This episode of Hub Dialogues features host Sean Speer in conversation with the Hon. James Moore, the former federal Cabinet minister and current senior advisor at Dentons and Edelman, on the state of Canadian policy and politics, the limits of populism, and the case for conservative optimism and aspiration.
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SEAN SPEER: Welcome to Hub Dialogues, I’m your host, Sean Speer, editor-at-large at The Hub. I’m honoured to be joined today by James Moore, who was a former Conservative cabinet minister, and these days is a senior business advisor at the law firm Dentons, a public policy advisor at the public relations firm Edelman, and a corporate director. I’ve asked James to join me to talk about several topics, including, of course, his views on conservative policy and politics. Thanks so much, James, for joining us at Hub Dialogues.
JAMES MOORE: Pleasure to be here.
SEAN SPEER: During our time together in Ottawa, I frequently saw you around the Cabinet table, and you were among the most consistent and thoughtful conservatives in the room. Yet you had a reputation in the media and amongst others as a so-called “moderate.” What do you attribute that to? What was the source of the disconnect?
JAMES MOORE: Well, I don’t know if there’s necessarily a disconnect. I suppose the needle on these things kind of changes over the fullness of time. I mean, when I was first elected in 2000, I was 24 years old and didn’t have any kind of profile. Being a member of parliament was my first bit of profile. So, you know, the national media gallery who sort of gets the first crack at history, of defining people and who they are and what their profile is, sort of took a measure of me, and didn’t really know what to make of me. When I was first elected, I was the Deputy Official Opposition Foreign Affairs critic under Monte Solberg, sitting in the fourth row, splitting my desk half and half, me and a Bloc Quebecois MP. So, I was super, super, super relevant, as you can tell. And so, they didn’t have anything to make of me.
But I suppose what a demarcation point in my career, I guess, was probably the vote on same-sex marriage. Over the fullness of time, there was a change in leadership in our party, of course, and all that, but there were 99 Conservative members of parliament, and there were three of us who voted in favour of same-sex marriage: myself, Jim Prentice, and Gerald Keddy. That was a moment of differentiation between the bulk of my colleagues. I think for a lot of people in the media, they sort of said, “Oh, he’s okay, because he’s socially moderate, therefore, etc., etc., etc.”
But, as I remind people, I was a staff writer and a student publications editor at the Fraser Institute; I worked in the Official Opposition for Preston Manning; I was a candidate for Stockwell Day and a Cabinet Minister for Stephen Harper. So, if I’m inadequately conservative, I don’t know what other checkmarks need to be checked next to my CV, but there you are.
SEAN SPEER: It’s fascinating, as you say, how these narratives emerge and develop, and oftentimes can diverge from—
JAMES MOORE: Well, any deviation from orthodoxy, right? And the Conservative party, we often do it to ourselves, right? It’s like, “You voted against same-sex marriage.” And we saw this recently in the most recent parliament, where if you’re a Conservative MP who has a stellar record of standing up in favor of natural resource development and lower taxes and smaller government and standing for democracy and principle in foreign policy, however, you might have vocally voted and supported the making illegal of forced conversion therapy on children—you stepped away from the orthodoxy, therefore you’re a CINO, a…