Liberal policies, ideas emerge with new year
Despite its failed dalliance with outgoing Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, or perhaps because of it, the Liberal party ends 2012 in a significantly better position than it began it, for one reason: ideas. It now has some, which it will be forced to use.
Agree with them or disagree, based on the policy frame beginning to emerge from the Liberal leadership race, the party has the beginnings of an intellectual spine, once again. This is something not seen from the red corner in lo these many moons.
To begin let’s deal with Carney who, according to a report last weekend in the Globe and Mail, engaged in a more-than-casual flirtation with “senior Liberals” (what must one do to become a “senior Liberal,” one wonders? Do they wear decoder rings?) last summer.
This culminated in a stay at the seaside home of Nova Scotia MP and former cabinet minister Scott Brison, during which time Carney was plied with visions of power and glory beyond the ken of mortal men, or something along those lines. No doubt there was a great deal of standing on cliff-tops, gazing at the distant, troubled horizon.
Though the clever central banker eventually begged off, he apparently entertained these conversations long enough for word to trickle around the always gossip-prone Grit establishment. There were rumours in Ottawa in September of an unnamed “giant-killer” in the wings, preparing to take on Justin Trudeau, and whose entry would be a “game-changer.” Clearly, that was this.
Setting aside the questions raised about Carney’s judgment and impartiality, it is astonishing that, even now, some Grit power brokers yet believe in their old model of the star draftee, with the impeccable policy and academic credentials, parachuted in to save the day. “Like Ignatieff, but happier!” we can imagine them enthusing, about Carney. “Quick with a quip!” But perhaps, in the final analysis, someone running for a party’s top job should actually want to be leader, and demonstrate this with political work?
Which brings us to the trio of Liberal front-runners — Trudeau, Marc Garneau and Martha Hall Findlay — and the basketball team of lesser-known but still interesting competitors, among them Joyce Murray, Deb Coyne, George Takach and Jonathan Mousley (a pity for him that he sounds like a Disney character, circa 1962), who all, at least, want the job. If there’s a way beyond the Grits’ failures of 2006, 2008 and 2011, surely they hold the key. So, what do they say? Findlay wants to scrap supply management in dairy and poultry. Garneau wants to boost productivity and lower taxes. And Trudeau wants realpolitik in trade with China. None of them would rebuild the federal long-gun registry, deleted earlier this year by the governing Conservatives. These Liberals favour liberal marijuana and justice policy, up to and including legalization. Democratic reform is on every candidate’s agenda. We can expect all three front-runners to bring this front and centre in the New Year, as they finish developing their economic bona fides.
Taken together, here’s what that suggests about the emerging approach: It’ll be unlike 2006, or 2008, or 2011, in that the Liberals will no longer be vying with the New Democrats for the economic centre-left. If anything, Trudeau, Garneau and Hall-Findlay are carving out economic positions to the Conservatives’ right. In social policy, meantime, they’ll seek to cut left of where NDP Leader Tom Mulcair will want to go, because of his desire to appear “conservative.” That’s still his vulnerability: The perception that the NDP are economic flakes.
In other words it begins to look like a moderate — call it Canadian — form of
Without Carney ... the party has no option but to be bold
libertarianism, calculated to appeal to the broadest possible swath of the electorate. It’s based on quantifiable trends, which in my view are key to understanding recent provincial election outcomes in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta: a longbuilding wave of economic conservatism blended with a stubborn and growing social progressivism, with which the Harper Conservatives are, as yet, only half in sync.
The knot holding it all together, with which the Grits will try to close the deal, will be an all-out assault on the Harper government’s own soft underbelly, which is its tendency to abuse democracy and its institutions — exemplified by the F-35 fiasco and this year’s two omnibus budget bills. The bolder thinkers in the Liberal party will want to see a concrete plan, at long last, to reduce the power of the prime minister’s office, which has been growing since the Pierre Trudeau era. MP independence will be on the table; so will proportional representation.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the Carney seduction, in other words, is that it failed. With him, Grit elders might have been tempted to play it safe, and trot out the same old intellectual mush in 2015. Without Carney, who would have been their next messiah, the party has no option but to be bold. Thanks to a leadership roster the “wise men” deemed too weak, they now have the beginnings of a tool kit for doing so.