New Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont sees 2020 as breakthrough year for party
Recent poll suggests Liberals and NDP neck and neck behind Tories
Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker once said "dogs know best what to do with polls."
That said, a recent Probe Research poll for the Winnipeg Free Press could spark at least a tail wag from rookie Manitoba Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont.
The Probe numbers suggest his party (along with its micro-caucus of three MLAs) is in a dead heat with the New Democratic Party led by Wab Kinew.
Lamont, who sat down with CBC News for a year-end interview just days before the poll came out, sees 2020 as an election year when the basement-dwelling Manitoba Liberals will come out of the political shadows.
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Lamont said he spoke to Sharon Carstairs (a retired senator and former Manitoba Liberal Party leader) about the party's fortunes in the 2016 election and he spied the real opportunity in an election further down the road.
"I called her and I said, 'I think 2020 might be better.' And she said 'I think it might be the best opportunity for the Liberals ever,'" Lamont said.
The former communications strategist and policy analyst may not have a seat in the Manitoba Legislature, but he doesn't lack confidence.
Confidence high, opponents weak
Lamont says the party has a strong board, will likely be out of debt by the end of the month and, with three seats, still has relevance and a role in the legislature.
He also sees weakness in his opponents, Premier Brian Pallister and NDP Leader Wab Kinew.
"If either one of those individuals were leader of another party, their own party would be extremely critical of them. If, for example, Brian Pallister were leader of the Liberal Party and took two months in Costa Rica, the PCs would be extremely critical of him," Lamont said.
As for NDP Leader Wab Kinew, Lamont said his economic views should draw fire from within his own party.
"In September 2015, in the middle of the last federal election, he gave an interview to Macleans [magazine] in which he said he was a Conservative. He said, I'm basically non-partisan, but it's too bad I can't vote Conservative because I agree with their fiscal platform 100 per cent. Two or three months later he joined the NDP."
(Kinew's exact words in the Macleans interview were "I don't think, on First Nations issues alone, anyone could vote Conservative, which is too bad, because, on fiscal issues, I would be 100 per cent open to a Conservative platform.")
Lamont may see internal knives out for the leaders of the other parties, but he is more careful when it comes to looking at the flame-out of his own party in the 2016 election.
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The Liberals, under leader Rana Bokhari, started with higher-than-average expectations for Manitoba's third mainstream political organization, then cratered under the weight of blunders and missteps — something Lamont won't lay entirely at Bokhari's feet.
"She's really smart and well-spoken, but I think she was just inexperienced," he said.
That might be an assessment of Lamont's background — he has never been elected to office and has no traditional in-government experience — but he touts his track record behind the scenes.
Where do the Lamont Liberals stand?
Looking back at the past or firing political missiles at opponents won't build an election contender and most would agree the Liberals have their work cut out for them.
That means Lamont has to carve out Liberal positions on major issues.
On a PC promise to cut the PST by one per cent by 2020 (regardless of being in deficit or not):
"I'll burn that bridge when I come to it," Lamont said, promising a tax review before making a decision, but he did call the PST "a regressive tax."
On health-care reform:
"Really important, but economic growth is really important to me. One of the things I ran on was the idea of good jobs in Manitoba."
On whether July 1, the federal Liberal government's choice (though the date is now in question in Ottawa), is too soon to legalize pot:
"No. This is a long time coming.… It's a realistic date."
On Pallister's "Made-in-Manitoba" climate change plan that sets a carbon tax of $25 per tonne:
"We are going to develop our own 'Made-in Manitoba' carbon plan which will deal with all those things." (Lamont added that a climate change plan should be about emissions and not necessarily taxes.)
On what Lamont identifies as the single biggest focus for the Liberals in 2018:
"I'm going to be going on a leader's tour, so to speak. I am going to be travelling all over Manitoba between now and March … to talk to people and see what the most important thing is."
Are you having fun?
"Yeah! Tons of fun, actually."
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