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.