Political Staples

coronations have worked so well for the Liberals in the past.

Here is Bob Rae on yesterday's CTV Question Period responding to Jane Taber question about Michael Ignatieff being installed as leader as soon as this week.

...I think it would be, Jane, I think if we, behind closed doors (laughs), if you had a group of people getting together and anointing themselves as the people who going to choose a new permanent leader, think there a an awful lot of party members who would feel that they were not being consulted, they were not being listened to.
...I think there is going to be a problem if some people decide that they can somehow anoint themselves as the people who are going to force the issue in that way. I think that would be a mistake. I think that would be unwise to do so. I think there would be a tremendous reaction in the party against that kind of approach.

All that being said, I think that the Liberals would make a mistake if they don't let their membership decide who the next leader should be. Mr Rae is correct in saying there would be a tremendous reaction to that kind of approach, the same tremendous reaction to the coalition that sees Conservatives support testing the 50% level in popular support.

Update: The irony continues. Check out ProgressiveBloggers.ca for people who favour the coaliton going batty over Ignatieff being installed as the interim leader of the Liberals (with a follow-up vote at the May convention). It seems to me that their position is that MPs can be trusted to pick a leader of a coalition, who would be become leader of the country, but MPs cannot be trusted to pick the leader of their own party. Again, I can't follow the logic.

Update II: And Rae's unintended irony continues here.

recorded with a webcam? What the heck was with that! Nice to see his bookshelf in such sharp focus.

Kady O'Malley has posted a press release from the Monarchist League of Canada. The release is well worth a full read but this is solution that I could get behind.
...Her Excellency could invite the putative coaltition to form a government, but - as Malcolm Fraser was told by the Governor General of Australia after the dismissal of the Whitlam government (1975) - in doing so she could say to Mr Dion that she would only give him a Commission on the basis that he would quickly pass a budget and other urgent financial measures through the House by a date certain and then immediately ask her for a dissolution so that the people could choose their government.
As I have stated before the opposition is fully within their rights to bring down the government and replace it with their governing coalition. If the Governor-General decides that this is the best course of action then it is legitimate. My problem with the deal (ok I have more than one problem with it) is the length of the agreement. The Liberal-NDP deal lasts for 30 months and the Bloc Quebecois have agreed to support them for 18 months with the option to sign on for the remaining 12 months (which, as the Monarchist League pints out, has no force in law and this coalition could and probably will fall much sooner than that). For the six months the coalition will be led by Stephane Dion who was forced to resign his Liberal leadership by his own party and then he will be replaced. This new Liberal leader and therefore new Prime Minister would then stay on, if the coalition holds, for another two years before facing the electorate. This, in my opinion, is unacceptable.

If the Governor-General forces the coalition to bring in an immediate budget (one that would have to be before the Conservatives were planning in January) and then force an election after the budget has fully passed then Parliaments will can be done by removing the Conservatives and bringing in their own stimulus program and then the citizens will can be done by passing judgment on the coalition. It is brilliant.

They may or may not be progressives but it looks like several prominent Liberals are not on board with the coalition. Far from being being part of the "four wisemen" both Frank McKenna and John Manley are distancing themselves from the deal. Former President of the Liberal Party Stephen LeDrew is against it and if I am reading between the lines Warren Kinsella is against it as well. Anybody else?
Bourque is speculating that there are several Liberals, New Democrats and Conservatives will to sit as independents in an attempt to find a way out of this. I hope this is true.

I hope the Liberals are skirming now that Jacques Parizeau has come out in support of the coalition. Not only does this deal throw the Bloc Quebecois a lifeline but
...«la souveraineté du Québec est de nouveau à l'ordre du jour».
Nice. This whole thing is playing right into the separatist's hands. They are going to push hard to get concessions in this deal - they already got it in writing that the coalition is one of Canada and Quebec, as if they were already separate things, and eventually they will push so hard that the coalition will have to dissolve. Them they use this as "proof" that Canada does not work, that Quebeckers have been betrayed and that the only solution is an indepedent Quebec. Does anyone really expect otherwise? Gilles Duceppe and Jacques Parizeau have said that this deal is good for sovereingty, do Liberals and New Democrats really want to be part of this?

the Bloc Quebecois are forced to trot out Jacques Parizeau to support the coalition then the coalition is dead before it begins.

Instant Update: And if Bourque's sources are to be believed then this deal may be unraveling already.

If it were up to me I would advise PM Harper to not prorogue and face the music on Monday. Let the opposition parties do as they will and then go the Governor-General and request an election. If she says no then accept defeat and go back to the House and get ready for the election that will be coming a lot sooner than the 18 months that the BQ has agreed to support the Liberal/NDP coalition. I don't think coalition can last anywhere near that long.

Update: Bourque is headling speculation from Lowell Green that "If coalition forms gvt, Tory MPs may resign en masse ...". I seriously doubt that they would do that and it sounds like an angry Tory let their mouth get ahead of their brain.

I don't agree with everything (I see no reason why political parties shouldn't raise their own funds - though the timing bringing it forward was flawed) that James Travers expresses in this column but I agree with quite a bit of it.

...What, beyond pummelling vulnerable opponents, was Harper thinking when he used Thursday's fiscal update to advance Conservative hegemony with a homicidal assault on public funding for political parties. What, in this era of quasi-presidential federal politics, infected Liberals with the viral notion that Dion, judged too weak for high office last month, can now provide the legitimacy, let alone the political skills, the coalition requires to be credible or survive?
...Coalition partners went hunting for that sanction yesterday by promising the economic stimulus missing from the fiscal update. A good start, that's no substitute for a leader able to hold together a loose association of rivals or win the country's consent to be governed.
It is my opinion that this coalition needs the country's consent. If they fail to get then it becomes doubly important for the new Liberal leader, who inherits the Prime

for an election.

And I have sent an email to the Governor-General asking her for such an immediate election.

I have tried to find some but I have not had any luck yet. It seems to me that this whole coalition thing is a highly suspect strategy (entirely within their rights, see below) but the long-term implications of the coalition could be highly damaging. First of all, if the latest reports are true, Michael Ignatieff would be the Prime Minister. Nobody voted for or against an Ignatieff led government in the last election - it was obviously not an option. Typically when someone is appointed the role of Prime Minister it is by their own party in power and they seek a mandate from the people as soon as they can. Ignatieff will not seek such a mandate but would rather hang out for about two years. His mandate will come from the combined force of the Liberals, NDP and the BQ, not from the people of Canada.

As with not voting for Ignatieff the Canadian people did not vote for a coalition government, it was not even on the table. It was a notion that forcefully rejected by the Liberal leader as bad for the economic state of the country. We have no idea what the policies of such a coalition government would be other than it will be "progressive". We have not been given the opportunity to judge such a program for ourselves but will be forced to take the "Four Wisemen's" word for it.

Do I really need to point out that this whole thing hands the Bloc Quebecois another raison d'etre. This does not lessen the influence of a separatist party in Ottawa but rather feeds into their argument that they are required to look after "Quebec's interest" and if they can't break up the country in the process then that is their gravy. What do the Liberals and NDP have to give the BQ for their support? Good luck campaigning against them in the next election.

Are there no "progressives" who worry about wrenching power from a duly elected Western-based party in favour of a Toronto-Quebec coalition? Say hello to a forceful western separtist party - isn't balkanization wonderful!

Are there no Liberals worried about getting trounced in the next election for attempting such a thing? I support the oppositions right to do this but aren't "progressives" just a little worried about how bad this whole thing looks?

Update: So I was too quite on the whole Ignatieff thing. It looks like Stephane Dion will the leader of the coalition. I feel better about this than having Ignatieff being the leader since Dion was at least the leader of the Linerals during the last election. Too bad he led them to their worst percentage vote share in history and that his own party didn't want him to be their leader anymore. Perfect candidate to lead the whole country. These are insane days. I hope the Governor-General allows us to have an election so we can pass our own verdict on this coalition.

Update II: I found a "progressive" who is against this.

...The tape also reveals some dissension among New Democrats on the notion of forming a coalition.
MP Charlie Angus can be heard saying that NDP efforts to win over the Liberals, rather than the public, are "insane" and "disastrous."

Update III: Here is a blogger thinking this whole thing through (h/t SmallDeadAnimals)

I have been invited to join one of these Facebook groups regarding the coalition possibility and seeing many of my friends joining one side or the other. For the record I am not on either side of this.

Such a scenario is part of our Westminster system. To be against the opposition parties forming a coalition is to be against the way we are governed. I don't see any need to change the system (well, same system but with electoral reform, but that is another story). I don't think that a Liberal-NDP coalition will provide good governance during this economic downturn but there are fully within their rights to defeat the government and try to form one of their own.

However, the Liberals and NDP have less combined seats than the Conservatives so without explicit support from the BQ it will be a very short-lived coaltion government. And they can't exactly bring a separatist party into the coalition. Another fact against the coalition is that the Liberals were firmly against a coalition in the last campaign. But the Conservatives didn't mention anything about reforming the funding of political parties either - hence the title of the post. I should also be pointed out the electorate soundly rejected the Stephane Dion led Liberal Party.

For these reasons the Governor-General could say no to the opposition parties and cause us to have another election. I wouldn't put money on it though. If the GG says yes to a opposition coalition it is not a "coup d'etat" or an afront to democracy. It is also not an afront to democracy to end the $1.95/vote/year subsidizing of political parties. What is unfolding right now is one of the features of our Parliamentary democracy, not a bug.

Since I don't think a Liberal-NDP coalition can last very long and the Liberals are already on record as saying such a coaltion would be bad for the Canadian economy my preference is for the GG to say no to the coaltion and have an immediate election. But I won't be marching in the streets if she disagrees with me. Especially since this whole mess is PM Harper's in the first place.

Check out this essay in the Globe and Mail referring to the false logic of uniting the left. There are some very interesting points but I will highlight something I have been pointing out.

...Strikingly, in his first outing as the leader of a united Conservative party, in 2004, Mr. Harper failed to win to as many votes as the old Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance parties combined. Many former PCs found themselves more at home with the Martin-led Liberal Party than with the Harper-led Conservatives. But this has not been sustained. And the traffic has been in the other direction ever since.
...a significant number of people said they had voted Liberal in 2006 but were switching to another party this time. Where did they go? Nearly 44 per cent of them said they were moving to the Conservatives. Thus, the Liberals' largest loss in the last election was to the Conservatives -- not to the NDP or the Greens.

Check out this event from the Canadian Journalism Foundation - The Power of the Polls: Do They Lead or Follow Events? that is this Thursday in Toronto.

...The proliferating polls - daily, nightly and rolling; by phone and by internet - dominated a great deal of the media coverage of the two elections. Poll results provided such an inexhaustible supply of news stories and fodder for commentaries, candidates and their platforms seemed to disappear at times in the blizzard (or fog) of polling coverage.

Yes, I know that expression should be the other way around but in the case of the Liberals it seems that seeking a great leader is getting in the way of selecting a good leader. Preston Manning may have been waiting for the wave but now the Liberals are waiting for the mesiah - even the second coming of Pierre Trudeau. You know how much I like tackling political myths so it will come as no surprise that I point out that Trudeau is now more myth than man.
Jean Chretien may have crippled the Liberal party by bringing them sponsorship and campaign finance reform but what he did pales in comparison to what Trudeau did. By making the Liberals toxic in upwards on 45 seats in Quebec and possibly 40 more in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan Trudeau made Liberal majority math pratically insoluble.
Besides, who anybody have thought that Stephen Harper was a great leader when he was running for the leadership of the Alliance? When he marged the Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives? When he won the leadership of the Conservatives? He was merely a good leader who had a vision of where he wanted to go and a sense of what it would take to get there.
That it was the Liberals need, a good, determined leader who through hard work can be judged to be great after, not before, all is said and done.
With that rambling introduction I bring you Stephen LeDrew's pining for greatness (and no, Danny Williams is not qualified to be great).

Good for Gary Goodyear, my local MP, who was appointed Minister of State for Science and Technology. I was hoping he would get into cabinet as he deserved it. Goodyear was the first Conservative to win in the tri-city area (Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge) in 2004. By being a strong representative for the area (I am thinking about his regular appearances on AM 570) he helped win the Kitchener-Constego for Harold Albrecht in 2006 and then in 2008 it became a clean sweep as the Conservatives won Kitchener Centre and Kitchener-Waterloo as well. All this while winning 48.66% of the vote in Cambridge. Congratulations!

It makes sense for a Minister of State for Science and Technology to come from this area as well. Waterloo is a science and technology centre with may innovative companies as well as the research being conducted at the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University (it just so happens that I went to both of those schools) as well as at the University of Guelph and the Unversity of Western Ontario, just 30 minutes and 60 minutes down the road, respectively.

It gets me to wondering how good Mr Goodyears french is.

I was going to name this post the English progressives*, but who doesn't want to reference Jackson 5 tune and many on the left dispute that the Liberals are a progressive party (again, whatever the heck that means) so we will go with the English Anybody but Conservatives.

Aside: I bring up the progressive issue in all seriousness, is progressive synonymous with "left-wing" as conservative is to "right-wing" or does it mean something different? Can you be centrist and progressive? Where the Progressive Conservatives progressive? Seriously, it confuses me.

Anyway, back to the post. As you see below the Liberals have been on the slide since the 2000 election. Why? Let's look at the combined Liberal, New Democrat and Green vote since 1993.

1993: Liberal, 41.2% + New Democrat, 6.9% + Green 0.2% = 48.3%
1997: Liberal, 38.5% + New Democrat, 11% + Green 0.4% = 49.9%
2000: Liberal, 40.9% + New Democrat, 8.5% + Green 0.8% = 50.2%
2004: Liberal, 36.7% + New Democrat, 15.7% + Green 4.3% = 56.7%
2006: Liberal, 30.2% + New Democrat, 17.5% + Green 4.5% = 52.2%
2008: Liberal, 26.2% + New Democrat, 18.1% + Green 6.8% = 51.1%

If we treat 2004 and 2006 as anomalies as the Conservatives re-combined their vote we can see a stable range from 48%-51%. From 1993 to 2000 the Green vote was a rounding error and the New Democrat vote was low leading to strong Liberal support and Liberal governments. After the sponsorship scandal we see a sharp increase in New Democrat support as well as Green support.

Since we have seen the Conservatives are now getting the traditional conservative support and that the New Democrats have been growing after 2000 it is safe to say that the Greens have become the home of disaffected Liberals. It makes me wonder about the whole Kyoto thing. Did the Liberals try to wrap themselves in Kyoto because they thought it was a wedge issue in which they could beat the C(c)onservatives with or did their polling show that they would bleed support on the issue and they were trying to protect their coalition? If it was the former then it worked out very poorly for the Liberals because the constant drumbeat of global warming or climate change hasn't helped the Liberals (deservedly as they signed Kyoto but did nothing about it, classic campaign left and govern right) but rather turned the Greens into an actual player in elections. I wonder if any Liberals think the agreement with Elizabeth May was a good idea now?

If the Liberals are to grow they need win back a larger share of this 48-51% (duh!). It seems to me that the route back is not through the centrist campaign that Michael Ignatieff is going to run but through the unite-the-left campaign that we see coming from Bob Rae. If only he didn;t have that disastrous run as NDP premier thing holding him back. Find me the "progressive" Liberal leadership candidate and I'll show another anybody but convention winner.

* and I now that the support includes some of Quebec but the BQ vote is pretty stable and I am trying to simplify things here

of past support levels for political parties let's look at the Liberals.

1993: 41.2%*
1997: 38.5%
2000: 40.9%
2004: 36.7%
2006: 30.2%
2008: 26.2%

I will start with the easy observation - Jean Chretian was regarded a political genius for winning three straight majorities and Paul Martin a fool for ending them. Look at 1997 (38.5%) verus 2004 (36.7%). I have said this many times before, Chretien's electoral brilliance is a myth, he won because a split right. His 1997 result would have been a minority or worse considering the combined Reform and PC vote was 37.9%. A united Conservative party could have beat Jean Chretien in 1997, they may not have, but it would have been very close.

And I will leave that as a tease as we dig deeper into the numbers in the next couple of days.

* I have corrected the incorrect number I originally posted. I add put the combined total of the Liberals, NDP and Greens, Which is where I am going with this post.

What she said.

...the Liberal and New Democratic parties are very different entities. And it wasn't so much a union as a reunification for the right after the 1987 schism caused by the founding of the Reform Party.
While Western conservatives felt alienated from their eastern brethren, ideologically they were not that far apart. They'd all been one big happy family. OK, scratch the happy bit. They were once a big fractious family.
Yet it took years to heal the wounds that separated them.
How, then, can two parties with such different histories and such disparate philosophies as the NDP and the Liberals ever find common ground?

Further to my post here I decided to sell how well the Conservatives have integrated the rural/populist Ontario vote with the traditional Ontario Red Tory vote.

1993: Reform, 20.1% + Progressive Conservatives, 17.6% = 37.7%
1997: Reform, 19.1% + Progressive Conservatives, 18.8% = 37.9%
2000: Alliance, 23.6% + Progressive Conservatives, 14.4% = 38.0%
2004: Conservatives, 29.6%
2006: Conservatives, 35.1%
2008: Conservatives, 39.2%

The same pattern as the national one is apparent here. The Reform/Alliance + Progressive Conservative vote was very steady around 38%. It took the Conservatives a couple of elections but they managed fully integrate both wings in 2008. In fact they did slightly better than that in the last election but that probably has more to do with a suppressed Liberal vote than a broadening of the tent. Though Jason Kenney's immigrant outreach program could explain some of that as well. It will take another election of two to know for sure.

Bottom line is that the Conservatives should be able to count on 38% support in Ontario barring unforeseen circumstances - such as, I don't know, two plus years of significant deficits.