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: Truth is not a campaign-winning formula

Jason Moscovitz

By Jason Moscovitz

This issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin went to press before the October 21 federal election. So, as I write, I don’t yet know who won. What I do know is how incredible a campaign it was. Doing politics was always hard, but in today’s lightning fast world of information flow, it’s just plain crazy.

In our political galaxy, incumbent prime ministers face the toughest task in the supercharged world of elections. In recent decades, both Conservative and Liberal prime ministers have needed to defend their records, and they’ve needed to defend their mishaps and blunders in office.

And while campaigns are like the finals of a blood sport, those involved love doing it and no one loves the action more than the leaders themselves. They believe they were born to campaign, that no one does it better, and after a big electoral win, they believe they are invincible.

A campaign is like a freedom ride from the restraint and reality of governing. In a campaign, politicians, as we’ve just witnessed, promise the sun and the moon while acknowledging the deficit will go up further before it comes down. Damn the deficit, Trudeau and the Liberals set the tone for making promises. The others were eager to follow.

The fiscal looseness of the campaign was striking. Day after day, there were more announcements of costly promises. And the usually more fiscally conservative Conservatives joined the spending spree to keep pace.

Creating a blueprint on how to make life better for middle class Canadians is noble – but over-extending promises is not. Getting elected is the easy part. Governing gets to be not so much fun when there is not enough money to fulfil promises made.

So while political leaders love to roll up their sleeves and campaign, they play a dangerous game. Because politicians make promises to win, no one should ever wonder why voters are cynical about politics. Promising too many beneficial tax changes is questionable, as thoughtful as the promises may be. There is something about political life that is not always rational. Ego trips can often hinder straight thinking.

For more than the past half-century, from John Diefenbaker to Justin Trudeau, those who won majority governments got intoxicated by what they thought was the love voters had for them. Diefenbaker, Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien all got hit by the same victory fever. Stephen Harper got it too, although his blandness served as cover. But rest assured, in the end, ego drove them all.

After a big impressive win, leaders believe they can convince voters of virtually anything. In an election campaign, they believe the mere sweetness of their voices making nice promises is enough to keep them in power. Hiding the truth is also part of it. Hiding Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s existence was Andrew Scheer’s best Houdini act.

Sadly, being forthright and honest has limited place in the world of election campaigns. The truth is not a winner. I once asked a prominent politician why he and his party wouldn’t discuss certain parts of their agenda.

“If we ever told the people of Canada what we were going to do, we would never get elected,” was his cynical response.

I can remember a Conservative prime minister who falsely promised not to cut old age security payments, just as I remember a Liberal prime minister who promised to “kill the Goods and Services tax.” More recently, we all remember Justin Trudeau promising his government would bring in long talked about electoral reform. But once in power, he slammed the door shut and did nothing.

Do they think people are dumb?

The answer is they just desperately want and need their votes. Talk is cheap. Delivering is hard and expensive.

We all grow up believing that speaking the truth is key to being a responsible respected person. Somehow, though, that rule doesn’t apply in the political world. Saying what needs to be said in order to win is such short sighted thinking – but they don’t care.

It’s time to stop being naive. It’s time to get with the program. It’s time to lower expectations on the truth. It’s time to grow up.

And it’s time to admit to myself that the political world I saw idealistically is an allusion.