This fairy tale could use a wolf

MONTREAL— Everybody — including hard-nosed journalists — loves a fairy tale! One does not have to be a diehard Liberal to see Justin Trudeau’s decision to seek the Liberal leadership at a time of dire need for the party as the stuff that such tales could be made of. But where would Little Red Riding Hood be today if there had not been a big bad wolf to contend with? That is a question that could not but come to mind as one watched the anti-climactic launch of Trudeau’s bid for the Liberal leadership on Tuesday. The event felt more like the first stop of a six-month pre-victory tour than the start of an adult conversation with Canadians. Over the next few months it may be hard to pass off a likely stroll down a Liberal path strewn with flower petals by a grateful party establishment as anything other than a passing distraction from the travails of the country’s senior governments. It may be a sign of how far off the radar the federal party has fallen that — as the Liberal political capitals of Toronto and Victoria may be about to burn — its members are content to fiddle with celebrity politics. As an aside, it is worth noting that Quebec’s audience-hungry Frenchlanguage cable news stations took a pass on a live broadcast of Trudeau’s Montreal launch Tuesday evening. The Quebec networks did broadcast the entry of former provincial minister Philippe Couillard in the provincial campaign to replace Jean Charest on Wednesday. It featured as much substance as Trudeau’s event featured flash. Trudeau’s launch could turn out to be the most exciting moment of an overlong campaign. His biggest challenge between now and next April’s leadership vote may be to generate momentum for 150-some days without tiring out his audience. Until further notice, Trudeau is the dominating thread line in a Liberal leadership narrative that features more blanks than arresting prose. That will make it difficult to bring voters around to the view that the party is not just offering the latest version of the same old story. That is particularly true in Quebec and Western Canada, where Trudeau has his work cut out for him to convince voters that he is more than the prettiest face the Liberal party has put forward to date to try to reverse a decline that is now into its third or fourth decade. Trudeau’s iconic background makes him vulnerable to the suspicion that he is being used by a Liberal old guard eager to substitute generational change for real change. His opening night speech did little to dispel that notion.

Nor did the benign presence of a coterie of Trudeau-era Liberals from Quebec such as Marc Lalonde, André Ouellet and Lucie Pépin. They all looked like proud parents attending a favourite son’s graduation ceremony.

That’s fine as far as nostalgia goes but in the absence of strong competition, what Trudeau could really use is the Liberal equivalent of Ed Broadbent.

The former NDP leader spent last year’s leadership campaign heading a party establishment charge against Thomas Mulcair.

In hindsight, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the incoming NDP leader.

Little could have convinced voters that Mulcair stood for a centrist repositioning of the NDP more efficiently than the sometimes shrill denunciations of elder statesmen such as Broadbent.

Against the protests of the keepers of the party’s status quo, Mulcair’s ultimately mild prescriptions for an NDP recast came across as a comprehensive reform plan.

As a bonus, Broadbent’s actions allowed Mulcair to campaign as a Quebec underdog.

Alas, it seems that nothing of the sort awaits Trudeau.

In the starry eyes of much of the Liberal old guard, he apparently can do no wrong. But if he is to convince Canadians that he is the agent of a belated Liberal rebranding, it might help if he did. Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.