A fox now is among NDP hens

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/09/2009 (5892 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When John Turner succeeded Pierre Tru­deau as leader of the federal Liberals and as prime minister in 1984, he toured the Liberal party headquarters in Ottawa to find cob­webbed offices housing a few beat-up typewrit­ers and little else. Mr. Trudeau had so dominated his party that its apparatus had simply shriveled up. Mr. Turner was left to fight an election with neither superstar status nor apparatus. The 1984 election result might not have been due to the hol­lowing out of the party structure under Mr. Tru­deau, but the result was that Mr. Turner lost, big time.

Something akin appears to be shaping up here in Manitoba following Premier Gary Doer’s surprise announcement that he was jumping from the provincial to the international stage as Canada’s ambassador to the United States. It seems from the occasional union conflicts that arise at NDP headquarters in Winnipeg that the place is not cobwebbed. But membership numbers indicate that Mr. Doer’s winning ways allowed complacency to seep into his party. It also seems that after leading Manitoba New Democrats for 21 years and centralizing decision-making in the premier’s office, that possible successors were, shall we say, shell-shocked to have their star player walk out halfway through the game.

They might get over it. In recent days, the three (so far) amigos vying for Mr. Doer’s mantle — Steve Ashton, Greg Selinger and Andrew Swan — have actually ventured to say something, to be sure mostly innocuous things about mostly minor issues. Mr. Swan, for example, has reminded us that Mr. Doer believes the party should renew itself, which he takes to mean that it should choose the youngest of the three candidates — Mr. Swan, 41 — for the job. He also believes that the rent-control regime can be tinkered with in the future as it has been tinkered with for the past 10 years by Mr. Selinger. It is reported that he has boldly declared that a harmonized sales tax is an issue to be dealt with later, but without saying whether it is a good or bad idea.

Mr. Selinger, meanwhile, believes that the rent-control regime he created is a pretty good one, that experience is what matters in a leader (10 years as finance minister) and that the Red River Floodway should be used to control river levels in Winnipeg, something Mr. Doer last promised nine months ago. On the HST he has the issue properly framed — Manitoba businesses and in turn working Manitobans will be at a seven per cent cost disadvantage relative to the rest of the country if the GST and PST are not harmonized. But so far he seems to think that doing the right thing by Manitobans can only be accomplished if Ottawa pays the freight so that Mr. Selinger can do the right thing by NDP voters, especially the newer ones that Mr. Doer wooed over time.

Mr. Ashton, of course, can and does claim more experience in the legislature than his competitors and has paid Mr. Doer that most sincere form of flattery by copying his tactical style. Manitobans will recall that Mr. Doer was first elected by promising not to do things — most notably, NOT sell Manitoba Hydro, which was odd in that nobody was promising otherwise. Mr. Ashton is now promising to not sell Winnipeg’s water and waste utility, or rather, put in place legislation that would prevent unknown phantoms from doing so.

All in all, pretty tepid stuff, and the whole "race" might remain lukewarm but for the fact that we must believe that each of the amigos actually wants to win and so see the government from behind the steering wheel rather than from the backseat behind the driver.

And if that’s the case, then it would seem that Mr. Ashton’s team has put a fox among the hens by declaring Monday — more than a month in advance of the actual ballots — that he might already have a lock on a first-ballot victory as a result of having signed up 1,100 new NDP members.

It is said that nothing so focuses the mind as the prospect of hanging at dawn. Something similar might have just happened. Manitobans should hope that it has. They deserve to know what their next premier thinks about big issues.