Outreach on the Path to a ‘Minimum Winning Coalition’
Introduction to Chapter 4
Thirty-five years of voting history established by a relationship! . . . And the light went off for me. How incredibly important relationships are. It’s blindingly obvious, but for newcomers those initial relationships that they establish are hugely important.
- Then Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and
Multiculturalism Jason Kenney, quoted in Wells (2010) Game theory predicts that, in in- person voting games, rational actors will seek to assemble a minimum winning coalition (MWC), that is, a coalition barely large enough to win. The theorem is counterintuitive, for politicians normally speak as if they would like to have everyone’s support. However, if the purpose of a coalition is to deliver benefits to the included at the expense of the excluded, it follows that the winning coalition should be as small as possible if it is to maximize benefits to the participants per capita.
In Canadian federal politics, the MWC for the House of Commons is 155 (50 percent + 1 of 308 seats). In the real world, of course, you want to have more than a bare majority of 155 to guard against the possibility of resignations, deaths or defections of caucus members to other parties. The MWC for the popular vote cannot be defined so precisely but seems to be slightly less than 40 percent, given the current state of Canada’s multiparty system. By both standards, the current Conservative coalition (166 seats, 39.6 percent popular vote) is ideal.
Larger-than-necessary coalitions tend to be unstable because of the difficulty of satisfying too many participants.
(Flanagan 2011a, 107)
In a 2010 interview with Macleans’ Paul Wells, then Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney recounted an encounter with an evangelical Korean businessman who had been a long term NDP supporter because an NDP MP had been supportive of his community from his early days in the country. Kenney felt that such a voter was a natural Conservative voter, and claimed to have achieved a revelatory insight from the meeting- that the
votes of newcomers to Canada were in large part determined by their early contact with politicians.
As was seen in the prior and will be seen in the next chapter, Canada's Conservatives created a compelling form of authoritarian populist politics that continued to be regressive in its overall character but was friendlier in tone to Canada's demographic realities than a Reform Party political heritage not generally seen as receptive to immigrants. Chapter three discussed the process underwent from an initial approach of “invasion from the margin” of Canada’s political system to the early years of the new Conservative Party of Canada. Over time, to quote Hall employing Gramsci, the Conservatives saw the need that "'account be taken of those interests and tendencies of the groups over which hegemony is to be exercised,' so that 'a certain compromise be formed'" (Hall 1980, 168). For Canada’s Conservative Party that was to exercise hegemony within the country’s settler colonial terrain, the demographics of which have changed
considerably in the past several decades.
This compromise- at least, but not only at the level of discourse- has been between the prerogatives of an at times nativist political base – composed of what Thobani terms Canada’s exalted subjects of white Anglo and French-Canadian settlers - with the hopes, dreams and expectations of many new or racialized Canadians who are expected to conform to their settler colonial prerogatives. This chapter and the next will show how these Canadians have been invited to participate in the Conservatives’ political project on highly regressive terms, an invitation that has been extended as the Conservatives have energetically and creatively sought to achieve what Tom Flanagan has referred to as a “minimum winning coalition” (Flanagan 2011a). As will be seen below, the Conservatives’ is a highly ideological and disciplinary approach to politics aimed at gaining a stable “minimum connected winning coalition”(Flanagan 2011b) large enough to win power and impose its vision of society rather than seeking social consensus. This creativity and
pragmatism marked a major political advance over earlier Reform Party doctrines and approaches, though maintained an overall regressive, often exclusionary approach.
Thus rather than serving as a positive model as conservative journalists and some academics would assert, the Conservatives are better viewed as having taken a creative yet cynical incremental approach to achieving a majority government and shifting the gravity of Canadian politics to the right. The Conservatives fostered new and in other ways maintained and even deepened exclusionary inclinations held over from their Reform (1987-2000) and Canadian Alliance (2000-2003) predecessors. This chapter will explore one of the key defining aspects of what I have termed the politics of Kenneyism, that of neoconservative pragmatism, and the creative hard work and political outreach required to have a realistic chance to reach a “minimum winning coalition” large enough to achieve governing power.
Neoconservative Pragmatism- Creative Hard Work and Outreach Designed to Achieve a
“Minimum Winning Coalition”
The pragmatism yet divisiveness of the Conservatives’ political project is significant, as it does not represent an abandonment but rather an adaptation of neoconservative principles to Canada’s demographic context. As Jason Kenney had long argued for, the Conservatives decided to “show up” to this political contest after decades on the sidelines and sought to forge strong interpersonal relationships with diverse communities (M. McDonald 2014). Kenney would become famous for his work ethic in establishing such relationships through tireless attendance at events and
community outreach. His successor as Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Chris Alexander has remarked that Kenney exhibits a “monk” like dedication to politics, as “part of him that has renounced other things to focus on his calling, and his calling is politics” (Markusoff 2018).
However a marketing and interpersonal outreach rather than a substantive mindset has often been apparent in their conservative populist approach. The dominance of an overall
centralized marketing approach to politics on the part of the Conservatives- to which other parties have subsequently conformed- has been chronicled by Delacourt, who has characterized the
“fusion of marketing and politics” on the part of the Conservatives as “complete and pervasive”
(Delacourt 2016b, xi; 2016a). The need to change their party’s “brand” was well recognized within the party. Based on interviews with thirty “Conservative Party elites” in 2011 and 2012 and a “strong” response rate, Marland and Flanagan (2013) confirm the centrality of marketing and quantitative data to the Conservatives’ overall approach. They also note that even after the merger of the Reform and Progressive Conservative Parties the Conservatives still faced an uphill battle in growing the party due to several problems with their brand:
The party's opinion research found that the merger had not sufficiently eroded the politically incorrect brand associations, leaving three reputational problems. First, it was perceived to be the party of rich, powerful, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants; second, voters believed that it was home to social extremists who opposed abortion and same-sex marriage and were hostile to the concerns of immigrants; and, third, it was seen as pro-American as opposed to pro-Canadian (W1).
(Marland and Flanagan 2013, 965)
“W1,” cited as the source for the diagnosis was categorized by the authors as a communications worker: “party staffers who liaised with leaders and consultants on marketing, opinion research and/or publicity” (Marland and Flanagan 2013, 957–58). The Conservatives needed to
significantly “reposition their brand,” though as was apparent at the time with the volume of attack ads purchased by the Conservatives, “[t]o gain market share Conservative strategists determined that it was not enough to reposition their brand; they would also need to “de-brand”
the Liberal party” (Marland and Flanagan 2013, 966).
To view Conservative documents and reflections on the need to reach out to immigrant and “ethnic” voters is to read an effort described in highly instrumentalist terms. A 2011 presentation by the party entitled Breaking Through: Building the Conservative Brand presents
the politically salient issue with respect to diversity being that it is “the new reality,” as if Canada had not been a diverse society for decades. Ridings targeted for a media buy are described as
“Target Ridings- Very Ethnic” with a “Take-away” that “There Are Lots of Ethnic Voters,” that
“There Will be Quite a Few More Soon” and that “They Live Where We Need to Win” (emphasis added). Therefore the key task has been the “Need to Positively Brand CPC [Conservative Party of Canada] in Target Communities” (6) which would be done through paid media advertising in the “ethnic press” (Nejatian 2011).Slides from a 2007 presentation indicated a need to “move approximately 5000 voters” in Thornhill, for example, where they might take the riding “if we target growth in the Jewish Community and those visible minorities which are accessible”
(emphasis added). Such an approach reflects a project of grafting such support onto the party’s base rather than a fundamental change of principles. It belies a notion of “ethnic voters” as
primarily units to be moved rather than citizens with genuine demands, although at least one slide does acknowledge a need “to develop mutual trust, respect and understanding” (Kenney 2007).
In the case of Indo-Canadians, for example, paternalistic sample scripts in their accidently leaked 2011 presentation (O’Malley 2011) euphemistically acknowledge that “Things haven’t always been fair for us,” to be shown alongside a picture of the Komagata Maru, and followed up with the message “But the Conservatives have always recognized our history and our
community’s sacrifice” (Nejatian 2011)- seemingly without knowledge that the second statement is therefore logically false. Such a message is particularly patronizing given the Komagata Maru was prevented from landing on Canadian shores in 1914 precisely to preserve “White Canada”
immigration policies. The Conservatives had earned a hostile response three years earlier for refusing to apologize in parliament for this exclusion to the great frustration of many Sikh community leaders- many of whose audience members raised their hands to reject a public apology delivered outside of the legislature (CBC News 2008). Such an approach might help
explain how they occasionally found themselves in hot water, for instance for patronizing outreach efforts that asked people to come to campaign events “in costume” to ensure better photo-ops (Wallace 2011), or unwittingly inviting an anti-immigrant group whose discourse rings true to some of their most prejudiced constituents to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration (New Democratic Party of Canada 2012; Ditchburn 2012).
The party’s long-term project of the 2000s has been painted in highly instrumental, top-down and even paternalistic terms. According to Flanagan, “Ethnic politics is clientalistic, because people coming to Canada from different cultures and whose English is imperfect naturally band together in ethnic communities. When they participate in politics, it is often
through community leaders acting as intermediaries with the larger world of Canadian society . . . It is less a matter of a five-week campaign than of maintaining long-term relationships that can be mobilized at campaign time” (2009a, 281)- echoing Kenney’s earlier insight of the important of relationships above policies.
As one ponders Flanagan’s assertions concerning “ethnic politics,” it is worth considering reflections and analysis by Thobani and Bannerji that denaturalize such forms of political
organization and their character, linking them long-standing state policies. Both scholars note from a critical lens how rather than being “naturally” organized as top-down and leader driven, that state multiculturalism, dominant society racism, sexism and immigration policies18 have contributed to the at times hierarchal and conservative forms of “ethnic politics” that Flanagan describes as so accessible to the Conservative recipe for political success.
18 Thobani argues that sponsorship regulations established under the 1976 Immigration Act contributed to the marginalization of immigrant women, as the sponsor-sponsored dynamic brought further power relations, whereby men, who were primarily the sponsors, saw their power reinforced through restricted access to social assistance making women at greater risk of economic insecurity and spousal abuse while spousal relationships between immigrants were much more highly scrutinized . Immigrant families became even more complex sites, for
“patriarchal structures were strengthened as a direct result of state policy; on the other hand these families often became the only sites of support against the racism these women encountered (Thobani 2007, 137–38).
Considering the rise of multiculturalism historically, Thobani notes that the formal introduction of multiculturalism and liberalization of immigration policies contributed to a
“changed cultural climate” that “enabled people of colour’s access to formal citizenship and its entitlements” (Thobani 2007, 175). Notwithstanding the attraction of multiculturalism for many people of colour that she acknowledges (172), Thobani in effect argues that acquiescence to a politics of multiculturalism was a Faustian bargain for some rather than one of greater social transformation. With policies geared to supporting cultural groups who supported nation-building projects and national unity, “multiculturalism was intended to further the nation’s unity, not its transformation” (Thobani 2007, 156) (emphasis added). State-sponsored multiculturalism was more a containment strategy at a time of social upheaval than one of transformation, she argues, referencing feminist studies of organizing by women of colour, for example, which show that state multiculturalism and its administration “enabled the containment of anti-racist organizing from below by the promotion of a middle-class elite leadership that focused more on issues of cultural identity than on socio-economic inequality (Thobani 2007, 159).
Thobani also points to multiculturalism’s properties to facilitate the public de-legitimization of material claims by Indigenous peoples by portraying them as just another cultural group,19 as well as allowing the dominant population of European descent to view themselves as enlightened and tolerant of othered peoples. In that context, she argues that
Increased inclusion was the reward for the race compromise forged by people of colour, and multiculturalism deepened integration into national fantasies and white domination
Immigrants who might have self-identified along any number and combination of possible identities, including those of class, gender and age, instead find themselves overdetermined culturally, over and
19 According to Thobani, “With its emphasis on tolerance and diversity, multiculturalism has discredited Aboriginal claims to special status as the original inhabitants of the land; Aborigionality is instead devalued as only one among several cultures that needs to be harnessed for the cultural enrichment of nationals” and their “resistance to such politics has been recast as evidence of their ethnocentrism and essentializing chauvinism” (Thobani 2007, 174).
above all other aspects of their identities. State-sponsored multiculturalism compels them to negotiate and comprehend their identities on very narrow grounds, discouraging and possibly foregrounding the possibility of alliances that might allow a systemic challenge to white dominance, patriarchy, and global corporate capitalism.
(Thobani 2007, 175)
Official multiculturalism, she argues, is thus representative of a “‘communalizing’ power of the state” in settler societies, “a power which constitutes communities as discrete racial, ethnic, and cultural groups existing within its territorial borders, yet outside the symbolic bounds of the nation (Thobani 2007, 149). Racialized and ethnicized minorities were included in society on disciplinary terms where power still remained in the hands of dominant and exalted white subjects.20 Accompanying its communalizing power was official multiculturalism’s ability to assist in a “reconstitution of whiteness in its distinct (and historically new) version as a culturally
‘tolerant’ cosmopolitan whiteness . . . a more fashionable and politically acceptable form of white supremacy” with “greater currency within a neocolonial, neoliberal global order” (Thobani 2007, 148). These properties of liberal multiculturalism would leave it ripe for eventual appropriation into neoconservative politics. They would bolster claims to an enlightened and positive
civilizational identity frequently evoked by the Conservatives, in contrast to the barbarity of others, and allow for electoral appeals based on meager promises and platitudes of inclusion which offered little substantive positive change.
Himani Bannerji (2000), for her part, notes that absent other avenues and resources, that
“politically constructed homogenized communities, with their increasingly fundamentalist boundaries of cultures, traditions and religions” emerged from far more complex societies than such orientalist assumptions would presume. In Canada, communalized groups “developed
20 Bannerji expresses the experiences of racialized (im)migrants she has met and the effects of the “machinery of the state” upon them in stark terms, as it “has us impaled against its spikes. In beds, in workplaces, in suicides
committed over deportations, the state silently, steadily rules our loves with ‘regulations’” (Bannerji 2000, 89).
leaders or spokespersons, usually men, who liaised with the state on their behalf.” Such forms of organization encouraged by the state could have highly conservative effects, including to the detriment of women, Bannerji argues, as:
Hard headed businessmen, who had never thought of culture in their lives before, now, upon entering Canada, began using this notion and spoke to the powers that be in terms of culture and the welfare of their community.
But this was the new and only political playing field for ‘others’ in Canada, a slim opportunity of mobility, so they were/are willing to run through the multicultural maze. What is more, this new cultural politics, leaving out problems of class and patriarchy, appealed to conservative elements in the immigrant population, since religion could be made to overdetermine these uncomfortable actualities, and concentrated on the so-called culture and morality of the community. Official multiculturalism . . . also empowered the same male leaders as patriarchs and enhanced their sexism and masculinism.” (Bannerji 2000, 48)
Thus Flanagan’s notion of “ethnic politics” has in fact been generated and assisted in important structural ways by liberal state multiculturalism and its lack of transformative politics. These were dynamics Kenney, Harper and others within the party came to use as they sought new ways to increase their levels of voting support.
It is in this long-term context and the Conservatives’ project of neoconservative multiculturalism that Flanagan could argue that the Conservative’s task was not to offer “a potpourri of new benefits,” or substantive social change to new Canadians – but rather “it was to help them realize that their convictions and interests would be better represented by the
Conservatives than by any other party” (emphasis added) (Flanagan 2011b). Despite the party’s inherited baggage and policy stances that had alienated many “ethnic voters,” according to Flanagan the Conservatives’ electoral success was attributable to hard work rather than many fundamentally progressive shifts- a “few policy innovations” but mostly “the patient effort of establishing contact – visits . . . to ethnic events; recruiting multicultural candidates and political organizers; printing political materials in [other] languages.” These, Flanagan noted, were steps
“easy to enumerate” but that took years to achieve (Flanagan 2011a, 106). The political project on offer by the Conservatives is that of assimilation or acquiescence to neoconservative and social conservative thinking, albeit on a much more rhetorically friendly basis for some, with nods to diversity and multiculturalism.
As Lawrence Martin has noted, the challenge facing the Conservatives was led by the
“inexhaustible” Jason Kenney- who learned greetings in “dozens” of languages- to wash the party of its “anti-immigrant and racist” reputation; “convince them that their values in fact coincided with the Tories’ entrepreneurial spirit;” and create “policy specific appeal,” through acts such as lifting visas, apologies and other forms of symbolic politics that appealed to
particular groups (L. Martin 2010, 226).21 And indeed, such efforts led the Toronto Star to run a headline highlighting Kenney’s “Bieber-like” following in many communities due to his
effective glad-handing (Keung and Black 2013) and witnessed an improvement in the party’s
effective glad-handing (Keung and Black 2013) and witnessed an improvement in the party’s