John Ivison: Fiscally restrained Marc Garneau a good contrast to Trudeau-mentia
John Ivison | Oct 17, 2012 6:44 PM ET
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THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean KilpatrickLiberal MP Marc Garneau rises during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, October 15, 2012
Marc Garneau still speaks in the conditional tense when talking about the federal Liberal leadership campaign. But maybe not for much longer.
When it’s suggested to him that many people think he is too dull to become leader, he all but admits he is running. “I’m not going to develop into something I’m not. I hope to bring substance, discipline, principle and a factual, evidence-based approach,” he said in an interview in his Parliament Hill office.
“I can’t control how the total package is received but I hope it will be compelling enough.”
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Mr. Garneau was one of only six chosen from 4,000 candidates for the Canadian astronaut program, so he’s faced long odds before.
But he is at a considerable disadvantage against Justin Trudeau, who is disproving the old line that politics is show business for ugly people.
Mr. Trudeau and his floppy fringe appeared on CBC’s George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight last month — Mr. Garneau had probably best not hold his breath for his invitation.
He said he is not fazed by speculation that Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty may enter the race. “That has no bearing on me. I’m still going full steam ahead,” he said. Another potential candidate emerged Wednesday, when Martha Hall Findlay’s team said debts from the 2006 leadership campaign have been cleared, opening the way for her entry.
There are legitimate questions about Mr. Garneau’s chances in a contest where success will likely be gauged by who can keep their speeches short and peppered with vapid notions of hope, renewal, whatever.
Political campaigns are about inspiring passion and loyalty. It’s not an environment in which Mr. Garneau is likely to thrive, in part because of his training.
“One of the reasons I was chosen as an astronaut is my ability to keep calm under pressure … But occasionally I can get excited,” he said, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
But what is it we want from our politicians? By any measure, except star wattage, Mr. Garneau is a strong candidate. Perfectly bilingual with a doctorate in electrical engineering, he logged 678 hours in space and ran a $300-million-a-year Crown corporation, the Canada Space Agency. Ironically, the vocation for which he is least qualified is politics — he was first elected in 2008, part of the same Liberal intake as Justin Trudeau.
He is coy about specific policies, but gives some sense of what a Liberal Party under Marc Garneau would look like. His focus would be on the economy, and in particular on improving Canada’s innovation and productivity performance.
“I’d make the necessary adjustments in industrial strategy where we’re getting the pants beaten off us. We have a huge talent pool of educated people but it’s clear to me that we’re underperforming. Thank God we have commodities,” he said.
The Liberal House Leader has seen at close quarters how key sectors of the Canadian economy operate.
A former director of oil company UTS Energy, he said he believes the oil sands are part of Canada’s future, but have to be developed in a sustainable way.
At the Canada Space Agency, he became familiar with the country’s aerospace industry, still the fifth biggest in the world.
“It is an area of strength in this country and a model that should give us cause for encouragement that we can do very well in the high tech sector.”
A former Navy combat systems engineer who was involved in procurement projects, he remains extremely critical of the government’s handling of the F-35 fighter jet file, contrasting it with the Liberal government’s purchase of the current CF18 fighters. “That was an example of how to do procurement — we chose the right plane after a competition and got outstanding industrial offsets,” he said.
Not only does it appear that a Marc Garneau campaign will contrast with Trudeau-mentia, by leaning heavily on policy, it sounds as if its philosophical underpinnings will be very different too.
Mr. Trudeau has said he will lead a “pragmatic centrist party” that will borrow from all parts of the political spectrum. Yet his few public utterances in the past suggest a leftward tilt in Liberal policy is pending. (Interpolation: even farther left? Pretty soon they will be fighting for votes with the Marxist Leninists and the Trotskyites! After that they will have to flip the Maoists, another rich lode of voters)
That should provide a foil for Mr. Garneau, who says he has always been a Liberal, but used to feel an affinity for the Mulroney-era Progressive Conservatives.
The suspicion he is a fiscal hawk was heightened when he criticized the Harper Tories for spending too much in their early years in power.
The 63-year-old insists on keeping up the pretense that his candidacy remains in doubt. But the mask is slipping, which suggests he is close to declaring.
“I told myself when I turned 60, ‘this is the decade I will work the hardest’. That’s what I plan to do,” he said.
The Liberals could do worse. For a party fixated on its own navel, being led by a man who has seen the Earth from space would add some welcome perspective.
National Post
