{"id":206777,"date":"2021-03-20T03:18:22","date_gmt":"2021-03-20T00:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/erin-otooles-all-tell-no-show-speech\/"},"modified":"2021-03-20T03:18:22","modified_gmt":"2021-03-20T00:18:22","slug":"erin-otooles-all-tell-no-show-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/erin-otooles-all-tell-no-show-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"#Erin O’Toole’s all tell, no show speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Erin O’Toole’s all tell, no show speech<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Shannon Proudfoot: The Tory leader’s big speech had a promising message about broadening his party’s tent. Missing was how he plans to do it.\n <\/div>\n
\n \u201cShow, don\u2019t tell\u201d is a familiar exhortation to anyone who\u2019s attended journalism school or spent time in a news<\/a>room. The idea is that it\u2019s dull and unconvincing to declare to a reader that a certain person is witty or a house shabby; instead, you quote a clever bon mot that person dropped in conversation or describe the sagging porch and rheumy windows of the building you see in front of you. If you\u2019re specific enough, you don\u2019t have to announce the thing you\u2019re trying to arrive at.<\/p>\n

On Friday evening, Erin O\u2019Toole delivered a well-crafted and by turns compelling speech to his party\u2019s virtual policy convention. It was a high-stakes opportunity to present his vision to his own party and to the country at large, given that a federal election seems a near-certainty as the minority parliament app<\/a>roaches its second birthday in the fall.\u00a0The Conservatives have been persistently lagging in the polls behind the governing Liberals, and if the smattering of unflattering stories about O\u2019Toole that broke just as the convention opened is any indication, an internal sales pitch might be as crucial for O\u2019Toole as one aimed at the Canadian electorate at large.<\/p>\n

The theme that opened and then wound throughout his remarks was that the Conservative Party of Canada must show the same courage that everyone else has in\u00a0living through this year that absolutely no one wanted, and gird itself to change and learn if it wants to grow. \u201cThe Conservative Party must show that we too have the courage to meet this extraordinary moment, and change,\u201d he said. \u201c<\/span>We have lost two elections in five-and-a-half years. In that time, we have had four leaders.\u00a0<\/span>We must present new ideas, not make the same arguments hoping that maybe this time more Canadians will come around to our position.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an astute point and a promising political launchpad. The only problem is that O\u2019Toole undercut his own diagnosis by telling instead of showing.<\/p>\n

The speech was distinctly short on specifics that would flesh out \u201cCanada\u2019s Recovery Plan\u201d or the party\u2019s efforts to grow. Restoring every pandemic-ravaged job within a year, beefing up conflict-of-interest and lobbying laws, crafting a mental health action plan, ensuring Canada can produce its own vaccines and personal protective equipment so it\u2019s not relying on China in the next mass health crisis and balancing the federal budget within the decade were the bullet-points, but they were almost entirely that. One\u00a0intriguing and possibly useful idea\u2014a national three-digit suicide hotline\u2014seemed almost oddly specific floating in a soup of general<\/a>ities.<\/p>\n

On climate change, O\u2019Toole first chuckled at people who had speculated that he might have something dramatic to say, warning, \u201cI\u2019m afraid you\u2019ll be disappointed.\u201d Then he<\/span>\u00a0drew two lines in the sand that had the effect of confusing anyone trying to figure out where he stands and what he wants to do.\u00a0 First, he declared stoutly, \u201cWe cannot ignore the reality of climate change. The debate is over.\u201d But then he said, \u201cAs<\/span>\u00a0important as climate change is, getting our economy back on track is more important,\u201d adding, \u201cCanadian voters should have no doubt\u201d that his first priority is jobs and rebuilding the ravaged economy.<\/span><\/p>\n

A party founded on farmers, hunters and anglers would have a \u201ccomprehensive\u201d and \u201cserious\u201d plan for climate change, O\u2019Toole said\u2014but Friday evening contained no hints about what that might be.<\/p>\n

Back in October, when he was a newer-still party leader, O\u2019Toole delivered another big speech to the Canadian Club. That address was pure populism, condemning rising inequality, the worry and resentment it bred and the opportunistic elites and heartless corporate entities that have fattened themselves at the expense of the hard-working left-behinds.<\/p>\n

\u201cJustin Trudeau likes to say we are all in this together, but are we really? Under the Trudeau Liberals, the country is more divided than ever, divided between the winners and losers in the global economy,\u201d he said at the time.\u00a0<\/span>\u201cWe can renew Canadian solidarity, but it will not be easy. Powerful forces continue to defend the status quo. Many of the rich, well-connected and well-educated have been largely insulated from the enormous economic upheavals of the last decade.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That speech was a pointed attempt to grow in a specific direction, toward\u00a0what a Tory strategist described as the \u201clow voter\u201d: low income, low education, low diversity and low voter turnout. The strategy was to carve out a larger slice of the next federal vote by effectively enlarging the pie, drawing in and capturing what the party believed to be a new and unclaimed bloc of working-class voters.\u00a0 During the 2019 federal election there were days on which you could have strip<\/a>ped the names from the transcripts and swapped many of NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh\u2019s talking points for those of erstwhile Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer.<\/p>\n

But in front of his virtual convention audience on Friday night, O\u2019Toole was making a different sort of appeal to broadening his party\u2019s tent, one that is more in line with polling that shows woo-able voters are\u00a0younger, more diverse and more supportive of immigration than the current base.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Toole listed off the core values of his party\u2014self-determination, hard work, respect\u2014that had built the country once and would now be crucial to rebuilding it from the pandemic ashes. \u201cThese ideals will ensure more Canadians see a Conservative when they look in the mirror, and feel good about voting for a party that will get this country moving again,\u201d he said. \u201cI want all Canadians to feel welcome in the Conservative Party of Canada.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He touched on differences of skin colour, sexuality and faith, telling everyone, \u201cYou are welcome in this party\u2014i<\/span>n fact, we need your help.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

O\u2019Tool adroitly diagnosed some of the major problems facing him and his party at the moment, their potential solutions and what a weary, stressed and frightened country may be hungry to hear from an alternative to the governing party. So there\u2019s the tell; it\u2019s just a shame the rest of his remarks didn\u2019t show how he would follow through on that.
\n<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Erin O’Toole’s all tell, no show speech” Shannon Proudfoot: The Tory leader’s big speech had a promising message about broadening his party’s tent. Missing was how he plans to do it. \u201cShow, don\u2019t tell\u201d is a familiar exhortation to anyone who\u2019s attended journalism school or spent time in a newsroom. The idea is that it\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":206778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/CP116975812-766x431.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[43485,98635,67806,67910],"class_list":["post-206777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-climate-change","tag-conservative-conven","tag-editors-picks","tag-erin-otoole"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}