Welcome to the ‘change’ election, where everyone is ‘change’

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Given the speed at which Mark Carney is abandoning long-held Liberal positions on issues such as the “consumer-facing” carbon tax, the capital gains tax and energy infrastructure, people are starting to wonder if the Liberal leader is actually a Liberal.

And while a good number of those people who are wondering happen to be Conservatives, that isn’t the point.

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Just like the sailor who will take any port in a storm, Canadians are now looking for safety. Hurricane Donald is blowing through and the seas are rough. And whether the port is labelled “Carney” or “Poilievre,” “Liberal” or “Conservative” might just be immaterial. So when the Conservatives ask “which Carney” should people trust — i.e. the Carney of the past five minutes, or the Carney who has long loved things such as carbon taxes and phasing out huge chunks of Canada’s natural resource inheritance — they are not asking a tough question. They are drawing attention to one of the ports.

They are also presuming people, especially young people, carry things like “partisan identities” around any more. But they don’t. Terrestrial television isn’t the only cord people have been cutting. The days of mass-movement political parties have been on the wane for generations. The days of defined world views and coherent groupings of those views into political parties are being replaced by à la carte politics. Voters appear happy to take a little bit of this with a little bit of that from whoever is offering them.

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This more transactional nature of politics is aided and abetted by a fragmented media ecosystem and the decline of informational gatekeeping. There are no longer a few major national songsheets; we are now encased in an information economy which spits up ideas and concepts from the great and good to the weird and conspiratorial. We can now end up spending hours, days, or weeks discussing things that would have been screened out of the old political order.

Our newfound ability to surface esoteric facts and commentary is fine when times are good. But people still want quality information and solid political leadership when really bad things happen. Like when a man named Donald Trump starts licking his lips as he talked about Canada. Sounding a little MAGA when Justin Trudeau was still in charge was one thing; a red baseball-cap tribute act cuts differently when Trump is the centre of the chaos, freaking everybody out.

The Conservatives might be right when they argue that Carney is the wrong port in a storm. It is certainly hard to look at our dire economic indicators and think that giving the party who produced them another go is the right call. But we’re in the midst of a tempest and Canadians will be looking forward more than they will be looking back. They are looking for a port. The more Conservatives flesh out what theirs offers, the better.

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Cancelling the travelling media pack on your campaign plane when you’re 20 points up in the polls against a man everyone is tired of says one thing; cutting it when your main opponent is the man south of the border who coined the term “fake news” is a heuristic, and not a handy one for Conservatives.

Typically, “change” elections feature only one party of credible change. Carney is trying to upend the usual dynamic by offering to be change, too. The Conservatives need to realize that what people are looking for change from is more likely to be Donald Trump than Justin Trudeau. If Carney sounds sane and reasonable in the face of Trump, that will register as change enough for voters.

Life isn’t fair. But pointing out that Carney doesn’t sound like Trudeau (or even like past Carney) is more likely to leave Canada with another “Liberal” government. The Conservatives need to think harder about the port they are offering, and ensure Canadians have clear access to the message.

Andrew MacDougall is a London-based communications consultant and ex-director of communications to former prime minister Stephen Harper.

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