News and Features
About Face: David Emerson Crosses the Floor
By Matt O'Grady published Apr 1, 2006
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Was David Emerson’s decision to join the Conservative Party a cynical betrayal of the voters of Vancouver-Kingsway or a brave political move intended to serve the public interest?
"My pet peeve,” said David Emerson in 1988, “is the herd mentality.” He was referring to the naysayers who believed Canada couldn’t, or wouldn’t, support a regional financial institution; at the time, he was CEO of Western & Pacific—what would soon become, after a merger with Bank of Alberta, the Canadian Western Bank. Emerson had battled linear thinkers in a previous gig as the B.C. Finance Ministry’s top bureaucrat, and so by the time he reached Howe Street, he had it all figured out. “In a sense,” explained Emerson, “you are running a business, even in government.”
But the bureaucracy is not politics, and if government were indeed a business, Emerson’s decision on February 6 to switch from Liberal Inc. to Conservative Inc. might not have raised any eyebrows. Captains of industry change ships all the time. Yet in politics, what the herd thinks really matters; the dissenting masses cannot easily be corralled. And the herd, on January 23, voted for a Liberal—not for David Emerson per se, and not for the prospect of being represented by a cabinet minister.
In any election, only one in five voters cites “candidate” as the reason for their choice, with almost 60 percent citing party (and the rest, the leader). But as even Emerson’s admirers admit, the man is politically tone deaf. He had not been parachuted into Vancouver-Kingsway by Paul Martin to sit on the opposition benches; he hadn’t left the executive offices at lumber giant Canfor to become a lowly constituency man.
He was made of sterner stuff—and so, in record-breaking time, he rejected the voters’ verdict and crossed the floor, before there was even a floor to cross. “I am pursuing the very agenda I got involved to pursue when I was in the Liberal party supporting Paul Martin,” Emerson said, a week after being sworn in by Stephen Harper—and only three weeks after promising to be “Harper’s worst enemy”—adding that he would not be driven from office by “partisan zealots and party operatives.” A poll released that day found 62 percent of B.C. residents disapproved of the move. But never mind.
Emerson is, of course, but one on a long list of politicians to “betray” their party. He follows in some not-inglorious footsteps: Winston Churchill crossed over twice—from Conservative to Liberal in 1904, from Liberal to Conservative in 1917. In this country, the list includes a former Father of Confederation, Joseph Howe, a former CCF leader, Hazen Argue, and the, um, inimitable Belinda Stronach. According to the Library of Parliament, 242 members of the House of Commons have walked the walk since Confederation, with the pace quickening: 40 percent have crossed over since 1967, half of those in the past decade. The reasons vary—some principled, some not—but an overarching theme emerges: loyalty doesn’t matter anymore. As in the private sector, where people once devoted their working lives to one employer but now change jobs as often as hairstyles, politics is largely governed by rational self-interest.
