Slim Chants

Remember the 407. S’all I got to say.

A Liberal-New Democrat coalition with confidence motion support from the Bloc, should they manage to survive, ought to give respective party elders pause for thought to the idea of joining forces in a more permanent fashion. After all, if they can work together then why not work together. The NDP will never form a government in Canada. Jack gave it his best in the latest campaign and didn’t overwhelm. Too, the Liberals can’t hope to secure anything but a weak minority and even that appears to be a lost cause. Here’s why I think they should unite.

The right has united. And they seem to have avoided serious cracks in the resulting mixture. Even together they only muster support from a third of those who bother to vote. But the Liberals and the NDP split the remainder of what is left after the Bloc takes their share of seats in Quebec.  So neither can raise enough support to successfully counter the Conservatives.

If the Liberals united with the NDP they could draw upon the vision of social-democrat dreamers in the New Democrats and temper that with the conservative economists in the Liberal fold. The Liberals after all, have historically been the best stewards of the Canadian economy. New Democrats have traditionally embraced the needs of citizens. We would not have our cherished universal health care without New Democrats.  Granted, there would likely be some right-leaning Liberals who would defect to the Conservatives, in the event of such a merger. But that would be countered by some pickup from the Bloc, and possibly the Green Party.

What would you call the new party? You can’t use the word Liberal. That brand is sufficiently tarnished. This is especially so in Quebec and Alberta. But Liberals outnumber New Democrats and besides, New New Democrats just sounds stupid. I’d like to suggest The Democratic Party of Canada as a name for the new party. There just so happens to be a new and very popular center-left president of our neighbour to the south and he hails from a Democratic party. And it would be very difficult for a Conservative to call Democratic Party members undemocratic.

What surprised me most in the reaction of Canadians to the recent turmoil in the House of Commons is the expressed dismay over Harper’s bullying and the support for a cooperative effort between the Liberals and NDP. Though that support was clearly qualified by a rejection of any “old guard” leadership of said coalition. Canadians want a new center-left government and presented with such an alternative, many who have chosen to abstain from voting would show up at the polls. Uniting the New Democrats and the Liberals under a new banner, with a new constitution and modern voting policies, one vote per member, I truly believe would be embraced by Canadians across the country.

Last night Canadians elected another Conservative minority government. Voting in record low numbers with a 58% turnout, it is fair to say Harper was re-elected through voter apathy. Although the Conservatives increased their seat count they will be considering whether or not the time has come to replace Harper, with his failure to deliver a majority after three attempts. The bigger question is what will happen to the Liberals. Having won only 76 seats, Dion is not expected to survive a leadership review. Indeed, the knives came out before the complete results had come in, before even the leaders concession speeches. Reporters began peppering Bob Rae with questions about his ambitions for the party leadership as he mounted the podium to thank his supporters.

Dion has yet to fall on his sword but expect that to happen in the next week or so, as he meets with other Liberals and finds the degree to which his support has evaporated. A Liberal leadership campaign and convention are a certainty. Dion is subject to a mandatory review regardless, within six months of the election, one he is certain to lose. Were he to wait for that review and force a subsequent convention, delays and expense, the party will suffer. Dion is intelligent and he is not an egotist. He will leave for the good of the cause.

So who to pick? Rae is ready. So too is Ignatieff. Both have been preparing for just such an event as took place last night. They have teams already in place to take up the cause for their respective campaigns. Gerard Kennedy will likely throw his hat in the ring. Recall, he was the king maker who made it possible for Dion’s leadership. This fact may come back to haunt him. Joe Volpe may want to give it another shot but he didn’t even keep his seat last night so he’s looking for a job today. Martha Hall Findlay and Caroline Bennet will probably be tempted to mount campaigns. I’m not sure Ken Dryden will be interested. These were the players last time around.

It is important to consider requirements. Key among these is the ability to win an election. To do that a Liberal leader is going to have to deliver Ontario votes. He or she will have to expand on the only good news for the Liberals last night, the federalist Quebec votes that went their way. So no sponsorship baggage would be a plus. A leader would have to be able to appeal to voters in all constituencies across Canada to elect a government which can claim to represent all Canadians. It would help if said leader could claim to have run a successful government previously. To have dealt with tough times and made a go of it. Above all, the next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada will have to be a good communicator.

I say draft McGuinty. He has no federal party baggage. He has a successful track record. He won historic back to back majorities for the Ontario Liberals. I think he can deliver Ontario. He has a record of reaching out to other provinces, collaborating with Quebec, even. He has all the right acoutrements, an attractive wife who teaches, photogenic family, and a large personal support network. He is fluent in french. He is an excellent communicator. And he has a powerful political machine. More than any of the aforementioned potential candidates I think Dalton McGuinty is the best hope for the Liberal Party of Canada.

The so-called opposition (now that’s an oxymoron) Liberals voiced their strong objections to the minority governing Harper Conservatives’ immigration bill (actually a part of the budget bill, though it has no place there), tabled for third reading in the House of Commons today. John McCallum said they would repeal it when they formed a government.

Liberal MP Maurizio Bevilacqua (Vaughan) told reporters, “We don’t support the direction in which the government is going and we will have ample time in an election campaign to in fact illustrate that the Liberal plan for this country is much better.” Dion said earlier in the day, “We want to go. We want to go. “I feel that more now than it was the case some months ago, and it’s good because indeed we need to replace this bad government.” There are several things wrong with this logic. The first and most obvious is that in order to have ample time in an election campaign, you have to have an election campaign. I need not remind these Liberals that they failed in great numbers to show up for the vote.

The Liberals have employed this tactic time and again saying that Canadians do not want an election. Bullshit! I want one. I thought perhaps they just don’t know. So I went to Karen Redman’s office and made my feelings known. Three times I went in there. I suspect a lot of other people did the same because the Globe & Mail reported that party whip Redman, along with Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff tried to convince Monsieur Dion to meet with them Sunday evening so they could convince him to bring down this aforementioned “bad government”. He elected instead to spend the weekend “at the cottage”.

The problem is, this was the Liberals last chance to bring down this government. Come fall Harper, if he is low enough in the polls to please the Liberal nervous nellies will likely prorogue parliament, depriving the Liberals of any opportunity to vote them out. In the meantime the planet cooks. The Harper minority, cash rich, continues to trash Dion in ads, and carries on tearing apart any semblance of social infrastructure in our cherished Canada.

Dion should have early on gone to the man that drafted him into this career and asked for advice. Like him or not, Jean Chretien had razor sharp political instinct. I’m sure he is shaking his head now. He would have told Dion not to be afraid to start an election campaign when you are down in the polls. Especially when you have such good issues to run on as the environment, foreign policy and the economy, stupid, the economy. Canadians may prefer a passive approach but we sure don’t back down from a fight. Dion, and all Liberals have lost a huge amount of respect for not standing up for the things they believe in and which Canadian hold dear. They have certainly lost mine.