The Liberals should take a stand but not stand up
The Liberals should take a stand but not actually stand up. That's the advice being given to Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion by advisor Bryon Wilfert. It's good advice too if you're a Liberal. It is consistent with the way Liberals think, and is in line with Liberal goals.
Dion confidante and Liberal MP Bryon Wilfert told QP on Sunday that he will advise Dion against triggering an election when the throne speech is delivered, citing a lack of party preparation and no clear defining election issues to rally behind.
"We're never afraid of fight, but I think when you go into a fight you should pick the timing," Wilfert said.
I find that comment about picking fights interesting. As an opposition party, the Liberals ought to consider that tradition would have the decision to call an election a perogative of the prime minister.
In other words, Stephen Harper would normally pick the timing of the fight.
But Stephen Harper doesn't. Perceiving the potential for abuse, and the actual times the Liberals in the past have called elections in order to take advantage of Conservative weakness, the Conservative government passed into law an act that sets fixed times for elections.
As far as Stephen Harper is concerned, it is not the role of government to "pick fights", but to govern.
Of course, in a minority situation like the one Canada has had since the 2006 election, the opposition parties have the chance to take down the government in a non-confidence vote. With the Throne Speech coming up, such an opportunity is coming. The NDP and the Bloc Quebecois have already made a list of demands of the Throne Speech they know full well Stephen Harper's government can't or won't agree to. Arguably, Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe are acting on principle, though it is up to them to decide just how much of their non-Conservative platforms they will insist are issues of principle.
But for a Liberal like Wilfert, principle is vastly more pliable. He wants the Liberal Party to take a stand, but then not actually stand up. His plan is for the Liberals to denounce the Throne Speech, and then abstain from voting in order to avoid a confidence vote going against the Conservatives and triggering an election. Why would such a plan make sense to the Liberals? Two reasons, really:
- Liberals have never really believed in anything. The party has always taken platform planks from the left and from the right, calling it "moderation". That winning formula was based on having only one core belief, and that is that they believed they were owed power by Canadians who could only benefit from Liberal Party wisdom (borrowed wisdom, you might say). So while Wilfert's plan might cause MPs from other parties who are worried about what an abstention would say about their principles a least a moment's pause, Liberal MPs would have no fundamental opposition to the scheme.
- Liberals are the political equivalent of mafia organization. Jason Cherniak wishes Stephane Dion was more like Michael Corleone, and in that Cherniak meant that Dion needed to ruthless with those who threatened Dion's plan to achieve power. By definition, a criminal enterprise has no principles other than the acquisition of power and wealth for themselves, and to use that power and that money to co-opt others who would be useful in helping to maintain power and to acquire more money. Getting into a fight over anything other than the principle of power and money, and you are doing the
familyparty a disservice.
The Liberals had become accustomed with accepting huge donations from Corporate Canada as tribute. Regular Canadians weren't asked for money, however. Thanks to the Sponsorship Program, the Liberals use the tax system as the tool to take money from us for their own personal use.
Things are different now.
Under the new donation rules, Corporate Canada doesn't provide money anymore. Joe Volpe's attempt to get money from pharmaceutical giant Apotex was a public relations disaster as the children of the corporate executives were used as conduits for "personal" donations. After that debacle, Corporate Canada has been playing it straight.
And as for stealing money, the Liberals will have to wait until they get back into power. For now, they are reduced to laughable scenes of MPs Mark Holland and Marlene Jennings stealing office files from the Conservatives. Maybe the Liberals are stealing office supplies and selling them on eBay to raise cash, but that's about the worst they could do right now.
So no power and no money.
Without those two things, the Liberals are an empty shell. Environmentalism? Stephane Dion did nothing about meeting Kyoto targets when he was in power. Apparently it was difficult to set priorities. Of course it's difficult. Power? Check. Money? Check. Other stuff? Whatever.
How do you set priorities for a set of issues that you simply don't care about?
And that the problem facing the Liberals today. Wilfert's comment about picking a fight is dead on right. The Liberals ought not to be picking a fight about the environment or Afghanistan or high individual taxes or health care or education or offshore oil or the Arctic or aboriginal rights or women's issues or any of hundreds of issues that simply don't matter to them.
The only things that matter to Liberals are power and money. The Liberals will pick a fight if it means getting more power or getting more money.
Would an election now put the Liberals in power? All the indicators say the Liberals would lose an election, and would even be worse off.
Would an election now put money into Liberal Party coffers? Unless the Liberals win, the opposite would happen. Add to that the expense of another leadership campaign.
Besides Wilfert, other Liberals are making the same calculation and coming to the same conclusion:
Members of the national Liberal caucus are highly unlikely to vote en masse against the upcoming Speech From the Throne, say some top Liberals, adding that Liberal Party Leader Stephane Dion's latest public pronouncement of possibly voting against the government is an attempt to otherwise demonstrate that the nervous and infighting Liberals are not afraid to fight an election.
The Liberal leadership needs "quite a bit of latitude in order to find a way to support without appearing to be too cowardly to actually challenge Harper in an election, or, Dion being perceived as weak.... The [OLO] has to lay the groundwork for that now because if he waits until the last minute then the tale is told," said one top Liberal, who requested anonymity in exchange for candour.
The Grit said Liberal MPs "are not interested in fighting a battle that personally or individually they might lose to come back to the same situation because even their own polls tell them, it's a repeat performance," and Liberal MPs "still don't think Harper will get a majority but if he wins an extra seat that happens to be yours, it doesn't help you very much."
Who cares if an election results in pro-Kyoto bill C-30 getting put back into the legislative agenda? The Kelowna Accords? Please, get serious.
It's just about the power and the money, both for individual MPs and for the party as a whole.
As a Liberal, you just have to get your priorities straight. Wilfert understands that. Heck, even Stephane Dion understood that once you had money and you had power, there were no other priorities worth worrying about, which is why nothing got done on Kyoto when he was environment minister, and why nothing will ever get done on it should he ever become prime minister. Wilfert and other people are asking Stephane Dion to remember that is really isn't all that hard to set Liberal priorites. Priority #1: Power. Priority #2: Money. Fighting the good fight is not the goal. Winning power is the goal. Getting rich is the goal. Don't pick a fight unless it looks like you'll add to your power and put money in the pockets of Liberals and their supporters.
Now we have to see if Stephane Dion is listening.
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Comments
Dion obviously cannot provide the means to regain power and the subsequent money. People like Wilfert and Garth who have hitched their political wagons to Dion's star, are going to go down the crapper with him very soon. Ignatieff, who is not yet affected by power and money, wants to cleanse and rebuild (read purge) the Liberal party in his hallowed Harvard image and make Canada as great as himself.
Once Dion has bitten the dust, we should see the Liberal party collapsing and from the ashes a new beast may emerge, led by another Liberal nesfaratu.
Posted by: Observer at October 1, 2007 10:10 AM
If you are bankrupt financially, politically, and morally, you better not be bankrupt of ideas as well. This is the Liberals main problem. Their only policy is that "Canada is #1". After almost 2 years of the Conservative Party being in power, that's not going to get the Liberals any votes now.
Posted by: PlaidShirt at October 1, 2007 10:24 AM
Liberal values are Canadian values...
Liberal motto: "Attain power at all cost, retain power at all cost"
Speaking to Ontario Liberal staffers in a secret pre-election strategy session this week, Gordon Ashworth (Liberal National Campaign Director)said: "It's about winning. That's all it's about." (Toronto Star, June 29, 2007)
Mr. Ashworth seems to be echoing sentiments that Dion himself shares, as Dion suggested that his goal was to get back into power “as soon as possible”: “Liberals, we need to go back to power as soon as possible.”- Stephane Dion, (Liberal leadership forum, Toronto, October 15, 2006)
Posted by: Davide at October 1, 2007 10:57 AM
Heres Warren Kinsella weighing in on what it means to be a Liberal from his blog on June 21, 2006. Ties right in with Steves analysis.
Conservatives' ideology is their ideology: tax cuts, law and order, and so on. That kind of stuff.
The Liberal ideology is, to be blunt, winning. Grits like to win, and they've had a lot of practice at winning. They're good at it. Right now, they're miserable, sure, because they LOST. But there's no better motivator for a Liberal than a loss. It gets them to where they most like to be: with their foot on a Conservative or New Democrat windpipe, watching them gasp for air until Election Day. That's when Liberals are happiest. It makes them smile.
Posted by: ward at October 1, 2007 11:28 AM
That's Byron Wilfert's advice as a close advisor of Dion but what do other Liberals like the Quebec Liberals say? All those with ambitions to change the leadership for their candidate may be pushing for an election. Others may have leadership ambitions of their own. Garth wants to go to war.
The Liberal party is definitely on the ropes right now but a change of leadership to say Brian Tobin, or John Manley and the Party could rise again like the phoenix. I don't think we should underestimate them.
Posted by: muttsrus at October 1, 2007 11:32 AM
According to Dion and others like him, we are all in peril due to global warming. They say how important it is to act now, for the future of all humanity. Considering the importance of that belief, is that not a really good reason to force an election? The future of all mankind is at stake afterall.
Posted by: Barbara at October 1, 2007 12:31 PM
Call me a wuss, but I don't like to see anyone utterly demoralized, including the Liberals. Yes, since Trudeau they've done much to hurt Canada, both domestically as well as internationally. We're all familiar with them so I won't list them. Now they're receiving their comeuppance and good on them.
But something Conrad Black said in an interview on the sale of his National Post to CanWest and the Aspers, a well-connected Liberal family, has stuck in my craw to this day. The Aspers he said, are St.Laurent-type Liberals, unlike the current crop at the time of the sale. Proud and entrepreneurial in spirit, Black didn't fear that they would run the Post into the ground. And they haven't. Not by a stretch. Not knowing my St.Laurent Liberals from my Chretien Liberals, I read up on LSL. By and large, I can see why Conrad Black placed his confidence in the Aspers.
Until Trudeau and his ilk took the Liberal party and turned it into their own kleptocracy with its misguided policies, the LPC was a proud brand with a great history. Canada needs an honest Left. Not an NDP Left that's 70 years out of touch with reality, or a BLOC Left that's, well, who knows what. But a Left that espouses real solutions and not illusory policies like Kyoto, National Daycare, or a 60,000 member Armed Force for a country as large as ours
Until someone like LSL comes along to restore the LPC to its rightful place in Canadian politics, I fear that they'll be stuck navel gazing for many years. So Steve, I have to go on the record and add that it's only been Liberals in the last 40 years, and not Liberals in the sense of all of whom have gone before, that have really tested the countrie's fibre.
Posted by: Phil in Ottawa at October 1, 2007 12:54 PM
Money and power. The two things that make being a Liberal one of the easiest things in the world to be.
Posted by: Lycan Stark at October 1, 2007 01:01 PM
"The Liberals should take a stand but not actually stand up."
I think that they're going to have to stand up. Ever try to run away from something while sitting down?
Posted by: Paul MacPhail at October 1, 2007 01:06 PM
So what was the grand principle behind this?
[edit] March 9, 2005
The House of Commons passes the 2005 Canadian budget by a vote of 132-73. The Conservatives abstain from the vote to ensure that the Liberal government does not fall on the confidence vote.
Posted by: Brendan Kane at October 1, 2007 01:30 PM
You'd never know that only days ago, Steve Janke thought Liberals would never follow Dion's lead on this. Now pretends to wonder whether Dion will follow the caucus' lead. What stupidity!
Posted by: Jason Cherniak at October 1, 2007 08:25 PM
yip, yip, yip.
Poor Jason, why so glum?
Is it that 'eternal looser' complex setting in, or more likely your usual inability to formulate a rebutle above a fourth graders?
You must be one crappy lawyer.
Posted by: missing link at October 2, 2007 12:43 AM
Right Wing, Bush, Hidden Agenda. NOt working any more Lieberals? AH. MAybe you should pull out Honest Jean. I think he is to busy making millions on Chinese business deals. What a bunch of F***ing Losers.
Posted by: rod at October 2, 2007 01:20 AM
Well Cherniak, its no stretch to wonder if Dion is going to flip flop on an issue - again.
Posted by: Kai Wolf at October 2, 2007 07:40 AM
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