Harper’s announcement on Kapyong shows Conservatives are vulnerable

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/09/2015 (3651 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you needed evidence the Conservative Party is worried about the federal election campaign, you got it this week in Manitoba.

Making a second stop in Manitoba, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper stunned observers Tuesday by announcing a Tory government will not appeal a Federal Court decision on the fate of Kapyong Barracks and is consulting with First Nations on the future of vacant land in southwest Winnipeg.

National Defence abandoned the Kapyong site 11 years ago, moving military personnel to Shilo, near Brandon. A group of First Nations from southern Manitoba immediately expressed interest in acquiring the land with Treaty Land Entitlement monies. Federal legislation allows First Nations to get a first shot at acquiring surplus federal lands.

However, since the First Nations stepped forward to make a claim on the Kapyong lands, the Conservative government has used every political and legal tool at its disposal to keep the land in limbo.

Harper’s announcement is the equivalent of a blink, a gesture that reveals just how concerned the Conservatives are about the way things are shaping up in the election campaign.

The consensus going into this election was that to win, all Harper had to do was campaign on pledges and policies that resonated with the core of his support. The Tory core has long been considered to be slightly larger, and profoundly more committed, than the core of support for the NDP and Liberals. With the opposition parties at risk of splitting the centre-left vote, Conservatives believed there was virtually no chance they could lose the election.

However, a series of campaign missteps have threatened to weaken the foundation of the once-dominant Tory base. The most impactful of these has been the very ugly, very public trial of Tory Sen. Mike Duffy on fraud and bribery charges.

The trial provided a daily gutting of the innermost workings of the Prime Minister’s Office, the details of which dominated news in the first month of the election campaign. The testimony revealed a government rife with partisan manipulation. The exhibition of all that dirty laundry coincided with a very modest, but very significant, decline in support for the Tories nationally.

The politics of the Kapyong decision, as expressed by Harper, is extremely complex for the Conservatives. There is little doubt that all of the foot-dragging and legal wrangling that Ottawa engineered on this file was a direct reflection of the distaste Tories had for the idea of First Nations owning some of the toniest real estate in Winnipeg. Land that was located smack-dab in the middle of a Tory-held riding — Winnipeg South Centre.

Doing everything they could to frustrate the First Nations trying to acquire the Kapyong lands was, to put it bluntly, a real winner for the Conservative base. Tory insiders have long confirmed that regardless of the right and wrong of the issue, the Conservative base does not like the idea of “urban reserves” being developed in non-aboriginal communities.

It mattered little to the core of the Tory base that there are successful First Nation urban reserves all over Western Canada that demonstrate the net benefit they can be to local economies. Or, that the First Nations interested in the Kapyong lands have indicated that they are looking to establish high-value, high-yield real estate developments, exactly what any private owner would seek.

Although their tactics may have infuriated First Nations and core supporters of other parties, it was an effective dog whistle for the Tory base, many of whom had ugly and ill-informed images of VLT lounges and gas bars dancing in their heads.

All that makes Harper’s decision to relent on Kapyong very intriguing.

This is not going to be popular with hardcore Tory voters but the strategy behind Harper’s decision seems fairly simple: use this change in position to appeal to some soft Conservative supporters who either don’t care who owns and develops Kapyong, or who think urban reserves are not all that scary.

With some national polls showing the Conservatives slipping into third place, Harper is now forced to wager that he can compromise on core policies enough to retain his hardcore base and win back some soft support. The simple fact is that there are no longer enough hardline conservatives left to propel the Tories to power.

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However, Harper is running the risk that these gestures, coming very late in a very long campaign, will fail to win back soft support. Even worse, that core supporters – voters who would not vote NDP or Liberal under any circumstances – will look at moves like this and decide not to vote at all on October 19.

No matter how you look at it, this is a desperate play late in a campaign that has not gone according to plan. So desperate, in fact, that Harper is now going to his base and asking them to compromise on issues and policies that strike deep at the heart of what they hold dear.

There are instances in politics where desperation can produce results. Most time, however, it’s a last-gasp strategy for a politician who has suddenly realized the jig is up.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca

Dan Lett
Columnist

Dan Lett is a columnist for the Free Press, providing opinion and commentary on politics in Winnipeg and beyond. Born and raised in Toronto, Dan joined the Free Press in 1986.  Read more about Dan.

Dan’s columns are built on facts and reactions, but offer his personal views through arguments and analysis. The Free Press’ editing team reviews Dan’s columns before they are posted online or published in print — part of the our tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.