Saving Liberals from themselves

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Saving Liberals from themselves

By Werner Patels | September 29, 2007

So many things in life are in fashion one day, only to be forgotten the next. In politics, this is probably even more accurate than in many other spheres of life. Voters are not exactly loyal creatures and tend to go with any party that promises to give them the most, either in terms of tax cuts or by way of even more government largesse.

The Liberal Party of Canada is a perfect and current example of this. Once known as the Red Machine, the Liberal Party is now known under its more appropriate moniker The Little Red Machine That Once Could But Not Anymore.

Liberals across the country are scratching their heads trying to figure out where they may have gone wrong. With so much soul-searching and navel-gazing going on, it was only a matter of time before a consensus was formed as to a suitable scapegoat: Stéphane Dion, the current leader of the party.

Recently, the party lost three crucial by-elections in Québec, the home province of Dion. Severely beaten by the New Democratic Party, Conservatives and even the separatists (Bloc Québécois), the Liberals have been reduced to single digits in popularity.

Since then, the Canadian public has been treated to the internal finger-pointing among Liberals and stories of sabotage and intrigue — Michael Ignatieff, who had lost to Dion in the leadership race last December, was quickly named as the master saboteur responsible for the Liberals’ losses suffered in Québec.

This, mind, is nothing new: reliable reports about attempts by Ignatieff and/or his team to undermine Dion’s leadership have been rolling in since early January of this year. Why anyone, particularly Dion, would be surprised by these goings-on now is simply unfathomable.

Making matters even worse, some high-profile potential candidates for the Liberals in Québec have announced that they are no longer interested, such as former astronaut Marc Garneau. All of them agree that Dion has not provided the necessary leadership and has failed to connect with his own Québécois compatriots — a fatal and colossal mistake at a time when the party is still busy rebuilding its reputation after one of the biggest scandals in Canadian political history (Adscam).

But Dion has not only failed in his home province, but all across the country. Just the other day he demonstrated yet again that he’s not listening to what Canadians really want. Instead, he goes off in the opposite direction. Case in point: Dion, it was reported, would support a stronger federal government and less autonomy for the provinces. This flies in the face of what a majority of provinces want today.

Canadians from coast to coast to coast have been quite unhappy with their federal government in Ottawa, and as a result, there have been growing separatist/autonomous sentiments not only in Québec, but also in Newfoundland and Labrador, Saskatchewan and, of course, Alberta.

Prime minister Stephen Harper has said that he will work towards achieving more autonomy for the provinces (a strategy that also enjoys strong support in Québec and led to the almost-win of the Action Démocratique du Québec under the leadership of Mario Dumont in the provincial election this spring).

Advocating a stronger role for the federal government now, as Dion has done, is not only foolhardy but outright foolish.

As a result, Liberals are looking for a new leader, only held back in their endeavour by the timing of a federal election that could come about much sooner than they would like. But leadership is not their main problem — it is their whole “Liberal brand” that is in trouble.

Liberalism in the classical sense is what Canadian voters would like to see — as defined, for example, by Webster’s Dictionary: a political or social philosophy advocating the freedom of the individual, parliamentary systems of government, nonviolent modification of political, social, or economic institutions to assure unrestricted development in all spheres of human endeavor, and governmental guarantees of individual rights and civil liberties.

Liberalism as practised by the Liberal Party, however, is sliding further and further into extreme left-wing territory (Dion is an expert in all things Marxist — as well as closet Marxist, as many suspect). As a matter of fact, on most issues today, the social-democratic NDP is to the right of the Dion Liberals.

Canadians have no truck with extreme political ideas, whether they come from the left or right. By moving his party ever-further to the left, Dion has alienated a large number of voters, including a considerable number of Liberals.

A Liberal Party that was truly liberal in the traditional sense would therefore have a strong appeal — hence, we see attempts to draft such liberals for the next leadership contest (most notably, Frank McKenna) — and even get a lot of votes from conservatives.

For their next “Canadian Liberal Idol” race, the Liberals must look for candidates of McKenna’s calibre — John Manley is another one that comes to mind, for example — and ensure that their party makes the transition from Liberal to liberal.

Consequently, every candidate from the last leadership race must be disqualified, except for Bob Rae, who ably demonstrated, by sacrificing his own chances of winning the crown, that the interests of the country mattered to him more than some silly games of pandering to certain groups within the party. Rae let his patriotism show — an extremely rare quality among the current flock of Liberals.

But change they must if they are ever to become a real national party again – right now, they are shut out in at least two key provinces, Alberta and Québec. Once the Liberals have returned to the roots of true liberalism and elected a leader that is respected by all Canadians, they will have the tools to make this happen