- 注册
- 2002-10-07
- 消息
- 402,235
- 荣誉分数
- 76
- 声望点数
- 0
Ottawa provincial conservatives Jack MacLaren and Lisa MacLeod are in India this week, practising.
They’re part of a delegation that Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown has taken to Asia as part of a mission organized by the Indo-Canadian Chamber of Commerce. The business group goes every year to build links between Canadian and Indian companies, but this time it’s joined by a large Tory contingent: Brown, multiple MPPs like MacLaren and MacLeod, a failed candidate or two, and Conservative Sen. Salma Ataullahjan.
Brown has invested a lot of energy in India, visiting repeatedly as a federal MP and striking up a friendship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi when Modi was premier of Gujarat. During an official visit to Canada, Modi dropped in on a Brown leadership rally, a signal moment in Brown’s march to victory.
Brown’s leadership win, though it seemed unlikely at the start, was the result of clever strategy and hard work. “You have to show up,” is one of his rules for rebuilding the Progressive Conservatives into a force that can contend for power in Ontario. Go places. Talk to people. Explain yourself. Learn.
Brown hit Pakistan before India, schmoozing politicians and business groups in Lahore. In Agra, North Bay MPP Vic Fedeli talked up his city’s tech industry at a government-sponsored conference aimed at making links between Uttar Pradesh and the Indian diaspora. MacLeod met the state’s minister for prisons.
Productive meeting with the Uttar Pradesh Minister of Prison Administration, Balwant Singh Ramoowalia. #pcindia pic.twitter.com/PNqJDeKpYl
— Lisa MacLeod (@MacLeodLisa) January 5, 2016
Later, she’s planning to talk up Ottawa as a location for the film industry in Kerala, where they make Malayalam-language movies.
“I hope to replicate the success of the Bollywood film Two Countries by meeting film execs with CanEast Films next week,” MacLeod wrote in a text exchange Tuesday. “That film brought millions into my community.”
This is unusual. Opposition leaders give speeches and have meetings in New York and Washington, sometimes London. A few go along with government ministers for a big ceremony, like a D-Day commemoration. Others go on tours set up for foreign politicians by advocacy groups (Israel is a common destination) or join “parliamentary friendship groups.” This outing is more ambitious. It looks for all the world like a government trade mission, minus the government part.
In fact, MacLeod says the politicians are paying their own ways, personally out of their pockets. The legislature isn’t sitting, and they’re doing both research and advocacy. Both she and MacLaren represent ridings with growing South Asian populations, MacLeod says, and trips like these help them build connections between Ottawa and their constituents’ homelands.
Ex-leader John Tory toured India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in 2006 and routinely marched in gay-pride parades, MacLeod points out. Assorted Tories have gone to Israel and Taiwan, and Tim Hudak went to the United States and Britain.
“But none has taken the role of outreach to cultural communities to the level Patrick has,” MacLeod says. “And the current premier has neglected until now. No coincidence she announced a visit to India after we announced ours (she comes when we go home).”
Indeed, Premier Kathleen Wynne has a 10-day swing through New Delhi, Chandigarh, Hyderabad and Mumbai scheduled at the end of this month. She and ministers will be leading their mission — not tagging along — and no doubt grinning while Ontario business leaders sign agreements with suppliers and buyers and joint-venture partners. Wynne came back from a China voyage last fall boasting of $2.5 billion in trade deals.
In comparison, the Progressive Conservative trip could seem like some bit of weird playacting. But it’s good politics, and not just in a pandery way. For over a decade, the Tories have been very good at being against things, terrible at convincing Ontarians that they’re capable of running the province themselves. They’ve shrunk and shrunk, till not much was left but their rural conservative base.
The Tories aren’t the government, but the more of the motions they go through now, the better they’ll be at presenting themselves as a ready alternative to Wynne’s Liberals in 2018, with broader horizons, international connections and greater wisdom.
Brown won the Tory leadership by spending most of a year slogging through every diner and ice rink and gurdwara that would have him, promising to keep it up until Ontarians saw him as a premier. This trip to India is what that work looks like.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
They’re part of a delegation that Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown has taken to Asia as part of a mission organized by the Indo-Canadian Chamber of Commerce. The business group goes every year to build links between Canadian and Indian companies, but this time it’s joined by a large Tory contingent: Brown, multiple MPPs like MacLaren and MacLeod, a failed candidate or two, and Conservative Sen. Salma Ataullahjan.
Brown has invested a lot of energy in India, visiting repeatedly as a federal MP and striking up a friendship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi when Modi was premier of Gujarat. During an official visit to Canada, Modi dropped in on a Brown leadership rally, a signal moment in Brown’s march to victory.
Brown’s leadership win, though it seemed unlikely at the start, was the result of clever strategy and hard work. “You have to show up,” is one of his rules for rebuilding the Progressive Conservatives into a force that can contend for power in Ontario. Go places. Talk to people. Explain yourself. Learn.
Brown hit Pakistan before India, schmoozing politicians and business groups in Lahore. In Agra, North Bay MPP Vic Fedeli talked up his city’s tech industry at a government-sponsored conference aimed at making links between Uttar Pradesh and the Indian diaspora. MacLeod met the state’s minister for prisons.
Productive meeting with the Uttar Pradesh Minister of Prison Administration, Balwant Singh Ramoowalia. #pcindia pic.twitter.com/PNqJDeKpYl
— Lisa MacLeod (@MacLeodLisa) January 5, 2016
Later, she’s planning to talk up Ottawa as a location for the film industry in Kerala, where they make Malayalam-language movies.
“I hope to replicate the success of the Bollywood film Two Countries by meeting film execs with CanEast Films next week,” MacLeod wrote in a text exchange Tuesday. “That film brought millions into my community.”
This is unusual. Opposition leaders give speeches and have meetings in New York and Washington, sometimes London. A few go along with government ministers for a big ceremony, like a D-Day commemoration. Others go on tours set up for foreign politicians by advocacy groups (Israel is a common destination) or join “parliamentary friendship groups.” This outing is more ambitious. It looks for all the world like a government trade mission, minus the government part.
In fact, MacLeod says the politicians are paying their own ways, personally out of their pockets. The legislature isn’t sitting, and they’re doing both research and advocacy. Both she and MacLaren represent ridings with growing South Asian populations, MacLeod says, and trips like these help them build connections between Ottawa and their constituents’ homelands.
Ex-leader John Tory toured India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in 2006 and routinely marched in gay-pride parades, MacLeod points out. Assorted Tories have gone to Israel and Taiwan, and Tim Hudak went to the United States and Britain.
“But none has taken the role of outreach to cultural communities to the level Patrick has,” MacLeod says. “And the current premier has neglected until now. No coincidence she announced a visit to India after we announced ours (she comes when we go home).”
Indeed, Premier Kathleen Wynne has a 10-day swing through New Delhi, Chandigarh, Hyderabad and Mumbai scheduled at the end of this month. She and ministers will be leading their mission — not tagging along — and no doubt grinning while Ontario business leaders sign agreements with suppliers and buyers and joint-venture partners. Wynne came back from a China voyage last fall boasting of $2.5 billion in trade deals.
In comparison, the Progressive Conservative trip could seem like some bit of weird playacting. But it’s good politics, and not just in a pandery way. For over a decade, the Tories have been very good at being against things, terrible at convincing Ontarians that they’re capable of running the province themselves. They’ve shrunk and shrunk, till not much was left but their rural conservative base.
The Tories aren’t the government, but the more of the motions they go through now, the better they’ll be at presenting themselves as a ready alternative to Wynne’s Liberals in 2018, with broader horizons, international connections and greater wisdom.
Brown won the Tory leadership by spending most of a year slogging through every diner and ice rink and gurdwara that would have him, promising to keep it up until Ontarians saw him as a premier. This trip to India is what that work looks like.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
