The Hon Carolyn Bennett, MP St Paul’s, co-chair of the Liberal Party of Canada’s Change Commission, came to Thornhill yesterday to meet with our local Liberal district association and members of the public. As Dr Bennett put it, when an organization that was long considered Canada’s naturally governing party, has lost three elections in a row (if you count the fall from majority to minority status a loss) it’s time to figure out what is wrong. The Liberal Party has undertaken a national process of self-analysis with the objective of reforming how it operates and interacts with Canadians and, ultimately, returning to government.
The process of renewal is being informed, in part, by the lessons learned by Howard Dean’s efforts to reform the US Democratic Party, with a 50-state strategy, that culminated in Barack Obama’s election last November. Already the party has embraced contemporary communications technologies with the creation of an on-line forum, en famille, in which Liberal Party members are debating the issues that are limiting the party’s popular support and the suggesting how things can be improved. The Change Commission’s meetings with Liberals across Canada complement the on-line discussions. What is learned in both forums will be reported to the party’s national executive and leader as recommendations and strategy for the long-term rebuilding of the party.
If there was a consensus coming from yesterday’s meeting it was that the Liberal Party has to improve how it communicates with members and how it nurtures a feeling of belonging that will deliver a vast team to “sell” the party, its policies and candidates at election time. Many felt that, as members, they have lost their connections with the party and lost sight of why they, their friends, neighbours and associates should want to elect a Liberal government. The result has been that the party lacks the financial resources and constituency workers to mount a successful campaign effort. But already there are signs things are changing as evidenced by the online debates, more newsletters and better communications with members and the fact that over 40 people came out on a snowy, winter, Sunday afternoon to discuss how the party operates.
Yesterday’s event was not a policy forum, but that did not inhibit those who turned-out to proclaim that the Liberal Party’s electoral problems would all be solved if it would only commit national policy to their particular special interest. There were the students who promised to rally an army of workers with a commitment to reduced or free university tuition, there was the member arguing for eased immigration rules for work-visa residents and, no surprise this being Thornhill, those believing the Liberals will only win again when the party commits to unquestioned and unchallenged support for Israel, whatever its government of the day may be doing. And then there was the member who suggested that Liberals might have been able to hold the riding in the 2008 election if only the campaign office hadn’t closed and the campaign been suspended for 4 days of Jewish religious holidays. It was all very civil but it was not pretty.
It’s my belief that the Liberal Parity has followed, for too long, a strategy of exploiting special interests at the expense of building a national creed. It was enough to garner the support of federalists in Québec, or south-east Asians in Peel and the Fraser Valley, or Italian-Canadians in Toronto to ensure the (re)election of members. Voters were coming to the Liberal party because of association with a special interest rather than any commitment to, or knowledge of, what the party stood for. Local policies that may be popular in one riding are just as likely to cause voters to reject the party in the next electoral district, such is the distribution of the special interests. Catering to special interests is divisive and, eventually, self-defeating.
In addition to operational reform, Liberals need to define what It means to be a Liberal. In 1968, Pierre Trudeau defined it as commitment to a socially just and united Canada, with a strong central government, and rallied the party and nation. After a succession of leaders who were more shop-keepers than visionaries, the party seems lost. The new leader has the intellectual skills to define a creed that will unite the party and Canadians and to communicate what we want Canada to stand for in the world. If Canadians conclude, as a result of the recent economic disaster, that the decentralized, unregulated, survival of the meanest philosophy of the current government is not their desired future, then there is every opportunity for a renewed liberal vision of the “just society”, befitting the 21st century, to emerge and capture the imagination of Canadians. This is the change liberals and Liberals seek.
