Wild About Writing

UPDATE: President Obama’s denial of a permit for TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, on the grounds that the Republican-dictated Feb. 21 deadline does not allow sufficient time for a proper environmental review, is likely just the first in a series of setbacks for pipeline proponents.

They’re happenings half a world apart — the grounding of the cruise liner Costa Concordia off the Italian coast, and the hearings into the proposed Northern Gateway oil pipeline, being held in Kitimat, British Columbia.

What links them is the prospect of tanker groundings in the pristine waters of the 130-kilometre long Douglas Channel. It’s this fear that is motivating B.C. native groups and environmentalists to oppose the plan of Enbridge Inc. to pipe crude oil from Alberta’s tar sands to the B.C. coast. The scheme calls for new port faclities at Kitimat that would permit more than 200 tankers a year to ply Douglas Channel en route to Pacific destinations, mainly China.

The case against the oil sands (or tar sands as they were known before  oil industry’s PR machine got to work) is eloquently made by Alberta author Andrew Nikiforuk in his book, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent.

Nikiforuk does more than criticize. While declaring that the pace of oil sands development represents a political emergency, he offers up a 22-point plan to avert disaster, both environmentally and economically.

His arguments need to be taken into account by the National Energy Board in its hearings that opened in Kitimat last week. It’s going to take two years for the NEB to reach a decision. Even then, no matter what  it recommends, the decision could be overturned by the pro-oil Harper cabinet in Ottawa.

From what we’ve heard out of Ottawa, the hearings could turn out to be an exercise in  futility.

They got off to a rocky start with that infamous open letter from the minister of natural resources, Joe Oliver, pointing the finger at “environmental and other radical groups ” w0rking with “foreign special-interest groups” in opposition to the pipeline.

That line was set down last fall by Prime Minister Harper when he warned against “American interests trying to line up against the Northern Gateway project.” Another indication that nothing happens in Ottawa without Mr. Harper’s fingerprints on it.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with the foreign money of international oil companies who are spending large sums in Canada to back the project. That’s because their cause is in the “national interest,” according to Harper & Company.

Northern Gateway is about more than the pipeline, however. It’s about the morality — and the long-term economic consequences — of the environmental degradation caused by extracting oil from the tar sands.

The premier of Alberta, Alison Redford, was quite accurate when she suggested that some opponents are primarily motivated by a desire to stop or slow down the oil sands.

Pipelines are the only way to get the oil out. Stop the pipelines and you stop the oil sands.

The delay in approving the Keystone XL line in the States — a prospective key carrier of oil sands crude to the Gulf of Mexico — is a serious setback to the hopes of oil sands proponents.

A strong argument can always be made for the jobs and other economic benefits that flow from exploitation of natural resources.

We need to argue equally strongly against destroying our planet to feed the voracious beast of oil consumption. The best way for North America to achieve energy self-sufficiency is to consume less, not produce more. Will anyone make that argument to the National Energy Board?

The Liberal Party national convention in Ottawa next week could  be a milestone on its  road back to power in Canada — but only if Liberals forget about power for the moment and instead put policy first.

How do you separate the two?

Look for what delegates spend the most  time on — figuring out process that they hope will help them win an election, or fathoming what kind of policies will warrant their eventual return to office.

Process involves such things as leadership selection and voting rules. All important stuff,  but which should be disposed of pretty quickly.

One quick step that could be taken would be to abolish the strictures that have been set on Bob Rae as interim leader. The rules say he can’t stand for permanent leader, and that he’s not allowed to enter into any dialogue with the NDP that might culminate in a merger.

Both are unreasonable restrictions, and should be dropped.

As to opening up leadership selection to a primary style vote, letting anyone cast a vote who is prepared to say they support the Liberal party, I think that’s a good idea. People who take advantage of that will be more likely to join the party and support it financially in the future.

But it’s policy, not process, that will carry the Liberal party back to power, if that’s ever going to happen. Liberals will have to address important issues that are generally considered too hot to handle. It’s the failure of the parties to address these kinds of issues that has led, I believe, to both the poor voter turn-out of recent elections, and the increasingly negative view we hold of our politicians.

A few examples:

1. The militarization of Canada. At a time when the U.S. is preparing to strip a trillion dollars out of its defense budget, the Harper government seems determined to pick up the pieces. Ordering F-35 “first strike” planes for which we should have no use is a colossal waste of taxpayer money, at a time when the country is struggling to get out of deficit.The Harper government seems to have become the prisoner of what U.S. President Eisenhower warned against when he left office in 1961 — the “military-industrial complex.”

When you have the Prime Minister and his Minister of Defence, Peter McKay, going before the annual convention of Canadian arms makers — the Conference of Defence Associations — as they will do again in February to explain their military intentions — it’s difficult to come to any other conclusion that they are indeed prisoners of said military-industrial complex.

The Liberal party should set out — as the NDP has done — a vigorous set of alternative policies in defence and foreign policy.

2. The war on drugs. This is another great issue that’s damaging the country — in terms of ruined lives, sky-high policing costs, and ever-growing investments in bigger prisons. Witness the Harper government’s new “tough on crime” approach. Better to call it “stupid on crime.” Liberals should demand a medical focus on the problem of improper drug use, a strategy that would have a far greater prospect of success in bringing the drug problem to resolution than the present approach. Treat the drug addict medically — just as we need to act on the medical problems that bring large numbers of mentally-ill prisoners to our jails.

It’s fine for Liberals to be addressing the future of the monarchy, and calling for a an all-party committee to consider replacing the Crown with a Canadian head of state. But not a whole lot of people really care too much about that, one way or the other. We’re not suffering as a nation because we pay allegiance to the Queen.

3. Justice for Canada’s “First Nations.” We can no longer, in conscience, tolerate the conditions under which native Canadians live. I was involved in a study a decade ago, for the Canadian Council on Native Business, that showed aboriginals in this country are actually WORSE OFF than when the first Europeans arrived four hundred years ago. We need to begin by investing people on the reserves with some responsibility for their own lives, rather than being forced to accept Ottawa’s dictates. The Liberal party should develop a clear, practical policy with this native self-responsibility as its goal.

How about it, Liberals? Let’s start focusing on some REAL issues for a change.

The second volume of Richard J. Gwynn’s biography of Sir John A. Macdonald — Nation Maker — dealing with the epochal final years of Canada’s first Prime Minister will be one of the most discussed of Canadian non-fiction books of 2011. In Kingston, where Macdonald lived most of his life and  where I’ve lived for the past year, Macdonald is a revered figure and much effort is being put into preparing for the bicentenary of his birth in 2015.

Richard Gwynn spoke of his subject at the Kingston Writers’ Festival last weekend and the line-up to buy his book and have him sign copies was satisfying long. During an appearance with two other authors of books on Scottish-Canadians, Ken McGoogan  (“How the Scots Invented Canada”) and Vincent Lam (“Tommy Douglas”) he spoke knowingly of Macdonald’s undisputed impact on Canada. In his book, Gwynn concludes that “Had there been no Macdonald, there almost certainly would be today no Canada.”

It is not always easy to challenge the shibboleths of Canadian history, but after reading this latest of Richard Gwynn’s meticulously researched and finely crafted Macdonald biographies, I feel compelled to do so.

Macdonald’s achievements were indeed historic. His crafting of the scheme to confederate the British colonies of North America in 1867 and his purposeful resolve to build a transnational railway that would provide the spine to keep the country together (completed in 1885) are not to be disputed.

Macdonald is also remembered for a third reason. Little more than a decade after Confederation, he addressed himself to the great economic issue of the times: protectionism vs. free trade. He came down on the side of protectionism, which he saw as a way of building up manufacturing and reducing the appeal of the United States. As Gwynn points out, Macdonald worried that “our work-people have gone off to the United States … adding to the strength, to the power, and to the wealth of a foreign country instead of adding to ours.”

Macdonald was right that there was a great Canadian migration to the United States in the 19th century. Population levels stagnated as the movement to the United States offset, and in some years exceeded, immigration from Europe. Job creation was lagging at a time when the younger sons of farmers, knowing they would never inherit the homestead, headed to the cities in search of jobs.

Macdonald’s solution was his National Policy, a system of tariffs high enough to protect existing Canadian manufactures and to encourage the establishment of new ones. The new tariffs that came into effect after Macdonald’s relection in 1878 ran as high as 34 per cent on finished goods. In a short time, Canadian farmers were paying 25 cents a gallon for inferior coal oil, compared to eight cents a gallon for high-quality oil in the U.S. The duty on iron was 80 per cent, vastly increasing the cost of an American harvester and ensuring a comfortable home market, with high prices, for such companies as Massey-Harris. To make Canadian manufacturers even more comfortable, a healthy portion of the tariff was passed to them rather than the Canadian treasury.

The upshot of Macdonald’s National Policy was to deepen and extend the “Long Depression ” that ran through the 1870s and 1880s. Limiting Canadian farmers to a small home market of just a few million consumers, while they had to pay exorbitant prices for farm equipment,  condemned thousands in the countryside to impoverishment. The new jobs in industry created by protectionism were far fewer than if Canadian companies had had to go after the sixty million eager consumers making up the American market. Richard Gwynn observes astutely that in the years immediately before Confederation, the Reciprocity Treaty then in effect with the United States “had been a boom period for Canadians.”

Macdonald’s National Policy had a second and even more damaging consequence for Canada. It made the country an economic vassal of the United States when, in order to get around the tariffs, American companies began to establish branch plants here. They were, of course,  pleased to charge the higher prices allowed by the Canadian marketplace, a circumstance that continues to this day.

The Liberal-Conservative party of Sir John A. Macdonald continued as the champion of high tariffs and protectionism. The Opposition Liberals under Wilfrid Laurier, campaigned unsuccessfully for “unrestricted reciprocity” in 1891 but finally won election, after the Old Chieftain’s death, in 1896. The Liberals lost power in 1911 over their attempt to bring in a free trade agreement with the United States. It was left, ironically, to Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives to drink from the holy grail of Canadian politics with their free trade victory in 1988, leading to the North American Free Trade Alliance (NAFTA).

Richard Gwynn’s latest book represents an important addition to the literature of Canadian politics and history. It fails, however, to recognize the disastrous consequences of Macdonald’s National Policy and the fact that for a century it relegated Canada to economic and industrial second-class status.

Former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien, looking fit under a mask of TV make-up, gave an interview this week in which he predicted that a merger of the Liberals and the NDP, “will be done one day.”

A master politician, Chretien is probably right. There is a solid case to be made for an NDP-Liberal merger, which would create a centre left party that would give Canadians a single, clear alternative  to the centre right of Stephen Harper”s Conservative Party.

The question is, what time frame does “one day” mean?

Amid the heavy discussions about the possibility of a merger — intensified by the death of Jack Layton and the beginnings of a race to name his successor — the issue of what might be in it for the NDP is being overlooked.

Parties only unite when they see it in their mutual interest to do so. That was the case early in the 20th century when Mackenzie King’s Liberals swept up the remnants of the Progressive Party. The leaderless Progressives had no where else to go.

Turn the clock ahead to the 2000s, and we have the merger of the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative party. As Mr. Chretien mentioned, that came about despite PC leader Peter McKay’s promise that he would never entertain such a horror.

Despite their differences, it wasn’t as much a merger of two parties as it was the reassembly in one tent of an old party — the party of Brian Mulroney. But it didn’t come about easily, and it took time. Both parties went through three leaders and three elections before Stephen Harper struck his deal with McKay to “unite the right.”

The NDP and Liberals share many values: a commitment to a strong public sector, belief in the social safety net, support for multiculturalism, and suspicion of adventurous foreign entanglements. Both parties also have blocs bitterly opposed to their opposite numbers: right-wing Bay Street Liberals that a merger would send into the arms of the Conservatives, and the NDP’s left wing activists, quiet under Layton, who would be tempted to start their own party.

Overriding all of these concerns, however, is the fact that having become the Official Opposition, the NDP now has a historic opportunity to nudge the Liberals out of the political centre, the great mainstream where most Canadian voters spend most of their time.

With this prospect, may NDPers are asking: Why bother with a merger? What’s in it for us?

The Liberal governments of Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien, in doing their duty as they saw it, lost both Quebec and the West. Quebec went when the PQ was able to convince voters that Trudeau’s new Constitution and Charter of Rights was the product of a conspiracy against la Belle Province. The Clarity Act cinched the myth. The West started to go when Trudeau asked Western farmers, “Why should I sell your wheat?”  The rout was completed with the National Energy Policy, a 1970s program that stripped the three Far Western provinces of oil revenue and paralyzed the exploration industry, beggaring the oil patch of Alberta.

The NDP is at a historic junction, made all the more challenging due to the fact of its sudden and unexpected successes in Quebec. Embracing the Liberal party at this stage would hardly reinforce its tentative hold on its 59 Quebec seats.In the West, embracing the Liberal party would put new difficulties in the way of the NDP rebuilding its federal strength on the prairies.

There may be an NDP-Liberal merger some day, but I would not expect it to come about before at least one, or perhaps two federal elections have passed into history. Along about 2020, when Canadians have grown tired of Jason Kenney as their Conservative Prime Minister, Mr. Chretien’s prediction could well come true: “One day.”

Travelling about Europe this past week, I followed the sad news of the death of Jack Layton, and his funeral today (Saturday, August 27) in Toronto. I write this in the Toronto International Airport, awaiting ground transportation to take me home.

So much has been said and written about Jack Layton that anything I could add would probably be redundant. I last spoke to Jack one Saturday morning when Deborah and I encountered him in a bookstore on Danforth Avenue. He was filling the role of the “constituency man.” getting about his riding and keeping in touch with people and things.

Margaret Wente has a lovely account of Jack’s funeral at Globe and Mail Online.

Jack Layton’s death was the subject of a long account I read in the International Herald Tribune while in Paris. I was there doing some research on a book idea.

Interestingly, there’s been quite a bit of Canada in the European press this week. The Sino Forest scandal on Bay Street made the Financial Times of London, and I ran across a review of Maureen Jennings’ new book, Season of Darkness. She’s the author of the books behind that great TV series, Murdoch Mysteries, featuring an 1890s’ Toronto detective with a flair for solving cases through clever use of newly emerging scientific criminology.

In Paris, we watched with several thousands others the ceremonies in front of l’Hotel de Ville commemorating the liberation of Paris on August 25, 1944.  This year tribute was paid to the resistants who rose against the Germans in the final days of the Occupation. It was a moving ceremony and while the crowd was not large by Parisian standards, it included many young people, presumably all mindful of the importance of that historic day.

Back in Canada, the prevailing sentiment in wake of the death of Jack Layton seems to be a yearning for politicians to learn from the positive and optimistic view he expressed so eloquently, especially in his final campaign. I have always felt that the first priority of a national leader should be to provide people with reason to feel positive about their country and themselves. Not blind patriotism of the flag waving type so endemic to the United States, but a genuine sense of delight about a country’s prospects and the promise it holds for its people and their place in the world.

It is probably unrealistic to expect the aura around Jack Layton’s passing to persist for more than a brief moment. But one can hope that the flame he set alight will burn in the hearts of men and women in our public life for a very long time to come.

Stephen Harper once vowed that by the time he was finished with Canada, we wouldn’t know the place. Now ruling with a majority government, he’s well on his way to fulfilling that promise.

The decision to restore “Royal” title to the Canadian Armed Forces, giving the Air Force and the Navy these regal appellations, speaks to Harper’s monarchial and traditionalist views, all to be expected from a conventionally conservative politician of his brand.

According to Defence Minister Peter McKay, designating the branches of the forces as the Royal Canadian Navy, the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Canadian Army is a matter of restoring military pride. The titles were abandoned when the Canadian forces were merged under Prime Minister Pearson back in the 1960s.

If you have a romantic view of the courage of British heroes, such as Lord Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar, then I guess you might like to see Canada reverting to such colonial nomenclature.

But it smacks of the kind of mentality expressed by Arthur Meighan, the Conservative leader of the Opposition back in 1922, when Winston Churchill, as First lord of the Admiralty, said the Dominions might be called on to support Britain in its tiff with Turkey over a place called Chanak.

Canada’s Parliament was not in session at the time. Prime Minister Mackenzie King balked, saying he wouldn’t give aid without Parliament’s approval, but the issue wasn’t important enough to justify its  recall.

Arthur Meighan thought differently.

  “When Britain’s message came, then Canada should have said, ‘Ready, aye ready, we stand by you,’” Meighan declared. In fact, he was echoing a slogan of a former Liberal PM, Wilfrid Laurier. But Meighan  got stuck with the colonialist tag and never lived it down.

The man who engineered the merger of the Forces, Paul Hellyer, Defence minister under Pearson, says Harper’s decision shows a colonial attitude. And he points out it’s going to cost millions even to do the “cosmetic changes” required by the re-naming.

Stephen Harper’s enthusiasm for royalty was highly visible during the recent tour of Prince William and his new bride, so none of this should be very surprising. And bored as Canadians are with the whole royal thing, it’s unlikely there’s going to be much public reaction, one way or the other.

A quick survey of online reader comments on the Toronto Star website bears this out.

Of course, there are those who served proudly in the Canadian military and welcome the re-astablishment of the historic tie. Others are not so sure.

“I Didn’t Know the Monarchy System of Absolute, Birthright Rule was still so popular in Canada. This is the 21st century. What exactly does this say about us as an independent country? It’s bad enough the Queen has the final say in our political system, now we’re back to waging war in her name, rather than our own?” wrote one reader.

Polls taken over the years show a pretty consistent disinterest among Canadians. According to Wikipedia, in an October 2009 poll by Angus Reid, only a minority 27% of Canadians preferred Canada to remain a monarchy. The plurality 35% of Canadians prefer Canada to have an elected head of state. When asked who they would prefer as a monarch after Queen Elizabeth II, the plurality 37% of Canadians responded by saying there should be no monarch after her.

Guess what? I predict the split will be about the same in 2029!

The mini boom in Canada’s largest city in support of Margaret Atwood for Mayor raises some interesting questions. Would the 71-year-old novelist, poet and sometime political activist ever seriously consider jumping into politics? And if she did run for Mayor of Toronto, could she win?

To this point, the gathering support for Atwood for Mayor is not much more than a lighthearted fling, a spontaneous outbreak of enthusiasm following her intervention in the debate over the future of the city’s library system.

The novelist is accustomed to taking stands on issues affecting arts and culture. She’s been a bitter critic of Stephen Harper. Now, in the wake of Mayor Rob Ford’s determination to “cut the gravy” from city spending, she’s become the prime proponent of saving the Toronto Public Library’s 99 branches that circulate more books than any other system in North America.

Ms. Atwood started it all with a Tweet to her 233,361 followers on July 21, responding to the KPMG report that identified library closings as a possible way of helping the city out of the $750 million hole that Mayor Rob Ford has dug it into in the first year of his term.

The Tweet heard round Canada: “Toronto’s libraries are under threat of privatization. Tell city council to keep them public now.” Her appeal drove readers to an online petition on a web site of the Library Workers Union. The site promptly crashed, and as I write (Sunday, July 31) it’s attracted 41,499 signatures.

More pointed Tweets followed, including this one:

“Twin Fordmayor cld fight for fair shake from ON, but that’s not the agenda? T(he)y want to trash old folks + readers + working moms instead?

The Twin Ford reference cleverly links in the Mayor’s witless brother, Doug Ford, who promptly denied any knowledge of who Margaret Atwood might be, or what she does.

“Good luck to Margaret Atwood, I don’t even know her. She could walk right by me – I wouldn’t have a clue who she is,”  Ford said in response to Atwood’s tweets. “Tell her to go run in the next election and get democratically elected. I’m happy to sit down and listen to Margaret Atwood.”

So how about it, Margaret Atwood. Would you run for Mayor?

Anyone who knows her knows that Margaret Atwood could never fill the role of a back-slapping politician. But she wouldn’t be the first artist to go for political office. I’m thinking of Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright and poet dissident who was the President of free Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic. Or Jan Paderewski, the great Polish composer and pianist who was the second Prime Minister of an independent Poland after the First World War.

Would Ms. Atwood have the interest, the stamina, or the ability to withstand the inanities of a political life? Anyone who’s been through the ordeal of author tours as she has, surely has the stamina. Age is not a factor. Look at Hazel McCallion, long-serving mayor of neighboring Mississauga, and at 90 only now is in what will be her final term.

But let’s face it, Margaret Atwood running for Mayor of Toronto is a highly unlikely prospect.

Let’s suspend disbelief for a moment, and pretend Toronto voters could choose between Atwood and Ford in the next election.The campaign would be highly entertaining, pitting culture against the barbarians. However, like all things political, it probably wouldn’t be fought on any rational understanding of issues facing the city. The Ford forces would depict Margaret Atwood as a “tax and spend liberal.” She’d fight back, brilliantly, but perhaps not successfully.

The library controversy is a case in point. It would be nice to have a rational discussion of the cost/benefits of the city’s chain of libraries. Doug Ford claimed, erroneously, there were more branches in  his Etobicoke district than there were Tim Hortons coffee shops. Not true, but what’s that got to do with it?

With the city hard pressed to cover its costs, perhaps a rational analysis might turn up one or two libraries that could be closed without depriving anyone of reasonable access. Even if that were the case, the savings would be miniscule. But it would give Mayor Ford the spoon of gravy that he needs to feed the right-wing voters who put him in office.

As of today, Margaret Atwood is off Twitter for a week, busy on a writing project. Maybe she’ll tell us when she comes back how she would feel about becoming a politician.

If I were a young person — say 25 or 30 — with political ambitions and ideas about how the country should be run, I’d jump into the Liberal Party with all the energy I could muster. Why? Because a party that’s down — or new — is wide open at the top and the bottom. And all it takes to move up the ranks is determination and patience.

This is not a new idea with me. I had these thoughts fifty years ago. I thought there were two things you’d have to do. First, build your own personal constituency through some kind of citizen activism. It could be any kind of a cause. Second, mobilize that constituency to help you get elected and on the ladder to the top rank in your party.

Too many things got in my way of following through on those ideas. (Although I did join the Liberal party, back in 1972.) Now, there’s a great opportunity  for someone with the commitment and motivation to create a new leadership role in tomorrow’s Liberal Party.

It’s been done before, in other parties.

Tommy Douglas joined the CCF as a young church minister in its early days in Saskatchewan, rose to be Premier, and later leader of what would become the  Official Opposition, the New Democratic party.

Ernest Manning, a youthful Bible student, became enraptured with the idea of Social Credit, joined the new movement in Alberta, and served for years as Premier of that province.

W.A.C. Bennett, a disgruntled B.C. Tory, took hold of Social Credit aspirations in the west coast province and established a political dynasty that ran out only after his son, Bill, has succeeded him in power for several years.

Rene Levesque, unhappy with the reluctance of the Quebec Liberal Party to move from “maitre chez nous” to all-out separatism, built the Parti Quebecois from the ground up, establishing a legacy that endures to this day.

Joey Smallwood, convinced that Newfoundland would be better off in Canada, campaigned for Confederation and became the odds-on choice to head up the Liberal Party when that island became a province. He reigned for years.

Gilles Duceppe, a one-time Maoist and union organizer, became the  first elected MP for the Bloc Quebecois in 1990, setting him on a twenty-year trajectory in Parliament.

All of which goes to prove, in my view, that booking into a political party at its nadir, or catching the rising star of a new movement, offers unusual opportunities.

And of course, you need to engage with the community, as Duceppe did as a community organizer (also Barack Obama) and as Gerard Kennedy, the onetime Ontario Education Minister and federal liberal leadership contender, did with the foodbank movement.

In saying this, I’m not advocating self-serving opportunism. You’ve got to have ideas to go with your ambition. And if your ideas are really important, they probably won’t be very popular at first. Witness Tommy Douglas on healthcare, Smallwood on union with Canada, Bennett on B.C. economic self-sufficiency, or even Duceppe on separatism.

What ideas might a future leader of the Liberal party embrace as Canada goes forward from 2011? They shouldn’t be ideas based on what the public says it wants, or what might win a few seats at the next election.

Really important ideas need to be fought for, and take a long time to fulfill.

Here’s one: family planning, as an element of Canada’s foreign policy. The government of the day refuses to fund international aid involving the teaching of family planning or practice of abortion. Canada’s policy should be just the opposite. Give foreign aid only to countries that agree to embrace family planning.

Drug addiction. Treat it as a health issue, not a crime. End the insanity of a system that, like the prohibition of alcohol, creates vast cesspools of crime. Do just the opposite of what we’re doing.

Immigration. Combined with a global family planning program, Canada could in a clear conscience severely restrict immigration to only those who bring significant new knowledge and cultural compatibility to this country.

Foreign policy: An end to international adventurism, putting a stop to making war on countries like Libya.

This handful of ideas, all in diametric opposition to current policy, would not be an easy sell. But for too long, politics has been based on parties trying to find out what the pubic wants, and then giving it to them. We need a different approach. Come up with  good ideas and then sell them to the public.

Michael Ignatieff closed his resignation speech by saying he hoped that someone out there, perhaps a young woman, was listening to his remarks and he hoped they would come into the arena, and perhaps one day lead the Liberal party.

I hope so too, and with ideas that will engage Canadians into thinking about real solutions to real problems in the 21st century.

The first time I heard Bob Rae speak was at a breakfast meeting of the Board of Trade in Toronto where he discussed a new federal budget — back about 1988. He was the leader of the Ontario NDP at the time. His critique was rational, reasonable, and surprisingly non-partisan. Later that day, I heard him on the radio blasting the Peterson Liberal government — shrill, filled with invective, harshly political. I had heard twp Bob Raes that day.

Now that he is the interim leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, I’m wondering whether a third Bob Rae is not emerging: seasoned, sensible, committed to values more than to strategy, a voice that can talk sense to the party’s inner core and motivate the grassroots to assert themselves in ways that’s never happened before.

There are bound to be a lot of rocks ahead on the Liberal road, and we can expect a few stumbles. I talk about some of these in the new e-edition of my book, Turning Points: the Campaigns That Changed Canada. This book was originally published in 2004. I’ve updated it with a fresh chapter 1 on the 2011 election. It’s available online ($9.95), here, and here. I’ll give you a preview of some of what I have to say about the Liberal party:

“If wisdom prevails – a not always certain assumption in politics – the Liberal party will focus neither on leadership nor on winning the next election, but instead will search for ways to build a new
kind of party, infuse it with the energy of the grassroots that has never been deployed, and address issues that matter to Canadians from a long-term, non-ideological perspective. This would mean
a long period of soul-searching and investigation to identify policies that are needed to strengthen Canada in the coming century, not necessarily calculated to produce victory at the next election.
The greatest challenge facing Canada will be to equip the population with the skills to lead successful lives in an increasingly technological society. This will require ideas that go far beyond giving
students a few thousand dollars to help pay their post-secondary tuition.

“The second great challenge will be to achieve transition to an economy that is less reliant on fossil fuels, a course that will be fraught with frustration when the inefficiencies of wind and solar power
become more apparent. Social and health issues will become increasingly important, with one of the most urgent needs being to develop an alternative to the failed “war on drugs,” something likely
to be found only by harnessing the resources of the healthcare system in place of reliance on police and prisons. More meaningful roles for parliamentarians have to be found, the power of the
Prime Minister’s office needs to be curbed, and consideration must be given to further democratization of political life, perhaps through such new ideas as turning the office of the Governor
General into an elective, presidential type of position. More of the elements of federal governance need to be located in Western Canada in recognition of that region’s growing importance. Why
couldn’t Parliament meet on occasion in a Western city?

” Canada’s foreign policy needs to be carefully orchestrated toward the encouragement of democracy and human rights in ways that do not
require commitment to Afghanistan and Libya-type military operations. Our relationship with the United States will test future Canadian governments if we are to retain national self-respect and
self-determination. All these issues need to be studied by experts and discussed by the Canadian people, and the Liberal party should play a leadership role in seeing tthis happen.

“In 1992, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama published The End of History and the Last Man. His book asserted that the world had passed through not just a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such; the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. In a similar manner, the decade marked the Liberal Party of Canada’s own “end of history” – the end of a long period of nation building in which Liberal governments transformed Canada into a modern welfare state, with a modern constitution and charter of rights, a strengthened federal system with protections against secession, and the birth of a multicultural society that despite inherent problems has become a model for the world. Having reached these goals and having tested the limits of affordability of the social safety net, the Liberal party reverted to a short-term policy of brutal fiscal management – as it had to – but in the process lost its sense of national purpose and any claim to a common vision. Now Liberals must find a way to rediscover the energy to deliver new solutions to new problems, if they are to make history again.”

Thoughts on the federal election results tonight:

The New Democratic Party is celebrating but it is Jack Layton’s efforts which have given the Conservatives their majority. He’s not likely to be able to move the country forward toward the goals he set out in his campaign against the new Tory majority. That will disillusion and disappoint NDP supporters. A pyrrhic victory!

In his speech at his victory party in Toronto’s Convention Centre, he said he would get the country moving on the issues he raised in the campaign. He spoke as if he had won the election – lifting seniors out of poverty, making Canada a voice for peace in the world, dealing with climate change. Not likely. Preston Manning, Reform founder and spiritual father of the new Conservatives predicted tonight that Stephen Harper “will not be timid” with his majority. He was being questioned on CTV as to whether Harper would now, with a majority, feel he has to bow to the demands of social conservatives.

We can expect to hear and read a lot about the new crew of NDP members elected in Quebec. A few jokes too, no doubt, especially in regard to the lady Dipper who vacationed in Las Vegas during the campaign — but got elected!

Don’t forget that another party was a brief force in Quebec not long ago – the Action Democratique. It almost formed the government in the provincial election before last. But its multitude of new and inexperienced members proved to be such disasters that the ADQ has now disappeared from the Quebec political scene.

I don ‘t wish the same fate to the NDP, and it’s unlikely to write a similar sorry chapter. But with two-thirds of the caucus from Quebec, Layton and his Quebec lieutenant, Thomas Mulclair, have their work cut out for them.

The reverse side of the NDP’s winning coin — the demise of the Bloc Quebecois. How reminiscent of the 1993 federal election, when the Progressive Conservatives were reduced to two seats. We welcome the demise of the Bloc, but it is sad that once again, Quebec is shut out from the federal government. The new Tories elected in Quebec are unlikely to be able to connect Ottawa with the province. What a dramatic reversal in  Quebec City — all Tory candidates defeated, due no doubt in part to Harper’s refusal to help fund a new hockey arena. Right decision, but bad politics, Stephen.

A fine concession speech by Michael Ignatieff – showed himself the true gentleman he is. It is unfortunate he wasn’t able to connect with the voters. Ignatieff is the second professor in a row to lead the Liberal party, a party which has lurched from disaster to disaster since Paul Martin forced Jean Chretien into premature retirement.

I was pleased to see Elizabeth May finally make it into Parliament. After her futile run against Peter McKay in 2008, it’s clear she made a sound strategic decision to move to the one riding in the country — Saanich and the Islands — that is genuinely receptive to Green ideas. They won’t be able to keep her out of the next leader’s debate!

So what can we stay about Stephen Harper? He ran a mean and vicious  campaign, and in many ways has debased and devalued the quality of Canadian public life. One can only hope his majority will mellow him.

Finally, the polls once again measured up as fairly accurate forecasts of the vote. Notwithstanding the fact that the 40% vote the Conservatives garnered was higher than any of the polls had forecast. It’s “Blue” Ontario and Tory Toronto once again!