New Conservative ads don’t add up

If you thought the Conservative Party of Canada couldn’t go any lower than the trashy character-assassination campaign they ran against former Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion, think again.

The Conservatives – led by I’ll-never-get-a-majority Prime Minister Stephen Harper – have launched Ignatieff.me. This time, their target is current Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff.

Unfortunately for the Conservatives, they are making the same mistake many marketing people make. They are taking a tactic that worked once and laying the same template over a different product and audience under a different set of circumstances.

Even though there is no election going on, the Conservatives launched their campaign-style campaign last week, including a website – as silly as the one they did last year showing a puffin pooping on Dion’s shoulder – and TV ad, which are spewing up all over Canadian television.

The ads criticize Ignatieff on a number of fronts, but most notably, they make the argument that he is not a real Canadian because he lived and made a name for himself in the U.S. and Britain. This is just plain silly.

Did Harper & Co. not get the memo that Canada has become one of the most diverse, multicultural and globally aware nations on the planet? Isn’t it a good thing for Canada that Ignatieff has political connections throughout the world, particularly in the Obama administration? Do Harper & Co. not know that a large number of successful Canadians were born and raised elsewhere? And Ignatieff is hardly the first Canadian to leave his home and native land to gain experience and fame, but then return to utilize those skills learned abroad. (If you must, you can watch the ads for yourself at http://ignatieff.me/?p=ignatieff#watch.)

But if all that weren’t bad enough, the French version of the ad – airing in Quebec – is even worse. In that ad, the Conservatives criticize Ignatieff for speaking Parisian French instead of the “joual” French heard on the streets throughout La Belle Province. And by doing so, argue the Conservatives, Ignatieff is looking down on the Quebecois people.

First of all, since when is it evil for an Anglophone to speak non-Quebec French? For the most part, Francophones are more than willing to give Anglophones a break so long as they try to speak the other official language. And Ignatieff is fully bilingual, so his lack of Quebec colloquialism is irrelevant. The truth is that the Liberals are gaining strength in Quebec, and the Conservatives will try anything to stop this.

But also, this is the same Conservative Party that criticized the Liberals last year for assembling a coalition with “socialists and separatists.” At the time, Prime Minister Harper accused the Liberals of getting to close to Quebec nationalists. Now, Harper seems to be saying the exact opposite. Which is it?

The truth is that it is both – and neither. Harper and the Conservatives are willing to play with the fire of Quebec nationalism either way, so long as they think it will get them ahead politically. This is a cynical and dangerous game in which Harper is using separatist sentiment as a political pawn.

In the end, what the Conservatives don’t seem to realize is that Ignatieff is NOT Dion. Ignatieff is much more politically savvy and a much better communicator. While Dion was hesitant to fight back against disingenuous Conservative attacks, Ignatieff is taking them head on – and rightly dismissing them.

As he said last week, “When you're down in the polls, when you're presiding over the worst collapse in employment in recent memory, when you've got record bankruptcies everywhere you look, the thing you're going to do if you're in government and responsible for this mess is change the channel and that's what they're trying to do. Is that serious government? Is that serious politics? That's the kind of government we've got." (http://www.thestar.com/article/634672)

Ignatieff is right. Harper and the Conservatives are out of ideas as the Canadian economy crumbles around them. They are scared, and this latest campaign show it. 

Stephen Harper shows his nasty, but true, colors

Stephen Harper, Canada’s Conservative prime minister, ate up all the attention he received when President Barack Obama came to visit him in Ottawa last month. And this was on the heels of Harper’s middle-of-the-road, bipartisan budget to deal with the economic crisis. So has Harper finally realized the errors of his past ways and turned over a new political leaf? Not a chance.

Harper talks a good game in public and in front of the media, but behind closed doors, he is as rabid a conservative as ever.

Last week, he gave a fundraising speech at the Manning Institute for Democracy, a misnomer if I’ve ever heard one. The speech was closed to the press – thank you, Mr. Accountability – so it took a few days for the substance of his speech to finally make its way out.

According to the Toronto Star (http://www.thestar.com/article/603283), Harper showed his true colors during that speech. Most notably, he dissed Obama, the most popular politician in the world, for being too liberal.

He dissed the Canadian Senate, judiciary, and federal bureaucracy for being full of “ Liberal insiders and ideologues.” And what are you, Mr. Harper, but a Conservative insider and ideologue?

He dissed Wall Street for being too “unconservative.” (If only Wall Street had been more conservative!)

He dissed Canada’s public broadcaster for being too liberal. (If only the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation were more conservative!)

He dissed Parliament, in which he is the head of government, and name-called the opposition parties as “a toxic coalition brew.” (By the way, there is no official coalition among opposition parties. In fact, the Liberals voted WITH the Conservatives on the budget.)

Then he made the most bizarre statement of all. In comparing conservatism to liberalism, he said, “Unlike various forms of liberalism, conservatism is a value system, not an ideology. … I like to summarize my idea of conservatism in the three Fs – freedom, family and faith.”

George W. Bush anyone?

Harper loves to showcase himself as a blue-sweater wearing, kitten holding, Tim Horton’s drinking everyman. But once again, he proves that he is nothing but a right-wing ideologue and partisan whose “compassionate conservative” rhetoric – like Dubya - is not to be believed.

Liberals find a third way on Conservative budget

Most people assumed that the Liberals had two options for the federal budget that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative presented yesterday. The Liberals could have announced their support, showing them to be as weak and capitulating as they were under former leader Stéphane Dion. Or they could have voted it down, which could have risked plunging the country into its fourth federal election in five years, something that certainly would not have been good for Canada’s economic stability.

But Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff found a better way, a third way. In his announcement earlier today, he and his Liberal caucus put the Conservatives and their budget “on probation” – neither voting it down, nor giving it whole-hearted support, either.

This is wise for a budget that no one saw as 100 percent bad nor 100 percent good. The reviews have rightly stated that the budget is a long way from the Conservatives’ poison-pill “financial update” of last fall, which is ideologically driven and lacking in any measures to help stimulate the economy.

This current budget may not go far enough – there is nothing addressing the nation’s Employment Insurance problem, for example – but there is a minimum amount of stimulus to keep the economy moving.

One of the biggest complaints from all of the opposition parties is that Stephen Harper is not to be trusted. Sure, the budget numbers are OK, they argue, but you can’t trust the Conservatives to show them the money when the time comes. Therein lies Ignatieff’s politically creative genius.

The Liberals will introduce amendments to the budget calling on the Conservatives to produce three accountability reports, detailing how the Conservatives are doing in terms of producing the economic stimulus they now promise. These reports will also be confidence motions, so if the Conservatives do not reach the economic targets they set in their own budget, they can and likely will be voted out of office.

This is the ultimate in accountability for a Conservative party that loves to talk about accountability, but rarely likes to apply such principles to itself.

All this is also better politics – and policy – than the knee-jerk reaction coming from NDP leader Jack Layton and Bloc Québécois head Gilles Duceppe. They decided before they even saw the budget that they were going to vote it down.

And I feel their pain. Like Layton and Duceppe, I would much rather see a left-wing coalition government than sit through any more time with Harper’s Conservatives in power. The government should have been voted down after the financial update was issued last fall, and Harper should never have been allowed to prorogue Parliament in order to avoid a non-confidence motion. That was a corruption of democratic principles, and both Harper and Governor General Michaelle Jean are to blame for that.

But the current budget should not be judged based upon Harper’s past behaviour, but on what the current budget offers and the ability of Harper to keep his promises. And the Conservatives are not likely to vote against the Liberal amendments for fear of being seen as anti-accountability.

Harper, whether he feels it in his heart or is just doing it to save his political skin, seemingly learned something from his near-death scare before the prorogation. Now it is up to Ignatieff and the Liberals to make sure those lessons stuck.

If they didn’t, then it will finally be time to throw the bums out.

Ontario conservatives playing political musical chairs

What are John Tory and Ontario’s Progressive Conservative party trying to pull?

The latest news in the party leader’s quest for a seat in the Legislature is that MPP Laurie Scott – who represents the riding of Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock – has agreed to step down. That will trigger a by-election in which Tory plans to run and win.

But there is so much wrong with this scenario, and it shows just how desperate Tory and his PC party have become.

Firstly, Scott agreed to vacate her seat only after being promised a political golden parachute. She will reportedly become Tory’s chief of staff at Queen’s Park until the next provincial election in 2011. In any other situation, this would be called a bribe.

Secondly, Scott will only serve until 2011 so that she can run for her old seat again. What would Tory do then? Well, he would run in some other riding – that is, if he can find one that will elect him. After all, he disastrously lost in Don Valley West last year against Liberal incumbent and education minister Kathleen Wynne.

And speaking of whether or not he can win: Thirdly, what makes Tory so cock-sure that he will win a by-election in Scott’s riding? Yes, Scott has held the seat since 2003, but in last year’s election, she only won with 50 percent of the vote. And after the pathetic campaign Tory ran last year – basically, his party bottomed out because of Tory’s sorry plan to expand public funding for religious schools – why would the voters of Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock simply roll over and accept Tory.

Which brings us to the provincial Liberals and NDP. It is sometimes customary for parties not to contest party leaders who are trying to get a seat in the Legislature. But this is a tradition that needs to end. I don’t live in Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock, but I certainly wouldn’t want to be treated with such disdain that politicians would just expect me to accept a one-party, one-candidate ballot. That’s not democracy, and voters should urge the other parties to field candidates against Tory.

Is Tory – who has proven himself to be a political loser on multiple fronts and barely has two-thirds support of his own party’s legislative caucus – so full of himself that he expects voters in Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock to accept him no questions asked?

If a by-election is called, so be it, but it should be an election, not a coronation.

 

All Liberals must have a say in new leader

Wounded Liberal leader Stéphane Dion must go ASAP. And the Liberal leadership race must be expedited. However, that increased speed in picking a new leader should not come at the expense of democracy. All members of the Liberal Party have a say in who the new leader will be.

Certainly, a new Liberal leader must be in place by the time Parliament reconvenes on Jan. 26. But that leader should not simply be installed by the federal Liberal caucus, which plans to meet behind closed doors on Dec. 10.

Not surprisingly, leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff has not spoken out against this closed-door strategy. Most likely, that’s because he has the majority support of fellow MPs – as well as the 58 Liberal senators – and would likely be named the new leader without any input from the grassroots. (Technically, he would be named “interim leader” by the party’s national executive, with the leadership convention still slated for May. But the convention delegate vote, which would choose a “permanent leader,” would become a mere formality.)

Also unsurprisingly, Ignatieff’s competitor, Bob Rae, favours a more open competition that would consult Liberals from coast to coast to coast through phone and email balloting.

While both Rae and Ignatieff would personally benefit from the system they and their supporters are advocating, Rae’s position is the one that is in line with open democracy, party revitalization, and grassroots involvement.

As Rae and others have pointed out, if the choice of party leader is left up to Liberal MPs, only 77 ridings will be represented in the decision-making process. This caucus-only solution leaves Liberals from 231 ridings – those that do not have a Liberal MP – in the dark and out in the hallway while the decision is made. Most troubling of all is that the areas of the country that need the most Liberal rebuilding – namely Quebec and the West – will be the areas least involved in the process.

Just as Rae was right when he walked out of a Mississauga leadership debate last month that was closed to the media, Rae is right again about what is needed in this selection process. Whatever the party decides to do, the process of picking the next leader must be democratic, open, inclusive, and transparent.

Rae and others have said that the party needs a contest, not a coronation. That’s true, because coronations don’t work. The Republican Party in 2000 coronated George W. Bush as its leader – and we see how well that turned out. And just this year, it was supposed to be a coronation for Hillary Clinton, but when that turned into a real contest, the people had something else in mind.

In Canada, as in the U.S., parties must listen to the people.

It’s about time for Liberal/NDP coalition

While Conservatives are spinning out of control, trying to convince the public that a coalition government is undemocratic, I have just one thing to say: What took the Liberals and NDP so long?

We saw shades of such a coalition back in 2006, when Paul Martin and his Liberal minority worked with Jack Layton’s NDP to come up with the budget. The government fell – taking that ad hoc coalition with it – only after Layton decided he didn’t want to play ball anymore.

But now with the spectre of another couple of years of an emboldened Stephen Harper, Layton decided it made more sense to cooperate with – rather than bash – the Liberals.

Although some hard-core partisans are balking, the Liberals and the NDP are natural coalition partners. Frankly, except for the separatist issue, so is the Bloc Québécois.

All three are left-of-centre parties with more commonalities than differences. All three parties agree, more or less, on issues ranging from the economy and infrastructure to arts funding and gender equality. And certainly, these three parties have more in common with each other than any of them have with the Conservatives.

Even on an issue like climate change, the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc may have different ideas on how to handle the issue, but at least they all agree that it is a crisis that needs to be addressed. That’s in contrast to the Conservatives who still want to stick their heads in the ice as it melts around them.

Although the seeds of this agreement were planted some time ago, the Liberal/NDP coalition did not crystallize just because it could. It happened because Harper pushed them into it. He overplayed his political hand, expecting Stéphane Dion’s Liberals to continue to sit on their hands while Harper’s minority ruled as if it had a majority.

Right after the Oct. 14 election, Harper – who won another minority government – vowed to work with the opposition parties to make this parliament work. Well, so much for cooperation. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty issued a “Financial Update,” complete with the unfortunate if appropriate acronym “FU,” that was void of any plan to handle the current economic meltdown.

Instead, it included ideologically driven proposals – such as limiting the public sector’s right to strike and decimating the public financing system for elections – that Harper knew would not be acceptable to the opposition. Again, Harper was expecting the Liberals to just roll over and play wait-for-the-next-leader dead.

Even more disingenuous is the Conservative argument that a Liberal/NDP coalition is undemocratic and/or unconstitutional. Under the parliamentary system, what the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc have proposed is completely acceptable. The Conservatives won neither a majority of the vote (just 38 per cent in this fall’s election) nor a majority of the Commons seats (143 out of 308). So collectively, the left-of-centre parties won a majority of the vote and a majority of the seats.

Under the Constitution, if the Harper government falls because it no longer has the confidence of a majority of the House of Commons, it is Governor General Michaelle Jean’s duty to ask the opposition if they can form a government. All the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc have done is worked out that they would be able to step in and take the reins.

Harper, as usual, has been acting as if he were an American-style president, rather than a Canadian prime minister. But as Bush has been his role model, he should have been looking at Barack Obama’s transition to power, and how Obama is putting competence ahead of partisanship in picking his new cabinet. It is Obama who is working with his rivals – from both parties – to form a new government.

But instead, Harper was still reading from the Bush “you’re either with us or against us” playbook, a manual that has yellowed quickly and is fraying at the seams.

Harper and his minions are now trying scare the public out of supporting the Liberal/NDP coalition, arguing that in this fall’s election, people didn’t elect Dion.

Well, Mr. Harper, a majority of Canadians didn’t pick you, either. You had your chance to play nice, but you refused. It’s time to leave the sandbox.