recommendations that urge the Conservatives to abandon a key election promise. (He won’t say which one, yet.) And last night, Mr. Turner delivered a speech to the Hull-Aylmer Conservative riding association that castigated Conservative colleagues who sacrifice their independence in hopes of being rewarded with cabinet rank.
“The Prime Minister has nothing I covet,†the financially secure MP declared.
“Unlike many of my colleagues who want to be in cabinet or want to be parliamentary secretaries or want to have additional pay, more titles, a bigger office in a better building or a seat in the House of Commons closer to the boss, I don’t care. And I don’t think they should care, either.†So the unofficial lottery to guess the date when Garth Turner gets expelled from caucus is already under way.
He will become another John Nunziata, another Carolyn Parrish: colourful, eccentric, good for a quote, entirely marginal.
Except that Garth Turner represents something that is both very old and quite new, and dangerously compelling. He is a digital populist.
Populists, of course, have been with us forever, on both the right and the left, speaking up for the little guy. For Mr. Turner, however, the little guy is the bleeding upper middle class.
Halton, on the edge of Greater Toronto, is full of them: Mr. Turner chronicled their plight in his speech.
He recalled talking to a man whose house “was worth maybe half a million — modest for this neighbourhood. He told me it felt like his life was being squeezed now from all sides. Property taxes, income taxes, GST . . . ‘All I’ve got is this.’ He kicked the bricks at his front door.†Then there was the woman who decided to stay at home and raise her kids. Her husband makes six figures, but “our friends who have two incomes make a lot less, and always have more to throw around.
The system is killing my family.†Mr. Turner calls these people “the worker bees of our society.†(Some bees. Some work.) He is their champion.
Stephen Harper wants to be their champion, too. He built his election platform around their hopes and needs. But the Prime Minister is an intellectual: distant, unapproachable, aloof. Mr. Turner, on the other hand, is a digital populist. He has his own blog. His website is filled with news, information, links. He has converted part of his House of Commons office into a webcasting studio.
While the Conservative communications office plots ways to get the leader on television and in the newspaper — dying technologies, so they say — Mr. Turner BlackBerries, webcasts and blogs.
(Note to style editors everywhere: Mr. Turner and his ilk are no longer uppercasing Internet, and we still are. What does that say?) He sings the praises of interactive virtual town-hall meetings, of constituents casting electronic ballots that determine the vote of the MP in the House, of live video greetings to 90th birthday parties.
Much of it sounds quite appalling: identifying the suburban middle class as disenfranchised, when it is in fact the most cosseted demographic in society; catering to the narcissism and self-pity of people who should thank God each and every morning for their blessings; giving the whip hand to anyone angry enough and articulate enough to fire off an e-mail demanding lower taxes, an easier commute, tax breaks for private-school tuition — and just why are there so many immigrants cluttering up the place? It doesn’t matter. The suburban middle class elects the government, and Mr. Turner understands them. He may understand them even better than Stephen Harper does.
Kick Garth Turner out of caucus? They’d be kicking out the future of Canadian politics.
jibbitson@globeandmail.com
