Renewing the Party

I went on a much needed vacation after the election and now I’m back I thought I would post my thoughts on what I think the Liberal party needs to look at as a part of its renewal process. Just in case you wanted to read yet another opinion on the subject.

I’m going to get the issue of leadership out of the way first, since that’s been a bit of a hot topic lately. I’m in firm agreement with all of those who have said that the leadership should be pushed back because it is more important that we decide what the party stands for first. Personally I’d like to see the leadership vote take place sometime between June and November of 2012, preferably towards the beginning of that time period. I think if we wait any longer then that we will make the leadership selection process too long and prolong internal bickering which can only hurt the party. I also want to see the membership get to set the date for the leadership convention, because if it’s left up to the executive then the biannual convention will end up being focused on leadership as every candidate will trying to get a favourable executive elected. On the issue of the interim leader, I was pleased to see that whoever is interim leader is not going to be allowed to run for the leadership. I disagreed back when Ignatieff was allowed to do that, so I’m pleased to see that it has been changed this time around.

The issue that the party really need to talk about before getting all hung up on leadership per usual, is what do we stand for. In my opinion the party hasn’t had a clear vision of what we stand for in a long time, going back to the last couple of years we were in government. The public votes on issues, and the Liberals simply being “not Harper” wasn’t going to attract votes because the public largely didn’t share our dislike of Harper. The public also doesn’t share our penchant for nostalgia, so dragging out former PM’s to try to give us a boost doesn’t create an enticing reason to vote for us. Once we’ve decided what we stand for we can re-build the Liberal brand around those issues. Until we have a solid idea of what we stand for we aren’t going to be able to convince voters to return us as the official opposition, let alone as the government.

Most importantly the grassroots of the party need to be front and centre as a part of the rebuilding process. For too many years very little attention has been paid to what the grassroots of the party wanted. Now we find ourselves in a situation where Liberal members are more likely to find out what is going on in the party through the media instead of by communication from the executive to the grassroots. The reform of the party should be driven by the grassroots as much as possible, with the party executive and caucus spending most of their time listening to ideas instead of trying to impose their own ideas on the party. As long as the grassroots continue to feel as if the party is ignoring them people are going to leave the Liberal party and not come back and the rebuilding process will amount to nothing.

A Few Thoughts on What Happened

Now I’ve had a bit of time to digest what happened last night, but before I get to reading other people’s post-mortems on the campaign I want to offer a few of my own thoughts.

Conservatives
The Conservatives ran the perfect front-runner bubble campaign. They had the exact same message day in and day out which lead it self to voters knowing exactly what the message was. Having only 5 questions a day also allowed a lot of the issues that cropped up during the campaign to brief stories that didn’t really stick. This was aided by the fact that the media for quite a while focused on the lack of questions they were able to ask instead of issue-based questions. If the campaign had ended up focusing on a specific issue or policy it might have gone a lot differently, but with the lack of a defining issue the Conservatives were able to coast to victory on essentially the same message for the entire campaign.


NDP
There is no question that the fact that the NDP surge became the story of the better part of the last two weeks of their campaign helped their numbers. The reason why those numbers started rising in the first place is a little less clear. The surge in Quebec started after the debates, but also after the weekend of the PQ convention where both Duceppe and Marois spoke about working towards another sovereignty referendum. Between Layton’s strong debate performance, his promise to re-open the constitution, and the seeming lack of desire on the part of most Quebecers for another referendum the NDP suddenly started becoming a viable option for many in Quebec.

But above and beyond the Quebec surge, I think the NDP also resonated with people because they were the only party with a positive message. The Liberals often spoke about what was bad about Harper without saying what they would do differently. While Layton was also critical of Harper, he constantly sounded upbeat about what he would do instead. I think the end result was that a lot of voters who would never consider voting Conservative decided to choose the hopeful message.


Bloc
I think I find the complete collapse of the Bloc the most shocking thing out of this entire election. Six weeks ago Duceppe was the most popular politician in Quebec, and there was a lot of talk of him replacing Marois because polls suggested the PQ would do better under him than her. But this campaign the Bloc really ended up lacking a defining issue. In ’04 and ’06 they had sponsorship and in ’08 they had the arts cuts and Duceppe was able to galvanise the electorate around those issues. However, without a defining issue the Bloc floundered.

Interestingly, towards the end of the campaign when they called on separatist voters in desperation that didn’t really seem to help them much. In past provincial elections the PQ has rarely slipped much bellow 30%, but last night the Bloc was reduced to 23% of the Quebec vote. If that’s the base for separatists in Quebec the PQ has got to be worried, but the rest of Canada should be cheering. Given the seeming volatility in the Quebec electorate it will be interesting to see if after they are done with their NDP experiment if they go back to the Bloc under a new leader, or if voters will stay with federalist parties. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the second one.

As a bit of a personal aside, from the time I started following elections even in the vaguest of ways as a child Duceppe has always been Bloc leader. So I’m having trouble imagining federal politics without him, and I think I might actually end up missing him a bit, or at least his quick one-liners.


Greens
I’m pleased to see Elizabeth May win her seat, when I interviewed her a couple years ago she stuck me as the kind of person we need in parliament, much like we could have used her in the leaders debates. However, her victory also causes me some worry given that it could lead to more of the vote splitting that benefits the Conservatives that we saw last night.


Liberals
From the get-go the Liberal message was confused. We didn’t know where we stood on the issue of a collation despite knowing for over two years that it was going to be an issue. It set us off to a bad start and allowed the issue of contempt of parliament to be completely forgotten. And bad communications didn’t stop there. There were a plethora of issues that cropped up during the campaign that we could have used to create a narrative about why we needed to be the government instead of the Conservatives but we never developed that narrative. While we jumped on some of the issues, many of those issues were talked about for less than a day and we never coherently linked them together.

We also never seemed to create a coherent message of what we stood for. Voters knew we wanted to defeat Harper, even if they didn’t understand why we wanted to defeat him, but they didn’t know what we would do differently.

I won’t get into the issue of leadership in this post other than to say the attack ads were effective, but they were far from the only reason that Ignatieff didn’t resonate with the public. However, while Ignatieff resigned this morning it’s important that the party realise that our problems go way, way beyond this issue of leadership. But that will be another long post for another day.

Conservative's Making Sure the Youth DON'T Vote

This is an atrocious story out of Guelph:

No votes cast Wednesday in a special ballot at the University of Guelph should stand, according to the Conservative Party of Canada.

The party wrote Elections Canada on Thursday to request that none of the votes collected during the U of G session be included in the final tally of votes in the Guelph riding. The letter was sent by lawyer Arthur Hamilton, of Toronto-based law firm, Cassels Brock.

In his letter, Hamilton alleges the polling station was illegal and also that partisan election material was present at it, which is a violation of the Canada Elections Act.

The polling station in question was located on the main floor of University Centre, where approximately 700 students cast sealed ballots.

Elections Canada media advisor James Hale said this was the third election during which the University of Guelph held a special ballot on campus. And this is the first time it’s ever been challenged, Hale said.

And then there's this part which is even worse:

Several University of Guelph students claim Michael Sona, the communications director for Guelph Conservative candidate Marty Burke, attempted to put a stop to voting at the special ballot held Wednesday.

The students say Sona approached the Elections Canada balloting site claiming that the process unfolding at the location was illegal and at one point reached for but never took possession of a container with ballots.

“He tried to grab for the ballot box. I’m not sure he got his hand on the box, but he definitely grabbed for it,” said Brenna Anstett, a student, who at the time of the reported incident was sealing her second of two envelopes containing her vote.

Student Claire Whalen was just about to receive her ballot just before 5 p.m. when the episode unfolded.

“That’s when a guy came up and said it was an illegal polling station and that he was confiscating the ballots. And then he tried to take (the ballot box),” Whalen said.

Interfering with democratically cast ballots? This is Canada not some developing country that has rigged elections with candidates stuffing ballot boxes or destroying ballots cast by voters.

U of Guelph had 700 students vote, that's a behavior that we should be encouraging among youth not suppressing. But the Conservative strategy seems to be voter suppression so the last thing they want to see if people engaged and voting. Apparently this is especially true of young people.

Coward

After yesterdays great debate about the debates, Harper appears to be backing down from his offer of a one-on-one debate with Ignatieff.

I think a one-on-one debate between the only two leaders that realistically can end up as Prime Minister is a great idea. It should be something that we have every election after a debate including all of the leaders of the major parties (which includes Elizabeth May). Hopefully after all of yesterday posturing we do start a new trend of a one-on-one debate after the all-leaders debates.

If it’s true that Harper is now backing down, then you have to wonder why he’s so afraid of putting his ideas to the test directly against Ignatieff without the other leaders there to muddy the waters.

Post Secondary Education for Your Kids vs Tax Cuts for Foreign Corporations

Today the Liberal unveiled the Learning Passport. This will provide $1,000 a year to every student in post-secondary education, $1,500 for students from low-income families. This tax-free cash will provide a huge boost to cash strapped families who have been suffering to afford putting their kids through school with the rising tuition rates in recent years. It will also allow students to attends a post-secondary institution who otherwise couldn't have afforded to go.

Given today's economy we need to get more people attending a post-secondary insitutions to remain competitive. This policy takes great strides in that direction.

How are the Liberals going to pay for it? By rolling back those corporate tax cuts. This is a great strategy because it presents voters with a clear choice: money for their kids education, or money for big banks, big oil and foreign corporations.

Promises that Will Never be Kept

Today's Conservative "major policy announcement" of income splitting for families with kids under 18 is a joke, it won't come into effect until after the budget is balanced. Harper is hoping that people will miss that convenient fact when they got to the ballot box. Even if you go with the optimistic Conservative estimates the budget wont be balanced for another 5 years. How many families voting today would be ineligible for the income splitting by that time? Also, even if Harper wins this time, between now and when the budget is projected to be balanced there has to be at least one more election. It is highly likely that Harper wont even be Prime Minister by the time the budget is balanced making it impossible for him to follow through on it.

Most importantly there is no guarantee that the budget will be balanced in five years. The parliamentary budgetary officer has been very skeptical of these projections as he can't see where the money will come from to balance the budget based on the information he's been provided by the government. At the rate the Conservatives have been increasing spending over the past five years I think it would be easy to argue at this point that they will never balance a budget. All this makes it very likely that this in an election promise that will never be kept.

On Things More Important than Guergis/Jaffer

A story that has largely fallen by the wayside due to the much more sensations Guergis/Jaffer affair is the speakers ruling on the documents pertaining to Afghan detainees (which may by made later today). Like the coalition crisis this is a precedent setting case, and is being watched by a number of other countries.

In the past speakers have always maintained that the will of parliament is supreme and the Prime Minister can not simply do whatever they want. The upcoming speakers ruling may change that. If Milliken decides that the government does not have to release the documents then he has given the Prime Minister the authority to do whatever he chooses.

Parliament is supposed to be the checks and balances on the Prime Ministers power. Unfortunately as a result of Michaëlle Jean’s decision to let Harper prorogue during the coalition crisis, it clear that parliament already sits only on the will of the Prime Minister. If parliament’s power is further reduced by it no longer being able to compel the Prime Minister to submit to the will of parliament then we might as well get rid of it entirely.

By eliminating the power of parliament we essentially end up with a one-man government. That worries me, regardless of who’s Prime Minister, and hopefully it worries you too.

Reflections on Copenhagen

Well in the late hours of last night the leaders finally came to an "agreement" that basically says a whole lot of nothing. It's hard to come away from here thinking that the conference was anything other than a failure.

It was very striking to me when I spoke to people and they found out I was from Canada. In the past when I've traveled abroad I've never heard anything but good things when people find out I'm Canadian, here it was a mark of shame. All week I heard variations on the phrase, "why isn't Canada doing anything to fix climate change, I though you guys cared?". Over and over I had to explain that most of us did care, but the problem was our Prime Minister didn't.

Canada also received the title of Colossal Fossil for receiving the most fossil awards throughout the conference. Here's a photo I took of the Fossil of the Day leaders board on my last day in the Bella Centre (Wednesday):

As far as the conference went, I have to leave disappointed in the UN's organization and communication skills. The fact that they changed their minds on who would get in the Bella Centre for the last two important days on the Friday of the first week of the conference was ridiculous. If I (and many others) had known they were going to do that we would have arrived earlier and not even stayed for the last two days as we could have followed it just as well from home. The fact that the UN constantly talks about the importance of the involvement of civil society and then restricted access of NGOs as much as they possibly could was atrocious. There was a gentleman who worked for the UN staying at the same bed and breakfast as me and he couldn't believe how they treated those of us from NGOs either. He told me how in the hall where the negotiations were taking place (that NGOs weren't allowed into to observe) there was a table with a sign saying it was for NGOs with only two seats, and those were empty because we were bared from the room. It's something I wish I had a photo of.

Finally, if you ever get the chance to visit the city of Copenhagen I recommend it. Besides being a beautiful city it has a public transit system you really have to experience to fully understand what we're missing out on here in Canada. The metro runs 24-7, and even in the middle of the night I never waited more than 6 minutes for a train. Most buses run from 5am to 1am, though some on major routes run 24 hours, and their trains run from 5am to 3am. Also, over half the city uses bikes as their main mode of transportation, and there's bike lanes on literally every road vs Toronto where people scream and cry when you even suggest adding bike lanes. It is certainly worth seeing as a model for some of the things we should be implementing if we really want to get serious about tackling climate change.

Disaster in Copenhagen

We've spend the day watching the live feed of negotiations from the Bella Center, and unless there is a big change in the next few hours then we will end up with a document that basically says everyone realizes that climate change is an important issue but no one is actually willing to do something about it.

Politicians are too busy being lazy and trying to commit to as little as possible instead of listening to the recommendations of the scientists and being bold enough to at least try for a 40% reduction in GHG emissions from 1990 levels by 2020. Or if they really want to use 2005 as the base level have a percentage of reductions that matches that amount knowing that it will be something like 90%.

Instead we are currently on track for a 3-degree increase in the temperature of the earth that doens't matter to any of the leaders because they will all be dead by the time the fallout from climate change becomes obvious. Instead my generation and my childrens generation will be the one's who have to bear the brunt of climate change devastation. Many youth groups have been wearing t-shirts that read "How old will you be in 2050?" which are particularly poignant now we have been given an agreement that says nothing.

Everyone had hoped for not only actual action in Copenhagen but serious targets. Instead we are left with what is basically the worst outcome.

Live From Copenhagen Archive

Since today is a slow day for me, I decided to create a list of all my post from Copenhagen in one spot in case you've missed a post and are interested in following my coverage. I'll update this list with any posts I make after this point.

In chronological order:

Live From Copenhagen
A Failure in Organisation
Live From the Bella Center
CNN and YouTube Debate
Recap of Day Two
Green Growth and Green Jobs,
Gender and Climate Change,
Climate Summit of Mayors,
Clean Energy and Climate Action: A North American Collaboration
Recap of Day Three
Disaster in Copenhagen
Reflections on Copenhagen