"Within a stone's throw of it. "

We're getting somewhere.  LPC sent out a decent note to (I am assuming) actual members of the Party today, finally providing some information about what's going on.  They also released it to the public so one has to read some of the contents as not purely informational and in the vein of member relations, but public relations as well. 

For example, the following excerpt, particularly in this first direct-to-member communication does not seem entirely neutral as an explanation for this special process:

"However, so many members like yourself have called, written and emailed your Board members, asking that this Leadership Vote be delayed. According to your feedback, the overwhelming reason to delay the Leadership Vote is to allow for meetings throughout our ridings, regions and provinces in the upcoming months so we may together discuss and decide upon our future as a party and focus on serious policy and organizational rebuilding work before we turn our attention to our leadership choices.  Your Board has heard almost unanimously that this is best done free of a Leadership selection process."

For my part, I'd rather that we were already in the process of holding "meetings throughout our ridings, regions and provinces in the upcoming months so we may together discuss and decide upon our future as a party and focus on serious policy and organizational rebuilding work" instead of these delays and distractions. En tous cas...

Unfortunately missing from today's note are the actual amendments themselves (perhaps they are not entirely finalized?) and a call for riding level and other discussion of them in advance of the delegate selection meetings.  

To repeat what I have written elsewhere, I for one would like to know that a potential delegate understands fully the implications of an amendment passing or failing and their position before I vote to send them or others as delegates.  After all they will be expressing the will of more than themselves. (Some people do simply put their trust in delegates to "do what they think best" and that's AOK for them, but that shouldn't be the norm on which these things are predicated, in my view).

I'd rather they didn't seem so forced into it, but this communication is a step in the right direction.

It is past all controversy that what costs dearest is, and ought to be, most valued"

Let’s elect a steward as the Party’s next Leader. 

We’ve got a lot to do to rebuild and one of those things, an important one but not the only one is to pick a new Leader.  Let’s not once again over-inflate the critical nature of this choice by trying to get around process. We have too nasty a legacy of that as it is.  The precedents aren’t pretty.

For years, I’ve been arguing that the Liberal Party has placed too much emphasis on the personal characteristics of our Leaders and not enough on their values.  After all I’ve argued, when we choose our leaders at whatever level, we should be seeking those that best articulate our shared values, not those who make them up for us and then deliver them to us.   

For years the membership was ignored or bypassed while the views of donors and outside experts were sought first or exclusively.  Members were told to wait, anxious and drooling for the platform tablets to be delivered from the mount. Very few discussions were held on policy matters at the riding level, and in recent times, not even at the national level.  Conventions were rah-rah affairs, scripted and too expensive for average people with thoughts to share to actually participate.

Some of us suggested that we shouldn’t be discussing policy specifically, certainly by way of policy resolutions at Conventions anyway.  What we should be discussing are our values and belief structure in a modern context and providing a prioritized subset of those to the Party’s leadership to go away and craft a platform and programs with, and then come back for some sort of ratification.  

In other words, the Party should be providing a mandate to its leadership, not the other way around. These discussions, consultations and ratifications would be ongoing and regular, assisted greatly by today’s technologies and social media.  The Leader and the caucus would of course continue to provide leadership on most issues of the day, but they would benefit from the guidance provided by the party; by a more intimate relationship so to speak.  The same is most certainly true with respect to the important organizational and structural matters facing the Party.

This type of process would have stood us in much better shape if for example we had used it to discuss democratic notions such as coalitions and pre-election cooperation, together and consensually as a party. 

It could serve us decently now, if the Party executive, who are after all supposed to be accountable to us the membership - the people who “elected” them - deigned to ask us our thoughts and seek some guidance on the choice of an interim leader.  After all, the caucus only makes a recommendation.  The people decide.

I think that most Liberals agree on changing the relationship and taking more control, but are now saying that we should wait to have this discussion “amongst ourselves” before entering into a leadership race to determine who best could take this sort of direction from the Party.  Not so much wait to have the discussion I guess as to put the selection of a new permanent leader off while we do this work.  

There are no saviours after all.  That I agree with.  But aside from the fact that my reading of the party process doesn’t allow for this – and I would hope that we have learned that adherence to the process does matter; after all it is hard to argue about prorogations and contempt in Parliament and then turn around and dis your own party’s processes just because you disagree with them due to unanticipated circumstances – I don’t think the party will ultimately benefit from a lengthy interim leadership. Lengthy periods of interim leadership tend toward lengthy and divisive periods of pseudo leadership races, and interim Leaders, even though they have all of the powers of permanent leaders tend to focus more on caucus leadership and less on the organizational side.  Where I might concede on the process side of this discussion is if the full party was consulted in some sort of vote or guiding straw vote, as alluded to above.

Tom Axworthy has argued quite eloquently for some of the things the party needs to do and the length of time that may be required to do it, and concluded that a side benefit of waiting until a year before the election to choose our new leader, will be less time for their “demonization”.  Many, many others are echoing those thoughts, primarily on the rebuilding front.  I tend to think that we can walk and chew gum at the same time, and that we will be better off doing this work alongside any candidates, having deliberative discussions with them instead of making them debate themselves seeking divergence and division as the determinant of intelligence or leadership ability.  They’re Liberals too.  Presumably they share our values, and what we should be seeking from the “race”, is as I say a determination of who best articulates them. Then we work together on a jointly developed plan in a networked organization. 

Also, are we so sure that the other parties will be able to demonize every single person capable of leading the party that we need to shyly bring them in at the "end"? Maybe the problem has been as Tom says that we have elected those leaders with the expectation or their own stated goal of becoming Prime Minister as the sole raison d’être of their leadership. If the one we elect has pledged to rebuild the party in a collaborative way, why would they be pressured to leave if they didn't win? Pearson didn't leave after one loss or even two.  He was a steward.

The biggest thing the party needs to do is to define its sense of purpose.  We need to do this together.

---

When the head aches, all the members partake of the pain

Why Michael Ignatieff will have to give up the leadership of the Liberal Party.

Last night Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff seemed to know what needs to be done in the Party's best interests when he said: "I will play any part that the party wishes me to play as we go forward to rebuild, to renew, to reform the vital centre of Canadian politics. I will serve as long as the party wants to make me serve or asks me to serve and not a day longer."

While some Liberals debate just how long and under what circumstances that continuing service might be, the Leader is really boxed by the realities of process.  No doubt, more important is the question of moral authority, but over the years the Party has gradually moved to put in place some checks on the misguided reading of that authority.

The plain facts of it are that Mr. Ignatieff failed to win a seat and it will be four years before another one may open up.  He cannot lead the Party for long even as a medium term measure without a seat in the House of Commons and there is not one out of the 34 we've got that could or should be risked in a resignation-based by-election.  That would be blatantly contrary to the democratic will just expressed, in both the positive and negative senses.  In other words, there would be no moral authority to support either action.  Everyone likely agrees this is just not on.

So why couldn't he just wait a while to resign, say a year or so? This is where the process kicks in.

When the election was called the Party rescheduled its Biennial Convention originally scheduled for June to mid-December, on virtually the last date that the Constitution allows for the holding of said Convention. It has to be held within two calendar years of the last convention which was held in May of 2009, so December 2011 it is. 

The Constitution also says that at the first Convention following an election at which the Leader fails to become Prime Minister, an automatic review vote or "endorsement ballot" will be conducted.  All well and good one might say, he can hang in until that Convention and face the music there, perhaps bringing a plan for rebuilding the party to the party for discussion and ratification.  

Problem with that (and there are many more) is that the review vote is actually conducted well before the Convention - by all members at the delegate selection meetings held between about one and two months before the Convention itself, in other words in September and October.  Mr. Ignatieff will not win that vote and the Party should not be wasting its energies fighting a review battle or even simply going through the motions of conducting a review process at any rate when it needs to get on with rebuilding. 

Nonetheless, if he chose to option his right to that vote, and he loses it, a vacancy is created immediately. On the spot. A Leadership will have to be held by mid-June 2012 and an interim Leader chosen.  The ironic result of that? An ipso facto year-long Leadership battle in two stages.

The Liberal Party knows full well how harmful and  divisive lengthy (or endless) Leadership battles are.  That's one of the reasons Leadership votes must now be conducted within 6 months of a resignation or intention to resign.

The experience of the recent Leadership race that selected Christy Clarke as Leader of the BC Liberal Party (they have the same one-member-one vote process that their Federal cousins now have too) should be a positive lesson for Liberals.  Swift and surgical, with minimum bleeding.  In fact an amazing ability to bring in new blood.

The Party may be surprised at just how many Canadians are actually prepared to help rebuild the Party having participated in giving us the breathing room to do so.

So, the only logical route for Mr. Ignatieff and the Party to take is for him to announce his intention to resign when the Party chooses his successor.  The Party should then set the date for the Convention it must have this year for late October/ early November, and conduct its Leadership balloting over the same weekend, and the Party can give its new Leader a proper mandate.

“Spare your breath to cool your porridge.”

Way back in 1992 I participated in negotiations with the Broadcasting Arbitrator (who?) as the Liberal Party’s representative to statutory “negotiations” on the divvying up of broadcast minutes for a future election.  These meetings in the past had been completely perfunctory, but this time, there was a twist.  Well several actually.  We had a new arbitrator, number one. Number two, we had a(nother) new political party flexing its (national) muscles: Refooooorm!  And, number three, these were the first negotiations conducted since the multi-million-multi-year Lortie Commission on Electoral Reform (sic) and Party Financing had delivered a four volume report upon which the government had yet to act (and frankly never did).

Here’s what was interesting about these negotiations (aside from being scrummed for the very first time).  No one really knew this, or rather I should say few were cognizant of this, but at the time the Canada Elections Act, which barely recognized and contained no effective definition of a political party, nonetheless contained references to a formula upon which advertising minutes would be divided amongst the various parties. 
 Basically (I’m doing my best to simplify, so no one jump down my throat for the generalities) the Act recognized that broadcasting (television and radio) were the primary media upon which political parties could get out a message fairly universally to all citizens, but also that these were expensive mechanisms and so an element of fairness should be inserted into the electoral process to ensure that those who had the money couldn’t simply over-buy the airwaves (sound familiar?). 
In other words, to provide a bit of a level playing field.  Keep in mind that while we had quite a number of political parties back then (around 12 if memory serves me), there were only three (ok! I’m leaving out Creditistes) that had ever participated in crafting and amending the Act and its provisions and also which had ever formally participated in these negotiations. So they were really only interested in the playing field amongst themselves.

Soooo, the Act said that the arbitrator needed to meet with the parties to divvy up at total of 390 minutes (6.5 hours) of paid advertising time. “Free time” advertising would be allocated based on the “agreement” on paid time.  In place was a statutory formula for the divvying up of these minutes and if the parties couldn’t agree, the Arbitrator would decide. In keeping with the above-mentioned, the Arbitrator had never had to well, arbitrate; everyone (the big three) always agreed on the formula’s outcome. No Question Asked.

The formula, bless its little soul, used for the allocation of paid time was based largely on the application of factors that gave equal weight to the percentage of seats in the House of Commons and the percentage of the popular vote obtained by each of the registered parties in the previous general election, and half-weight to the number of candidates endorsed by each of the registered parties as a proportion of all candidates so endorsed. So, if that lost you – read it again – you will note it is based on previous performance – including, but not exclusive to the number of or even having a seat in the House of Commons. In short, it was was based on some principles.

Sooo, I, the little Opposition party person arrive at the usually sleepy meeting of party reps and who’s there, but The Media, yeah, THE MEDIA, and the REFORM Party – those upstarts – they joined our private little meeting, AND THEY CALLED THE MEDIA!!! After we all calmed down and the Arbitrator explained everything we got down to business.  But a lot of the business wasn’t what everyone expected.  We chatted a lot about public opinion and not a lot about democracy or equality of opportunity in the democratic process, but, I digress – or do I?

The Reform Party rep – actually a good man and a good political friend to this day, began by challenging, as had his party in court, the application of the provisions, which, without doing the math, one could see would diminish their relative weight, simply because of the paucity of seats they held in the House, and the number of seats they had run candidates in, even though they had performed relatively well on popular vote in the ’88 election.  At one point he mused that because his party was at 18% in public opinion polls; his party should be allocated 18% of the advertising minutes.  Being in opposition at the time and really, really badly in opposition to boot, I jokingly shot back that we, the Liberal Party, should then get 35% of the time because that’s where we stood at that very minute in the polls (even though we were little munchkins in terms of our relative weight in the house). 

The Tories (real Wheatbix Tories they were in those days too) really didn’t know what to make of all of this.  Their performance in the last election meant that they were entitled to well over 50% of the available prime time minutes, but everyone and I mean everyone (cause remember, my party had been in a majority situation before) knew that even though it was impossible without busting the expenditure limit several times over to purchase prime time advertising to a limit on each station in the country, you agreed to the allocation in order to hoard minutes so no one else could use them.

Soo, the little opposition person with nothing to lose and a democratic bent fomented from the Lortie hearings just ended, offered that piddling as they were, the Liberal Party would be prepared to “donate” some of its minutes to the emerging parties, because it would be good for the public debate, on the basis of the principles of the statutory formula (combination weight of % seat in the House, % of popular vote and proportion of candidates run).

The Arbitrator (with some edification by the courts admittedly) agreed that the allocation formula had a discriminatory effect which tended to favour the existing parties at the expense of new or emerging parties. He concluded that the statutory factors as applied to allocation “unduly fettered the ability of emerging parties to purchase enough time to make a meaningful case to the Canadian public”. So, two thirds of the time was allocated using the statutory factors and the remaining one third was allocated equally among all the registered parties. The result of this, as was put at the time a “hybrid” approach, was to significantly increase the time allotted to smaller parties, while continuing the predominant weight given to previous performance of “successful” parties. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a great Canadian compromise.

So fast forward to today’s debates about “the Debate”. It’s a debate that encompasses several similar parameters.  It discusses legitimacy for inclusion as witnessed or contemplated through previous performance and public expectations or increasingly importantly sentiment.  Some, but not all of these principles are being discussed. If you really think about they are challenging our tenets and precepts.  

We used to do that behind closed doors and without formal change. But when the public is involved it is often hidden too.  That’s called convention. But it is really about vested interest. In Canada, even though we’ve been given a lot of opportunity, it’s rarely called public intervention or public legislation.  For some reason, we prefer to let convention – for have no mistake, that is what Elizabeth May, when she speaks of opportunity, or Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff, when they yearn for one-on-ones are talking about.

For sure. Let’s have a discussion in this election about who should be included in a debate. But could we please have the bigger discussion about why? And what’s fair? And what’s in the public’s interest? And a better definition of a national party? And how we should codify it? And most important of all, on what bases?

Every election, we seem to discuss what is in the perceived interest of the various parties, because we think that is what ultimately is in our own interests.  And then we hear that so rarely are our elections about something. Or something real.  When might we have a debate – in an election - about how we want to be and how we should be represented? In an election that people are already calling a Senfeld Election – an election about nothing, why don’t we turn it into an election about something that counts?

"Why do you lead me a wild-goose chase?" Byelection syncronicity: Power to the people

Most of the posting and punditry analysis of the three federal by-elections held this past Monday has focused on the deep meaning or not of possible immediate and longer-term electoral trends that might be indicated by the different results. Discussions, not unexpectedly, centre on traditional by-election turnout levels, profile of the candidates, the rural/urban "divide" and some bits on the resonance of messages or perceived political party ideologies.

I see another set of patterns in these by-elections with implications for all of the political parties and while this may sound counter-intuitive given the poor turnout, these are related to a desire by the public - in the sense of the grassroots, the plebs, the masses - to be closer to the action. 

What are these common threads?

Local is where it's at. All three by-elections were called when their federal representatives chose to take a run at municipal politics. While I don't have the stats, this appears to be part of a trend in recent years of elected officials seeking positions at a "lower" level; a level closer to the people, viz. Joe Fontana, Dawn Black, Jim Watson.  Municipalities in Canada, be they large cities like Winnipeg, mid-sized and fast-growing ones like Vaughan or rural regional service centres like Dauphin, have the most direct impact on our quality of life, on our environment, on our welfare and on our economy.

It is interesting in light of Samara's latest study of the motivations of MPs, that some of our most seasoned chose to offer to serve where they believed they could have a greater impact.

Now, while the low turnout in the by-elections could be simply be a result of voter fatigue stemming from back-to-back elections in those municipalities, I'd posit that it could just as easily be as a result of voters giving more import to and therefore interest in who represents them at the local rather than the federal level.

Grassroots are not involved in candidate choices. Here by "grassroots" I mean both the political party partisan member and the civically-minded engaged citizen. 

In Vaughan, both of the leading candidates, Julian Fantino for the CPC and Tony Genco for the LPC were appointed and regardless the stated reasons there was deemed to be no need for a meeting of the membership.  In the case of the LPC, there hasn't been a meeting of the membership related to the choice of a candidate in over 20 years, the incumbent having been uncontested or "protected" in six general elections. Some have suggested that Mr. Genco (and this is no reflection on his calibre as a candidate whatsoever) was appointed because the Party was unable to convince several others, including former National Director Rocco Rossi to take the plunge.  Shame if that is so, but it also makes one wonder about the state of the riding association if their lack of ability to identify and convince - with much notice - good candidates with local roots to run.  I don't know the circumstances, I admit, but one has to wonder just how engaged the association is with its own citizens relative to its engagement with its MP or national party. Open nominations are great ways to engage the public.  LPC often seems to want to shut them out.

In Winnipeg North, the NDP chalks up their stunning loss of a flagship riding to the fact that their candidate Kevin Chief, while also of high calibre, was less known than the Liberal candidate and ultimate winner, Kevin Lamoureaux.  But they fail to mention, as widely rumoured that their own grassroots refused to participate or participated lamely having been shunned from selecting their own candidate themselves.  Kevin Chief was the choice of the outgoing MP and the party "elite".  Glad to know the NDP have one too.

And guess what? Not that it would or did make much of a difference in Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette (CPC could probably run a stick of wood and still win), Stephen Harper too chose to effectively appoint the candidate, Robert Sopuck, so angering the former MP, Inky Mark, a former Reform MP to boot, that he endorsed the Green Party candidate Kate Storey.

Used to be that local associations of political parties acted to some extent as brokerages for the institutional party with the population both in terms of political expression and representation. Having a say on policy matters and in the choice of candidates was a way to balance power between Party and Public.  What these by-elections illustrate to me is that the public already know where the real power lies.  It lies with the people.

In the immortal words of John Lennon:  right on!

"Many go out for wool, and come home shorn themselves".

I really don't get it.  I am usually the first in line to criticize my Party - and especially the Caucus purporting to decide/speak for the entire party all the time - for not consulting or at least finding some way to do a real values-oriented validation on the big policy directions of the day. (Not talking issues management here.)  I for one am getting pretty darned tired with the "You Propose, therefore I Oppose" modus of political debate in this country (well not just this country, but I digress).  Sounds silly, I know, but some issues are just too important for politics.  So one question for the LPC Caucus members and other Party members and pundits now vocally opposed to Leader Michael Ignatieff's position on assistance to Afghanistan but who (presumably) approved of the foreign policy program announced in June and fleshed out earlier this month:  If this were all happening for the first time today, what role is it exactly that you would propose Canada take on?  What role, given our historical outlook and historical strengths?
I'm not usually a betting gal, but I'd venture a wager on this one that the answer, from a military perspective would likely be along the lines of peacekeeping and training.  Particularly as we right now probably have the best, and freshest experience and expertise in the world to impart.
Where I will (must) agree, though is that the Canadian public is surely owed a public and open debate and discussion in the interests of public order and good government and in that vein, the Party is too. I guess what goes around, comes around.

I am warningly mindful though, as I often am, of Sir Edmund Burke's poignant commentary on representation: Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

"A little in one's own pocket is better than much in another man's purse."

It seems that when it comes to reports about political fundraising in Canada we see the same headlines and stories recycled quarter after quarter year after year - at least when it comes to the Liberal Party and at least since 2004. "Cash-strapped Liberals". "Liberals lag behind."   Virtually every such headlined story contains a line or two suggesting that it is simply mind boggling how the party has been unable to "adapt" in over 7 years to the "new regime" of limits on donations and sources of funds.  The usual excuses are trotted out.  We had a Leader who was "dumb as a bag of hammers" (not); we never got over losing access to the corporate teat and continue to look for ways around it; we're doing okay, the Tories are just better at it; we've had problems (in this day and age, sheesh!) developing or buying the proper database; those mean old Tories used those nasty 10 percenters.   The one that hits closest to home is that the Tories inherited a more grassroots-oriented system or rather culture from their Reform wing.  

I would tie to this Liberal Party cultural shibboleth the unfortunate structure of the organization itself.  The Liberal Party of Canada remains a federation of "Provincial and Territorial Associations".  Until 2006 the constitutionally defined members of the the LPC were these "PTA's".  Actual individual membership in the party was not held at the national level, there was no standardization with respect to dues, privileges, and the like, other than the most basic (not a member of another party, etc.) and the PTA's, having wrested "control" of the lists away from the riding associations, guarded their membership lists fiercely from the national party.  While successful in creating (on paper at any rate) a "National Register of Members" in 1992, the national organization was not to fundraise from these lists, if given, and the biggest budgetary consultations each year occurred around "revenue sharing agreements" between the various levels.

Even with the obvious impact of the 2004 and subsequent changes to the Canada Elections Act, and with the move in 2006 to a real national register of members, the party continues to constitutionally vest power and authority for operations to the PTA's (real power and authority however is vested with appointed officials and bodies in the party but that's for another post) and separate revenue sharing arrangements are negotiated each year with each PTA.

This federated structure made sense in the days when there were closer and in fact unifed relationships between Liberal "Parties" at the national level contesting for seats in the House of Commons and Liberal "Parties" at the provincial level vying to form provincial governments.  In today's world, the BC Liberal Party for example has no ties related to members, policy, funding or frankly ideology to the Liberal Party of Canada. Provincial Leaders and MLA's have no standing at National Conventions or within the LPC constitution for any purpose including consultative.  Some of the smaller provinces retain some ties, mostly related to cost-sharing for secretariat operations, but the CEA and similar provincial acts have made financial and other ties virtually obsolete.

So who can, and who does raise money from whom remains an annual and individual matter of negotiation. Individual members, while being members of the national organization through their local organization are organized by their PTA's and subjected to the commensurate loyalty/affinity tuggles and jealousies.  

The main outcome of this is an ingrained culture of members giving at the local level and influencers giving nationally, although members will give when they are charged up and stimulated either by policy or passionate advocacy or both.  I think that this impression also influences the perceived voting preferences amongst the populace at large.  In other words, rather than Canadians giving less to the LPC when polls decline, the polls decline when Canadians see that the party's own membership either declines, or reduces its own vocal and financial support.

Like most things in the Liberal Party, organizational change occurs at a snails pace. In some sense this is understandable for a party that "knows" that if it can just wait it out until it's back in power, things will all be right once again.  But the required cultural change will not in my view occur without it. 

Cultural change and organizational change.  It's like love and marriage.  You can't have one without the other.       

Remember the old saying, "Faint heart never won fair lady."

I'm seeing  a bit of red over this front page story in today's Globe, particularly the beginning of this sentence:

"But more specifically, insiders said the Liberals will abandon nanny state proposals like universal child care and put forward boutique proposals that would cost relatively little and target areas where many Canadians are hurting – such as their family-care plan, which would give family caregivers a six-month employment-insurance benefit similar to parental leave and a family-care tax benefit for low- and moderate-income earners modelled on the child tax benefit."

Insiders say the Liberals will abandon universal child care do they?  On a day when I'll be attending an event for Liberal women with members of the Liberal women's caucus and former female Liberal luminaries, billed as an opportunity for women to participate in the Party's policy development we read this?  

It is also rather galling coming so swiftly after Person's Day when at a panel discussion following the ceremony we heard the Governor General's Person's Award laureates speak about the importance of universal child care to the cause of women's equality.

Although I am sometimes referred to as an "insider", and it can certainly be a useful moniker from time-to-time I'll admit, in reality I am not.  As a member of the LPC, I shouldn't have to be, or become, an "insider" to effectively influence policy. 

It will be an interesting discussion tonight, no doubt.

"Those who'll play with cats must expect to be scratched."

I'm getting very sick and tired of unelected, unaccountable people in the Liberal Party of Canada purporting to speak for me.  Just as tired as I am with the Party leadership refusing to discuss things with me. I'm not saying that every member of the Party isn't entitled to their own opinion and to express it - and I do think we shouldn't be shy of discussion, even difficult discussion - but I don't recall anyone (serious people!) being given a mandate by anyone, let alone the Party membership to go off and have serious discussions about anything. 

For those musing about dating, living together, shot-gun weddings and birthing babies I gotta say - you are missing the point.  It's the changing nature and role of political parties that we should be examining.  Shouldn't technically, parties have some semblance of being movements of political thought?  Shouldn't technically we govern ourselves in a manner indicative of  how we would govern the country? In an interview in the Hill Times about his new book, Power: Where is it?, Donald Savoie articulates my thoughts exactly.

"Part of the overall problem, as well, Prof. Savoie said, is that political parties "have lost their soul" and politics has been taken over by professional politicians. He said there was once a time when the core values of political parties never changed, but now, all parties are the products of their leaders and not based on public policy ideas and values for which Canadians can vote for.


"They've been captured by the election day, the need to organize around elections. They've been captured by cronies and lobbyists and in the process they've lost their soul," he said. "If you've lost your way, if you've lost your soul, you've lost what the party's all about, then personalism takes over. The Liberal Party of today is Michael Ignatieff's party, tomorrow it will be someone else's party. The Conservative party today is Stephen Harper's party. In a few years it will be someone else's party and the core values will not matter all that much."


Prof. Savoie noted that parties today have focused more on gaining power than about offering ideas, something that has been made easier by the MPs who come to Parliament with no experience in anything other than politics. "They're there to gain power without really spelling out what set of core values drives them to gain power. Power becomes an end in itself. The goal of the game is to secure political power so that your gang of lobbyists and your gang of cronies will do well," he said. "They don't bring a knowledge of other sectors to bear. They bring a knowledge of politics and they play politics. And it's not a process of ideas, it's a process of tactics.""

I hate to say it, but I think it so I may as well, but it is the embrace of this "process of tactics" by Leader Ignatieff and those who trained him that may now do him and if they have their way - ??  - our Party in. 
Concerned Party members should be writing and petitioning their elected (or acclaimed or appointed, because that's most likely what they've got) representatives from EDA Presidents on up to the top, requesting if not demanding an extraordinary meeting to have a big, long discussion about values, principles, ideas, programs, platforms and democracy and to consensually and democratically decide the path the Party should take in its quest to better serve the nation, not itself or its personalities.  We shouldn't be relegating our own responsibility to "party insiders".  We should be doing this work ourselves.
Otherwise, I'm not interested in joining the Kicking Ass Party.  If the smartest people in the room think that's the way to go, fine.  I'll go my own way.  The way of the increasing hoards of people who just don't vote, because if you don't know what you're voting for, how the heck can you know why you should.

"Plain as the nose on a man's face."

Or is it?  Avid readers (sic) of Tilting at Windmills will know that the blog found its genesis mostly in the post-2008-election discussions about minorities, coalitions and such. To be more precise: minority governments, coalition governments, and such. There is lots and lots of evidence to this effect if anyone has the stamina to peruse the archives (I suggest copious quantities of caffeine prior to the attempt).


Liberal friend Rob Silver tweeted yesterday something to the effect that the word "coalition" has come (rather quickly, I add) to have at least 6 different meanings. Somehow, over the past little while, the word (and concept of) "coalition" in the political context has become synonymous with "collaboration", "merger", "cooperation", "discussion", "arrangements", and "accords", to name a few (I'm kind of chuffed that I actually came up with six!).

This morning I was tagged in an earnest Facebook note by another Liberal friend, whom I am sure, means the best and cares deeply about his party, its electoral prospects, its Leader and so on, basically the whole nine yards, but was riddled with confusion about just what people are, and likely should, be discussing.  And then I read a piece by David Mader (Tory alert!) in The Mark, which I have come to enjoy, largely because the pieces are just out there and no one, other than the commenters editorializes much.  On the other hand they don't correct the record either.

Just look at what Mader says in the first paragraph: 

The partisan reaction to whispers of a Liberal-NDP coalition, or even a formal merger, has been predictably predictable. Hopes of such an arrangement revived when the British Conservative and Liberal Democratic parties recently entered into a formal coalition, and Liberal MP Bob Rae – himself a former NDP premier of Ontario – further fanned the flames with his reminiscences of the 1985 Liberal-NDP coalition in that province. When the president of the Young Liberals of Canada added his voice to those calling for a proper coalition, pointing to a poll that suggested such a coalition would be at least competitive with the Harper Tories, an air of momentum seemed to develop.

 So he links "whispers" of a coalition (keep in mind my bolded word/clarification, government) to a "merger", incorrectly calls the Ontario Liberal/NDP accord of 1985 a coalition, and states that YLC President Sam Lavoie called for a "proper coalition". Frankly, Lavoie did no such thing.  Lavoie called for discussions on collaboration and cooperation in a pre-electoral context, hinting, but never stating that those could/might eventually to some sort of merger and most certainly not a coalition government.

For my part, I've become a tad (not a lot, but a tad) concerned that any little interventions I may have made are being viewed in this state of collective confusion.  So allow me to, er, um, clarify.

I would like my party to discuss and recognize the democratic nature of the possibility of a coalition government, in Canada, given our Westminster-styled parliamentary democracy.  I would like recognition that given an agreed upon set of circumstances that such an outcome - after an election - would be a legitimate consideration. (Aside -  I am not personally interested in pursuing other pre-electoral collaborative arrangements, unless I see that we have drifted so far from Liberal principles that a new movement might be palatable, but I surely see the need for my Party to not be afraid to sit in a room and discuss it).

I'm tired of this concept being demonized by PM Harper and his hoards, and sorry to say, by our Leader as well.  I do not think that his categorical statements reflect the nature of our democracy very well.  In constantly referring to "the" coalition, which I take to mean the attempt in 2008 by Messrs Dion and Layton, as opposed to "a potential coalition government", the Party falls into the same trap as M. Dion did back then.

It's rather obvious that a coalition government can only be entered into after an election given that pollsters aside, no one really has a crystal ball that can confirm what the final outcome will be.  I am in the camp that says there should be some conditions to legitimize the option should it come to that.  For me, a most important condition includes the fact that the possibility should be contemplated by the electorate, so that it can take it into consideration as it deliberates about its reasons for voting the way it does.  This is done in most European elections (where I might add the longevity, therefore stability of most governments is in excess of three years regardless of majority, minority or coalition status) and was most recently witnessed in the general elections in Germany and the UK.

This, for me, and for many academics and practitioners is the main reason I view the Dion/Layton attempt as, how to put this politely: not terribly legitimate.  That's because, during the 2008 election, M. Dion (and I believe Mr. Layton too - I'm just too lazy to search out a reference) categorically ruled out considering it.  In fact he used identical wording to current Leader Michael Ignatieff, just days ago: "Liberals will campaign to form a Liberal Government. We aren't interested in coalitions."

I don't think this is in keeping with democratic principles and I don't think it is particularly wise, and, I do not think that it serves Canadians very well. 

“Fear is sharp-sighted, and can see things under ground, and much more in the skies.”

Like I said here last week, I don't know why we fear a good and healthy discussion and debate in our party.


Yesterday there were reports that some members of the Party are interested in discussing possible collaborations between progressive parties, and others basically saying no discussion required, the position is clear.  Well, speaking as yet another member, I'm just not so sure this is true.

 

The entire last session of Parliament was defined by the tugs, tears and stretches of our democratic institutions, processes and conventions, written and unwritten, contorted and explained.  From prorogation to prorogation (well actually from breaking of a fixed election law …), the country was seized with discussion of about the state and functioning of our democracy – and the changing nature of politics and politic discourse.

But in our party, not so much.

These are no little issues.  These are big important things that people in the Party want to discuss, member to member, friend to friend.  Like MacLeans’ Paul Wells noted in a tweet yesterday by pointing to this post on independent site Punditsguide.ca, there’s certainly enough evidence out there pointing to the facts we should have been discussing for a very, very long time.  They indicate that this Party has been most successful when we reach out, when we seek like-minded citizens and voters.

From all of the op-eds, blog postings, discussion boards, Facebook groups, notes and links, tweets, roundtables and academic treatises out there over the past 18 months or so, many of them by Liberals and liberals known and not-so-known, people want to discuss this. And there are many opinions. Many, many opinions.  But a discernable consensus position?

Personally, I’m not so keen on paid officials and pundits inferring that any member of the Party and an elected officer to boot, can’t speak for the Party in those capacities and yet they do. 

Better that we not, as Cervantes says, see things under ground, but examine them in the light of day.

“It is good to live and learn.”

I was intrigued by the advice that Chantal Hébert had for the Liberal Party late last week, in the middle of a series of polls showing the Conservatives generally trending up and in particular widening a gap in seat-rich Ontario.  Hébert suggests that Liberals would be wise to embrace electoral reform as a national party-building survival mechanism. :)

In answer to a question on this at a townhall in March of 2009, then interim Leader Michael Ignatieff was cool to the idea, saying that he was “not yet convinced” on PR, preferring the stability provided by our current system and that he wouldn’t want to “turn this place into Italy”. (Go to about 8:45 of this clip.)

One of the first jobs I had at the Liberal Party Secretariat in the mid-80’s was in the Organization Department. I developed a predictive polling model for the Party.  It was the early days of “desktop” computing.  I had a tower the size of a small car, and a screen the size of a CD.  We ran an operating system and stored data on floppy disks the size of an iPad.  I personally inputted the results for 282 ridings into a Lotus spreadsheet, because of course, Elections Canada did not provide (or even record as far was we knew) the results in electronic format.  We had to refer to the blue books.  Because the Party could not afford a “pollster of record” at the time, I used data from public opinion polls published in the newspapers.

Taking into account a lot of provisos, my little model proved surprisingly accurate for the ’88 and ’93 general elections, including the prediction of a clean sweep in Ontario in ‘93 – which even the Party mucky mucks at the time, could barely believe.

Prevailing wisdom at the time was that with three competitive parties, 42/43% would get you a majority given the first past the post system.  With four competitive parties, things begin to change.  So it was in 1993 when with 53% of the vote in Ontario (a true majority rare in Canadian politics) the Liberals captured 98 out of 99 seats,and with them one-third of the available seats in the country - period.  The one other seat went to, wait for it, Reform, which captured 20% of the vote in Ontario; the PC’s were at 17.6% and the NDP at 6%.  (Change some party names and you start to see the similarities to today.)

Flash forward to last week’s series of voter intention polls and the trends they project for Ontario, par example and Hébert’s words of advice become even more poignant.  

Seat predictor site ThreeHundredEight.com, takes the Harris/Decima’s 5-point gap in Ontario and turns it into a 13- seat gap (CPC: 39% = 54 seats; LPC: 34% = 41 seats) and EKOS’s 8-point gap into a 20-seat gap, (CPC: 39% = 56 seats; LPC: 31%= 36 seats). With Friday’s Leger Marketing poll result showing a 14-point gap in Ontario (CPC: 42%; LPC: 28), it doesn’t take much arithmetic genius to imagine the devastating result.

Convinced yet?

“It is a true saying that a man must eat a peck of salt with his friend before he knows him.”

Yes, let’s chat a bit, chew the fat, hash a few things out.

I must admit that when I saw the Liberal talking points on the “coalition fear-mongering”, I had exactly the same reaction as this guy’s musings.

Last week I sent the letter that follows to the Chair and Vice-Chairs of the LPC’s Policy and Platform Committee, copied to responsible board members and officials at LPC and LPCO, as well as some in OLO.

“Last Friday, exactly one month before the date of the “Policy Matters” conference scheduled for Ontario, I received a “notice” for it contained in an email note from the Party’s Membership Secretary.  I do not know exactly on what basis I received the note (as an “insider”, as an email subscriber, as a donor, or as a member) but assume that it did not go exclusively to actual signed up members of the Party as the notice itself contains a plea to join, in order to participate, going on to say:

“Liberal members have a key role to play in shaping our party’s policies. Between the point where the broad ideas and priorities are identified, and where our policy platform is presented to Canadians, members must weigh in with their views, to ensure those policies reflect the values and vision of grassroots Liberals in all corners of Canada.” 

This is an excellent sentiment, but I can only view the process that accompanies it as not much more than lip service.

As a very long-standing member of the Party, I have to say that I am extremely disappointed on several fronts.

·         Some of you know that it is my personal view that the leadership of the Party should be having policy and value-validation discussions with members before going to the broad public as well as after, and on a regular ongoing basis.  I believe that this lack of ongoing discussion, debate and consultation is a key factor in the appearance of a lack of surefootedness on the part of our Party and its leadership. 

·         As far as I can tell the date for the conferences was “announced” by the Policy Chair on En Famille on March 24, and while some of the very few active participants on En Famille have discussed various aspects, there have not been any updates on process, subject areas or otherwise posted there or elsewhere since.  If these conferences were not in fact after-thoughts to somehow try and engage the membership one would have assumed that all of the general preparation for them would have been already in place immediately post- (pre- actually) Canada at 150 itself, so that active discussions and preparation could take place. Even with a great deal of understanding it is difficult to comprehend no further communications in over 7 weeks. 

·         As part of the premise or positioning of the conferences appear to be about membership engagement, and hopefully encouraging the development of more activity at the level of the EDA in anticipation of an election, again, it seems to me that one of the better ways to do this is to encourage a lot of activity and opportunity well in advance of the conferences themselves.  I do not know how EDA’s can be expected to call assemblies or other gatherings of members to discuss these issues in order to properly present their association’s – or further – their region’s points of view.  You will therefore most likely end up with a bunch of individual opinion presented at the conferences; I do not know how this advances a collaborative, coherent (and perhaps brokered) party platform.    

·         It is very difficult to glean from the agenda (which was difficult to access for several days) exactly what will in fact be discussed.  The agenda simply contains the broad subject areas. If, as the agenda indicates, the plenary will provide the “set of statements from Canada at 150 Conference”, “Questions for themed breakout sessions”, and the “Regional topic presentation”, I do not understand why those could not be “presented” or available in advance.  We only learn that in the case of Ontario, the regional topic is “Municipal Infrastructure” by peering further down the agenda to the breakout sessions. Personally, I do not know if I would be able to participate properly without the ability to research and review a bit, and gather my own thoughts, opinions and positions, let alone discuss them with others as per above.  I am sure many others would be in the same boat. And, just how are we to discuss the subject areas?  Will we be accepting or rejecting, or improving upon a set of proposals?  Will we be applying a “Liberal-value test”? What exactly is the form of the input the marvelous statement above actually requests or expects? 

·         How did the regional subject areas get assigned? Wouldn’t it have been better for the party members to actually have been asked for their input? I don’t know that municipal infrastructure would have been on my personal list but perhaps there might have been consensus in the membership on that, we just don’t know.  In the context of platform development and the future of the country (at 150 recall) I personally would liked to have seen us discuss the future of our democracy – a pretty hot substantive and political area of national discussion these days and there are tonnes of party members discussing it in all sorts of public and private arenas, but no one asked. I do not know how this Party, the Liberal Party of Canada could contemplate going to the electorate without some sort of discussion about the state of our democracy and what type of democratic institutions and systems we believe the country should have when it reaches it’s 150th birthday. 

You should expect that this email has been blind copied to someone somewhere. Thanks for listening.

Sheila Gervais”

I did not receive many formal responses, but that fact and the content of those that I did are not the point of my posting this letter here.  The talking points referred to above are.

Now that it’s out there, I expect there will be “debate” in the Party about this statement as WK points out:

We aren’t interested in coalitions.  

Just not formal debate.  And that’s a darn shame. Isn’t that exactly the type of thing that the Party should be discussing when it gets together to discuss stuff in June?  Isn’t that the type of rather big, principled stuff you consult on or at least seek some guidance on before making such a categorical and definitive statement?  Why do we allow ourselves to fear a good, healthy, principled debate?  I’m just asking.