Modeling Journey

Dion has announced via a press release, two things: sitting MPs will not have to fight for their right to represent ridings, and 33% of candidates must be women.

This is hardly renewal, in my eyes. When Martin safeguared sitting MPs by giving them the same protection, it was a retrogressive and undemocratic step. And Dion is repeating this retrogressive step. By protecting incumbents, we are denying Liberal members in those seats the right to choose their candidates. Every incumbent gets protected, even those who are not highly regarded by the members of their riding. All such members are denied the chance to voice their view of the performance of their MPs.

In one stroke, Martin and Dion have changed the democratic balance within the Liberal Party into something even the corrupt politicians in the US would envy. Imagine! Sitting MPs do not have to raise funds to ensure that as incumbents they can beat off attackers during nomination fights, as American Senators have to do. Here, in democratic Canada, the party leaders simply issue an order protecting their own seats, and the seats of those now sitting as MPs.

What a remarkable Canadian coup! And it is greeted without a word of protest, not even from those who thought they were fighting for renewal of the Liberal Party.

At the same time, the 33% candidates who are women, will have to scrounge around for the seats where the Liberals are not the strongest, and take their chances. If electing more women to represent the Liberal Party as MPs in Parliament is the aim, and if it is a morally justifiable and worthy aim, then at least lets not pretend that protecing all sitting MPs and relegating women to the rest, is the best way to achieve this high moral purpose.

At the very least, Dion should choose by random choice some 20 seats where the Liberals have large majorities, and allocate those seats to women, so that the next Parliament has twenty more women MPs representing the Liberal Party.

That would be decisive leadership. Protecting sitting MPs is not.

Dion has a chance to make a quantum leap forward in political parties, making the Liberal Party a world leader in the advancement of women's involvement in politics.

He can do this by tackling the job in several blocks:

First, he can change the representation of officers in the Party throughout the country to be 50/50 male/female.

Secondly, he can ensure that his advisers are balanced equally between women and men.

Thirdly, he can impose candidates on ridings where the Liberals stand the best chance of winning, by exercising his powers of appointment to parachute women into ridings where they will win. This means ridings which already have Liberal MPs. By so doing, he will clearly indicate that this gesture is not mere tokenism, but a serious commitment to remedying the democratic imbalance in the Liberal Party. He can select the ridings by random choice. He can draw up lists of women candidates, inviting contributions from Liberal members. He can give ridings choices of women candidates, so that they can vote for the one they prefer from the list of elegible candidates.

Fourthly, he can commit the Liberal Party to passing legislation within 90 days of it assuming power as the government, designed to ensure the democratic imbalance is remedied throughout all 308 constituencies. The contents of the legislation should be drafted by the panel he is setting up to review the issue of women in politics.

Fifthly, he can commit the Liberal Party to reviewing the adoption of proportional representation at the federal level, with a referendum, similar to BC and Ontario. This will solve a host of problems, and ensure that all votes are equal, and all votes matter.

Sixthly, he can launch within the Party a separate initiative to train and fund women who wish to seek election as candidates, for both party positions and to run for election. The panel can come up with a range of training, mentoring and financing alternatives.

These steps would certainly amount to significent party renewal, and would catapult the Liberals into the forefront of gender-democracy.

The Globe & Mail is speculating that Harper will run on a constitutional change which will restrict the right of the federal government to spend money in the jurisdiction of a province. They speculate that Harper would introduce a one-subject constitutional change, to avoid having the constitution opened up to other matters.

G&M also say this would put Dion in a quandry, and risk him splitting the Liberal Party.

Why? Because, says the G&M:

"On a grander scale, Mr. Harper is said to be considering the idea of putting constitutional limitations on Ottawa's spending power as part of resolving the fiscal imbalance -- an initiative that, presumably, would be accompanied by tax cuts flowing from Ottawa's scaling back its activities. This would present Mr. Dion with a difficult choice. Mr. Dion's rival for lefty votes outside Quebec, Jack Layton, would howl at any proposed limitations on the federal spending power. But Mr. Dion already has a record in limiting Ottawa's spending power (1999's Social Union agreement with the provinces went even beyond the Meech Lake accord in this respect). And he has a history of championing constitutional amendments: He pushed for recognition of Quebec as a distinct society even after Meech Lake failed, and he was the driving force in two successful amendments dealing with education in Quebec and Newfoundland. If Mr. Harper were to bring forward a constitutional resolution, Mr. Dion would have to choose between competing with the NDP for votes on the left outside Quebec and siding with mainstream public opinion inside his home province. Should he choose the latter, he would risk a split within his own party."

The G&M are right about the splitting of the LPC if Dion for a moment thought of backing such a Harper move.

The centre of gravity of the Liberal Party is in supporting a strong federal government, and fighting anything which might limit the power of the Canadian government from ensuring national programs are used in the interests of all Canadians.

For Dion to support Harper's proposal on this issue would be a massive sellout of Liberal values, and would indeed split the party right down the middle.

The Cat gives odds of 5 to 1 (hypothetically) that by this time next year, Stephen Harper, former Prime Minister, having been beaten by the resurgent Liberal Party which will become the majority government, will be facing open rebellion amongst Tories dissatisfied with Harper's one-man one-decision style of rule. A leadership review will be called, and several candidates will run, with Peter Mackay being sounded bested, Harper quitting rather than running and losing, and a new Tory leader, cut on the mold of the old Progressive Conservatives, becoming the new Tory leader.

And Stephen Harper will take his place as a footnote in Canadian federal politics.

Now that he was elected leader on a platform of renewal (pushed over the top by the premier renewal candidate, Kennedy), Dion has to decide how fast he goes in implementing party renewal. The risk he runs is that delay will lead many who supported him or participated in the selection of delegates and the convention to conclude that it is "business as usual", and that neither he nor Kennedy are prepared to walk the talk.

Some interesting observations on the dilemma facing Dion and Kennedy are contained in an article headed Seeking and keeping the hot seat: Party leadership successors in comparative perspective, written by Frederik Bynander and Paul 't Hart .
(The article may be found by googling the title or at http://polsc.anu.edu.au/staff/hart/pubs/successor_200606.pdf)

Some quotes from the article for Liberals to consider:

"Reform-inclined incumbents have to decide whether to pursue a crash through approach, i.e. launch major proposals for change early on, while they are still 'fresh' and in their 'honeymoon' period; or to tread gently at first and delay the internal battle until they are well entrenched as leader and after having been able to promote their supporters into pivotal positions within the party; or not to go for a single major reform at all but to pursue an incremental, long-term strategy."

"These judgment calls not only depend on new incumbents' personal style and risk-taking inclinations, but also on their more or less objectifiable strength within their party-- as indicated by the margin with which they were voted in or the known level of support among the former leader and the other key internal power brokers -- and their potential polling strength at the time. "

...

"Our dataset shows that new party leaders have tended not to be revolutionaries. In general, the number of successors that comes to office with an avowed commitment to transforming the party is limited: not even 10% in our sample, and usually precipitated by extraordinary electoral losses or the unexpected loss of long-held government rule. "

...

"But notwithstanding the lack of concrete moves towards internal party democratisation with regard to leader selection procedures, one may plausibly wonder to which extent this premium on continuity and not rocking the boat will remain the dominant imperative.... Contemporary electoral markets are much more volatile than they used to be .... In the West volatility results from accelerating social and cultural changes, which put even highly established parties at risk of plunging into big depths in no time.... Western political parties now are much more under pressure to reinvent themselves than they were a few decades ago... "

"One way or another, many parties have had to reconsider their programmatic and organizational legacies in order to stay in the game. This has increased both the political momentum and the tactical possibilities for new party leaders to adopt a self-consciously reformist posture. Hence it is much more likely for contemporary than for early post-war leader-elects to be chosen on a platform of party innovation or to reveal reform ambitions shortly after being elected.... If they don't, and if their party has enjoyed meagre electoral fortunes in the most recent past, they are not likely to stay in power long, because they are unlikely to improve those fortunes. "

"In our dataset, the rapid turnover of Australian Labor leaders Australia since Paul Keating?s 1996 departure, and of British Conservative leaders since Blair?s 1997 landslide against Major, illustrates the point clearly: none of the people holding the opposition party leader's role succeeded in developing a clear, cogent and appealing new platform upon which the 're-branding' of the party could be footed."


So, Messrs Dion and Kennedy: how soon can we expect meaningful steps towards the renewal of the Liberal Party, starting with:

- the election of the leader (our current system is clearly not democratic enough, see Red Tory's blog for some concise comments);

- the selection of candidates as aspirant MPs (which is clearly broken, because the current instant party members and bused in voting sheep is a travesty);

- achieving a balance between male and female party officials;

- making sure we select, within a very short period, 50% women as candidates, in good ridings, so that the Liberals in the House are fairly balanced;

- changing the decision on policies so that members of the Party may have greater input on the direction of the party;

- changing the behaviour of Liberal MPs (to stop the buffoonery which now gives Parliament a bad name).

Have I missed any starting items? The last thing we need is another batch of Liberal promises, made but not delivered upon. So let's get cracking.