Worth the Fee to Read It

“An election if necessary, but not necessarily an election” seems to be off the table. St-Stéphane, le Dauphin Dion, has apparently reached a decision: Liberal MPs are to spend the summer communicating new Liberal policies (to be revealed shortly) to the electorate and then the fall session will “be allowed to begin”.

It is not my place today to throw wood and camp stove fuel, along with a lighted match, on the fire of controversy about the various Conservative bills and Liberal Puffery placed against them that occasionally manages to leak out around the edges of the drool and theatre surrounding Liberal indignation over “In-and-Out” and the rebuttals thereunto that pass for the nation’s business these days. Talk radio, at least here in Vancouver, is ignoring the whole sordid mess of Ottawa: none of it matters. This echoes what I was highlighting last month during the lead-up to the Vancouver-Quadra by-election: the irrelevance of the whole Ottawa thrust and counter-thrust. My guess (and, to be fair, my hope) is that when Stéphane’s Liberal MPs — the underwhelming Don Bell in North Vancouver, the indescribable Dr. Hedy Fry in Vancouver-Centre, the party-switching Ujjal Dosanjh in Vancouver-South, the lunch-bag-let-down Joyce Murray in Vancouver-Quadra, the seldom-seen Raymond Chan in Richmond and the generally-forgettable Sukh Dhaliwal in Newton-North Delta — come to hit the hustings in what on all the available history and evidence ought to be fertile ground for their party they discover that not one — not a single one — of the “policy issues” they want to talk about get any traction, or, indeed, any interest, other than the local party ground troops from the EDAs there to clap on command.

I’m not being hard, by the way, on the Liberals — the NDP MPs and the Conservative MPs are just as likely to meet quiet indifference to their presence in their ridings, and to require equal levels of support from their EDA members out to make it look good — because, frankly, if the Lower Mainland of BC is anything to go by there’s little going on in Ottawa that’s seen as mattering to people here, and even less that anyone here can do to influence what goes on in Ottawa. (Do you suppose there’s a correlation between BC’s “worst compliance record in Canada” with the Canada Revenue Agency and that sense that that happens over the mountains, across the Prairies, and through the endless lakes and forests that lie between here and the Nation’s Capital really happens on another planet?)

The Liberals, for instance, are likely to be here selling Dion’s much-anticipated Carbon Tax. BC residents, of course, will — oh, frabjous joy for Dominion Day! — be paying the BC Liberal Government’s carbon tax come July. Of course, in the grand scheme of things, 2.4¢/litre doesn’t sound like much, and as a percentage of the typical current pump price for 87 octane of $1.31.7/litre perhaps it’s not. But it’s the principle: Excise Tax, Deficit Reduction Tax (for a deficit long gone), GST & GST on the taxes!, Translink Tax … the list is long and here’s another one. The hub of cross-border shopping in Canada is across the Peace Arch/Douglas Point crossing, followed very shortly by a stop at a Washington State filling station, where, at US$3.60/US gallon, the price is still only 96.4/litre in Canadian funds. Selling yet another tax won’t be easy. Selling reversal of the GST cut — every trip to Bellingham is 2% cheaper now when you declare your purchases on a day trip — won’t go far, either.

The Liberals will be pitching their wares against the latest Statistics Canada data, which shows that BC has benefitted the least — wages up a paltry 0.7% over 2001-2006 (and how much is the cost of living up?) with increased bifurcation of the incomes of British Columbians out of the middle class and into the small but increasing-like-mad incomes of the “rich” and the growing numbers of the poor. They’ll be selling against a party with the same name, and many of the same well-known “names” involved, that gave the Premier a 54% pay increase, Cabinet Ministers a 39% increase, established independent “Boards” for BC Ferries and Translink that voted themselves massive (40-60%) increases while raising fares, and which has recently funded playground equipment at well-heeled private schools like St. George’s without a penny going to any school on the East Side of Vancouver, all because St. George’s could write the matching funds cheque and despite all the hard work of the parents and community around the East Side schools they couldn’t raise the sums required in the time available. Blatant mis-steps like these await the Liberal MPs.

It’s not even a matter of being tarred with the same brush because of the similarity of name: it’s that they’re coming back with a “Government Knows Best” approach when a spring of similar arrogance has been laid down by the Province. We get to deal with our MLAs next spring; we get to deal with these MPs now. Expect — just as in talk radio — the average citizen not to give any care as to which level of government did, or proposes, what: you’re here, I’m ticked, you must be responsible.

That lack of knowledge of where and whom to actually target, of course, is yet another indication of the disconnect involved. (The inevitable “that’s not us, that’s them” en riposte, of course, solidifies the inclination to ignore the lot of them.)

As with Chicken Little (or Professeur Puffin) the running about shouting le ciel tombe day after day has now led to the point where tune-out is complete. Vote, don’t vote; topple, don’t topple; threaten, don’t threaten; it’s all just noise now. If Ontarians, for instance, have expressed more favour for the Liberals since In-and-Out that can just as much be because Ontario’s Provincial Government is Liberal, and fighting Ottawa’s Conservatives as it might be for In-and-Out. In other places the shift is not happening, or not profound: evidence of disregard or a belief that, yes, they all do it.

What this means is that when the next election does finally come it will be fought, not on accusations of sleaze (much though a Kinsella-inspired Liberal War Room might salivate at the thought) but on policy. Chatter about global warming has died down and mostly gone away, in the face of tougher economic times (jumping food and fuel prices, slowing pay, increasing taxes and fees, fewer opportunities, knowing people who are now laid off) and a winter spent literally chattering as La Niña worked its oscillatory magic on our weather. No doubt the warming goes on, but it is not the issue it was. Feeding the family, dealing with the member in distress, wondering how to close the gap between income and every two-bit oligolopolist and agency head who thinks they’re the only one shovelling a double-digit increase at you: that’s what matters.

A bevy of MPs who have spent this year sitting on their hands or ducking for cover when the division occurs — we might call it a sit-in, except the last place they wanted to sit was in the House — will come to face a population likewise on sit-down strike. Or most of them at any rate: there will be those who shift their agitation (such as with immigrant community leaders) from the Conservatives for “changing the rules” to the Liberals for “not stopping this” (as has been threatened). For the rest of us, though, we’ll get to yell at any politician who shows their face.

It shall all be a fire storm of sound and fury — signifying nothing.

Yesterday, in the first part of this article, we dealt with the Greens, NDP and Bloc. Today, let’s turn to the Liberals; tomorrow, the Conservatives.

Liberals Cannot Be Led By Reason Alone

In a front-page story this morning, The Globe and Mail discusses the difficulties the Liberals are facing in their Québec wing. “[Dion] has no instinct”, as Liza Frulla, the former Heritage Minister, put it. This may well be true — certainly Stéphane Dion’s shifts between threat, bluster and invective followed by abstentious quiet, his failures in Outremont and Desenthé-Missinippi-Churchill River with appointed candidates, and the general disarray portrayed by various caucus members in their press quotes and blogs over the last fifteen months do suggest a person who is trying, but not succeeding, at marshalling his party and preparing for the challenges of a general election. There are many — including Dion himself — who hold to the thought of “once Canadians get to know him, they will support him”. Alas, after all this time, there is the slight possibility that we have come to know him.

There is little question in my mind but that Dion is an intelligent man. Not only that, but his intelligence is that of academic success and reasoned argument. Those who believe we still need to get to know him base this, I believe, in large measure upon someone who no doubt shines in small settings, able to carry a scintillating conversation over dinner, or (en français) engage in the cut-and-riposte of laying out a position, then dealing with the questions that follow.

Some of the comments heard from Dion over this time — about having a team, listening to caucus and advisors, etc. — are, I believe, genuine. He does expect a reasoned discussion, and, through the processes of reason, a consensus to emerge, which all will then support.

Alas, this is politics, and, unlike another former professor turned cabinet minister before him, Pierre Trudeau, Dion lacks the capability to handle the other sides of politics: the reaching out and mobilising a crowd, the balance between passion about an issue and shrillness about it (in this, he shares the harsh light that also falls on Elizabeth May), and a sense of how to make people work with him and for him, especially people with their own power base, their own agendas and their own ambitions. (Effectively it was only John Turner whom Trudeau could not keep on side [what is it with Finance Ministers and unbridled ambition coupled with a sense of entitlement, whether this be Turner-Trudeau, Martin-Chrétien or Brown-Blair?].)

Whatever is missing remains missing, and is now unlikely to be discovered and put to work.

This says that it is not Dion’s fractured English that is at fault, or the forces of other leadership candidates refusing to do their jobs (in Québec, in particular) or any of the other common thoughts about him. He has, of course, run himself up the flagpole to flutter in the breeze by the policy of election avoidance followed under his leadership, especially in 2008, but most of that is from his attempts to act indignant in Question Period. Poseurs for the cameras are easily exposed in the harsh light of the kleigs as ingenuine: we sense that, whatever Dion is, this is simply an act.

And a bad one, for Dion (unlike Trudeau, or his mentor Chrétien) is unable to suspend his critical thinking and play the role with the wholeness needed to succeed. If we found ourselves wondering at Paul Martin’s use of the “Harper wants troops in Canadian cities” television spot during the 2006 election, we at least could blame his team for it trying to respond to their leader’s need to hold power; Chrétien we would have believed instantly as having designed the spot. But for Dion, we would wonder if it was just another case of the last advisor through the door having bent him in a new direction. This is what a tin ear for political life brings you.

Whether the Liberals decide to bite the bullet and dump Dion now to present a new leader for a 2009 election, or whether they go with him into the next election and, from the Opposition benches again, go through Leadership II afterward, is somewhat irrelevant, for the time has run out. A putsch — and there is little else to call it — would create even deeper fractures in a party already rent by nearly four decades of them. Lose with the new leader, lose with the existing one, the result will no doubt be the same. For the other missing link in Liberal fortunes is the one we might well have expected Dion to have done something about: policy.

Over the years, the Liberal Party has been quite proud of its “big tent”, able to attract both Progressive Conservatives, the odd Reform/Canadian Alliance soul, and New Democrats to join them. There is nothing particularly wrong with the notion of a party able to attract people from other parties: what difference is there, really, between you deciding to give up your existing party membership and take out membership in another, and an MP crossing the floor, save only that your act does not appear in television footage and in the front section of the newspaper as a result? But, starting with Trudeau, policy began to take a back seat. Other initiatives were responses; all that mattered was his constitutional obsession. Turner didn’t have a clear policy, until the opportunity to oppose the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement handed him one: once the 1988 election was lost, the party was again effectively policy-less. The Chrétien-era “Red Books” (aside from mostly being ignored once the election was over) were more policy grab-bags — a little of this, a dash of that — than anything focused and coherent, and the thing we remember his governments most for now (other than scandalous behaviour far beyond anything Dion and company have attempted to dredge up in this Parliament) is curing us of deficit spending and eating into the interest burden of the accumulated national debt, something that was forced on him and did not come out of the much-bally-hooed Livre Rouge. Martin, in turn, had no clear policy — instead, he had hundreds of them, all equally vital and important: in other words, still dipping into the pay-off and grab-bag method, but with no restraint on his words.

The Liberals, in other words, have fallen out of the habit of needing policy. At their Montréal Convention in 2006, they ignored the whole question and shunted it off the agenda: there was a leader to elect! In Liberal thinking, we will respond to the leader, and accept whatever dross and floss he pulls out of his bag of tricks.

This, apparently, is something Dion cannot do. He commissioned, instead, a proper policy review, one that has produced less than nothing in the public eye. As a result, his party is defined by a vacuum: all we have to work with is the acting we see in Question Period.

It is the combination of the core Liberal vote — those people for whom a party choice is not a question (all parties have such a core: where it is distributed across the country defines likely lower bounds for seats if all else fails) — and those who so despise Stephen Harper that Stéphane Dion could eviscerate live kittens at his desk in the Commons and it would not sway them to reconsider their support that hold Liberal polling numbers up today, and it is the complete and utter lack of a coherent vision and policy for consideration that keeps them low.

It takes more than reason to do this. People who opposed Dion’s leadership bid will not fully come on side simply in the name of party unity (this is why even amongst the Liberal blogging community, Jason Cherniak’s exhortations on Dion’s behalf for everyone to sit down, shut up and get on the team are laughed at and pooh-poohed). They commit their hearts to the new leader because the new leader sells them on his future vision.

Alas, “Dion is not a Salesman”. The Liberals are stuck. With it, Canadians are stuck, for a vibrant and coherent Opposition with a positive vision of their own makes for better government, too.

Tomorrow: a look at the Conservatives (who have their own set of issues).