Month: March 2010

The Liberals, at their “thinkers conference” here in Montreal have tried to assemble some non-partison speakers. Well, Robert Fowler, the long-time Canadian diplomat who spent 130 days as an Al-Queda hostage last year, was not only non-partisan, he was, in his own words, “blunt and rude” to the hosts that invited him to speak here this morning. Here is the pre-amble to the 30-minute speech he gave titled “Reflections on Africa and other Canadian Foreign Policy Issues':

It's early on a Sunday morning and many of you wish you had slept in a little longer, or perhaps you will once you hear what I have to say, because, as invited by Mr. Ignatieff, I'm not going to mince my words.

I know that you are not all Liberals but I'll be addressing my remarks principally to those of you who are so I hope those of you who aren't will understand that it is not you I am haranguing.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge that I am a little conflicted. I'm going to say some negative things, both directly and indirectly, about our current government. While this may not cause enormous difficulties for most of this audience, my criticism is not offered lightly, for the simple reason that Mr. Harper and his government brough Louis (Guay) and me home. The government could have taken the British position and, like my fellow hostage Edwin Dyer, I would have lost my head. Thus, I owe a debt to Mr. harper and I am all too aware that such criticism is a rather churlish way of repaying it.

So, without further preamble: I believe the Liberal party has lost its way, at least in policy terms; indeed it is in danger of losing its soul. To this observer, it seems Liberals today don't stand for much in the way of principle.

I have the impression that they will endorse anything and everything which might return them to power and nothing which won't, whatever the merits of either.

I believe Liberals seem prepared to embrace an infinite array of special interest in order to shill for votes, rather than forging a broad-based, principled alliance, founded in deep Liberal traditions, one with a distinct social conscience and an independent, Canadian character, which would protect, project and defence core Liberal values, at home and abroad.

The Liberal party today is not the Liberal party that governed this country for 30 of my 39 years of public servcie, nor is it the one my father was so proud to be part of.

I know times change and while Canada clearly needs a viable alternative to the currenct government, I believe that Liberals haveyet to present Canadians with a cogent vision, one with a fully articulated international dimension, of where they stand and what values they represent.

This morning, I'll say why I believe this to be true, at least when observed through my foreign policy prism.

Thank you, though, for inviting me to talk to you, and for your willingness to think, for a momement, about the plight of Africa today and tomorrow in a broader geo-strategic context and permitting me to blunt and rude while accepting your hospitality.

It's no secret that, as Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party were looking around for ways to organize themselves in opposiiton in order to become the government they are today, they went to Australia and John Howard's Liberal Party. (Despite its name, Australia's Liberal Party is, essentially, a conservative party.) Howard had found long electoral success in Australia and Harper advisor Patrick Muttart drew on Howard's example as he and others crafted the strategic and policy ideas that would help Harper win in 2006 and govern beyond that.

In 2003, University of Sydney anthropologist Ghassan Hage published a critique of Howard's Australia, arguing, as one reviewer noted:

“The radical neo-liberal Howard Government engages in a highly unethical practice of social and ideological exclusionism. This socio-economic, cultural and ethnic 'othering' increases the membership of marginalised people in our community, while further disempowering and delimiting the opportunities of hope for those traditionally marginalised by society. Hage's paranoid nationalists are the chronically underemployed or unemployed, the poor, the 'no-hopers produced by transcendental capitalism and the policies of neo-liberal government' “

Hage, in the foreword to Against paranoid nationalism: searching for hope in a shrinking society (2003), then suggests that the opposite of Howard's approach is something he calls “The Caring Society”. Here's a snapshot of the section (Google Books doesn't let you copy so I've taken a screen grab of what Google Books displays.)

Now: Why is all this important?

This weekend, the Liberal Party of Canada is hosting a three-day 'thinkers conference“. Experts from a variety of political and professional backgrounds are addressing delegates — including leader Michael Ignatieff — as it tries to come upon some ideas which it might use in a future election platform.

This morning, the conference heard from David Dodge, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and a former deputy minister at the Department of Finance. Dodge's speech was notable for several reasons but I noticed that he used the phrase “the caring society” more than once. In his view, a broad range of policy initiatives — employment insurance reform, fiscal measures, pension reform and so on — ought to be brought to bear to improve the country's productivity becuase, in doing that, the Canada of the next two decades will be able to afford to pay for the care of an increasing number of retired persons, the sick and so on.

“However politically difficult to put in place, these and other structural policies will be key to raising productivity and enhance incomes and government revenues to cover the increased costs of a caring society. The question of how do we care becomes moot if we do not have the income and wealth that allows us to collectively care at all,” Dodge said.

So if the Canadian Liberal Party is casting about for some idea it can take into battle against a Conservative Party inspired by Australia's Liberal Party, perhaps it could look to the concept, defined by Hage and others here in Canada, and articulated today by Dodge of “The Caring Society”. If the Liberals of the 1960s championed Pierre Trudeau's vision of “The Just Society”, perhaps Liberals may consider linking their policy ideas around the theme of “The Caring Society.”

The Ottawa Citizen has two great takes from columnists Dan Gardner and Susan Riley on the “Canada 150” conference, organized and hosted this weekend in Montreal by the Liberal Party of Canada.

Gardner sets the Montreal gabfest against the historical record of its predecessor, the conference in Aylmer, Que. in 1991, a conference that preceded Jean Chretien's big victory in 1993:

“Aylmer really wasn't what it has become in political lore. What's more — and more relevant — the circumstances then are remarkably similar to the circumstances now: Those gathered in Montreal really should take a quick look backwards before they start talking about the future.”

Susan Riley puts Canada 150 in its current context, looking at it against the background of Michael Ignatieff's leadership and the current political environment:

…will the ideas survive the withering contempt of the Conservative hit squad, Michael Ignatieff's timid and drifting leadership, or inevitable editing by drafters of the next Liberal campaign platform? Bold ideas have a habit of turning into minor tax credits, or small monthly cheques, or short-lived millennium scholarships once they've been through the reductive spin cycle of campaign politics. (Especially once they're costed.)

The precedents aren't encouraging. Everyone — especially Liberals — remembers what happened to the last Big Idea. Stéphane Dion's green shift included a carbon tax, but also offered personal income tax cuts and enhanced support for poor families and seniors. It was more ambitious and less threatening than portrayed — but it was doomed by poor marketing and opposition vitriol.

… Liberals need more than ideas. They need a leader who doesn't treat his caucus like wallpaper. (Liberal MPs and senators are explicitly not invited to this weekend's wonkfest.) They need answers to their own daily questions. What would they do — never mind the government — if the Americans ask us to leave 600 soldiers in Kabul after 2011? How would Liberals pay down the deficit, fix the isotope shortage, regulate greenhouse emissions?

Mostly, they need a leader who is liberal by conviction, not just in name.

Two of my Canwest columnist colleagues are here in Montreal this weekend: Don Martin of the Calgary Herald/National Post and Barabara Yaffe of the Vancouver Sun. Looking forward to reading their perspective.

In 1991, with his party low in the polls, Jean Chretien convened a thinkers conference in Aylmer, Que. Among other things, his party,which had just campaigned against free trade — losing big to Brian Mulroney — had to come to grips with free trade. The Aylmer conference helped Liberals do that and come up with some other forward-looking ideas that found their way into the famous “Red Book” that Chretien would use in the 1993 campaign to win a crushing majority against Mulroney's successor Kim Campbell.

This weekend, Liberals are gathering in Montreal for the heir to that Aylmer event, dubbed “Canada at 150” and Chretien was on hand again, this time as a party elder. He was asked by reporters on his way into the event this morning about that event in Aylmer.

“When you're in opposition, you're in opposition and your goal is to form a government. So it's the same situation that it was for me and it was for Mike Pearson. We want to prepare the party to take over … and offer something that is very in tune with the times.”

Stephen Harper's Conservatives are already belittling this “thinkers” conference, calling it the “spenders” conference. Chretien had some thoughts about that.

“When I see the Conservatives, they are always the same. They are for balancing the budget but they got us in debt. I remember making fun of President Reagan. President Reagan defeated President Carter because it was awful that Carter had a $50 billion deficit. And President Reagan reduced it — to $250 billion. So it's always the same: Between their talk and their doing, there is always a big gap.

“We turned the finances of the country. We put the Canadians into surplus. Who had us in debt again? Again it is the Conservatives who left me with $42 billion deficit, representing 6.2 per cent of GDP. It's always the same thing.”

Did Aylmer help? “It was good for me. It was very useful for us. You can be drifting sometimes. And there's a change in leadership. A change in the membership of the party and sometimes, it's not bad to sit back and say, wait a minute, where are we going? And it's what they're doing.

“There's a lot of factors to win an election. [Aylmer] was not the only thing but it was one element. There was [voter] fatigue. When they picked Madame Campbell [to succeed Mulroney as leader of the Progressive Conservatives], I called my caucus — some nervous Nellies — and I started to say, she has a summer job, she is a shooting star and we turned it around. Politics is very unpredictable. But you have to be ready to be the alternative when the opportunity comes.”

My friend Roger Smith of CTV then asked: “So what do the Liberals have to do now?”

“Their best,” Chretien said, and turned and headed inside the conference room.

The Canada at 150 conference, organized and hosted by the Liberal Party of Canada, gets underway this morning in Montreal. It's a weekend-long affair where various leading thinkers — from a variety of political and professional backgrounds — will offer their views on everything from education to the economy to culture in a digital world.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff kicks things off at about 9:30 this morning.

The conference in Montreal is the main event but the Liberals have organized 60 satellite events to go with it in ridings around the country. That's where most MPs and Senators will be. Only a handful of Liberal MPs will be here in Montreal.

In Montreal, Ignatieff will also be supported by his party's former leaders, including former prime ministers John Turner, Jean Chretien, and Paul Martin. Stephane Dion is also here.

I and several of my Parliamentary Press Gallery colleagues are also here to report and blog on the event over the weekend.

The Liberals, though, have also accedited several amateur bloggers to provide their perspective on the conference. I asked the party for a list of bloggers so that I might point you to their coverage but the party declined to provide such a list.

That said, I met a few of those bloggers and tweeters last evening and here's my list. (Feel free to send an e-mail and let me know who I'm missing). These folks are here at their own expense cuz they care:

• A BC'er in Toronto
• Impolitical
• Liberal Arts and Minds
• Far and Wide
• Stephen Gordon of Worthwhile Canadian Initiative
• Liberal Minute
• Ken Chapman

The Liberals were trying to be clever. Their plan was to put the following motion to a vote in the House of Commons that could, under some circumstances, be interpreted as endorsing abortion as part of the “full range of family planning, sexual and reproductive health options” to be included in the government's G8 maternal health initiative:

1. That, in the opinion of the House, the government’s G8 maternal and child health initiative for the world’s poorest regions, must include the full range of family planning, sexual and reproductive health options, including contraception, consistent with the policy of previous Liberal and Conservative governments and all other G8 governments last year in L’Aquila, Italy;
2. That the approach of the Government of Canada must be based on scientific evidence which proves that education and family planning can prevent as many as one in every three maternal deaths; and
3. That the Canadian government should refrain from advancing the failed right-wing ideologies previously imposed by the George W. Bush administration in the United States which made humanitarian assistance conditional upon a 'global gag rule' that required all non-governmental organizations receiving federal funding to refrain from promoting medically-sound family planning.

The Liberal crafters of this motion assumed the NDP and Bloc Quebecois would vote with them on this motion and that, it being a minority government, the motion would carry. The Liberal crafters assumed the Conservatives would vote against it and then political opponents could accuse the Conservatives of having voted against “the full range of family planning, etc.”, a charge which would likely extend to accusing the Conservatives of being sexist, paternalist, anti-women, etc.

On her blog, Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett, a doctor who argued vigourously in favour of the motion, had, earlier in the week labelled the vote a “day of reckoning” on the issue.

It was indeed a day of reckoning — for her own party.

Though it was an automatic whipped vote for the Liberal caucus because it was their motion — a whipped vote being one that all MPs are required to be in the House for and to vote as the party instructs — 13 Liberal MPs were absent and three — Paul Szabo, Dan McTeague, and John McKay, all from the Toronto area — voted against the motion. Szabo, McTeague, and McKay have all had a long history of voting against abortion when presented with the opportunity. Some of the absent Liberals included MPs like Albina Guarnieri, who have also historically been uncomfortable with any further extension of abortion access.

The motion was defeated 144-138. Had the absent Liberals showed up to vote in favour, it would have easily passed. Remarkably, there was, after the vote, much confusion about whether or not it was a whipped vote. Some said, yes, they'd been whipped. Others, like B.C. MP Keith Martin – he was there and voted in favour of the motion — did not know it was a whipped vote until told it was by reporters this morning.

And so the Liberals ended up with some tremendous egg on their face. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff seemed to concede as much after emerging from the weekly closed-door meeting with his caucus. ““I would have preferred a different result and we have some internal caucus issues to work out,” he wryly observed.

Privately, Liberal MPs said that the 90-minute caucus meeting was not a happy place with MPs directing their frustration at Ignatieff, his staff, and party whip Rodger Cuzner. It would have been Cuzner's job to make sure all of his MPs knew it was a whipped vote and to make sure they were all in their seats and ready to vote “Aye”. Ignatieff would not say what punishment would be in store for the Liberal MPs who did not vote the way they were supposed to, saying only that Cuzner would decide on that.

“We look like fools,” one Liberal MP said privately.

Not surprisingly, the Conservatives, emerging from their weekly closed-door caucus meeting across the hall from the Liberal caucus in Parliament Hill's centre block, were pleased with the turmoil among the red team.

“Mr. Ignatieff tried to divide Canadians. It turned out that he ended up dividing his own party. A very bad for the Liberals yesterday,” said Ottawa-area Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre.

“It was just a cynical motion to try to create some havoc in Parliament and really, they're not focusing on what Canadians are interested in,” said Bob Dechert, a Conservative MP from Mississauga, Ont. “That was simply a motion to try to disrupt Parliament and I don't think it served any purpose whatsoever.”