First, Dion lost his job because he didn’t appeal to anyone, not because the party ate him. As a part of this, he ran a horrifically ineffectual campaign that convinced Canadians he was unsafe for the economy. (That said, I voted for him, and he remains one of my favourite politicians.)
Second, the opposite is true of party leaders. I’m afraid I can’t track down a cite for this (it’s from in-class course materials, donchaknow), but. In Canada, party leaders’ opinion ratings only go down with time. The only exceptions are, IIRC, NDP leaders (basically because nobody takes them seriously, so their political baggage doesn’t get mulled over) and Stephen Harper in 2006 (but not 2008). I really wish I could get the source on that, so that you don’t just have to take my word.
Actually, there have been dozens upon dozens of newspaper articles over the last few years talking about how Harper has transformed the political system (sample). We’ve seen power become drastically more centralized in the P.M.O., bureaucratic processes yielded to electoral concerns, etc. It’s not a new trend, but the extent to which Harper has changed the Conservative Party into a personal promotional machine and the Canadian government into his party’s propaganda wing is pretty unnerving. This is the sort of change that the Liberals generally wouldn’t do, but it having been done, they’re unlikely to change back. So yes, in fact, Harper’s Conservatives have changed the system. Keep in mind, this is the party that almost lost power because it tried to bankrupt its opposition out of spite.
I’m sure there are. The thing is, I read exactly the same articles about Jean Chretien. Stories about how Chretien centralized all power in the PMO and left his backbenchers to rot came out every week. It’s trivially easy to Google up the takes of horror and looming dictatorship under Jean Chretien. And I’ll bet dollars to dimes we’ll see the same articles about the next PM. And if you wanna go back a bit further, what was it Pierre Trudeau said about backbenchers? This isn’t anything new, nor is it even a growing trend (though with quicker media the emphasis on managing messages is certainly increased, and understandably so) - it’s just that no matter who the PM is, no matter which party, hostile writers will always say they’re power-hungry centralizers. They said it about John A. MacDonald.
To use your cited example, which incidentally is from a newspaper that by corporate policy always supports the Liberal Party, the accusation is NOT that Harper has transformed the political system at all. There’s nothing whatsoever in the article about that. It’s about how Harper tells his MPs and partisan appointees to stay on message using memos. Well, he’s the party leader, so who cares if he tells them what to do? If the Conservative Party doesn’t like how its leader runs the Conservative Party, it’s up to the Conservative Party to kick his ass out of the big chair and elect someone else to lead them. He’s not changing the fact that we get to vote in elections and how elections are called and such.
The political system today is exactly the same as it was five years ago, ten years ago, or twenty years ago. The system hasn’t changed since 1982.
If Canadians prefer someone else to be PM over Stephen Harper, they’ll get a chance to say so in the next three and a half years, as per our Constitution, as has always been the case, and they can give more seats to some other party. That’s how the system works.
Ok, this is just demonstratively untrue. Harper’s government is certainly the least transparent in recent history, but he didn’t start this trend. Before Harper, as Rick has pointed out, there was Chretien whose governments were infamous for being opaque. This isn’t a new trend, and not just the Conservatives are guilty of it. I can pretty much guarantee that when the Liberals get back in, they’ll find some new way to be even less transparent than their predecessors. This is never going to change until the average Canadian voter actually gives a shit about this stuff, and I’m certainly not holding my breath on that.
Anyway, Rick, you haven’t answered my question. What, in your mind, could the Liberals do to be, in your own words, “an effective opposition”?
In the short term I’m not sure they can do anything. But if they keep thinking short term they’ll keep losing.
What they need to do, ikn my honest opinion, is blow up the leadership and bring in fresh faces who’re willing to spend some hard years in opposition articulating some sort of platform. If that means standing against the government on a vote on principle, losing, and being an opposition to a majority government for four years, so be it. Better to give yourself a chance to win in 2014.
Who should these fresh faces be? Dunno. But there’s talent in there.
I’m not going to object to the general point that the trend is old (and John A. MacDonald was a power-hungry centralizer.) But that doesn’t make it any better. And the system has changed in the last twenty-eight years —a significant problem has become worse.
Similarly, I’m not going to object to your characterization of the Toronto Star (I mean, hell, they put their bias right into their name). Still, the concentration of power in the PMO is a serious problem.
As with RickJay, I’ll agree that the trend predates Harper. That said, he is a pretty striking figure in his domination of power (in a minority government, no less!), and I don’t think the Liberals would end up doing the same thing right now. You need a leader who has the right combination of arrogance, ambition, ruthlessness, and immorality to pull that off. Certainly Ignatieff lacks the ruthlessness; Dion lacked all four of those traits.
So, I guess I’ll take both your points, and of course I always try to remember that I lack context (having been paying attention to Canadian politics for, oh, about two years) but I don’t think it makes me wrong about this. Alarmist, perhaps.
Actually, wait. Before I go to bed, let me add briefly: the bureaucratic meddling is part of a long-standing trend, but the damaging of Parliamentary supremacy is not. I doubt that the Liberal Party would have come up with misusing proroguement — after all, Paul Martin had two years of minority governing in which to do so, yet did not. In the same way, I don’t know of Liberals trying to keep Parliament from subpoenaing documents in blatantly illegal manners*. IOW, it would be difficult to justify the opinion that the Liberals are just the same, seeing as they neither invented nor have used the nastier tricks in Harper’s book.
Oh, and, BTW, RickJay, do you really think it will be 3 1/2 years until an election? 'Cuz that’s just funny.
*There’s also been an article in the Star about Harper trying to put some of his staff off-limits — but that may have been spun some.
He’s supposed to be our MP for Etobicoke-Lakeshore, as well as leader of the party. He has, basically, nothing whatever to do with our riding - was parachuted into a long-time “safe” Liberal riding, and the other Liberal candidates disqualified on dubious pretexts from competing with him.
The impression conveyed is that the Liberal leadership thought some famous foreign professor and writer had a good shot at leadership, and decided what was best for us - trading on the fact that Etobicoke-Lakeshore would never go Conservative (and they didn’t).
Now, I have nothing against some famous professor, and maybe he knows better what is needed for Canadians generally than some local guy from Etobicoke who has never visited the rest of the country much.
However, that being said, the impression conveyed is one of great contempt for the very people who he’s supposed to be representing - that he and his backroom political boys know what’s best for us, that they can pull whatever back-room deals to ensure we get the guy they want, and that we will put up with it, because we are loyally Liberal. [Not mind you that this is anything unusual in Canadian politics - merely unusually blatant in this case]
In short, the opposition to him does not derive solely from who he is, but also from how he became leader - with basically zero of the usuall political apprenticeship and dues-paying with the grass-roots.
This is what bothers me about Ignatieff–unlike others, regardless of party, he didn’t work his way up. During his time at Harvard, he may have kept in touch with his friends back home, and read the Globe and Mail in the Harvard library, but I’d suggest that was not quite the same as being in the thick of things back here; watching, discussing, and analyzing daily events and occurrences with other politicians. And, perhaps more importantly, with the electorate.
I think this is why the attack ads against him were so damaging to his image. He was/is an unknown who has no ‘record’ to fall back on; all the intellectuals swooned over him, parachuted him into his privileged seat so Iggy kept the “buzz” going until he won the leadership.
When he won, he was a complete “blank slate” for the public, so the Tories started to paint a (damning) pictureof himfor us. He tried tocounter, but it wasn’t too effective IMO.
When he came onto the Canadian political scene, I went and researched him. I don’t know nuthin’ bout no Conservative smear campaigns; my intense dislike of the man comes from looking up his history.
ETA: I should also say, I looked up Stephen Harper’s history at the same time; my respect for him grew because of my research. I just wish he’d quit using dirty tactics; he doesn’t need them.
What did you not like about Ignatieff’s history? Surely it’s the same things that the Conservatives pointed out (mainly the lack of any strong Canadian profile).
I suppose that is his job, but he’s supposed to do this through his current leadership. He’s not going crash the party in an ill timed election just so they can re-build with fresh faces. That’s just silly. Why would he (or the Liberals) want to do that? The Libs will take down the government only when it’s strategic for them to do so. Just like when the Conservatives called the 2006 elections despite their very vocal hatred of this tactic.
