The Candidate
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“Beyond belief,” said Doug.
“Are you Facebook friends with Pratt?” asked Sarah.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”
“Take a look at this from the man who accused you of ‘revenge porn.’ ”
Then Sarah pulled up the NDP director of organization’s Facebook page and clicked on photographs of Pratt giving the finger to whoever was taking the picture of him alone or with party staffers or doing the same in older shots from university days; then others of him boozing stupidly and a couple of him appearing to be cuffed by a police officer. On Twitter, Pratt had posted a picture of a gun aimed at an unfortunate arachnid with the caption, “How to kill a spider.”
Now it was my turn: “Wow,” I said.
Really. “Wow” was all I could say. I was laughing but also reeling from the display of an operative fancying himself a performer in House of Cards. What drives these people, I asked myself? I’d had an early impression of their kind at the Scotiabank Giller Prize years before, when I’d seen the provincial Liberal Party operative with the red bow tie and unpleasant mug look furtive as he swiped the card-key and entered the hotel room just down the corridor. Like a drug deal was going down; like he’d wanted to look like a thief, or maybe just a backroom big shot in his politician’s Boys’ Own world—he’d leave his hard-working wife soon enough. How is it, I wondered, that a TV aesthetic of bullish behind-the-scenes power is so influential that folk signing up to further democracy and supposedly “open” practices make it their profession to hoodwink the public? At what point does a spin doctor decide, “The public is a meal ticket and an impediment, not a cause—the path to office is for me to wield power secretly”? At what point does the political strategist or field director conclude, “Honesty is not the path; the best way to serve the public is to manipulate it, sell them something”? Is James Carville, Lynton Crosby, Alastair Campbell or Kevin Spacey to blame?
—
Ideas for an NDP government to pursue:
A commons law
An education act
Aboriginal studies as a mandatory high school matriculation requirement
Free Internet access
A minister for old people
Pharmacare
—
More radical ideas for an NDP government to pursue:
The pursuit and representation not of unions, but of disorganized labour
A living wage
Compulsory national service in communities, NGOs and the military, with the possibility of paying for university studies as one of its benefits The creation of a permanent Canadian Peace Operations Regiment
The creation of a University of Peace Studies
Saying Canada is a soft power and an honest broker and the habit doesn’t have to be just military: saying that we are going to be the party that takes labour laws it has taken two centuries to arrive at and push them at the supranational level, fighting monopolies and cartels and corporations evading these laws
—
Ideas that didn’t matter:
Bill C-51
Bill C-24
The politician with experience
—
Ideas that won’t happen:
The House of Commons as a travelling show, rotating in major cities around the country for one of each year’s sessions
Rebuilding the Houses of Parliament as three concentric rings: the 338 MPs around the first (and the Speaker seated in the middle); Elders, whether Senators or Native, around the second; and the people looking in from the third
Paying residents of northern communities and remote places a decent living wage for simply being where they are, because the truth of Canada is that we’re still a country colonizing itself and we might as well ’fess up to the fact and make a virtue of it
—
“You know they were ready to go through the whole heroin thing if the Facebook stuff didn’t work,” said Doug.
“That’s why I got it out of the way.”
“Nobody would have remembered,” said Doug.
Forgetting counts for a lot in politics. We forget about others and the part we ourselves have played to appoint some above the rest. How many Canadians were forgetting their role in ten years of a Canada that was so suddenly being wiped from the chalkboard of our experience?
It was astonishing how instantly forgettable Harper had been—how the “legacy” (that’s how politicians speak) had no substance. The oil and gas lobby was responding to Alberta NDP premier Rachel Notley and her carbon tax plans; Kellie Leitch, on the brink of tears, would distance herself from the “snitch line” she and Alexander had proposed; and Tony Clement, the minister who’d seen to the execution of the long-form census, would disassociate himself from the man who’d been his master. “I think I’d have done it differently, looking back on it,” said Clement, far from the only Conservative to build a makeshift sod hut in the chasm left by the resigned leader not even his own party seemed to like anymore. “A respectful tone and civil tone and working across the floor with other parties,” said the interim CPC leader Rona Ambrose, “is something our members would welcome, that our caucus would welcome, and that Canadians would welcome as well.”
It was as if all the Conservative nastiness and hatred and alienation of big chunks of the franchise, the blockading of the media and the vilification of opponents, the plans for a snitch line had never happened—not even in CPC minds. The errant Senate, Omar Khadr: so much of the last ten years already belonged to another time.
It was like—it was like waking up from a bad dream.
—
This will end. Time passed and I was good for not much. Heller was emailing, still looking for a place to store our campaign’s eleven-hundred-plus signs. He’d already moved on to next time. Then, on November 4, Phil called. He mentioned that Stephen LeDrew and Ann Rohmer, the hosts of CP24’s Live at Noon, were wondering if I’d join former Liberal MPP George Smitherman and John Capobianco, the CPC candidate who’d lost in the 2006 federal election to the then Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, in the Etobicoke—Lakeshore riding, to provide commentary and debate on the three hours of Justin Trudeau and the Liberal cabinet’s swearing-in at Rideau Hall.
“No cab fare,” said Phil.
“Sure, I’ll do it,” I said.
I liked Phil, knew I would miss him and wanted to speak for the party without Ottawa on my back. I put on my orange Fluevogs and a blue summer sports jacket and jeans, and headed down to the old CHUM-City building at Queen and John. Smitherman was himself and domineering and pushing Liberal credit for everything, Capobianco was affable, Ann Rohmer a little tense and LeDrew droll and a good host. As Trudeau and his cortège of ministers-in-waiting slowly walked past cheering onlookers to Rideau Hall, I pointed out that the father–son PM example, a first in Canadian history, had a precedent with William Pitt the Elder and Pitt the Younger, the latter twenty years Justin Trudeau’s junior, in early-nineteenth-century Britain. Who would care about that? Smitherman muttered. Who cares about history? I answered. The throng of smiling Liberals continued their sunny walk and I wondered if Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau was pissed off that Mélanie Joly, soon to be appointed minister of heritage, was also wearing a white autumn coat—but this was Canadian politics, not the Academy Awards, and I kept the musing to myself. Smitherman feigned astonishment that former Toronto police chief Bill Blair, the “star” Liberal candidate who had defeated the incumbent NDP MP Dan Harris in Scarborough—Southwest, was not to be seen in the ebullient gang.
“Hold on,” I said, “I think I see Blair being kettled at the back!”
“I should point out that the views you are hearing are those of the contributors and not the network,” said Rohmer.
The cabinet-in-waiting entered the Rideau Hall ballroom, Phil Richards’s portrait of the Queen hanging where there used to be Jean-Paul Lemieux’s Charlottetown Revisited.
“I have to say, as a Republican, that I miss the Jean-Paul Lemieux tha
t was there before this portrait of the Queen.”
“The views you are hearing are those of the contributors and not the network,” said Rohmer.
Capobianco leaned my way and whispered, “I’ve been doing this show for years and that’s the first time I’ve heard her say that—and twice. Well done.”
I was aware of a small electric current of pleasure running though my veins. The Liberals, I pointed out, had not appointed a single African-Canadian to cabinet, so that a generations-old loyalty had been “abjectly denied.” I was enjoying putting the boot in. And I was hoping that someone in Little Jamaica was listening. Smitherman excused himself and, for the first time since October 19, I thought, I could do this again. I was almost ashamed. I was having a good time.
—
Drove home from Montreal and sent a postcard:
November 2, 2015
Officer H.
This may be a first for you, but I wanted to thank you for ticketing me for speeding (offence 19087662). Not that I want to part with the money, or lose the points, or was travelling much faster than the average car, but in truth I was obviously depressed, and a bit angry (I’d run for the NDP and you know what happened there) and I was probably too stressed to have been responsibly behind the wheel. No personal mood warrants putting anyone’s life in danger. Once again—
Thank you!
Noah Richler
Up, down, up, down.
You move through a carousel of moods and get stuck in some.
—
“Dreamed I was in bed with Trudeau last night,” I told Sarah.
“Oh?” says Sarah. “Tell me more.”
“No hanky-panky, we were fully clothed, just he and I having a little pillow talk. I called out to you to make coffee—you were in the kitchen—but you went to bed in one of the girls’ rooms and so I told him to go to the kitchen and make a coffee himself. When I came down, the espresso machine was all in bits on the table. He’d taken it apart and was pouring dirty water through the grinder.”
“He’s making a mess of your mornings, that’s what your dream is saying.”
—
London, England, 1997. I have been in psychotherapy for a year, and am in the session I did not yet realize would be my last.
“Your dreams used to be so interesting,” she says.
—
Squash, again, and Doug and I are Statler and Waldorf back on the Muppet Show balcony, dreaming up slogans in advance of the next time around: “We’re Still Here,” “We’re Watching You,” “Community Is Not Big Business.” Behind the desk of the Hart House gym are three students in red gym T-shirts. One of them takes my pass without looking my way. Doug asks for a squash ball, we’ve forgotten ours, and the young woman bouncing on a Pilates ball hands it to him. She’s not looking our way either.
“They’re Trudeau’s generation, not ours,” says Doug.
“We had our time,” I say.
“What about party leader?”
“Oh come on, I’m white, fifty-five, and male.”
“So?”
“So maybe I can help the right person.”
We wait for the third student to press the buzzer to let us in to the locker room, which she almost manages to do without looking our way. Except that when she hands me a towel she has to lift her gaze to see if I have taken it.
“Hey,” she says. “You were the NDP candidate in my riding. I voted for you!”
“Thanks,” I say sheepishly.
“Great campaign. Loved your videos.”
“We did our best,” I say. “And this fella, he got me into it.”
She smiles.
“Will you run again?”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe a big, first debt of gratitude to Scott Sellers for seeking me out and pressing all the buttons to make The Candidate happen, and pushing it out so ably in the marketplace. Thanks, as well, to Kristin Cochrane, my editor Jordan Ginsberg, designer Scott Richardson, and to Susan Burns and Tara Tovell, also on the Doubleday Canada team. Jonathan Rotsztain and Marc de Mouy were as generous with their graphics and photographs during the writing of this book as they were during the campaign; and thank you Doug Bell, Ralph Benmergui, Sean Caragata, Michael Geist, Julian Porter, Siobhan Roberts and Shawn Van Sluys for giving the manuscript or portions of it an early read and subsequent advice, any errors of course my own. Thanks, too, to Philip Carter, James Cudmore, Elizabeth Glor-Bell, Wendy Hughes, Julian Heller, Bryan Leblanc, Penny Marno, Tom Mulcair, Janet Solberg and Peter Sussman for providing monologues in good faith to a book I would not allow them to read in advance. I must also thank Daryn Caister, Kevin Farmer, Shannon Litzenberger, Christian Peterson, S., Erinn Somerville and several of the staff at Elections Canada, all of whom helped with my researches in various ways.
Thank you to the staff, campaign and E-Day volunteers, and hosts and donors not just of my own run—but also to the impassioned, crazy lot across the spectrum and the country—that give in all sorts of ways when elections come around, and to Canadians for being interested, in 2015, in record numbers. There’d have been no candidates without you.
And, above all, thank you, Sarah.