1 Anxious Liberal

There are those that would dismiss Krieber’s comments as whiny and meaningless, and those are some of the same people whose understanding of politics could fit on the tip of a needle.  These comments resonate with Quebecers.  Don’t you get that?  There’s an underlying truth to the comments that cuts to the bone.  Coderre, for example, is an absolute moron, particularly compared to Ms. Kreiber, but his comments resonate with Quebecers as well.  Sorry, but those of you who think Krieber’s comments should be dismissed do not understand politics.

The latest Angus Reid poll shows that 64% of Canadians distrust Michael Ignatieff.  Wow.  And that number rises just above 74% when you only included decided Canadians.  Those are disastrous numbers for the Liberals.  Since Ignatieff unconstitutionally seize the leadership of the Liberal Party he has become a known quantity by Canadians … and they know him as someone they barely trust at all.  You can’t win an election with those types of numbers.  And for all those Liberals who took solace in the hopes that even though the polling numbers have been bad they couldn’t get any worse, things just got worse.  The Liberals have dropped to 23%, only five percentage points higher than the NDP.  Put another way, the Liberals have a 15 point gap to overcome with the Conservatives while the NDP need only overcome a 5 point gap to surpass the Liberals.  So if it is possible for the Liberals to overcome the Conservatives then it is more than possible for the NDP to overcome the Liberals.

A lot of good people have been cleared out of the OLO.  And that’s too bad, because the one person who should go is still there, the unconstitutional leader of the party.  Davey certainly had to go.  I’ve never met him, and I hear nothing but good things about the man as a human being, but his political judgment on Ignatieff was absolutely wrong and he should be terminated for hoisting this petard upon on.  But I do know some of the others in the OLO and they are top notch individuals with great capabilities.  But again, they’re not the problem.

So, the PQ want the government to use the so-called notwithstanding clause to override the charter of rights guaranteed to its minority english-speaking population – they even have a legal opinion regarding the matter.  Someone should tell them to get a new lawyer, because the relevant section of the Charter (Section 23) cannot be overriden with section 33, the notwithstanding clause.

There are signs that the results of the recent by-elections have FINALLY provided a sobering wake-up call to some Liberals.  Liberal performance in these elections were mediocre: certainly nothing to cheer about and while it might be a little on the down side it wasn’t really that bad.  In some sense the results should have been a non-event because no one expected a good showing from the Liberals.  However, when Liberals see the Conservatives win a seat they were not suppose to win it redefines the context of their own standings.  Now they’re asking themselves, if they can rebuild why can’t we?  And now some Liberals are finally understanding that cheering at polling numbers that once had us in first place – by two or three percentage points – is nothing to cheer for.  Some Liberals are now finally seeing that it is truly embarrassing to consistently poll below 30% when the Liberal base use to be 33%.

I wrote here before that it would be a mistake for the Conservatives to write off Quebec.  However, the situation he recently found himself in in Quebec gave Harper a freedom that ultimately served him well in Quebec, and will continue to if he holds to this.  He took federalist positions, driven by his own ideology of course, that the chattering classes of Quebec thought for sure would alienate Quebec voters because these positions did not serve the interests of Quebec City.  Harper may now have learned what Chretien and Trudeau always knew and Paul Martin could never figure out: First, Quebecer’s expect their federal governments to be federalists and their provincial government to protect provincial interests – its the way they want it; and second, the interests of Quebec City cannot always be assumed to be the interest of Quebecers.

And so now we are at the point where the federalist alternative to the Bloc Quebec is more and more looking like the Conservatives.  And the anti-Conservative option in the west is more and more looking like the NDP.  Part of the problem is that Ignatieff is simply the wrong leader.  Another part of the problem is that the Liberal Party simply has not defined who it is, other than it is not Harper.  And ironically enough, given the respective policy changes Harper has made to his party and Ignatieff to his there is very little that now differentiates the two, so even that definition of the Liberal Party, that it is not Harper, does not hold much credibility with swing voters.

So will the Liberal Party now finally begin to reform itself?  I doubt it very much.  You see, reform will only happen when the grassroots of the Party rise up and take control.  But it is almost laughable the lengths to which the grassroots of the Party have justified every slap in the face they get from the Party elites – laughable or just very sad.

So I hear that Peter Donolo is about to become King Ignatieff’s new Chief of Staff.  That’s the best decision Ignatieff has made in his political career thus far.  Perhaps Donolo can help put a stop to Ignatieff’s bungling of every opportunity.

You know, I like the McGuinty government and still consider myself a provincial Liberal (it’s the anti-grassroots federal Liberals that I have become disassociated with).  But the deficit they have announced is crazy!

When McGuinty was elected he increased spending, and I think appropriately so.  But we’ve been in the recession for some time now.  Controls should have been put in place.  I’m prepared to cut them slack on this provided that they put controls into place immediately!

I’ve said before that the feds should raise the GST by one percentage point to deal with the short term problem of deficits, and then reduce income taxes by the same amount once the deficit problem has been slayed.  I’m a fiscal conservative and that means your spending in the long run needs to match your revenues.  That is not true federally and it is not true provincially.  And no one has any plan that will make that true!

I am proud of the french character of Canada.  I also support the Quebec government’s efforts at promoting and preserving the french character of Quebec.  But that should be done with the least amount of coercion as possible.  And Bill 104 did not take into account the best interests of the child.  If it was in the best interest of the child to attend an english school why should he or she be sacrificed at the alter of Quebec nationalism.  For those of you following this case, that is exactly what this law has done.  A woman was on CBC radio talking about how when her son went to high school he was forced into a french high school even though his primary school education was at a private english school.  He failed his first year because of language difficulties and eventually dropped out of school.  And to top the story off with some nice irony, he’s now back in school at an adult education program – in english.  A law that treats your children like that is unacceptable.  Anyone who has lived in Quebec can attest to two facts: so called anglophones are now overwhelming bilingual in Quebec and the anglophones of 30 years ago were overwhelming unilingual.  That means there once was a problem but it no longer exists – at least not the same problems or not to the same degree.

Any way, I don’t want to go into a whole lot of detail except to congratulate the court for its level headedness on this issue.

Just a quick comment.  Rick Hillier’s assessment of the problems in Ottawa seem true enough for the most part.  But it seems that he did not properly understand his role as Chief of Defence Staff.  So when looking for what to solve, listen to him.  When looking for how to solve it, don’t listen to him.  On another note, he seems to be benefiting in a number of ways from the unusually high profile he had as Chief of Defence Staff.

So Toronto won their bid to host 2014 World Pride.  You would think there would at least be a press release from Ignatieff regarding this.  But nothing.  It was the same thing when Canada’s nationalized health insurance system was called into question in the U.S.  Both of these were incredible opportunities to highlight the progressive agenda of the Liberal Party.  But whenever these opportunities arise Ignatieff completely ignores them because he is busy trying to win over social conservatives.

The strategy is absolutely bizarre.  It’s true that a successful Liberal Party needs to attract the moderate left and moderate right in order to win.  Chretien attracted the moderate right through sound fiscal policies, thus he attracted the fiscal conservatives.  Ignatieff’s strategy is to attract the social conservatives.  When it seemed as though the Minister of Science may not actually believe in science the Liberal Party said that was okay.  What?!  These are all opportunities to show the progressive side of the Liberal Party that were completely ignored – opportunities lost.

Now, if you’re a social conservative you definitely are not going to like what I have advocated above.  But that’s fine, you have a party already.  And you’re not likely to leave it.  Conservatives should be conservative and Liberals should be liberal.  Ignatieff should be putting forward a sound fiscal agenda to attract fiscal conservatives from the right.  Instead he comes forward with EI reforms that border on fiscal lunacy.

I have no idea why Ignatieff and his team are doing what they are doing.  Ignatieff has specifically said he believes there are more votes to be gained for the Liberal Party on the right than on the left.  So he is targeting social conservatives which also means he avoids taking progressives stands that would offend this group.  This at a time when fiscal conservatives in the Conservative Party are feeling highly uncomfortable.  Even in the best case scenario social conservatives will never be easier to attract to the Liberal Party than fiscal conservatives, but right now Ignatieff is giving up a huge opportunity to win fiscal conservatives over and actually build a majority coalition.  Because not only is he not winning either fiscal or social conservative votes his right wing stance is allowing the NDP to poll too high, particularly in BC and in Atlantic Canada.  If Ignatieff had built a strategy based on strong social justice and sound fiscal management he probably could have built a majority coalition by now – and a strong one at that given the economy and deficit.

But I’ll summarize this with two points:

1) A first year poli sci student could see how stupid Ignatieff’s strategy is.

2) The progressive wing of the Party is sitting back and allowing this to happen.