Ideas and Impressions: Do federal leaders need to speak French?

Jason Moscovitz

By Jason Moscovitz

A wise person once told me every member of Parliament thinks they should be leader of their party, and that it just takes one scotch for them to say so. Welcome to the zany world of leadership politics.

Watching the Conservatives stumble out of the gate is a sight for sore eyes. A Peter MacKay coronation is not what the leadership race was cracked up to be. Apart from MacKay there is no star.

I am intrigued by Rona Ambrose saying no to running. Every political star I knew would have jumped at a chance to be prime minister. As I write, Ambrose is still resisting attempts to get her to change her mind.

On the surface, I really admire the rarest of politicians who can bury their ego in an egocentric business. It is such a rarity that I suspect something else is going on that has everything to do with Canada being a bilingual country.

A lot has been said about MacKay’s embarrassingly bad French. He made grievous errors reading a few French lines on a teleprompter when he announced his candidacy last month.

MacKay’s French sounded as bad as former Progressive Conservative prime minister John Diefenbaker’s did 60 years ago, and about as bad as Reform Party leader Preston Manning 30 years ago. Maybe not quite as bad, but this is 2020, not 1957 or 1987.

MacKay’s fumbling efforts were met with derision in Quebec. In English Canada, a debate was launched as to whether the leader of the Conservative Party really needs to speak French. That debate centres on whether the Conservative Party needs Quebec to win an election.

Numerically, it is possible to win without Quebec. But as Brian Mulroney asked Tories during the 1983 leadership race, why start with a 100-seat disadvantage between Quebec and ridings outside of Quebec where there are enough French-speaking voters to make a difference?

Mulroney knew his history, and he knew reading a few French lines like John Diefenbaker was not going to cut it with Quebecers. He knew the next stage of moderate fluency wasn’t good enough either.

A dictionary definition of ‘bilingual’ is that a person speaks two languages, one as well as the other. In Canada, bilingualism has often incorrectly come to mean speaking French or English with varying degrees of fluency in the other official language.

Former Conservative leaders and prime ministers Joe Clark and Stephen Harper were able to converse and debate in French. While Quebecers respected their efforts, Clark failed miserably in Quebec while Harper only won a few seats there.

Not being fluently bilingual is not a sin, but it falls short of the ultimate goal for an English-speaking Canadian to truly understand Quebec culture and Quebecers.

Although it seemed like a big surprise in 2011, it was no accident that the late Jack Layton won so big in French Quebec for the NDP. He didn’t just speak French, he spoke it like a Quebecer. This told Quebecers, “This guy Layton, he really gets us.”

There will never be an NDP-like orange crush moment for MacKay. It is too late to learn that much French that quickly. But when all is said and done, it really isn’t about learning French. It is about feeling the French language, thus enabling you to feel and relate to Quebecers as Layton did.

As a former senior minister in Harper’s government, MacKay had to know what his linguistic target was, and he failed to meet it. The fact he is so far from it indicates extreme naiveté at best, or a complete lack of caring at worst. My ironclad guarantee is that Quebecers will never warm up to MacKay and, unlike Clark and Harper, they won’t be able to respect his efforts.

I recently asked a plugged-in Quebecer, someone whose job it is to know and follow all members of Parliament, about Rona Ambrose’s French. He responded by waving his hand, which told me everything I needed to know.

Perhaps her French is somewhat better than MacKay’s, but it is not nearly good enough, and Ambrose may have been smart enough to know that.

Ideas and Impressions: Trump will stop at nothing to win

Jason Moscovitz

By Jason Moscovitz

While the world watched the impeachment trial of U.S. President Donald J. Trump, you had to wonder if Mad magazine mascot Alfred E. Neuman had it right when he’d say, through that sizable gap in his front teeth, “What, me worry?”

I can imagine Trump’s face on Mad having the same impact as Alfred E. Neuman. The look is the same. A satirical idiot is still an idiot and, guess what, Trump has graced the front cover of recent editions of Mad. Actually I had no idea Mad was still around until I Googled it.

How could baby boomers know one day that someone just like Alfred E. Neuman would be occupying the Oval Office? For me, that’s the tragedy. I grew up never believing it possible that such a flawed individual would be the most powerful person in the world.

There are those who like Trump’s “America first” politics, his support of Israel, and there is no denying how employment and American stock exchange numbers have improved since he became president. But, as Shakespeare wrote, it still smells “rotten in the state of Denmark,” no matter how you cut it.

Trump’s behaviour led to the impeachment process – even though the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate would never vote to remove Trump from office. While Democrats argued impeachment was about protecting the constitution, Republicans maintained it was about protecting the presidency from unhinged partisanship, and so went the straight-laced politics.

While experts and pollsters will sway back and forth on who won the impeachment bunfight, the impeachment cannons on both sides are loaded and ready to fire with the primaries, the nominating conventions, and the presidential election now just days, weeks and months away.

The key question for many is whether Trump can win again. For many outsiders around the world, like us looking in, it is hard to imagine Trump winning again. However, hold on, anything is possible in America.

The Democratic candidates for president who are still standing represent a political party in disarray as the Democrats seem to sorely lack the necessary policy cohesion and discipline to move forward. The candidates offering to go to war against Trump in November appear weak, or at least, no one has yet been able to stand up and lead from a position of strength.

I’ve nothing against old people – I’m one of them – but former vice-president Joe Biden is past his best-before date. Senator Elizabeth Warren may have had it, but then blew it when she couldn’t gravitate to the centre. Mayor Pete Buttigieg is an intelligent, interesting newcomer, but the question remains, is a gay president even possible in today’s United States of America? Senator Bernie Sanders is further left than Warren. Senator Amy Klobuchar shines in that crowd, but can she shine throughout the country in sufficient numbers to win the presidency?

Democratic Party candidates are just not impressive and it makes you wonder how Hillary Clinton must feel about that. What a story it would be, if, because they couldn’t do better, Democrats drafted Hillary Clinton or dragged her into another battle with the same Trump she was once friends with until he savagely nicknamed her “Crooked Hillary” and then went on to beat her in the states that counted the most in the 2016 election.

What a rematch that would be, another battle of titans Trump and Clinton. It would be electrifying entertainment, but it would also do something positive and concrete. Somehow it would be good to know if Trump was a fluke in 2016 because a whole bunch of bad things happened to poor Clinton – when bad luck, bad judgement, and a bad campaign cost her the presidency.

Trump beat her in the Electoral College. He did it by belittling his opponent. When Trump threw dirt all over Clinton, he proved how far his killer instinct could bring him in politics. History will remember that Trump bullied his way to the presidency in 2016.

Post-impeachment, Trump appears to be ready to bully some other Democrat this year. We now know this man, this president, stops at nothing. There is a scary side to Trump that goes beyond him.

And what is actually scarier than Trump are the thousands of crazed, angry Americans who egg him on at his rallies.

Ideas and Impressions: This year’s holiday supper was different

Jason Moscovitz

By Jason Moscovitz

The year 2019 ended for me in the same way every year has ended for 39 years. Since 1980, I have had a holiday supper with the same two other couples. It started with the six of us and three little children. By 1990 there were nine children. Today there are 18 grandchildren.

We have seen each other’s children grow, marry and multiply. We have seen ourselves grow from young professionals to senior citizens. Being three journalists around the table always assured spirited conversation about politics and world events coupled with personal stuff about families, friends and acquaintances. A lot happens in four decades.

For all the sameness of any long standing traditional event, this year’s supper was different. The conversational lines of discussion were the same but, I am sorry to say, the tone was not. This year it was hard to turn any conversation to a positive place.

First and foremost, there were some personal health issues around our table this year. Major surgery in one case, ongoing health issues in another, and the aches and medical tests that 70-year-olds go through. All that is manageable and normal. We’re the lucky ones.

By contrast, 2019 was not a good year for so many of our other friends. Heartbreaking stories of friends with lung cancer and brain cancer. At times it seems to be like a bad dream or a bad movie, but the reality is that’s life as old age begins to set in. You’re healthy until you’re not.

A friend of mine whose wife is being treated for lung cancer recently lamented how he and his wife’s beautiful retirement suddenly turned sour. He left me with a haunting image: so happy and free until he found himself pushing his wife in a wheelchair in a cancer ward. There is no warning, and even if there were, there is no preparation for the shockingly abrupt fall from the good life.

It was no accident that brought all this bad health news. People can and do get sick at any time, but 70 seems to be when serious life-threatening illnesses begin to register in significantly higher numbers. Let’s just say it wasn’t easy to avoid the reality of life and death at this year’s dinner.

Our discussion about politics and world affairs fared no better. As 2019 ended, it was hard to elevate our conversation to anywhere near a happy place. Trouble here. Trouble there. Trouble everywhere.

Around the world people are angry for more reasons than anyone can keep track of anymore. Social media fuels the anger, and like those wildfires in Australia, the firestorm of anger engulfs the world.

Raging antisemitism, one of the manifestations of that anger, is in our face. Yes, it is that bad and how much worse can it get is the only question to ask. Thankfully Jews in Canada continue to live comparatively charmed and safe lives, but we can never take it for granted. Not for a second.

At our dinner it was difficult to talk about Israel. It was difficult because of diverging points of view. In 2019, the backdrop to any conversation about Israel was the repeated inability to form a government there. And how about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu being formally charged with corruption?

While no one around our table was ever a fan of U.S. President Donald Trump, in the three years since he became president the only thing that has changed is the extent of disbelief about what he says and does. What spooked us this year is how much we now know that we didn’t know three years ago. Simply put, that so many Americans actually like Trump. They like his politics, his bluster, and they share his anger.

As 2019 ended, the impeachment of Trump was all about politics, not justice. The partisan interests of Democrats and Republicans dirtied the impeachment process.

An optimist would shake off a bad year and say 2020 will be better, but we are off to a really scary start. As I write this to deadline, there is no way of knowing the full picture of where Trump’s ordered assassination of a terrorist-supporting Iranian general will lead. After 2019 you have to worry.

Worry for sure, but I know that next year, my friends and I will mark our 40th supper together, and no matter what happens, I know we’ll all be there.