The Globe and Mail

Saturday, May 7, 2011 10:34 AM EDT

Iggy, we hardly knew ye

Goodness but there’s been a lot of hand wringing over the departure of Michael Ignatieff from Canadian politics. Most of it is filed under W for “we weren’t nearly good enough for him.” The most egregious of these is Andrew Potter in Maclean’s. In a piece titled “No country for good men” he quotes, approvingly, a letter he received pointing out what rubes we are for not falling at the great man’s feet.

It’s pretty weird: Here’s Ignatieff, whose life has been devoted to precisely the challenges and “foreign policy” nuances that are front and centre in everything that’s happening of any consequence in the world today, in the so-called Muslim world. If he weren’t running for the prime minister’s job in Canada, he’d be one of the few go-to guys in the English speaking world on Egypt, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, the latest Hamas-Fatah deal. . . . and here we are in the middle of a Canadian federal election, with all these issues that make Ignatieff look totally world-class and massively relevant, and which make the Tories look stupid but make the NDP look infinitely worse, and we’re not supposed to notice that any of it is even happening. Like it’s an election for the Orillia school board.

What twaddle. In which solar system are federal election campaigns carried on like seminars at the Woodrow School of International Affairs? Not in this one that’s for sure. Lester “Mike” Pearson, who won the peace prize and was a brainiac of the first order, won his seat in Parliament and became prime minister because he connected with the folks in his riding and by extension in the rest of the country. In this last election Michael Ignatieff did neither. In 2008 I sat in a hall in Philadelphia and watched Hillary Clinton imply that Americans couldn’t trust Barack Obama because he was an effete snob who wanted to take away their guns and who, by the way, may or may not be a Muslim. Now as I remember Obama didn’t spend the next three months carping about character assassination he turned a hard eye at Hillary and pounded her back to the stone age (does anyone remember “Hillary, you’re nice enough”).

I interviewed Ignatieff during the 2008 campaign and here’s what he had to say on the subject of rough campaign tactics:

“There's a genuine dilemma there. Canadians don't like their politics becoming steadily more vicious and there's a price to pay - lower voter turnout, for instance. Some of this is self-correcting. But that said, we're up against a serious and unscrupulous enemy and I don't mean” – here Ignatieff waves his hands as a sort of mock Little Lord Fauntleroy – “ 'aren't they being mean.' I'm saying they're lying. They ran an ad for two weeks saying we're going to hike the GST. That's a lie. And I'm not saying that politics shouldn't be rough. Canadians respect that it's a contact sport. I've thrown a punch and I'll throw a punch again. But I try not to lie.”

That guy went MIA in this campaign and as a result he’s out of politics. Simple as that. In 1998 I studied with Ignatieff at the Banff Centre. He’s one of the two or three best teachers I’ve ever encountered. And if he’d gotten a little more pissed off he might have been a first class politician. But here’s the thing: He didn’t and as a result he’s gone back to something he knows he does well. Seems reasonable to me. So why’s everybody getting their knickers in a knot?

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Tuesday, May 3, 2011 9:18 PM EDT

Sage advice for the Liberal Party of Canada

“The only thing Canadians like less than a loser is a sore loser and I go out of politics with my head held high. … I want to take my responsibility as a leader and as a politician. If I was unable to connect with people, then that is my responsibility.”

– Michael Ignatieff

I don’t mean to pile on, but would it have killed the guy to have told us this last night?

That said, might I suggest the following as sage advice from The West Wing for whatever’s left of the Liberal Party of Canada. Watch right to the end; it’s the last line that counts.

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Monday, May 2, 2011 10:19 AM EDT

The game is up – and it's been a triumph for democracy

Here’s a little home truth about blogging at this stage of the election; there’s nothing left to say. “Les jeux sont faits.” That said, this has been the most thrilling campaign of my lifetime. There’s a genuine choice today that represents different ways of thinking about the manner in which we govern ourselves. It’s been a triumph for democracy.

I say that with a definite prejudice; and yet even if the Tories were to win a majority (as unlikely as that now appears) the restructuring on the left will have enfranchised and empowered a generation of voters to move beyond the deadening cynicism of abstention. Quoting yourself is a bit much but as a sort of tribute to the hard-won triumphs of the NDP in this campaign, I scoured my entries from the 2008 effort:

You have to ask yourself a question or two about your life's course when you find yourself at the Estonian Hall in east end Toronto at ten on a Sunday morning, listening to a troika of New Democrat policy wonks introduce their party's platform.

Still, whatever ignorant NDP stereotypes I might have carried with me into the room (beefy union types interacting uneasily with former Marxists and 60s refugees) were quickly belied. The NDP is running a razor-sharp campaign. The wi-fi works, the coffee's hot, the food's pretty good and the three briefers – Brian Topp, a former deputy chief of staff to Roy Romanow, Sheila Block, research director for the Ontario Federation of Labour, and Thomas Mulcair, the NDP member for Outrement – are smart, occasionally funny on a dry subject and pragmatic.

Topp related a story about traveling with Romanow to meet with a bunch of financial guys in New York in order to sell Saskatchewan's plans for debt finance. “At the meeting these guys said at one point ‘you seem to be spending a lot on health care.' This confirmed my intense hatred of debt financing for public programs. I don't think bond raters ought to be in charge of public policy.”

An avowed kneedipper with an intense hatred of debt – these are New Democrats. And while the talk on this occasion turned on the traditional NDP issues – peace dividends, child care and poverty – it was leavened with words and phrases like ‘prudence,’ ‘step by step,’ ‘mainstream,’ ‘reasonable’ and ‘responsible.’

Nearly three years later the Canadian public is catching up to the NDP’s continuous effort to define themselves as the responsible progressive choice. I doubt we’re going back.

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Friday, April 29, 2011 1:33 PM EDT

Foolish Dipper phobia

If you want evidence as to just how far out of touch certain segments of the traditional media are in catching up to the NDP surge check out Maclean’s magazine’s Andrew Coyne’s deeeeep contemplation of his endorsement. Here in a 19 paragraph piece is his learned consideration of the national party currently running second:

“I can eliminate two options off the top. While both the NDP and the Greens offer appealing proposals for democratic reform, I can’t bring myself to vote for either. It isn’t only their policies – the enormous increases in spending and taxes, the ill-judged market interventions – but their personnel. Simply put, neither party is ready for government.”

C’est tout. That’s it, that’s all.

Eighteen paragraphs of somnolent assessment as to who, between the Tories and the Grits, he trusts more or less to reform democracy in Canada and that’s all he can muster regarding the NDP. Notwithstanding the reportorial obligation he seems to have waived, let me take a crack at decoding his “analysis.” The bit about personnel reflects his discomfit that nobody he knows at the Spoke Club or the Fraser Institute are or were NDP staffers. The stuff about spending and taxes is nonsense on its face. Here’s Bill Curry in The Globe a day prior:

“On Bay Street, in academia, in newsrooms and living rooms, many are taking a closer look at just what, exactly, the surging party stands for. This is leading to panicked warnings of lost jobs and nervous markets in some conservative corners. But a key point in the commentary is the fact that the NDP’s platform is far more mainstream than it used to be. In fact, in some key areas like eliminating the deficit and boosting health transfers, the planks of the NDP, Conservatives and Liberals are identical.”

Anyway, Coyne’s voting Liberal. Where was he when Kim Campbell needed him.

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Friday, April 29, 2011 1:57 PM EDT

Another word from our NDP conscience ...

A while ago I passed along a correspondence from Liam McHugh-Russell . That missive turned out to be somewhat, sort of, kind of prescient. Just a reminder: Mr. McHugh-Russell ran against Michael Ignatieff in Etobicoke-Lakeshore as the NDP candidate in 2006 and again in 2008. He’s a law student at McGill these days and a pretty sharp cookie. So here’s his latest. It’s worth reading right to the end because his conclusion is a stunner.

So I watched CBC's The National and I have three things to say:

1. The NDP surge is the story, two nights in a row. The first eight minutes of the show were about how well the NDP is doing and how the other parties are responding. Some people said some things about Québec and the Constitution – and the response? Jack looked calm, smooth and energetic talking about how his priority is making people's lives better. Harper looked whiny, harping on the point. Ignatieff seemed passionate, but only got five seconds on TV and the point he made didn't stick.

2. The At Issue panel treated the surge as a fait accompli; we are, in other words, no longer at the point of shooting milk through our nose. Remember that thing I said about non-belief turning into belief, Jack is not Ed, the word on the street living in 1988, all that we need to know is that we don't actually believe what we think we believe? We're way past that point. The surge is real, people realize it's real, the other parties realize its real, the press treats it as real, and it was already real on the weekend, when people came out in disproportionate numbers to vote in the advance poll, 33-per-cent more than in 2008. If that translated on election day, we're talking 75 per cent of the population voting rather than 58 per cent. So we're talking new voters, no doubt. Ignatieff's message today is that the Liberal voters who didn't come out in 2008 are back, and he's right – they are back with a vengeance, and they're voting NDP.

3. The Insiders panel pretty much agreed with the At Issue panel: the surge could be nudged but not reversed, but the other parties haven't planned for this and they don't even have a plan to nudge them, let alone reverse them. The numbers game, the candidates question: it's just not going to make a difference. The At Issue panel and Peter both talked about the surge building, the possibility that the NDP could end up with even more votes, more seats than the current numbers show. Angus Reid poll released a few moments ago? Shows the NDP at 30 per cent, five back from Cons, 8 per cent ahead of the Liberals. What's going to happen next? The NDP put up new ads in Montreal in bus shelters today and the news cycle is going to be in a frenzy for the next three days talking about wedding dresses and British republicans; Mansbridge isn't even going to be in the country. In other words, with the election past the last curve in the track, the NDP is not only ahead but still gaining momentum and spending money.

Where does it all end? Check out people's first and second-place preference from today's EKOS poll:

I told you two weeks ago that the NDP would need just a glimmer of hope to finally take off, and now they've gotten it. They're finally heading toward their ceiling and that ceiling is high indeed: 130 per cent the height of the Conservatives or the Liberals. You want a seat count? NDP 115, Conservatives 110; Liberals 65; Bloc 18. In the end, politics is possible and suddenly, so are these results. Me, I am still rooting for the NDP because I believe they're serious about us having the Canada we already have, except better. But it's also very exciting that the result we do get five days from now will be determined by the question I said mattered when this whole thing started: whether Canadians believe it's possible for them to have the government they want. And it seems increasingly like they can – and that they will.

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Wednesday, April 27, 2011 11:13 AM EDT

Surely masses of new NDP voters have more than protest in mind

I read with interest John Duffy and Tom Flanagan’s daily campaign back and forth in the Globe. They are both smart guys and their discussions are for the most part edifying. I say for the most part because on Tuesday one sentence of Duffy’s kind of stuck in my craw. In contemplating The NDP’s surge in Quebec (and the seeming step back on re-opening the Constitution) Duffy opined:

“Obviously Mr. Layton is looking to maintain a moment of protest voting (italics mine) and avoid discussing the longer-term consequences that will occur if masses of voters take that step.”

Is that really fair to call it simply a momentary “protest vote.” On the same day, EKOS pollster Frank Graves told Jane Taber: “Unlike other parties, most of the current support for the NDP doesn’t come from an NDP voter in 2008. ... The majority of it is new vote.” And moreover, Taber wrote, “EKOS has the NDP, meanwhile, doing best among women – a key to success, pollsters said at the beginning of the campaign – and with voters under age 45.”

That sounds to me more like a considered vote for a set of policy alternatives to guns, jets and prisons that’s being set out by a party that presents a friendly, engaging, and vigorous face to its prospective constituency.

Surely the fact “masses of voters” are moving toward the NDP in the last days of the campaign is about something more than a surly protest…

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Sunday, April 24, 2011 8:30 AM EDT

What to do about the vote splits

Every pol worth his salt knows that in a close federal election it’s the splits that count. Splits are the percentages of votes in a three (or more) way race.

Last week, very early on a Good Friday morning, I spent 90 minutes at a greasy spoon in the bowels of downtown Toronto with my favourite Liberal mucky muck discussing same.

Here’s the deal (he said): If you’re a Grit they don’t look good. Now of course my pal has to spin that POV like two bastards because, per Heisenberg, he wants those results to change while he’s looking at them.

Why? Because if “progressives” realize that by joining the orange wave they’re handing the Tories a majority, then, just before they fire the gun to end the fourth quarter, they’ll have an attack of real politique and vote Liberal.

And while he sat there spinning , I thought “I love this guy.” I thought that because he believes that the Charter actually matters and he believes that the G20 crackdown was bullshit and he believes a guaranteed annual income is the natural outcome of a just society and he believes a lot of the same stuff I believe. Plus he’s not a cynical bastard like a lot of other people in politics.

But this time, as much as I’ve pimped for the coalition and as much as I believe a Tory majority would be a disaster, I want to disagree with my friend. This time I want to vote NDP because it’s the right goddamn thing to do; because they ran the best campaign and because maybe just maybe politics isn’t about this campaign or the next campaign but the one after that.

Here’s a quote from Catcher In The Rye that sums up my thinking this Easter weekend. I wish I’d had the wit to quote it verbatim to my Liberal friend.

“This fall I think you're riding for – it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started.”

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Wednesday, April 20, 2011 8:06 AM EDT

Harper’s coalition dog won’t hunt

Stephen Harper’s continuing to whine about the perils of a coalition winning the confidence of the House (and thereby sparing the Canadian people the horror – there’s no other word for it – of a fifth election in seven years) is starting to sound at best like special pleading and at worst like those “birther” freaks who complain that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States and therefore ought not to be President.

Michael Ignatieff gave us all a blinding glimpse of the obvious when he pointed out that, after the election, should the Tories fail to gain the confidence of the House after, say, tabling a budget the Grits would be well within their rights to approach the Governor-General and give it the old college try. The Globe reported the matter thusly:

“But although [Ignatieff’s] description of various possible scenarios will receive the nod of constitutional experts, it will likely conflict with what Canadians expect: that the party with the most seats in a minority Parliament governs until it is defeated, and the result of that defeat is an election.”

Here’s something else Canadians expect; to be left the hell alone come barbeque season. Jack Layton said it best: “We shouldn't immediately go back to an election; that would be ridiculous.”

Now if Stephen Harper can win a majority on his record god bless him and happy days. That said, he’s not going to win holding up the coalition bogey as our version of a Honduran coup d’etat. Like they say in Texas, that dog won’t hunt.

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Monday, April 18, 2011 8:14 AM EDT

Ignatieff should play the G20 card

Adam Radwanski’s piece Sunday lauding Michael Ignatieff for his nobility and passion had about it more than a whiff of damning with faint praise. To wit:

“On Friday night in Sudbury, he considered aloud why it is that Canadians seem to be saying ‘So what’ to a litany of alleged injustices – prorogation, the end of the long-form census, the treatment of Helena Guergis. And when it came time to tell them why they should care – why it was time to ‘rise up,’ as the Springsteen lyric demanded – he said that it was about what kind of democracy we would hand to future generations. It was passionate, even noble, and it brought his audience to its feet. But so long as Mr. Ignatieff is just preaching to the choir, it won’t get him very far.”

Radwanski suggested that the leader of the opposition might make better hay out of attacking Harper for firing the nuclear watchdog and “neutering” Stascan. Not exactly what The Boss had in mind when he penned The Rising now is it?

Here’s a thought. How about getting after the Prime Minister for overseeing the most severe abrogation of human rights since the FLQ crisis at last summer’s G20 fiasco. None of the opposition parties have come anywhere remotely close to making this an issue. And here’s the thing, it would re-establish the Grits as the party of the Charter and energize young voters who will otherwise sit this one out. The Tories will carp about the opposition getting into bed with “anarchists,” but honestly would anybody really believe that twaddle after the spate of recent findings on this issue? It’s gotta be better than preaching to the choir.

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Tuesday, April 12, 2011 1:48 PM EDT

And now a word from our NDP conscience

My old pal Liam McHugh-Russell, formerly Michael Ignatieff’s NDP nemesis in Etobicoke-Lakeshore (who, by general consensus, dusted the great man twice in the 2008 riding debates) and currently an LLM Candidate at McGill’s Institute for Comparative Law, wrote me recently to unburden his considerable mind as to the state of the current federal fisticuffs. I’m not sure that I agree, but it’s definitely worth pondering ahead of tonight's food fight:

The word on the street is that Jack Layton is going to get trounced in this election, but that's because the word on the street apparently lives in 1988 and is still peeved about free trade. Yes, like 1988, Layton has brought the party to a high-water mark after three elections. But Layton's no Broadbent. In fact, the word on the street is the only thing keeping Layton out of 24 Sussex.

What's keeping the NDP at their traditional 18 per cent nationally? The conviction that, unlike Ignatieff's Liberals, the NDP will never form government. It's the old Catch-22: people like the NDP, and Jack, more than the Liberals and Ignatieff, but fear and distaste for the Conservatives keep them voting for and supporting a party ‘that can form government’; but until that support breaks and the NDP gets a good run of polls setting the waterline above Liberal support, the Liberals continue to be the party which people believe can do it. No matter that the NDP is a powerhouse, having spent more money than the Liberals in the last election; no matter that, with the option of Jack Layton as prime minister, 44 per cent of Quebec would vote NDP, 10 per cent more than for the Bloc. That poll is from a year ago, but there's probably a good reason that Gilles Duceppe's campaign involves stressing to voters that Layton will never become prime minister.

This is the crazy thing, the difference between Layton and Broadbent: people loved Broadbent, but they weren't willing to make him prime minister if it meant voting for his party. Today, people love Layton and they aren't afraid of an NDP-led government: if there is an option for an NDP-Liberal coalition, people prefer Layton and his party to lead more than two to one. The problem is, they just don't think it's going to happen.

When Egyptians succeeded in deposing Hosni Mubarak in February, what was revealed to them and to the world was that what had seemed impossible had been entirely possible. Their situation was much as that facing Canadians now: it was precisely their continued belief in the impossibility of achieving what they wanted which perpetuated its impossibility.

So the question to Canadians is: why not vote NDP, leave the Liberals in the wilderness, strike a blow against Quebec separatism and get the government you want? All that's stopping you is the belief that it can't happen.

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