Liberal Party of Canada Leadership

[GAP]

When the Libs lost in 2006 the thought then was it would be at least a decade before they were able to come up with something resembling a leader and a coherent policy.....

 

[dapaterson]

I know, with absolute certainty, that sometime between now and 2020 the Conservative Party will become fat, lazy, corrupt, bereft of ideas, and, generally, in need of a few years in the political reserve (opposition) to regroup and reorganize.

Paging Senator Mike Duffy from Kanata PEI.  Paging Senator Duffy.

 

[George Wallace]

Paging Senator Mike Duffy from Kanata PEI.  Paging Senator Duffy.

Interesting how the shoe is now on the other foot.  No longer is he reporting on the carrying ons of Parliament and the Senate; he is now partaking in it.  ;D

 

[Edward Campbell]

Finally ... Marc Garneau has come out swinging. He has just given a press conference, his opening statement, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from his campaign website, is attached:

http://marcgarneau.ca/statement-130213/

Statement by Liberal Leadership Candidate Marc Garneau

2013/02/13

Good Morning. Thank you all for coming.

This is a critical time in the history of the Liberal Party of Canada. As I have repeatedly said throughout this leadership race, I believe this is the most critical time we have ever faced. In choosing our next leader, we have to get it right.

And I believe we, as candidates have a responsibility during this campaign to define where we stand; we must be clear in our convictions; and speak honestly to Liberals and to Canadians. They expect it from us. If ever there was a time for Liberals to be clear with Canadians, it is now.

And that’s why I am here today.

As Liberals, we cannot wait until after the leadership race is over to find out what we signed up for.

And therein lies the difference between my friend, colleague and fellow candidate Justin Trudeau and myself.

I am raising this matter because the interest of the party are uppermost in my mind.

I am concerned by what I have heard from Justin since this leadership contest began.

Justin says now is not the time to tell Liberals, to tell Canadians, where he stands and what his plan is for the country.

He says he will do that after the Liberal leadership race — sometime before the next election in 2015.

In my opinion, this is like asking Canadians to buy a new car without test-driving it first.

I cannot, nor should the Party accept this approach in choosing its new leader, and that is why I am here today. There is simply too much at stake.

In the recent past, we put our faith as a party in one individual without asking the tough questions.

The result was that we chose our leader through a coronation rather than a contest.

It was a mistake.

Without a message, without a clear vision of what we stand for, the Conservatives defined us and will define us once again.

I believe this to my very core. We have to know what we’re voting for, not just who we’re voting for!

I have made it clear where I stand on the knowledge economy; trade; telecommunications; Western Canada and electoral reform.

Monday, I announced my position on youth employment and student loans.

And, I will continue to present my vision and positions, to be straight with Canadians on where I stand and where I want to lead, for the duration of this campaign.

This is not the case with Justin.

He has told Canadians that we need a “bold” plan and a “clear vision” without defining either.

On Justin’s two clear priorities, the middle class and youth engagement, he has said nothing.

To be credible as a Party, we must go beyond generalities. We have to actually say what we intend to do. I have been doing that and Canadians can go after me if they want on any position I have taken, but at least they know where I stand. It’s important that all candidates be clear on where they stand before we choose our next leader.

There is little value in saying we care about the crunch facing middle class families if we don’t say what we will do to help them.

I’m positive all nine leadership candidates are for the middle-class and for youth, but leadership is only demonstrated when we make choices, when we decide what it is we will do to bring about change.

Now is the time for the party to hear different approaches before it decides who is best able to lead the party.

New thinking is critically important.

I have been clear from the start and I am bringing new thinking to the table. My vision is to build a strong, diversified knowledge-based economy, an economy that will enable us to create jobs for middle-income families, to find more jobs for our youth, and an economy that will provide all Canadians with the opportunity to succeed. And I have a plan to achieve it.

I am the first to recognize that Justin has given a tremendous amount of energy to the Liberal Party and to Canadians. He is drawing Canadians to the Party. The Liberal Party is richer for having him.

Before we can present ourselves to Canadians once again, we must debate the issues vigorously amongst ourselves and that means that each candidate must present their vision and the plan to get us there.

In that process, we will also discover who is best to lead us.

Thank you. I will now take your questions.

It's a pretty clear and simple statement: I am a mature, thoughtful man ~ Justin isn't; I have ideas and I am willing and able to express them in policy terms ~ Justin hasn't and isn't; I have a plan for Canada ~ Justin doesn't; and I'm the best choice to lead the LPC ~ Justin isn't, not yet, anyway.

 

[larry Strong]

It will be interesting to see how Le bébé responds to this.

Larry

 

[Edward Campbell]

And here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Toronto Star and filtered through the TorStar's Susan Delacourt, is the Trudeau campaign's explanation of why it is so very light on policy:

http://thestar.blogs.com/politics/2013/02/trudeau-versus-policy-in-liberal-leadership-race.html

Trudeau versus policy in Liberal leadership race

Posted by: Susan Delacourt

February 13, 2013

Marc Garneau has fired a direct shot at Justin Trudeau in the Liberal leadership race, accusing him of lacking policy substance. An excerpt from the statement:

“As Liberals, we cannot wait until after the leadership race is over to find out what we signed up for,” Garneau said in a prepared statement. “That is like asking Canadians to buy a new car without first test-driving it.”

Trudeau, however, has been saying for a while now that he won't be putting out a policy platform. He said this in an interview we ran over the holidays: link to that is here.

And  last week, when Trudeau was talking to students at Western University in London, he pointed out this policy lack as a mark of his distinction in the race. I've filed a story with some of these quotes in it, but here's the full context, for those who are interested. It starts when a student asks him how he differs from the other eight candidates:

    That’s an excellent question and that’s a question that’s at the base of what the Liberal party is trying to figure out right now. And you’re very right, the nine of us candidates, all of us very strong candidates in very different ways,  have very similar approaches -- in that we’re evidence-based,
    we’re not too far left, we’re not too far right, we tend to want to build dramatically on the values and the needs we have going forward.

    So the big difference, to my mind, is in what we actually see as a need for the Liberal party to do. Many of my colleagues are very much emphasizing their strengths around policy and their specific ideas and I’m actually frustrating both media pundits and a lot of others --
    not because I haven’t had a lot of very clear things to say, whether it be against the Northern Gateway pipeline, in favour of the legalization of marijuana, against strengthening the language laws in Quebec, various things that are ... difficult issues for politicians to deal with.

    But because I’m not going to be putting forward a comprehensive platform over the course of this leadership. And that’s because the Liberal party has gotten far too much in the habit of generating a platform by the leader and some very smart people around them,
    that they then turn to Liberals across the country and say ‘now go and sell this door to door.’ 

    This leadership is the beginning of a platform-development process, not the end of it. And what we do around connecting and drawing in ideas from around the country, not just from Liberal circles, but from Canadians who are looking for a better option,
    right across the country, will be the big work we have to do over the coming months and even years leading up to 2015.

    By the time the 2015 election comes around, we will have had enough development of policies. We will have an extraordinarily detailed, extremely bold platform to present to Canadians. But now is not the time to short-cut this. My emphasis right now,
    rather than being on policy-development, like most of my colleagues, is on organization. It is on building the capacity to be relevant in every single riding across the country, folding people back not just into the Liberal party, but actually into the political process.
    Because before we can sell someone on our platform as being the best one, the smartest one, the one with the vision, the one with the long-term view for this country, we actually have to remind Canadians that it’s important for political parties to have a platform,
    a vision, a long-term view of this country. And that only happens when you rebuild a connection with people in their lives, on their ground, feeling like they matter in how we shape the platform for the election.

M. Trudeau is, essentially, running a "front runner" campaign and, in that role, he neither wants nor needs to give opponents any easy targets. But there's a risk: Canadian might want to what policies and principles he espouses, failing to tell them that makes him an easy target for Prime Minister harper and Opposition leader Mulcair.


Edit: format (to take the last paragraph, my words, out of Ms Delacourt's article).

 

[Sythen]

Speaking as someone with not a politically strategic bone in my body. Does it seem like Mr Trudeau is not giving any specifics on policy because he feels his "celebrity" will be enough to win this election, and if that doesn't work, by next election he won't have anything concrete the Conservatives can attack him on so he can focus next election on whatever the flavour of the month is?

 

[a_majoor]

Not just the Young Dauphin,but the LPC "Brain Trust"as well.

Given the short attention span of the electorate (one wag on Army.ca suggested people will become interested in the campaign about a month after the election) this may actually be a viable strategy, although it does run the risk of being devoured by clever attack ads or inserts into political speeches, events etc. ("Here is what we in the CPC/NDP plan to do about problem "x". What do the Liberals propose?").

The other factor that allows this sort of behaviour is the fact that most of the Media is not going to aggressively follow up on the lack of Liberal policy, vision or plans. This is a clever slight of hand, since they can trumpet the faux scandal of the month or spin their "narrative" to paint the other parties as "bad" without ever having to explain why the LPC is "good" in explicit terms.

 

[a_majoor]

Marc Garneau attempts to light the policy fire. As the article says, it is about time to inject some real meat into this vague leadership "race". My concern is that since the LPC essentially wasted the period between 2006-today and never came out with any policy or defining philosophy (arguably this happened a lot longer ago; consider the LPC ran using the 1993 "Red Book" platform for each election since then),ther is really nothing for the candidates to hang their policy on (i.e. no one with a policy will be albe to explain "why" their policy is good Liberal policy or articulates Liberal values. Oddly Martha Hall-Findley has good, solid Conservative policy with her marketing board position...)

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/02/14/kelly-mcparland-marc-garneau-challenges-justin-trudeau-to-take-a-stand-any-stand/

Kelly McParland: Marc Garneau challenges Justin Trudeau to take a stand. Any stand.

Kelly McParland | Feb 14, 2013 1:27 PM ET
More from Kelly McParland | @KellyMcParland

In The Bourne Identity, the first of the films on the Robert Ludlum novels, Matt Damon as Jason Bourne is hauled from the sea and dumped onto the deck by a group of fishermen who assume he’s dead. Then his arm moves and they leap back: It’s alive!

Something similar has happened to the Liberal leadership race. Two debates into the contest, and with just two months to go before the choice is made, Mark Garneau has openly criticized Justin Trudeau, the perceived frontrunner.

“Federal Liberal Leadership frontrunner Justin Trudeau has a responsibility to tell Canadians where he stands and where he intends to lead now, not after the leadership race is over,” Garneau says in a press release headed “Garneau calls on Trudeau to take a stand.”

    As Liberals, we cannot wait until after the leadership race is over to find out what we signed up for,” Garneau said in a prepared statement. “That is like asking Canadians to buy a new car without first test-driving it.”

It takes a shot at Trudeau’s fundraising talents, thanking him “for his contribution to the party’s coffers”, but suggests that leadership is about more than raising money.

    “Garneau said he has made his leadership vision clear and has outlined his plan on the knowledge economy, trade, telecommunications, Western Canada, electoral reform, and student debt and youth employment. He added he will continue to do so for the duration of the campaign.

    “This is not the case with Justin. He has told Canadians that we need a “bold” plan and a “clear vision” without defining either. On Justin’s two clear priorities, the middle class and youth engagement, he has said nothing,” said Garneau. “Therein lies the fundamental difference between Justin Trudeau and myself.”

And in an apparent reference to the party’s failed experiment with Michael Ignatieff, he adds:

    “Too often in the recent past we have put our faith as a party in one individual without asking the tough questions: Where do we stand? What is our vision for Canada?” he said. “Now is the time to get it right. In this race, we must know what it is we’re voting for, not just who we’re voting for.”

Well, them’s fighting words, and not a moment too soon. The next debate among the nine candidates is to take place on Saturday in Mississauga, and if someone doesn’t bring some excitement to the competition it’s in danger of keeling over dead from sheer tedium. The lowest point had to be the recent “debate” in Winnipeg, which consisted of contestants being individually interviewed by a failed candidate from Calgary. There’s still an excellent chance the party will manage to blow this opportunity as well, as current plans call for a series of one-on-one exchanges that will feature David Bertschi challenging George Takach, Joyce Murray questionig Martin Cauchon, and Karen McCrimmon versus Deborah Coyne. Don’t stand in the exits folks, you might get trampelled.

    Should Liberals expect their leader to come equipped with firm policy ideas, or just go with whoever they figure will most easily attract votes?

Still, Garneau has made clear Trudeau should no longer expect the “hands off Justin” treatment he’s enjoyed until now. And his point goes to a fundamental issue: Should the party expect its leader to come equipped with firm policy ideas, or just go with whoever they figure will most easily attract votes?

Garneau is a policy guy. Most recently he pledged an overhaul of student loan programs so graduates would only begin repaying once they’d found a job paying at least $40,000 a year. He’s also urged Canada’s wireless market be open to foreign competitors and proposed an infrastructure investment program to “re-orient” Canada’s economy towards Asian trade.

Trudeau has made an attribute out of being vague. Acknowledging that his lack of specific policies is “frustrating both media pundits and a lot of others,” he counters that  “leadership is the beginning of a platform-development process, not the end of it.”

The party, he says, “has gotten far too much in the habit of generating a platform by the leader and some very smart people around them, that they then turn to Liberals across the country and say, ‘Now go and sell this door to door,’ ” he said.

He has a point, as does Garneau. Desperate to regain their lost lustre, Liberals have made a habit of entrusting the party to anyone they thought mind be able to leverage them back into power, whatever the means. But does that mean you pick an empty vessel and fill it with whatever positions are temporarily popular with voters?

Trudeau’s argument would have more bite if it emanated from someone of wide experience, with a solid background of accomplishment and a history of good judgment, rather than someone best known for his last name, whose biggest income (as he revealed Wednesday) comes from a trust fund and public speaking? Trudeau can point to the Ignatieff experiment and argue that Michael Ignatieff had a solid, impressive background, yet proved a bust. Which is true, except that Ignatieff imploded precisely because he didn’t seem to have any idea what the party believed in, and was constantly staging bus trips, public meetings and campus get-togethers in search of an answer.

It’s a debate worth having, and might even generate a bit of interest in the public. But only if the Liberals find a way to ditch the also-ran candidates and let the serious contenders go at it head to head.

National Post

 

[Edward Campbell]

Kelly McParland hits a key point about ideas: they must be ones which resonate with many, ideally most Canadians, and, just as important in politics, they must be ones in which the "party base" can believe, too. In  other words, the Liberal leader must, first of all, understand, appeal to and "connect" with the Liberal Party "base," ~ something that Ignatieff, McParland argues, failed to do.

I'm not at all sure that I understand the Liberal base but my guess is that it is a bit left of centre: it likes big, interventionist government but it accepts that it must serve the vested interests of big business, the big banks and big labour, too. The Liberals "base" is, I think a big city movement ~ isolated from rural Canada, from small town Canada and, increasingly, from sub-urban Canada. If I'm right then the LPC and NDP are competing for the same slice of the political spectrum, leaving the Conservatives with a clear run at the 40% or so of voters that are needed for a majority government. If that's the case then both parties are making a mistake and both need to redefine and fight for their core constituencies.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Two National Post columnists have gone after Justin Trudea and the whole Liberal establishment, with some justification in each case:

In his his column, headlined "Drunk on Trudeau, Liberals prepare to forget reform and hand him the keys," Kelly McParland says:

"This is a party that woke up the morning after elections in 2006, 2008 and 2011 with ugly headaches and a deep sense of regret,  spent the day on the couch gobbling hangover remedies and swore that never … ever…  would it make the same mistake. Oh Lord.  Did we seriously do that  … with Stephane Dion? … oh my God. And Michael Ignatieff too? How will we ever live it down? Take me now, please take me now ... They took the cure. Elected new party officials and swore up and down the country to stay away from the quick fixes and devote themselves to a slow, solid rebuilding of Liberalism, on a firm basis of beliefs rather than flash and a pretty face.  They would dig deep and establish what Liberalism was all about, establish real principles and policies that weren’t simply about winning votes ... Then came Justin, an once again the party is dancing around with a lampshade on its head."

Trudeau, McParland notes, is short on policies but very, very looooong on charisma.

Andrew Coyne says much the same thing in his column headlined "Liberal Party would rather be a personality cult than transform itself;" he says:

"Perhaps it was an impossible thing to expect. Perhaps it was even unfair. To demand that the Liberal Party of Canada, after a century and more as the party of power, should reinvent itself as a party of ideas; that it should, after a string of ever-worse election results culminating in the worst thumping in its history, ask itself some searching questions, including whether Canada still needed a Liberal Party, and if so on what basis — perhaps it was all too much to ask ... Because, on the evidence, the party isn’t capable of it. Or perhaps it simply doesn’t want to. Either it does not believe such a process is necessary. Or it does, but can’t bear it. Whatever may be the case, nearly two years after that catastrophic election, the party shows no interest in reinventing itself, still less in any healthy existential introspection. The policy conference that was to be the occasion for this came and went; the months that followed were similarly void ... And the leadership race, so long delayed, so eagerly awaited? Not the ideal place for a party to reflect on who it is and what it stands for — that’s why the race was put off for so long, to get all of that out of the way beforehand — but perhaps it was the only realistic shot. As they chose between candidates, Liberals (and “supporters”!) would also be choosing between competing visions of the party, sharpening and forcing issues that until now the party had preferred to avoid. Only that’s not really how it’s turning out, is it? ... It’s tempting to suggest this amounts to asking party members (and “supporters”!) to accept him on faith now, on the promise that he will listen to their views later. Except to most of his followers, it doesn’t matter whether he listens to them or not: he had them at hello. Trudeau may not be wholly uninterested in ideas himself, but he is plainly the candidate of those who are. All many of them know is his name and his face, and all the rest need to know is that, for much of the population, that is enough. He will spare them the hard work of looking within. He will rescue them from doubt, from debate, from having to choose to be this and not that."  He concludes: "By such rationalizations, the Liberal Party of Canada prepares to transform itself into a personality cult."

I need to reiterate: Although I am a Conservative Party member and a major donor, I want the Liberals to pick a good, effective leader, because -

    1. I KNOW that in a few years my Conservative party will be stale, tired, bereft of good ideas, in need of a rest in the political wilderness; and

    2. I don't not think the NDP can transform itself into a socially progressive, economically moderate and fiscally responsible party in time to take over.

Therefore we need a Liberal government in waiting.

But I suspect that M. Trudeau will be a weak leader - as his father was. (The "gunslinger" image was well crafter and well publicized but it didn't tell us anything about the timid, little man who wanted to lead a timid, little Canada.*) I also suspect that Messers Harper and Mulcair will destroy M. Trudeau's Liberals, send them back, yet again, to rebuild - but this time it will be too late; they will not be ready to govern when the Conservatives need to be replaced.

It's all rather sad.

_____
* See A Foreign Policy for Canadians, Trudeau's 1970 White Paper and contrast it with St Laurent's 1947 Grey Lecture - the best, arguably the only original foreign policy Canada ever had. Trudeau saw and presented Canada as a poor, weak place, unable and unwilling to assert itself in the world - not even strong enough to oppose South Africa on a clear, moral principle, as Diefenbaker had done.

 

[Old Sweat]

Terry Glavin lets us know he is not a Trudeau admirer in this piece from the Ottawa Citizen reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act:

The Trudeau effect

By Terry Glavin, Ottawa Citizen February 28, 2013


Everybody’s laughing at Italy this week. Silvio Berlusconi is back. Italian voters have somehow managed to give their comically corrupt 76-year-old former prime minister a clear shot at keeping the country’s centre-left coalition from the Lower House majority it needs to properly govern the austerity-wracked country. Ha ha. Idiots.

But this sort of thing can happen to the nicest of democracies. There are rules that apply here, and Canadians should not be too quick to mock. After allowing its leadership race to degenerate into a sort of cross between a beauty contest and a reality television show, Canada’s very own Liberal Party, for instance, is on the verge of handing its crown to someone it would not be entirely wrong to call a largely talentless and insufferably foppish celebrity drama queen.

This is not a nice way to describe Justin Trudeau. It is also one thing to be Italy’s best-known patron of teenaged prostitutes and quite another thing to be merely a strangely pretty 41-year-old former snowboarding instructor who would be wholly unknown to all of us if he weren’t the son of a famously glamorous Canadian prime minister.

But at some point, it is going to have to be made to sink in. This is a guy who was boasting, as recently as 2001: “I don’t read newspapers. I don’t watch the news. I figure, if something happens, someone will tell me.” This is a guy whose main real job before he got into federal politics five years ago was a stint as a teacher at Vancouver’s West Point Grey Academy.

I note that particular gig only because earning as much as $462,000 a year for merely being the celebrity Justin Trudeau and giving inspirational speeches at up to $15,000 a pop is not what is ordinarily considered a “real” job. It is a racket, and Trudeau has carried on with it, featherbedding his $158,000 MP’s salary with more than a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of these celebrity “speakers’ fees” since 2008, when he first got elected Member of Parliament for the down-at-heels Montreal riding of Papineau.

Odd as it sounds, there is no House of Commons rule that prohibits MPs from moonlighting like this. Odder still, Trudeau has got away with justifying this lucrative sideline work on the grounds that he’s doing it as a favour to his constituents. “It is to make sure that the values of the people who elected me in Papineau are being heard in Ottawa and across the country,” he told reporters.

This is like something the notoriously stupid Alaskan ex-governor Sarah Palin might have said, but it gets a pass when Trudeau says it, and Trudeau gets away with this sort of thing all the time owing only to a pathetic and distinctly Canadian variety of celebrity-worship. This is not to be mean. It is actually the most charitable way to explain how it has come to pass that Justin Trudeau, if you don’t mind, is actually on the verge of annexing the Liberal Party of Canada as his personal vanity project.

It has got so that two weeks ago, when the leadership contender Martha Hall Findlay hinted at Trudeau’s obvious unsuitability to the task of championing the “middle class” he claims to be uniquely qualified to champion, she was jeered at and shouted at and hounded until she apologized. Maclean’s magazine called her question a “jarring outburst.”


If this were France in 1793, Justin Trudeau would be just another dandy in a powdered wig and a frilly shirt being trundled away to his just reward on the guillotine at the Place de Carrousel in Paris. But this being Canada in 2013, to merely ask out loud why it is that not once since Justin Trudeau declared his candidacy last fall has he managed to articulate a single original and coherent thought, is to be not just impolite, but inexcusably impudent and saucy beyond all bounds.

Only the other day, when the sturdy and perfectly capable leadership candidate Marc Garneau came close to publicly noticing Trudeau’s determined vacuity, Postmedia News reported that Garneau had subjected the dauphin to a “fiery attack.”

The Liberal party’s desperation — down to 35 seats in the House of Commons, rudderless, bereft of ideas — is not sufficient to explain this state of affairs. Neither is money, although Trudeau has purchased a great advantage over his competitors in the race by outspending all eight of them combined. The main reason is merely that his name is Trudeau. It’s the glitz of it. With a family name like that, it’s amazing what you can get away with.

In Montreal, Justin is one half of a high-society power couple, the other half of which is Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau, a former entertainment-television personality, a sometime bulimia-awareness ambassador and occasional New Age self-improvement evangelist of some sort. Gregoire has been known to explain the scourge of global violence against women as a matter of some dislocation in “the feminine and masculine balance of divinity.” Just last week, the 38-year-old Gregoire-Trudeau showed up in the Globe and Mail describing herself as being “at that awkward stage between jail bait and cougar.”

Can you imagine the spouse of any other politician getting away with saying something like that? Of course you can’t.

Then there’s Justin’s “senior adviser” in his leadership campaign, a celebrity documentarist whose works include a crude piece of anti-Israel propaganda produced in association with the Iranian government’s English-language propaganda arm. This most cherished of Justin’s confidantes is also famous for having penned a 2006 essay for the Toronto Star attributing such super-human powers to Cuban strongman Fidel Castro, “an expert on genetics, on automobile combustion engines, on stock markets, on everything,” as the ability to go long periods without sleep and to harvest sea urchins from the ocean floor at depths of 20 metres without any artificial breathing apparatus.

This is Justin’s brother Alexandre we’re talking about here, so, you know, back off.

These are the Trudeaus. They are, first and foremost, rich and famous. They are chic and glamorous. “They are,” as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it in his short story The Rich Boy, “different from you and me.”

The same rules just don’t apply.

 

[larry Strong]

A piece by David Akin on the opposite side of the article posted above,reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act:

Harper haters get behind Murray for Liberal leader

OTTAWA - Could Joyce Murray win the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada?

It may seem a preposterous question to ask. After all, from the numbers we have so far, we know that Justin Trudeau has an overwhelming fundraising advantage.

And if Twitter is any indication, Trudeau has an online army ready to vote for him while Murray and the other contestants have platoons at best.

And, in terms of media coverage, Trudeau has been all any pundit seems to want to talk about.

And yet, the peculiar voting system the party is using to select its leader makes this race an ideal one for single-issue interest groups to influence the outcome in a way they have never been able to in a federal party's leadership race. Murray's campaign appears to be taking full advantage of that, so much so that she seems a good bet to finish a strong second to Trudeau and, while her odds of overcoming Trudeau to finish first still seem long, they are much shorter than what they were at the beginning of the contest.

What's peculiar about the voting system this time around is that ballots may be cast by anyone who simply declares himself or herself to be a "supporter" of the party.

Paid-up members of the party get to vote, of course, but, for the first time ever, non-members can also weigh in.

And it's one-person, one vote. And all the votes will be done online or by phone. No one needs to go to the burden of travelling.

The most recent numbers from the party say that about 40,000 have signed up in this new "supporter" class but there could easily two, three, or four times that many after the deadline to sign up to vote expires this Sunday.

Murray is staking her campaign on one big idea, that in order to dislodge Stephen Harper from 24 Sussex, Liberals, New Democrats, Greens and other so-called "progressives" must, for at least one election, find a way to pool their votes to defeat Conservatives.

After all, they reason, Harper's party got 40% of all votes cast in the 2011 general election. If 60% voted for someone else, shouldn't "someone else" have been prime minister?

Murray, a B.C. MP, is the only leadership candidate openly advocating an electoral co-operation plan to defeat Harper. Trudeau, notably, has rejected such an idea.

And environmentalist David Suzuki, actress Sarah Polley, anti-globalization activist Naomi Klein along with groups like Avaaz and Leadnow.ca are pushing their supporters to Murray. Avaaz claims 500,000 Canadian members. Leadnow.ca has 225,000 members. Suzuki has an online following estimated at 100,000 or more.

All of these groups may not be united in their love of the Liberal Party of Canada but they are united in their loathing of Harper and the Conservatives.

Of course, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair has been, like most New Democrats in Ottawa, steadfast in the belief that the NDP is capable enough, thank you very much, of knocking off Harper by itself and that the best thing Suzuki, Polley, Klein or any other celebrity could do would be to vote NDP in the next election. Indeed, in winning the NDP leadership race last year, Mulcair beat a rival, Nathan Cullen, who, like Murray, was advocating electoral co-operation with the Liberals.

And yet: if tens of thousands of left-leaning activists have put Murray into the Liberal leadership or even into a strong second-place finish, it's not too hard to think that they would then train their mailing lists and lobbying power on the Greens and the NDP in order to forge a Harper-hating political coalition in time for the general election of 2015.

All of which makes Murray's candidacy the most interesting in this race.[/quoye]

 

[ModlrMike]

So how would Ms Murray's proposal work in practice?

Would all the candidates who came second to the Torries be the only ones to run in those seats, or would the be some other convoluted process? I hardly see the parties, particularly the NDP, dilute their standing in favour of other "also rans". I hope this gerrymandering proposal never comes to pass.

 

[a_majoor]

This is how Ms Murray's campaign is working:

http://bcblue.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/us-funded-groups-trying-to-influence-who-wins-liberal-leadership-race/

US funded groups trying to influence who wins Liberal leadership race
February 28, 2013 — BC Blue

The American organization Avaaz funded by billionaire George Soros is trying to get MP Joyce Murray elected leader of the Liberal Party:

Avaaz, an even larger online group that supports electoral co-operation, is similarly joining the fray, sending an email alert to its more than 500,000 Canadian members, urging them to participate in the democratic process of the party of their choice.

“But we also let them know that … there is a leadership race where co-operation is up for grabs and in this case it’s the Liberal party’s leadership race and there’s a candidate who’s clearly out for co-operation,” said Emma Ruby-Sachs, a campaign director with Avaaz.

Also trying to decide who becomes the next Liberal leader is the NDP-backed Leadnow and the Dogwood Initiative which is funded by the US-based organization, Tides. (see here)

Imagine if it were US conservative groups trying to interfere in Canadian leadership races – the Media Party would go ape.

There are two questions here:

1. What is the real goal of Avazz and their fellow travelers?

2. Why are they throwing money and resources in a quixotic campaign with little hope of winning?

I suspect they are trying to set the stage for the NDP to be the winners in the 2019 election, in support of their Progressive goals, but at this point this is speculation on my part.

 

[Old Sweat]

It is just plain unworkable. How many far left Dippers would vote for a Blue Liberal and vice versa. It sounds great in theory but sucks in practice. It seems to me Dion and May tried it in the 2008 election in an effort to defeat McKay, but he won anyway.

Mind you, many pundits hate the first past the post system too. Unfortunately for them, it is one of those things that is bad in theory, but works in practice. Imperfect as it is, it is better and easier to manage than any of the alternatives.

 

[larry Strong]

That's what I don't understand either. If you pick NDP in one riding, and Lib in another, and then Green elsewhere, how do you get a majority/minority? Unless they plan on ganging up after the election......not so sure how that would sit with John and Mary Sixpack.


Larry

 

[a_majoor]

Which is why this is so mysterious to me.

The only thing that comes to mind is to create even more disarray in the LPC and prevent it from becoming the "Government in waiting", so when the 2019 election rolls around only the NDP is a viable alternative to the CPC. (This also assumes that the CPC will have become tired and complacent by then and voters are eager to vote them out. There are arguments against that proposition, starting with demographics and some possibilities hinging on Prime Minister Harper stepping down and being replaced by a new leader to keep the party fresh). Other counter arguments to that scenario are the defection of "Blue Liberals" to the CPC in the event the LPC disintegrates, maintaining the relative size of the CPC voting block.

Of course it could come down to the American sponsors of Avaaz simply do not understand Canadian political culture, believe the CBC, Toronto Star and Rabble.ca as gospel and have backed the wrong horse.

 

[Brad Sallows]

I'm too lazy to look this up to verify my understanding: is "the party leader becomes PM if the party wins" still a custom, or did it become a law?  Surely a party which newly forms government would be within its rights to tell its leader "Thank you, now fuck off" and choose a different one within the House.

It is pleasing that Trudeau-supporting Liberals have shat out their "party of well-reasoned, sensible policy" credentials.  They are all serious and earnest and oh-those-horrible-anti-science-conservatives-tsk-tsk-sorrowful; then Trudeau shows up, and - to borrow a phrase - their panties hit the floor with a splash.

 

[ModlrMike]

I'm too lazy to look this up to verify my understanding: is "the party leader becomes PM if the party wins" still a custom, or did it become a law?  Surely a party which newly forms government would be within its rights to tell its leader "Thank you, now frig off" and choose a different one within the House.

There is no law AFIK that mandates the party leader be PM, although the custom is sufficiently well entrenched to be considered a permanent policy. That being said, there are some examples of sitting PMs facing leadership reviews and failing to maintain their place as head of the party. Specifics escape me just now. Custom in these situations is that the new leader/PM holds an election at the next opportune moment to legitimize their leadership with the voting public.