The Trudeau government figures it's best to ignore Rob Oliphant's private-turned-public disdain for party's Gaza stance
Rob Oliphant seems an unlikely candidate to serve as a fiery, chest-thumping rebel, chronic troublemaker or ego on legs searching out microphones and cameras he can spout off to.
A Liberal loyalist since youth, he has party credentials reaching back to the first Trudeau regime almost 50 years ago. He served in several capacities for David Peterson’s Ontario government, has worked on more Liberal campaigns than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made promises and was tasked with important roles by former leaders Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff. In 2019, Trudeau appointed him parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs, a post he still holds.
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A United Church minister, Oliphant has a Master of Divinity from the University of British Columbia, a doctorate from the Chicago Theological Seminary and a lengthy record of humanitarian and human rights activities both in Canada and abroad.
His standing may explain why Oliphant has escaped largely unscathed since delivering a scathing attack on his government’s handling of the crisis in Israel.
In a leaked recording reported by the CBC, Oliphant denounced the Liberal decision to halt funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the main channel for aid to Palestinians, as “the wrong decision” and a political move aimed at placating Canada’s allies, presumably meaning the United States given that it was the only other country to have cancelled its aid.
“You don’t stop aid to Gaza because of 12 or 13 employees out of 13,000. It drives me crazy,” he raged. “It is opportunistic, it is unfair and it is maligning the operation of a UN organization that is doing, not perfect work — there’s no organization that’s made of human beings that’s perfect, UNRWA has its faults — but it is the best we have for education, for medical care, for food, all of those things.”
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The proper course, he said, would have been to shift an equal amount of money to other agencies aiding civilians in Gaza.
“Our government bungled that and we should have announced it the same day. All that money and more needs to go to Gaza for instantaneous humanitarian aid.
“We have half a million people at starvation levels. We’re going to have cholera. We’re going to have all kinds of things in Gaza. We need an immediate ceasefire.”
He also bashed Trudeau’s response to South Africa’s attempt to have Israel condemned by the International Court of Justice, saying he warned the government it would be misunderstood and dismissing the result as “a communications disaster.”
As a sign of the divisions troubling the Liberals, it far exceeds a suggestion by Ken McDonald, an otherwise mild-mannered MP from Newfoundland, that Trudeau had reached his “best-before date” and should face a leadership review. Yet while McDonald was swiftly browbeaten into claiming he didn’t mean what he so clearly said, Trudeau responded to Oliphant’s critique with the kind of bland airiness that has become a hallmark of his tenure.
“The kinds of conversations that go on within our party are not always easy, but they reflect that diversity of conversations happening across the country,” he assured reporters, as if the issue had been which sandwich to order for lunch.
“We are continuing, as a country, to engage in the full complexities of the situation with a steadfast focus on bringing forward peace, stability and standing up for the rights of people to live in peace and stability.”
Unlike McDonald, Oliphant was elected before Trudeau became leader, and thus can’t be accused of owing him his career. Nor can he be dismissed as a know-nothing backbencher: he’s on his fourth foreign minister, having started under Marc Garneau and remained for subsequent ministers Chrystia Freeland, François-Philippe Champagne and current minister Mélanie Joly.
As Joly’s deputy, it fell to Oliphant to rise in her absence in the House of Commons and defend the UNRWA decision he so deeply disagreed with.
“Mr. Speaker, let me be very clear,” he told the House on Feb. 8. “The funding that Canada is giving to civilians in Gaza has increased: just last week, $40 million more on top of the $60 million that was already there. This makes Canada a top donor for aid, helping with the crisis in Gaza. We are proud, and Canadians want us to help. Every time there is a time of emergency, we stand up and we are clear. We will always be there.”
That must have hurt, and may have been a moment in which Oliphant considered resigning, something else he confessed to considering “many times” in his leaked conversation. If he did quit, there’s a good chance the damage to the Trudeau government would be greater than the hurt to Oliphant. There’s always his flock to go back to, while the prime minister is testing ever-deeper depths of unpopularity while striving to convince New Democrats to keep propping up his minority.
There’s also a qualitative difference between Oliphant’s remarks and other recent Liberal embarrassments. McDonald knew he was speaking to a reporter when he offered up his opinion, and thus had to realize the words would become public. Similarly, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault was addressing a conference on public transit when he declared Canada has enough roads already and Ottawa wouldn’t be paying for any additions, a flub he had to “clarify” after Trudeau insisted there’d been no change in the government’s position.
Oliphant, in contrast, was speaking on a private call to a constituent, who evidently chose to record the call without his knowledge and let the CBC have a listen. That may not impress voters weary of politicians preaching doctrines they don’t believe, but is enough of a fig leaf for Liberals to hide behind. Given that Oliphant obediently defended the party line in public, he can’t be accused of outright betrayal. This is the government, after all, that declared it acceptable for candidates to reject its abortion stand as long as they didn’t vote according to their beliefs. And going after Oliphant risked the danger that fellow Liberals who share his views might come to his defence.
Why the media didn’t make as much noise about the Oliphant outburst as they did about McDonald or Guilbeault is another issue. For the government, it was enough to hope ignoring one embarrassment was better than the danger of sparking another.
National Post
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