Wild About Writing

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!

I’m beginning to feel like the guy who wrote the famous headline, DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN, in the 1948 U.S. presidential election. Harry Truman of course beat Dewey handily, and he never tired of holding up the front page of the Chicago Tribune to show how wrong they were to rely on early returns.

We had a similar occurrence in Canada in 1957 when Maclean’s magazine came out after the election with an editorial written before the voting,  saying the Liberals had been re-elected. The only trouble was that on voting day, John Diefenbaker’s Tories  had defeated the Grits!

My mea culpa comes from a blog I posted a few weeks ago predicting the political death of Jack Layton. Honestly, for all I admire the man, I just couldn’t see him withstanding the physical strain of the campaign. Who would have known?

Now that all the polls are showing the NDP as the only party with momentum, and EKOS having vaulted Layton’s crew into line to become the Official Opposition, everyone is frantically revising their assessments and forecasts.

Based on this poll, either a shadow of things to come or an off-the-wall aberration, Stephen Harper’s minority would be cut to 130 seats, with 100 seats going to the NDP, 62 to the Liberals, 14 for the Bloc, and one independent. I don’t know which is the most shocking — the NDP gain or the Bloc collapse.

If the NDP were to become the Official Opposition, I think the Liberals would be more inclined to swallow another Harper minority than to put Layton into the prime ministership. Playing second fiddle to the NDP would be the end of the Liberals; they’d go the way the Liberal party did in England during the rise of the Labour party. Also, while the Liberals have a left-leaning platform this time, if it came to a fundamental choice for the Grits and the corporate establishment that still backs them, I think there would be more acceptance for a Liberal-Conservative coalition, possibly under someone other than Stephen Harper. This would be especially the prospect if Michael Ignatieff were to stay around for a while.

A Conservative-Liberal accord under a new Tory leader could be sold as a national unity government, the only acceptable arrangement at a time when economic uncertainty is still a fact of life. There’d be many Tory claimants for the top spot, but someone like Jim Prentice, the former environment minister who left Harper for a top banking position, would be an acceptable compromise if he’d come back.

While Ignatieff has failed to do himself much good in this campaign, I think he has been successful (more so than most realize) in crippling Harper’s bid for a majority. I suspect his sharp and pointed denunciation of Harper’s anti-democratic record has stiffened opposition to Harper, even though it’s failed to warm up voters to the Liberals. So the NDP has become the natural beneficiary of Canadians’ continued suspicion of Mr. Harper’s real intentions. That 500-page dossier of Harper’s “problematic” quotes, compiled by his own party, tells you just how much this guy has had to swallow to present himself as deserving of a majority.

The forces at work in Quebec, meanwhile,  differ from those in the rest of the country. I’m disappointed to see Layton take such a pro-nationalist position — promising to open up the constitution, and to put federal workers under Bill 101. If voters in the rest of Canada decide this is just another example of Quebec getting what it wants, it would be a major turn-off for the NDP outside La Belle Province.

I voted Monday in the advance poll, and there was a long line-up ahead of us. Who ever said this was an “unwanted and unneeded” election?

Michael Ignatieff gave Canadians a lecture in Politics 101 the other day — simple facts on how Parliament works — but this may have been enough to derail his campaign.

When he sat down with CBC news anchor Peter Mansbridge, Ignatieff must have known he’d be asked how he’d handle minority government  if that’s the outcome of the May 2nd election.

It’s a topic of high interest because of Stephen Harper’s hammering on Coalition as a fate to be avoided only by electing “a strong, national Conservative majority.”

The political realist that he is, Harper knows  if he’s returned with less than a majority, he’s likely to fall on the first vote of confidence in the new Parliament. He’s warned he’ll bring his budget back just as it is, and seems reconciled to the Governor General calling on the Liberals to form a government when it’s defeated in the House. The Globe and Mail today puts it this way:

Stephen Harper has no plans to compromise on his next Throne Speech or his next budget if he wins only a minority government, because he believes it wouldn’t matter. “

That circumstance would be a bit of a replay of the 1926 “King-Byng” affair. Prime Minister King asked for an election, Governor General Byng denied him that and called on the Conservative leader, Arthur Meighan, to form an administration. Its defeat within a few days left the Governor General with no choice but to allow Meighan an election. King won by campaigning against the Governor General’s “interference.” In fact, Byng was perfectly justified in what he did, as Bruce Hutchison explains in his definitive biography, The Incredible Canadian (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Ignatieff’s remarks shouldn’t have set off the fuss they did, or given Harper a new opening to demand a majority. Anybody who’s been to high school in Canada should know, as Ignatieff explained, that a government rules only with the consent of Parliament. But that didn’t deter Harper from raising the spectre of Coalition once again. He claimed we’d end up with a government about whose program we know nothing and that we’d be open to higher taxes, another referendum on sovereignty, and whatever other ill wind might conceivably blow through Ottawa.

Of course, Harper’s ravings are all nonsense. The Liberal program has been clearly spelled out in the campaign. Ignatieff has said he would consult with the other parties if he became a minority Prime Minister, which is what Harper should have been doing the past five years, and hasn’t.

The media are nevertheless duty-bound to report whatever is said in the campaign. And so Harper gets another chance to rail against the ghost of Coalition, despite Ignatieff’s clear disavowal of such a course. And while the media are harping on the subject, the Liberal attempt to focus on health care is knocked off the rails.

It says something that both parties are reduced to campaigning on fear. Harper on the fear of cooperation among the Opposition parties. Ignatieff on the fear of what Tory tax cuts could do to the government’s ability to fund healthcare.

Amid it all, support grows for the NDP. I am among those who agree with Jack Layton’s stance on Afghanistan — there’s little we can accomplish and we shouldn’t be there. But the rest of the NDP program makes little economic or constitutional sense, as Jeffrey Simpson notes in this  analysis.

So what do you fear the most?

Is democracy a pocketbook issue? Probably not, which explains why Michael Ignatieff fell short of his goal in last night’s English federal leaders’ debate. He may have gotten to the five-yard line, but he didn’t score.

Ignatieff was hard-hitting and on the money in properly calling Stephen Harper to account for his dictatorial tactics in refusing Parliament a proper accounting of the costs of government legislation.

“This is about the economy, about telling the truth,” Ignatieff said. He reminded Harper that parliamentary debate isn’t “bickering,” it’s the stuff of democracy. “You cannot be trusted with the institutions of our country.”

But it’s hard to work up much enthusiasm for the Liberal leader’s performance. The Toronto Star has a good wrap-up here.

The morning after assessment from the media and the blogosphere seems to be that the leaders conducted themselves true to form.

• Harper, the smarmy, schoolmasterish lecturer telling Canadians they’d better give him  a majority or face “a fifth or sixth election” in the next few years.

• Jack Layton, the happy warrior, smiling despite the pain he must have felt on his feet for two hours with a fractured hip.

• Ignatieff, a novice in leaders’ debates but a seasoned TV presenter, dealing all the right sound bites in his criticisms of Harper.

• Gilles Duceppe , the irrelevant fourth man, there merely to demand more for Quebec. Nonetheless a telling and effective debater; if he’d been a Liberal, he’d probably be Prime Minister right now.

The script fit nicely into Harper’s strategy. Leave me alone and let me have my way or the economy will nosedive and you’ll have to suffer the ordeal of another election. Don’t bug me with bickering. It was more of the politics of fear that Harper has traded on over crime and Coalition. It’s just possible Canadians will be so fed up with not just Harper but the others as well, that they’ll let him have his majority as the price of getting him off their backs.

More than anything, the debate demonstrated the sorry futility of hoping for a rational discussion of a vision  for the country. There’s the glimmer of one in the Liberal platform, but Ignatieff was not especially revealing in how he portrayed it.

There are two weeks plus left in the campaign for Ignatieff to sell the Liberal program to voters. There’s much in it that’s appealing, and the country can well afford the key planks of education support, assistance for home care givers, and help to seniors.

A change of pace

One of the best pieces of reporting in the current campaign is in the Globe and Mail today with an informative, highly readable account of the situation in the two key Kitchener ridings in southwestern Ontario. Traditionally Liberal, they both went Conservative by razor-thin margins in 2008. Anthony Reinhart writes knowingly of what these districts, heir to a long history of manufacturing success and Mennonite frugality, are doing to meet the challenges of a hi tech, global economy. It’s here.

Something very strange is going on in Canada when election rallies become “private events” and the RCMP give their aid to party operatives bent on keeping citizens away from the Prime Minister.

We expect the Force to provide security to the Prime Minister, but not to engage in political housecleaning. A statement from the RCMP today concedes they shouldn’t have been helping Conservative organizers keep out people from Mr. Harper’s rallies on the basis of their Facebook photos or bumper stickers.

Then the statement goes on to add:

The RCMP is responsible for the security of party leaders. This mandate does not include managing the access of persons attending private events.”

So now Conservative Party election meetings are “private events”?And here we thought, poor us, that election rallies were occasions for Mr. Harper (and other party leaders)to reach out to Canadians by explaining their policies and trying to convince us to vote for them.

In fact, these sessions have been turned into contrived media events, with a few dozen party stalwarts dragged out as props to make it look as if this guy is conversing with the people. Why do the media go along with this charade?

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, in view of the fact that the same Mr. Harper has been deriding our exercise in democracy as “an unwanted and unneeded election.” When is an election unwanted or unneeded? Ask the people of the old Soviet Union, or Iran, or Egypt and you might get some interesting answers.

Another disturbing thing about this election is that the two main parties, and even the NDP to a lesser extent, are ducking discussion of any serious issues.

Yes, the Prime Minister needs to explain why he hired as a chief advisor a man with a record of multiple fraud offenses and who is now being investigated for possible illegal lobbying.

But where is the discussion of:

1 – Foreign policy – and the implications of our actions in bombing Libyan targets?

2 – Free trade negotiations with Europe – and what this could mean to our future?

3 – The “perimeter” security and trade agreement Canada is discussing with the United States?

4 – Cost sharing between Ottawa and the provinces of health and medicare when the current agreement expires in three years (and the feds find themselves with a bare cupboard thanks to Harper corporate tax cuts and overspending on jets and jails)?

5 – Our nuclear future - its promise or its threat to energy security and climate change?

Not a peep about any of these from Mr. Harper or Mr. Ignatieff, and damn little from Jack Layton.

And therein may lie the explanation for voters’ apparent indifference toward this election.

Now, to change the tune, here’s a fun Video you might like – “It’s a Book.”