The Candidate

by Noah Richler

  “About that email,” I said to Pratt. “I’d asked in the spring if plans to be with my family were permissible and now you’re holding them against me. Wouldn’t the proper thing to have said been, ‘It’s 110 percent from the time you commit’?”

  “Let’s see how you do,” said Pratt.

  In truth, I was angry with myself for failing to have anticipated the obvious but tried my poor hand anyway.

  “So, if it works out, how about Fisheries and Oceans?” (I figured Heritage was taken—and, besides, too predictable a fit.)

  “Lots of people want Fisheries and Oceans,” said Pratt.

  Well, this wasn’t going very well, I thought. Instead of learning the name of the lucrative portfolio that would be handed me (a minister’s top-up of $80,100 plus my MP’s base salary of $167,400 equalling $247,500 per annum and the chance finally to recompense my family for the diminishing returns of my writer’s profession), I listened to Pratt tell me that $90,000, not $50,000, was a good fundraising target, and he couldn’t promise the party would chip in.

  “But I’ll look into it,” he said.

  —

  Then, on Saturday, July 4, I met with Heller and Marno at Bar Espresso, the Bloor Street café popular with University of Toronto academics and students, and Doug’s and my post-squash haunt. I learned there was still no other contender and, if all went as anticipated, riding members would be alerted and my nomination approved at an open meeting on July 29 (which also happened to be my birthday). The first and most crucial step, said Marno, was to find an official agent, the functionary necessary to have in place before donations towards a campaign can be accepted or expenses incurred. This is the notoriously thankless post of the person who oversees fiscal aspects of the campaign, ensuring these are handled properly. “If not, the candidate goes to jail,” said Marno, bringing to mind images of convicted Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro in handcuffs. Marno suggested I find someone thorough but, critically, said the official agent needed to be someone I trust, and Heller, that whomever I convinced to take on the unpaid position needed to be “in tune with banking, financial statements and the crushing specificity of government forms.” We discussed the need for a speaker and someone other than me to do a fundraising ask at the July 29 nomination meeting, an event that would double as an opportunity to revitalize the riding’s lagging membership. I suggested we might have a musician play. Marno was not so keen, but I made plans to do so anyway. Marno was clearly an asset—I worried that the relatively recent Ontario election had exhausted her. Already, I was relying on her expertise and I thought about what I could do to assure her and Heller I’d not be a party mistake.

  —

  Julian, Riding Association President:

  I’d been pursuing a candidate for Toronto—St. Paul’s for some months but couldn’t get the person to commit, and so we were starting anew when the Central Party set me up on a blind date on short notice. Noah Richler had been discussing his prospective candidacy for a while, and HQ thought we might be a match.

  Still bruised by the previous experience, I was nonetheless hopeful. Our chat in his backyard with a chaperone Ontario candidate search organizer in attendance was good, but I wasn’t wowed. There was no doubting his commitment to social justice and to the values of the party, but how would the clipped, vaguely British speech play out on the doorsteps? I called him out on some British pronunciation of a word—that probably annoyed him—but he countered with a funny story about ridiculous British dinner party snobs. The man did have a sense of humour, even if he seemed to have a hard time smiling.

  My sense of it? An excellent match for the riding and the party, but it would be up to him and us to draw in loads of enthusiastic volunteers, donors and attention. I asked him if he would run again, and started to think about how to get more smiles, handshakes out of him—get our candidate wading into crowds of strangers at the local latte emporiums like he enjoys it!

  —

  On the Sunday, Levy called again, this time to say she’d been through the vetters’ files and there were “just a couple of things we think we have to be careful about—the ayahuasca and Quebec.”

  “What about the ayahuasca?” I asked. I’d written for Maclean’s magazine about taking the brew, the three major ingredients of which are listed in Canada as Schedule III drugs and therefore criminally prohibited, at a retreat in Ontario.

  “You paid for it.”

  “Research. I may even have a receipt.”

  “Quebec could be a more difficult subject,” said Levy.

  “I have my own relationship with Quebeckers that’s independent of my father’s,” I said, a defence I was used to providing. “Both my books are published in French by Québécois publishers and having them translated is very important to me. Quebec has always been a fundamental part of my Canada. But, I forget, what did I write?”

  “You wrote in the New Statesman in 2011 that the NDP ‘was unable to drop the socialism from its constitutional lexicon, or to amend its troublesome resolution that, in any Quebec referendum on sovereignty, a mere 50 per cent plus one would constitute victory.’ ”

  “Well, that’s true, no? But if anyone brings it up, I’ll say it’s our job to keep Canadians happy in Confederation, Quebeckers or otherwise. I believe that—and that doing so won’t be an issue.”

  “I can see I’m not going to be having problems with you,” said Levy. “But understand, I have three hundred candidates, so I have to do this.”

  “And I have no intentions of being a problem.”

  Famous last words.

  —

  Things I was told when I started:

  This will end.

  The days can be unbelievably long.

  You will move through a carousel of moods.

  Politics is everybody else believing they know better than you.

  Politics is other people telling you what happened after the fact.

  Some days, the last thing you will want to do is canvass, and then you’ll go out and canvass because that’s what will make you feel better.

  Ninety percent of your vote will depend upon the performance of the leader in the last three weeks of the campaign.

  The Liberals start slow and then come on strong.

  —

  The week of the all-important Executive Committee meeting started and, in advance of my interview with the Toronto Star reporter, there was no shortage of advice from both party and riding.

  Say you want “federal support (‘sustainable funding’) for subways, or (in my wildest dreams) high-speed rail Windsor–Quebec,” wrote Heller and I liked that. We’d both come of age in la belle province and I liked that for Heller the train to Montreal was simply the logical extension of the St. Clair streetcar line.

  “God save me from Liberals,” said Debbie Parent, another experienced provincial NDP operative who telephoned to provide encouragement prior to the Toronto Star interview. “The Liberal Party isn’t really a progressive party in the sense that they’re not willing to change the paradigms and to take radical steps on core issues like fifteen-dollar-a-day child care. Justin’s response to Bill C-51—that I have serious problems with it but I’m prepared to vote for it—sums it up.”

  “You’re looking to identify projects in the riding that matter,” wrote Levy. “You’ll say, ‘I know people are concerned about Project X and, after years of PM Harper leaving our infrastructure crumbling, they’re excited that Tom has an urban agenda.’ ”

  I asked Levy what the Toronto Star, a paper to which I had contributed political and cultural op-ed articles for years, was saying about my running.

  “That if political candidates who wrote for the Star can’t be covered, they’d be out of business.”

  I suggested placing an op-ed about my candidacy, but Levy was lukewarm about the idea.

  “What’s okay for me to do?” I asked.

  “Look, I’m not here to shut things down,” said Levy. “I just need to know they’re
happening. If I see something that raises a red flag, it allows me to say, ‘Keep such and such in mind.’ ”

  “I asked for the party to fund a campaign manager, a pre-election organizer and for Tom to visit,” I said. “If I go ahead with the Star interview, then I’ve basically signed on. I want Pratt to respond.”

  “As soon as I get off the phone I’ll go and talk to him,” said Levy, “though it’s outside my purview.”

  “Sure. I just want you to understand. I’m not trying to make you my advocate, but if he says, ‘You’re on your own, swim,’ it’s a different ball game.”

  The day of the interview, Levy called again. Sure that every prospective candidate was doing the same, I told her that I’d been going through Hansard (the official transcripts of parliamentary proceedings available online) and listing all the instances in which Carolyn Bennett had voted with the government and against the NDP. “Bill S-7, whatever that was, and the Act to Amend the Citizenship Act, Bill C-26 was it?”

  “C-24.”

  “Right. And the omnibus Bill C-59. There’s also something technical that seems to be an affirmation—the word ‘concur’ is used—for the Senate budget that I presume the NDP voted against and she voted for?”

  Levy was silent. I was babbling and felt like a schoolboy cramming for exams. Did I really know so terribly little about parliamentary procedure? Yet I was running exactly because I was not the career politician type: Parliament should be open to all—and novices.

  “She’d have voted for Bill C-51,” said Levy.

  “Right.”

  “In terms of what you should be telling the Star,” said Levy, cutting gently to the chase, “one of the strengths we have right now is how dissatisfied a lot of people are with the way the Liberals have handled the Bill C-51 anti-terror law.”

  “I’m aware of that,” I said.

  “And the other thing I was going to suggest to you is that Bennett has a good reputation as the Liberal critic for Aboriginal affairs—”

  “For sure,” I said. “I noticed that she was the one who proposed the inquiry into murdered and missing Aboriginal girls and women—”

  “—and it can be a strength for you to have one nice thing to say about her. But deliver it with a little bit of an attack on the brand.”

  That word again.

  “A widespread view of the press is that, as the Aboriginal affairs spokesperson, Bennett knows what she’s doing but her leader does not. Obviously, given the Liberals’ top-down approach to things, the leader’s ability in this area is important, so journalists will perk up if you say something unexpected. Like, for instance, the work she’s done on the Aboriginal affairs file has been of credit to her party—Trudeau must have to rely on her quite a bit—and that’s something you would look to carry forward.”

  “What I worry about the most is how to talk about Israel and Palestine. And I feel I need to go once more through Quebec and ISIL.”

  “The chorus to my life,” said Levy. “I’m sending you a message guide. It’s not a script, but it’s been incredibly tested over and over again through focus groups. It’s essentially a frame and argument to our narrative for why we are able to form a government.”

  That afternoon, Levy sent the NDP document, What This Election Is About. It started:

  This election is about change.

  After 10 years of Stephen Harper, middle class families are working harder but can’t get ahead. Stephen Harper’s plan just isn’t working.

  That’s why Canadians are looking for a change.

  Tom has the experience to replace Stephen Harper.

  Tom has a concrete plan to help middle class families get ahead.

  Tom’s ready to bring change to Ottawa.

  KEY MESSAGES

  Tom’s a principled, trustworthy leader with the experience needed to replace Stephen Harper.

  Here are some points to help reinforce this message with voters and grow our support.

  • Tom’s a former cabinet minister and has the experience to make difficult decisions.

  • Tom knows where he stands—and backs it up with action.

  • Tom is the second oldest of ten kids. He knows what it means to work hard and live within your means.

  This was it? This was all a candidate was meant to say? I flipped through the scant pages.

  Tom was raised on middle class values and gets the things that are going on in your life.

  Here are some points to help reinforce this message with voters and grow our support.

  • Families are working harder than ever to build a good life for their family, but can’t get ahead.

  • Too many Canadians are unemployed and the jobs being created are part-time and precarious.

  • More and more Canadians are struggling to retire with security.

  —

  I showed the banal document to Doug.

  “When you run, you sign off on the party platform. Period. Now make it your own.”

  “But what’s with all this talk of the ‘middle class’? We never talk about class in Canada. The rural–urban divide, sure, but class?” “The Liberals are doing it too,” said Doug. “Big time.”

  “It feels too much like exclusion—frankly, even at the top end. What is the ‘middle class’ anyway?”

  “Eighty-five percent of Canadians used to identify themselves as ‘middle class.’ Now only half do.”

  “So thirty-five percent are up for grabs?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Still. It bothers me. We’re here for the poor. We’re not here for the rich. I want to talk about ‘working families and families that would like to be working.’ ”

  KEY MESSAGES

  After 10 years, middle class families are working harder but can’t get ahead. Stephen Harper’s plan just isn’t working.

  Instead of focusing on the things that matter to you and your family, Stephen Harper has the wrong priorities for Canada.

  He’s the reason they want change in Ottawa.

  Fair enough.

  Then, on page four, “Us on Trudeau and the Liberals.”

  Being Prime Minister isn’t an entry level job and on issue after issue, Justin Trudeau’s inexperience is showing.

  It’s no wonder that when it comes to taking on Stephen Harper and winning, many Canadians have decided Justin Trudeau isn’t up to the job.

  KEY MESSAGES

  Canadians gave Justin Trudeau a chance, but he hasn’t lived up to expectations.

  Here are some points to help reinforce this message with voters and grow our support.

  • Trudeau promised to do things differently—like open nominations—but hasn’t.

  • Trudeau said he’d stand up to Stephen Harper on key issues—like C-51—but didn’t.

  • And he’s still not sure where he stands on the serious issues facing Canada. Justin Trudeau’s inexperience is showing.

  “Politics isn’t about being clever,” Levy said in our first telephone call. “Any time you talk to the media, imagine the story you’d like to see.”

  Right, then. Forward.

  —

  It was raining the next morning when, at the Rushton, I met with Alex Boutilier, the Toronto Star Ottawa correspondent whom Levy had described as “a good guy and a fair reporter, young but old-school.” The restaurant, on St. Clair Avenue West, was where Ray and I had watched England in the World Cup a couple of tourneys back, and in the heart of a riding I was a day away from being able to call mine. ISIL, Israel and Palestine, oil, the environment—none of this came up. We talked about child care, urban infrastructure and transit, precarious work, and the fact of my living outside the riding. I tried responses I’d rehearsed: the issues that mattered to Toronto—St. Paul’s were true across the GTA, and in such an economically diverse riding, a fella from Cabbagetown had no more or less of a connection to residents in the streets of the district in which we found ourselves than did someone from Forest Hill, such an exclusively weal
thy corner, or Cedarvale, a little less ostentatiously so. I volunteered information about my past drug use, wanting to be the source rather than to be sideswiped by it. Taking Levy’s instruction, I was imagining the story I wanted to see and suggested, in good faith, that I had no connection, anymore, with the heroin user that had been me more than thirty years before. Acknowledging my drug use had always been, for me, a minor political act. It was, I believed, a question of integrity that, rather than refraining from mentioning it, I should own this moment of past experience so that merely, in this instance, participating in an election might serve as an example to people having trouble with the drug. There are other courses I have known: you can pretend to your best friend you’re free of it, as mine did with me, and then ride stoned and have a motorcycle accident and crush your voice box and forever speak with a rasp. Or you can die, as a couple of other friends of mine did (though they did so not from heroin but from teenage angst augmented by the drugs of their choosing). But there are other outcomes. My friend who crashed his bike subsequently became a very successful medical equipment salesperson. The addict daughter of a friend was now the owner of a prospering boutique. I’d stopped using and gone on to Oxford University and successfully pursued a rewarding career path and would relish the chance to say as much in Parliament. I was proof, I told Boutilier, that Draconian policies of the sort that Harper and his ministers of justice favoured did not work.

  —

  Then, at five o’clock the next day, I locked my bike to a railing outside the tower on Adelaide Street that housed the offices of Heller and Associates, an hour and a half before the riding executive was due to meet. Inside, I sat with Heller, Penny Marno and her spouse, Rob Milling, and Erinn Somerville in a cramped meeting room just big enough for our roundtable of five. Erinn, who had been a lawyer until, twelve years prior, brain cancer cut that career short, had agreed to be the campaign’s official agent. (A true survivor, she had already outlived her prognosis by more than a decade.) She also had the NDP and its precursor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, in her blood. Her father’s uncle, Edward Bigelow Jolliffe, had known David Lewis as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He had co-founded the CCF’s international wing before becoming an Ontario MLA and, from 1942 to 1953, was the provincial leader of the party. We sat together awkwardly, and Marno handed me the meagre members’ list for the riding and explained the difference between active and non-active members, listed as “A” and “B,” and suggested I start calling to introduce myself ahead of the general meeting called for July 29.