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.