Word of advice: Just don't run Ms Stronach Political arena will expose them all

Totnto Star 16 January 2004.

DAVID OLIVE

She will, of course, be torn to shreds.

Belinda Stronach is set to confirm next week that she will seek the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada.

It's not too late for her to reconsider, and avoid the embarrassment her father, Frank Stronach, suffered with his failed bid for a Commons seat in the 1980s.

There are many ways unavailable to most Canadians by which Belinda Stronach, 37, can influence public policy. Hurling herself into the electoral arena is not the one best suited to her.

An unhealthy media respect for multimillionaires and the conventions of political correctness has enabled the CEO of Magna International Inc. to craft for herself an image of business acumen and negotiating prowess in backroom politics.

Fortune magazine ranks Stronach among the world's most powerful businesswomen. The World Economic Forum, an annual celebrity summit usually held in Davos, Switzerland, tagged Stronach as one of its "Global Leaders of Tomorrow." A fawning press has alluded to her abiding interest in current events. Stronach is a "close friend of Bill Clinton."

Enough said, apparently.

Enough, in any case, for many moderate Conservatives and those hailing from Central and Atlantic Canada to latch on to Stronach as their best hope of keeping leadership frontrunner Stephen Harper from hijacking the newly merged Alliance-Tory party, and yanking it back into its Reform-era redoubt of right-wing nostrums and Western Canadian parochialism.

Withdrawing from the race earlier this week, moderate MP Peter MacKay of Nova Scotia seemed to pass the baton to Stronach. She has, he said, "proven herself in the boardroom, she's proven herself in the business world."

But Stronach has done nothing of the kind.

This isn't Canadian Idol.

It's a bid to run a G-7 country. Not for nothing did Harper launch his campaign this week promising a "Bloody Sunday." The polished Stronach image would not long survive the no-holds-barred scrutiny of electoral politics.

I'll try to be kind here. Stronach's opponents won't be.

Scan the Stronach résumé and count the ways she's vulnerable.

She was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. She's a college dropout. She's not fluent in French.

Stronach's flirtation with Olympics reform and a couture house in Toronto are the hallmarks of a dilettante. She has never fought to replace a level rail crossing with an overpass, has never launched a think tank, a food bank or an arts group. Nada.

Leading as scripted a life as Prince William, Stronach's paucity of major speeches and interviews has made her scarcely a spokeswoman for Magna, much less Canada.

Stronach is a figurehead CEO at a company where she was previously occupied, for the most part, with "non-core" assignments in personnel and philanthropy.

Having "joined Magna at birth," as she once said, and taken orders from company founder Frank Stronach her entire career, it's fair to ask if Belinda Stronach will be her father's puppet in Ottawa, as well.

What prompts Stronach to join the race?

"Citizens are encouraging me to run," she said this week. "Perhaps I could bring a fresh approach, a fresh perspective."

That will have to be fleshed out a bit, likely at the urging of political sherpa John Laschinger, recently of the David Miller campaign.

Between now and the leadership vote in March, Stronach will have to endure a crash course in Canada-U.S. relations, health-care reform, defence spending, gun control, same-sex unions, mad cow disease, the need to crack down on joint ventures like the pot plantation just discovered in Barrie, and the merits of the corporate welfare that brings Conan O'Brien to Toronto.

Unavoidably, there will be a backlash from Conservative delegates in the West, which coincidentally is bereft of Magna auto plants and racetracks operated by Magna Entertainment Corp. Squaring the Stronachs' gambling interests with the family values obsession of erstwhile Reformers will be an interesting exercise.

Harper already gave a hint this week of the little-rich-girl taunts in the offing. He'll find a heaven-sent zinger after perusing Anne Kingston's 2002 magazine profile of the neophyte Magna CEO, which mentions the Andy Warhol silkscreen of Chairman Mao adorning one of Stronach's former offices.

Jack Layton is holding his fire, but wishing ardently for an official opposition leader named Stronach.

For the NDP, it's a question of where to start with Stronach, after achieving such populist success from its attacks on Paul Martin's tax-dodging freighters.

Let's see: Magna's own helpings of corporate welfare? Stronach's $9.1-million CEO sinecure? Her father's 19th-century take on corporate governance?

With the ghosts of Joe Clark, Kim Campbell, Stockwell Day and other once-fresh faces haunting the campaign, Stronach will struggle at every church-basement appearance to justify the effrontery of her claim on delegates' support.

It will end badly. And Stronach will not have helped herself, the Conservatives, or the image of women in politics.

The arena needs more brawlers like Sheila Copps, consensus-builders like Audrey McLaughlin, and astute administrators like Barbara McDougall. But until we develop an affirmative-action program, Leave No Heiress Behind, it's hard to make a case for Stronach.

By contrast, tycoons are welcome participants in the non-electoral aspects of the political process.

Every New Brunswick premier of the past half-century, along with more than a few federal Liberal MPs in recent years, has collaborated with the Irving clan. And notables as varied as Pierre Trudeau and Barbara Hall have closeted themselves with members of the rival McCain family.

Paul Desmarais' Power Corp., Peter Munk's mining and real estate companies, and Jim Pattison's Vancouver conglomerate have nurtured budding politicians and taken them in from the cold after defeat or retirement.

As a non-partisan do-gooder, there's nothing to stop Stronach now from leveraging the Magna payroll in aid of her passions. The boards of Magna and associated companies boast more political diversity, clout and expertise than the average cabinet.

Those currently and formerly on the payroll include Tory powerbrokers Brian Mulroney, William Davis and Mike Harris, prominent Liberals like Brian Tobin, David Peterson, Doug Young, Ed Lumley and Dennis Mills, and former Ontario NDP premier Bob Rae.

Committing herself to projects rather than partisan politics, Stronach could model herself after Bill Gates' life-saving missions in AIDS- and malaria-stricken Africa, taking up once again the developing-world humanitarian causes she adopted while married to former Olympian Johann Olav Koss.

Those activities would be an extension of projects already within Stronach's ambit.

At her father's instigation, Magna has for years sponsored ambitious scholarship programs, endowed university departments, funded community action groups, and sponsored the popular "If I Were Prime Minister" student essay contests.

As a private citizen, Stronach is free to express her views to a parade of supplicants, a privilege denied to MPs hamstrung by the discipline of partisan solidarity.

The groundswell of support for Stronach's leadership bid is so subtle it has not announced itself much beyond the utterances of Magna retainers like MacKay, recipient of $100,000 in Magna funds for his Tory leadership bid, and Harris, a $75,000 Magna director.

But if she put her mind to building a substantial inventory of good works, the time might yet come when far more citizens are encouraging Stronach to seek the mantle of political leadership than is now the case.