The Liberal Party's Search For A New Brand

...at Dissent magazine.

Couple of excerpts and thoughts:

WHEN MICHAEL Ignatieff spoke at the Liberal Party convention in 2005, he was the country’s most buzzed-about politician since Pierre Trudeau. He was introduced as “the voice of our conscience” and seemed capable of uniting and broadening the ruling Liberal Party as well as expanding Canadian liberalism into a coherent philosophy instead of a laundry list of decades-old social programs.

I never thought that. While I consider Ignatieff a great thinker and scholar, I couldn't quite see how his past pondering on say, torture, could ever be fused with the Canadian "conscience." As to his potential to form a coherent philosophy, he certainly possesses the brain power to do it but he lacks the overall persona to drive through the hearts of Canadians. Moreover, he started echoing typical, tired liberal cliches about the environment, poverty and other social issues. His political meanderings were no better. Remember the farce of him leading MP's "to work" while Harper tried to "lock" them out.

Harper has proven to be a formidable politician, at times displaying a tactical ruthlessness foreign to most Canadian politicians. He has siphoned off support from Canadian centrists and liberals by co-opting programs created by the Liberals and the socialist New Democratic Party, and combining them with just enough elements of traditional conservatism to forge a distinct vision for his party.

Finally. Someone on the left with the balls to admit it.

Before he became the leader of the far-right Canadian Alliance Party and merged it with the center-right Progressive Conservative Party, Harper was among the most economically conservative politicians in Canadian history.

 Which is largely why I voted for him. There's nothing cooler than a penny-pinching politician with an eye on maintaining fiscal responsibility. If the Cons would elect a gal, then it would be sexy.

But even before he shrewdly merged the far right with the center right, Harper was a pragmatist. Although personally opposed to same-sex marriage, he knew that social conservatism would always be unpopular in Canada, and he warned the Reform Party (later renamed the Alliance Party) that they risked relegating themselves “more towards being a party of the religious right” if abortion and same-sex marriage became issues that they were not willing to compromise on.

As prime minister, Harper has extended this pragmatic conservatism. He has made no efforts to repeal same-sex marriage or abortion laws, and he has left universal health care intact. He passed a $40-billion stimulus plan earlier this year, leading Canada to post its first deficit in a decade, and he extended employment insurance benefits, a move that was part of a budget one pundit called “the end of conservatism in Canada.” He has apologized to Chinese Canadians for a head tax imposed on them at the turn of the twentieth century and sped up the immigration process for skilled workers. 

What? Harper a pragmatist? This guy is really impressing me. I agree with his decision to be pragmatic on social issues. Let freedom reign. However, I do feel he moved too much on his fiscal tough talk - I don't like that. I don't think anyone would dare attack universal health care, however, it would be nice if someone would have the courage to tackle the major problems it faces.

He did cut taxes. Some may scoff at the amounts but the child tax credit, for example, is $150 per child. I use the money for my child's RESP that invests strictly in bonds. That's $32 000 over 18 years. Do the math at an average of 5% per year for 18 years or so - you would have to calculate future value and I can't find my financial calculator.

The liberals didn't give me money. They took it in the form of the Sponsorship scandal.

About Stephane Dion's poor English:

While having problems with French has been a problem with Anglophone Canadians in the past, Francophone Liberals like Jean Chrétien and Pierre Trudeau have been fluent, even elegant English speakers.

I've seen a lot of descriptive wording and phrases used to describe Chretien but "elegant English" wasn't among them. For good reason.

Leadership aside, the Liberals also faced deep structural difficulties. In 2002, Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien introduced stringent public financing laws, capping corporate contributions at $1000 and individual donations at $5,000. As the longtime dominant party, the Liberal Party was heavily supported by corporations eager to curry influence with the government, and Chrétien’s laws, while admirably curtailing the role of big money in politics, drastically cut into the Liberal coffers.

Harper’s Conservative Party, on the other hand, has always been much more effective at developing grassroots financial donors. As a result, it has a much larger pool of cash on which to draw. In 2008, the Conservatives brought in more than $21 million (CAN) from over 112,000 contributors. The Liberals, meanwhile, took in less than $6 million from only about 30,000 contributors. The socialist New Democratic Party, a permanent third-place national party, took in nearly as much as the Liberals, underscoring the latter’s comparative disadvantage.

Under Canadian law, limits are placed on spending during election periods, which are called “writ periods”. It is meant to establish a rough equivalency in campaign spending by the parties. However, outside of the writ periods, no such limits are placed, and those parties fortunate to have a financial surplus can spend money as they wish. The Conservatives under Harper have taken great advantage of this loophole by spending huge amounts on advertisements that attack Liberal leaders before the elections. They have, as Kinsella put it, “been able to define the opposition before it has the chance to define itself.”

Not a Kinsella fan, but that was an apt description used by him. As I've written in the past, the conservatives are better at rallying the troops. They were right to want to put an end to taxpayer-sponsored subsidy political parties were getting. It was a way to reward their own inept behavior. The conservatives have no problem raising cash, so why should those who give to them have to pay through their taxes a subsidy to other parties who can't raise their own funds?

But if the Liberals are going to regain power in Canada, they will have to find a way to resolve the popular concerns over the balance between environmental interests and economic ones. The Conservatives are vulnerable on their stewardship of the environment, flouting an indifference to global warming eerily similar to that of the Bush administration. Liberals have talked much about their passion for protecting the environment and believe the jobs of the future are going to be green, as Ignatieff reports in a much-mocked ad filmed in a forest. But while Ignatieff called for a carbon tax, he also has conceded that the plan was a vote-loser.

Perhaps. If the narrative on the environment proves to be correct. And if the conservatives are smart, they'll beat them to it - without giving into the discredit global warming alarmists. 

All in all, a good read about the issues facing the Liberals and free from the usual hyper screed we're treated to when it comes to Harper.