Editorials

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Shooting themselves in the feet

By: Editorial

25/11/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 3

THERE is growing speculation, fed by polls and what appears to a broad public malaise, that the once-mighty federal Liberal party, the self-regarded natural party of government, is steadily slipping into the position of third-place party, after the Conservatives and the New Democrats.

Actually, that might even be fourth place if one were to count the Bloc Quebecois which, although it is not a national party, holds more federal seats than the NDP.

Much of the blame for the Liberal party's perceived decline -- and it is, until voting day, only a perceived decline -- has been laid on the shoulders of party leader Michael Ignatieff. That's not entirely fair. Mr. Ignatieff has been a disappointment since he returned to Canada to seek the Liberal leadership upon the resignation of former prime minister Paul Martin. Many Canadians hoped that he could take a sluggish, self-satisfied political party that was leaning too far to the left -- Canadians have the NDP if they want to go there -- and which was surrounded by at least a whiff of corruption, restore its integrity and firmly plant it once again closer to the centre.

In the end, Mr. Ignatieff lost the crown to Stéphane Dion, who personified the tired old Liberal party that Canadians had come to know and grow weary of, as three minority governments in a row, two of them Conservative, attest.

Mr. Ignatieff the reformer, who replaced Mr. Dion after an election, had already been subsumed by the great Grit Blob, a now rusty crusader who chooses to hang onto the old rather than grab onto the new.

One can blame Mr. Ignatieff for this but one should more accurately blame a Liberal party that still sees no need for change even as it withers in the polls. Well, the polls rise and fall, but Janine Krieber, the wife of Stéphane Dion, and a large number of other unhappy old-time Liberals, seem determined to see that they will not rise again, at least under Mr. Ignatieff's reign.

Ms. Krieber wrote on Facebook that the party was headed for the "trashcan of history" under the cocktail circuit leadership of Mr. Ignatieff and his coterie among the Toronto elite. It is a new mess that even the Liberals are having a hard time cleaning up and certainly a gift to the Conservatives.

Sometimes it seems, in fact, that if anyone can save the Liberals from being ignominiously bumped by the NDP, it is the Conservatives themselves. The Tories have a knack for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, knocking down a potential majority government into an actual minority government. They did it last election with Mr. Harper's cut in arts funding, and they may be laying the groundwork for it again with their attacks on Richard Colvin and his allegations of Canadian involvement in turning prisoners over to the Afghan government for torture.

Those allegations, the PCs say, are completely unfounded, without evidence to support them. Nevertheless, rather than letting the evidence, or lack thereof, speak for itself, they dismiss it as being based on hearsay and Taliban lies and instead of encouraging the enquiry, they criticize Mr. Colvin's credibility on no apparent grounds. It's the kind of Tory stone-walling that Canadians don't like from their governments, and the kind of political obtuseness that, it seems, the Liberals may be able to rely on to deny once again Mr. Harper a majority in the next election.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 25, 2009 A14

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3 Comments

Posted by: Huey Long

November 25, 2009 at 3:41 PM

@hollinm: Canada has entered a dark time in our political history. Harper is inept at leading Canada, pure and simple. The rich get richer, the poor poorer and the middle class vanish like manufacturing jobs from Ontario. Iggy should simply fade from the scene, the man is, poltically, a bumbling idiot. His tactics are akin to shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted. Neither of these men will win their majority and until a party raises forth a leader who is for Canada as a whole we will remain with this political status quo.

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Posted by: hollinm

November 25, 2009 at 7:48 AM

Canadians do not vote on foreign affairs. Instead they decide who they think represents what they believe in and who will do the lest harm. In this case it is the Conservative government. The public is saying to the Liberal party and its inept leader we don't much like either of you and we will vote against you in the next election.
The detainee issue that everybody is hot and bothered about is not something that most Canadians will think about when they cast their ballots. They want a government who can continue to lead them through this economic malestorm, keep their taxes low and generally manage the government effectively. The leader of the official opposition has not proven he can do any of these things.