Calling On The Ghosts

When Justin Trudeau came to power six years ago, he vowed that his party would not be the same old Liberal Party. Susan Delacourt writes:

Once upon a time, Trudeau made great efforts to cut his Liberal party’s ties to its past, even the history of his own father’s years in power. He abruptly disowned the senators appointed under past Liberal leaders as one of his first acts at the party helm. He vowed that a new, Trudeau-led party would close the book on past Liberal dramas.

But, at this week's virtual convention, he resurrected the ghosts of past Liberal prime ministers:

Anyone who has followed Trudeau throughout his path to the top of the party, there was no missing how Saturday’s speech was a change in tone toward ghosts of Liberal past, or even his own past.

He was introduced on the virtual stage by Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who entertained the audience with anecdotes of babysitting Trudeau and his brothers, and the deep ties between his parents and two generations of prime ministers.

Trudeau began his speech with a gracious shout-out too to Turner, the “true Grit” who died last year. When he spoke of what further challenges awaited the Liberal party of 2021, during and after this pandemic, he said repeatedly: “There’s still work to do.”

It was an unmistakable reference to Jean Chretien's victory speech in 1993. As Trudeau asked his supporters to reach out to those who didn't vote for the Liberals last time, he also picked out his targets:

Trudeau doesn’t have as many neighbourly thoughts about Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, calling him and his party out for being “disconnected” from the world in Saturday’s speech. The Bloc Québécois also took a few hits from Trudeau, but not the New Democrats, notably, who are helping the Liberals stay in power.

Will the strategy work? We'll get the answer in the next election.

Image: The Globe And Mail

Underwhelmed

The Liberal convention in Halifax left Michael Harris underwhelmed. That word also describes Harris evaluation of Justin Trudeau. He does give Trudeau credit for accomplishing a few important things:

There were definitely some things to boast about. Probably the most difficult piece of legislation passed by the government was its death with dignity provisions. Trudeau and the Liberals navigated this emotional minefield with grace and courage.

The Liberals have also clearly improved the Canada Pension Plan and the Child Tax Credit to the benefit of a lot of Canadians. And Justin did vanquish Stephen Harper, as millions of Canadians who cast a strategic vote for him, had hoped he would. All real accomplishments calling for a deep bow.

Justin admitted at the convention that he and his party weren't perfect. That admission set Harris off on a tirade:

Not being perfect doesn’t quite explain the sophomoric self-indulgence of holidaying on the private island of the billionaire Aga Khan while posing as the champion of the middle class.

Not being perfect is a long way from being perfidious. Where is the personally promised electoral reform offered during the 2015 election? Gone, but not forgotten.

But it's Trudeau's broken promises on the environment which particularly irk Harris:

Trudeau broke his promise that Harper-era environmental assessments for energy projects would be replaced by valid, scientific approvals, or there would be no federal permits.

Instead, he issued permits for B.C.’s ruinous Site C dam, which has just been plagued by another landslide, and the ill-starred Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

The prime minister has openly contradicted his passionate commitment to fighting the “politics of fear and division” by fomenting those very things over Kinder Morgan’s dubious pipeline expansion through British Columbia.

He has done that by teaming up with Alberta and the national business lobby to bludgeon B.C. into dropping its environmentally justified opposition to the transportation of noxious substances (diluted bitumen) across its land and waterways.

Perhaps it is that fate of all politicians not to live up to their hype. At the moment, the opposition parties are weak. But should they find their feet, Justin may have a hard time explaining the gap between promise and performance.

Image: The Chronicle Herald

The Myth Of The Reluctant Politician

We all yearn for a modern day Cincinatus, who -- so the story goes -- left his quiet life on the farm to serve Rome. In truth, Cincinatus was a Roman aristocrat who, because of political reverses, had been exiled there until circumstances allowed him to return.

Lawrence Martin argues that political parties are at their best in the hands of career politicians, be they John A. Macdonald, Wilfred Laurier, Mackenzie King or Stephen Harper. It is for that reason, he writes in this morning's Globe and Mail, that the Liberal Party is in good hands:

What Liberals are encouraged about is not new policy but the fact that the party is now in the hands of a seasoned political pro, one who has demonstrated a surefootedness that has been absent under the three previous leaders.

There are those who will strenuously disagree with Martin. Many of them are card carrying Liberals. But, for the present, it's hard to argue with Martin's assertion that:

For Liberals, the experience and professionalism Mr. Rae brings are what is needed at this time. With an election four years away, policy can wait. The one big issue he emphasized in his closing convention speech was income inequality. He sees this as a good prong with which to attack the Conservatives’ economic record.

The Conservatives assume that income inequality is a natural state of affairs.They do not see that it is their Achilles Heel. If Mr. Rae's political acumen can clear the way for a clear shot at such an obvious political weakness, the Liberals have a future.

Several commentators have opined that this weekend was a blast from the past. We shall see. Martin writes that:

The message from Bob Rae was that the Grits are and will remain the non-ideological party, the party of the pragmatic centre where reason allegedly triumphs over gut prejudices of the left or right.

If the new prime directive in Canadian politics is that gut prejudice trumps reason, then we are, indeed, in deep trouble. Those who operate on that principle should be exiled to their farms.

A Long Way To Go

After the last election, Peter C. Newman wrote an obituary for the Liberal Party. Some of us thought it was premature -- if only because a week is a long time in politics. The coming Liberal convention will allow us to have a peek inside what Stephen Clarkson once called "The Big Red Machine" to determine how much life is still in the party.

Robert Silver writes in The Globe and Mail that those who expect the old party to rise like Lazarus after the convention will be disappointed. It's not that there aren't important changes needed to the Liberal constitution. And the proposal to abandon the monarchy is bound to generate some heat. But, Silver writes,

We still need to develop a new, coherent policy proposal for Canadians that is very different from the one we have put forward in the past. We still need to decide what our new voter coalition looks like. We still need a new leader who’s economically literate, has a clear plan for the party and the country and can dedicate 15 years to the job. In other words, while small progress has been made since May, most of the really tough decisions and trade offs remain. None of that was ever going to happen at this biennial. 

The one thing that Liberals have in their favour is time. Unfortunately, Stephen Harper can -- and will -- do a lot of damage during that time. But for the first time in a long time, the Liberals do not have to prepare for an election. If they are wise, they will use their convention to lay out an action plan which will accomplish what Silver says needs to be done. There is still a long ways to go.

Starting at the Bottom

The Liberals have left Vancouver, with instructions from their leader to sell the party to the country. In the words of Jean Chretien -- almost twenty years ago -- they "have a lot of work to do." The most important work they have before them is to review and rebuild their policy platform.

For the last thirty years, the conventional way of doing that has been for a leader to gather a brain trust around him or herself, and -- after solving the problems of the world (as they perceive them) -- to issue marching orders to the rank and file. In Canada, this has resulted in the concentration of power in the Prime Minister's Office, where a handful of unelected bureaucrats dictate policy.

The result, as Toronto Star columnist James Travers has noted on several occasions, has been that, "Prime Ministers now rule between elections with the near absolute authority of monarchs." Our salvation does not rest in the hands of a benevolent dictator. For, we face more than a financial crisis. At the heart of the economic meltdown is a crisis of democracy.

Power and wealth are inextricably linked. And, as wealth has increasingly been concentrated at the top of the social pyramid, so has power. That was crystal clear when Detroit's auto executives flew to Washington in corporate jets to beg for public assistance; it was clear as bonuses were handed out to AIG executives; it is clear in the present torture debate in the United States. The powers that be want to avoid prosecutions, because they will inevitably lead back to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney.

Until very recently every policy announcement in Canada was made by the prime minister, while members of his cabinet nodded approvingly in the background. It is only as the economy has gotten worse that Mr. Harper has allowed his ministers to tout government largesse. Power enjoys the spotlight, until the refuse of bad policy decisions -- the decisions made by that small, self assured phalanx of "smart" folks -- hits the fan.

In truth, the policies were bad because they were made by a small group of technocrats. Democracy -- true democracy -- is a self cleansing and self correcting mechanism. That is why any true democracy has a set of checks and balances -- opposition parties, government committees, and regular communication channels between the people and their representatives -- to test and reformulate policy before it is given the force of law. The problem is that these processes take time; and they are messy -- some would say inefficient -- two phenomena which are supposedly roadblocks to true happiness.

There was talk at the end of the Liberal convention of an imminent election. That would be a mistake. What the Liberals need now is time to formulate policy -- not by turning to a small band of experts, but by heading down the pyramid and consulting ordinary Canadians. In the process, they can advocate for changes in Employment Insurance -- for those changes are sorely needed. But, until they have a plan to deal with the world as it is, they are not ready to return to power.

Such a plan needs to move wealth -- and power -- down the pyramid to those at the bottom. That will necessitate a whole series of carefully thought out policy changes.

Mr. Ignatieff likes to refer to himself as "a Roosevelt Liberal." If he is who he says he is, his policies will move wealth and power into the hands of ordinary folks. Like Roosevelt, he may draw the ire of his own social class. But things will not change unless -- and until -- that happens.

The Liberals made a step in that direction this weekend when they moved to a one person one vote system, which gives every member of the party a say in choosing their leader. It was a good beginning. But, as Mr. Chretien said, there is still "a lot of work to do."