Liberal MPs could find themselves scrubbing graffiti from Vancouver walls this spring as part of new Leader Michael Ignatieff's efforts to woo back B.C. voters, who abandoned the party in droves during last fall's federal election.
But it will take more than community-service projects – planned to coincide with the April 30-May 2 Liberal convention in Vancouver – to mop up from the party's disastrous showing in B.C.
The federal Liberal Party lost nearly half its seats in British Columbia in the Oct. 14 election and its share of the popular vote fell to 19.3 per cent, the lowest level in nearly 25 years.
Strategic Counsel pollster Peter Donolo said Mr. Ignatieff is already an improvement “just by not being his predecessor.” Former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, who resigned in December after a failed bid to oust Prime Minister Stephen Harper, spoke relatively poor English and failed to strike a chord with B.C. voters.
“Mr. Dion is a very good friend of mine but he would agree, and I think everyone would agree, that we were not able to connect with Canadians generally speaking and with British Columbians in particular,” said Ujjal Dosanjh, the Liberal MP for Vancouver South.
Mr. Ignatieff has more than a passing familiarity with B.C., having spent two years teaching Canadian and European history at the University of British Columbia in the late 1970s.
Asked what he learned about Vancouver and the province during his time at UBC, Mr. Ignatieff's team offered only bromides about B.C.'s scenery. “Michael's strongest takeaway from his time in B.C. was the sheer beauty of the province and the magnificence of the mountains,” spokeswoman Jill Fairbrother said.
The Liberals are understandably cagey about revealing their political strategy for B.C. – where the Conservatives surged to a new high last fall – but the elements of a winning game plan are fairly straightforward, analysts say: Mindful of the recession, they must recruit high-profile candidates with economic credentials. They should once again prepare a B.C.-specific campaign platform to demonstrate an affinity for the province. And, finally, to unite the centre and left-of-centre vote, they must sell the party as the only serious entity capable of defeating the Harper government.
But there's another albatross around the party's neck in British Columbia: the proposed Liberal carbon tax to discourage fossil-fuel use that was a keystone of the last campaign. Mr. Ignatieff may still feel an affinity for it because he first championed the idea in the 2006 Liberal leadership race.
But the policy – touted by Mr. Dion in the last election – was a particular turnoff for B.C. voters already grappling with a similar provincial levy.
Former Liberal cabinet minister David Anderson, who represented southern Vancouver Island ridings in Ottawa for 17 years, said the future of the carbon tax as a platform plank is still an open question. “That's the subject of interminable debate within the Liberal Party,” he said.
Mr. Anderson said he advised Mr. Dion – to no avail – to sell the measure as a means of raising funds for a concrete purpose that voters would support. “If [Mr. Dion] had called it a health tax and said every dollar that comes from taxing fuels will be used to build more hospitals and provide faster service for cancer patients … he would have had no trouble.”
“But stupidly he called it carbon tax and people said, ‘What the hell is this? Where is the benefit to me of a carbon tax?'”
Mr. Donolo, the pollster, said Mr. Ignatieff must renounce the carbon tax – and distance himself from it – to clear the air in British Columbia. “He absolutely can't touch the carbon tax … I can't see it being anything but poisonous for Liberals to go ahead with one,” Mr. Donolo said.
