The Liberals are to elect a new party president this weekend. Knowing the Liberals as I do, I’m quite positive that we’ll call Sheila Copps “Madam President” come Monday morning.
How would that be for the party’s promise to renew and reform itself?
Copps is a dinosaur. She’s been around forever. She also represents a time in the Liberal Party that even most Liberals would rather forget: the schism and feud between the Chrétienites and Martinites, which marked the beginning of the gradual demise of the party.
As for the promised renewal, let’s be realistic: the Liberals have made this promise since being ousted from power in the January 2006 election. Several leadership races have come and gone, and it’s still the same old party – that is, one that doesn’t know what it is or where it’s headed.
Even after daily poundings and ribbings in the House of Commons and in the public arena since 2006, the Liberals still insist on talking about “old things”, ideas and policies that have been rejected by voters several times by now. Thus, the Liberals are prepared to fight the next election, in 2015, on bringing back the gun registry, saving the Wheat Board, launching a national daycare program, and abolishing the monarchy.
All those propositions are anathema to voters – as all recent federal elections have demonstrated. In 2015, Canadians will be even more reluctant to so much as talk about such things (especially if the “conversion” of Canadians towards conservatism, started in 2006, continues unabated).
Copps, when asked whether her presence would open old wounds and start factional warfare within the Liberal Party again, said that wouldn’t happen – no turf, no turf wars; no power, no power struggle.
That remark is about as apt as it could possibly be. The Liberals don’t have a “turf” anymore. Their support is measured by neighbourhoods scattered across the country, rather than ridings, cities or provinces. And power has become a myth of yore, something the elders still talk about – you know, the way Brits talk about Camelot and Merlin.
But, surely, you say, things will improve for the Liberals, especially after the NDP has been relegated to the far corners of Parliament.
That’s true, to some extent. The Liberals will pick up votes from those that wandered over to the NDP in the last election. Those votes were for Jack Layton, not the NDP, and since Jack, tragically, is no longer with us, NDP polling numbers will have slid back down to the low teens, or might have fallen to single digits, by the time the next election is called.
Still, it doesn’t mean the Liberal Party is safe and merely has to sit out the next round until things have “normalized” again.
The aforementioned “conservative conversion” that so many Canadians are undergoing nowadays isn’t just wishful thinking among conservatives and Conservatives; it’s an established fact. How else can you explain such overwhelming support for what are typically conservative issues, such as a (theoretic) reintroduction of the death penalty or the incorporation of private sector aspects into our public healthcare system? Or how the silly Occupy movement failed to grab anyone’s attention, except for the thinning circle of radical and extreme left-wingers (such as Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi)?
As a matter of fact, it’s not really a conversion to conservatism, but rather one to common sense. You don’t have to be “conservative”, but must be able to apply logic and reason, to arrive at the kind of conclusions that are commonly described as being “conservative”.
That our public healthcare system can’t continue like this is a given. That we must do something about immigration is another given. That our (federal, provincial and municipal) governments can’t go on living beyond their means is something even those with “bird brains” can understand.
That unions don’t serve to protect the interests of the “little guy”, and in fact represent the real “1 percent” that the Occupy movement should have opposed, rather than the fictional one percent it did demonstrate against, not realizing that the latter creates, whereas the former destroys, jobs and prosperity, is increasingly becoming gospel across the land.
Consequently, any party that finds itself left-of-centre even ever so slightly (yes, that includes the REDfords governing in Edmonton, Alberta) is essentially headed for history’s outhouse. Maybe not immediately, but over the medium term for sure.
Hence, I think, there’s a good chance, especially if the Harper Conservatives fail to establish their fiscally conservative credentials, that the next contest in Ottawa could come down between two conservative parties, rather than between conservatives and those on the left.
Incidentally, Alberta has already entered that future: the next provincial election, now expected for mid to end of April, will be fought between the “Tories” (conservative in name) and the Wildrose Alliance (genuine conservatives), while all the other parties (Alberta Liberals, NDP, Alberta Party, Evergreens) are nothing but barely audible background noise.