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Why I’d join the Liberal party
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.
Rocks in the Liberal road
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.”
