A scorecard on policy: Liberals and NDP move left, Conservatives drift into the past
Years and years ago, when the world was younger than it is today, there was an American college football player known as Roy (Wrong Way) Riegels. A star of the University of California Golden Bears, Riegels earned his sobriquet for a boneheaded play in the 1929 Rose Bowl game against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.
Scooping up a Yellow Jackets fumble, he intended to run 30 yards to the Georgia Tech end zone. Instead, he got turned around and raced toward his own goal line 70 yards away, with his teammates in frantic pursuit. When they finally brought him down, Riegels was within one yard of scoring against his own team.
I started thinking about Wrong Way and his directional misadventure while reflecting on the recent policy conferences of the three major national parties — the Conservatives three weeks ago; Liberals and New Democrats this past weekend. Which way are they all going?
None of the three conferences got the attention it deserved. The pandemic turned them into “virtual” gatherings. The absence of physical contact, in-person debate and audience response — not to mention socializing with fellow delegates — robbed the events of energy, reducing them, except for few breakthrough moments, to listless affairs. Surely, only a hopelessly addicted political junkie could have found pleasure in spending hour after hour in his or her basement, staring at a computer screen while other junkies held forth from their basements — and while spring was springing outside.
Even in normal times, policy conferences are underrated in their influence on the political process. Generally held every two years, they do not get anything like the attention of leadership conventions. Their resolutions will not necessarily find their way into election platforms.
And, although I cannot think of a major-party policy conference that has precipitated a full 180-degree Riegels reversal, some have had a profound effect on a party’s direction and/or future.
The fall of 1966 produced two such events. The Progressive Conservative conference that fall was the battleground for the struggle over John Diefenbaker’s leadership. The reformers forced a secret-ballot vote to decide whether to call a leadership convention; they won, and the party elected Robert Stanfield the next year. The Liberal policy conference the same fall was the setting for an epic struggle between the party’s left and right wings over the introduction of medicare; the left got its medicare, but had to accept a oneyear delay.
The recent policy conferences signalled some shifts. The Liberals are accelerating on the leftward course they have been following since they made Justin Trudeau their leader in 2013. Their policy resolutions reflect the movement: a green new deal; universal basic income; national pharmacare; high-speed rail across the country; forgiveness of student loans — and don’t worry about deficits.
NDP policy conferences are always fun because of the quirky resolutions they produce. This time: disbanding the Canadian Armed Forces; 100 per cent wealth tax on billionaires; nationalization of the country’s five major banks — that kind of thing. Quirkiness aside, the direction is clear: as the Liberals trend left, the New Democrats will edge even more in that direction; it’s the only place they will find votes.
As the Liberals slide left, the Conservatives have a golden opportunity to move into the centre. But their policies suggest that is not about to happen. Their conference refused to acknowledge the reality of climate change. They are more preoccupied with dredging the past than addressing the future. They will keep fighting the carbon tax, an issue lost at the polls in the last election and at the Supreme Court of Canada; their MPs continue to rake through departmental files in search malfeasance in the WE Charity/student grant affair; and now their leader, Erin O’Toole, is demanding a judicial inquiry into what he sees as Liberal mishandling of the pandemic.
The policy-poor Conservatives don’t have a conscious direction. They are letting inertia carry them deeper into the comfortable familiarity of the past.
Even in normal times, policy conferences are underrated in their influence on the political process. Generally held every two years, they do not get anything like the attention of leadership conventions
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, retired recently from teaching political science at the University of Guelph. His column appears Mondays. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com.