The FAIREST approach for Liberal leadership

My expert solution that surely everyone would agree with is laid out below. So with LeBlanc’s exit the possibilities for the way forward have narrowed. Let me first say that I’m disappointed to see a race with only two contenders, I think we could have benefited from more, not less voices in this race (I think 4 or 5 would have been a good number). But I guess Dominic LeBlanc has become the John Edwards of this race (absent the torrid affair), bowing to the reality that he couldn’t win so dropped out early in the race. Has he been promised a jet ski by Rae or Ignatieff in order to get his endorsement? I’m sure we’ll know for sure quite soon.

But this leaves us with two key issues to resolve going forward:
- What should be the future of Stephane Dion’s leadership?
- How do we select the leader in time for the Jan. 26 return of Parliament as both Rae and Ignatieff seem to want?

Here is my gold 4 point solution that should satisfy EVERYONE.

1) Stéphane Dion stays on as interim leader until the permanent leader is selected in 3rd or 4th week of January when a permanent leader is elected.

The man has made many mistakes (which he has admitted to), but he has given the past decade of his life to this party and his whole life has fought hard for this country. He deserves some respect for what he has done. One could certainly make the case that anyone else might not have been able to put together the coalition that ultimately caused Harper to back down on public financing and leaves us with a chance to form government at the end of January. If we are going to elect a permanent leader in January anyway it seems unnecessarily cruel, not to mention ineffective to push him out sooner and replace him with an interim leader for a matter of 5-7 weeks. Parliament is not in session at this time and the organizational hassles involved in switching leaders for such a short amount of time simply because many people are upset right now just doesn’t make sense. I hope caucus can take the more rational and respectful approach here.

2) Hold at least 4 nationally televised debates between Ignatieff and Rae. Hopefully the major networks will cover them (the times and dates should be arranged for maximum coverage and ratings) and this will be an excellent way to get coverage for our party while Parliament is not in session (which is always a tough time to get the media to pay attention to the opposition)

3) Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff both release full platforms very early in the new year. I hope these platforms detail what they would do in their first 100 days as Prime Minister since that still remains a possibility should the coalition take power at the end of January or if we get an election should the government fall at that time where either will be running to be PM.

I will note that neither have answers my questions yet though! I have gotten assurances from the Rae camp that the answers will be coming soon and the Ignatieff contact said he “is trying to get answers to your(my) questions” so hopefully both will be up here soon.

4) Electing the leader through a One Member One Vote procedure that protects smaller ridings and the voices of youth, seniors, women and Aboriginals.

Here is how I envision this working:
- A date (or it can even last a whole weekend) is set in the 3rd or 4th week of January for when voting will take place by ALL Liberal members who have signed up ONE WEEK before the vote. Given that the dynamics of the leadership race have radically changed it seems unfair to set an earlier cut off. Everyone was under the impression the membership cut off was going to be February 6th so setting it for mid January seems pretty fair.
- Voting is done online, by phone or in person (I think we should follow whatever is done by other parties who use OMOV)
- Each riding is apportioned 100 points based on the percentage of votes received for each candidate in each riding. 50 points in each riding go to male members’ votes, 50 points go to female members, 33 for youth, 7 for Aboriginals, etc…. so that it matches EXACTLY the proportions that WOULD HAVE been given delegate spots to vote at the convention in Vancouver.
- Whoever has the most points “wins” and the other agrees to drop off the ballot for Super Weekend so the other is acclaimed in Vancouver at the leadership convention as per our constitution.
- That winner is appointed interim leader by the national executive as Stephane Dion steps down follwing the vote of the membership.

When we change the rules mid-stream I think it’s important that no groups voices are weakened as a result and this ensures that doesn’t happen. Some people may have problems with this arrangement for allocating votes (and in fact I’d hazard to guess it won’t even happen), but if this isn’t what happens I imagine it will end up the case that a smaller percentage of women, Aboriginals and youth will have a say in the leader than would have happened under the originals rules. This could in turn upset the Commissions. For instance, I recall the YLC opposed OMOV vote last time unless there was an agreement to apportion a certain percentage of votes for youth.

So this proposal doesn’t favour any camp over the other, and important to me, doesn’t weaken the voices of women, Aboriginals, seniors, or youth compared to the representation they would have had if we elected the leader in Vancouver as originally planned. I hope many others would agree with this modest, fair proposal.

It’s essential this be done right. This party needs unity which means having a procedure where EVERYONE accepts the results as an entirely fair way to decide the leader and so that Liberals can get behind the leader without any supporter of the other candidate or neutral Liberals having misgivings about how the race was done.

UPDATE 10:10 PM: Rumour is Ignatieff gave the jet ski to LeBlanc up front (as yet unconfirmed). Also, it appears that Jeff (BC'er in Toronto) would agree with my proposal

UPDATE 2: I was unaware it was possible to move up the DSMs for Super Weekend to mid January and appoint an interim leader then based on the results, but if it is possible to do that and still have a bit of flexibility on membership cut-offs (for the reasons I outlined above, ideally it should be a week before the voting) then I think that would be a fair solution as well since all members get to vote as DSMs. I still think what I proposed here is fully in line with the constitution but moving up DSMs would be more consistent I suppose. If you agree with that option OR the one I proposed in this post, vote Yes for the poll in the top right corner.

Recommend this Post

Canada NEEDS a NEW Prime Minister

Ok so I've said this before, but I say it again now for much different reasons. We have a clear way forward and much to justify it (for an exhaustive list see below).

Our economy faces its worst crisis in decades and this calls for putting personal partisan interest aside and working in a spirit of inter-party co-operation to give Canada the BEST policies to help our country through these trouble times. It’s clear now we won’t get that from this Prime Minister who’s fiscal update was all about pandering to HIS party’s base rather than helping Canadians who are most in need. Using an economic crisis to try to bankrupt your opposition parties was bad enough, but Harper at least had an opportunity to try and propose real solutions for the economy. He failed miserably.

- Weakening pay equity and public service worker’s rights isn’t a solution to the economic crisis.

- Claiming there will a razor thin surplus these next few years when EVERY economist says otherwise is not a solution to the economic crisis

- Promising massive cuts to social spending without specifying where those cuts are going to go isn’t a solution to the economic crisis.

- Having a firesale on government assets isn’t a solution to the economic crisis.

- Proposing NO stimulus for the economy, when EVERY OTHER world leader is, isn’t a solution to the economic crisis.

A much better solution to the economic crisis is a NEW government. This one recklessly managed mismanaged the economy for 2.5 years and when given another minority it has failed to change its ways. It has failed to act as all western governments have. It has failed to reach beyond its base as Canadians EXPECTED it to do.

It’s too late for death bed conversions, it will be obvious it’s just a façade. It’s time to bring this government down and give Canadians a better one.

I think the best, most practical and least divisive solution would be to have this government led by Stéphane Dion until the time a new leader is crowned and with the NDP receiving 7 or 8 cabinet posts in a trimmed down 26-28 member cabinet. To pressure Dion to resign would badly divide the Liberal Party when it needs to be united and, in particular, to install one of the other leadership candidates would be deeply resented by members of all other camps (and neutral Liberals like myself).

NO ONE can say Dion isn’t ready or fully qualified to lead as PM. He has over a decade in cabinet, he knows the issues this country is facing, and I think would work very well with members of other parties in this minority climate. If he is only to lead until May then no one can say he has ulterior motives other than what is in best interests of the country. We NEED that right now. McCallum and Goodale would be preferable to the current leadership candidates as PM, but as far as I understand they are each already committed to one of the candidates in this race (Goodale for Rae and McCallum for Ignatieff) so other Liberals would be more likely to question their motivations. Nor is it clear that either one of them isn’t one day interested in ultimately formally seeking the Liberal leadership.

For those that say Canada shouldn’t have a lameduck PM, the next 6 months may be the MOST crucial time in dealing with crisis and we need to have a PM who is willing to devote himself solely to bringing the BEST solutions foreward and that the public sees as having no ulterior motivations (e.g., positioning for the curren, or a future, leadership race or for the next general election). We won't get that from Harper, but we would from Dion. There are other countries that have tapped caretaker PM’s (usually with undeniably impecable qualifications) to deal with crises who later passed their job on to a successor and this would be no different and an orderly succession could be arranged in May to the next Liberal leader.

It is important to get all 3 leadership camps to agree to this though, but I would hope they would see it in their interest to be all now campaigning to be PM instead of opposition leader. If this deal falls apart due to the Liberal caucus unable to agree on who would be PM then whoever wins the leadership race would be certain to face a barrage of attack ads full of fear-mongering (e.g., “Bob Rae will ruin the economy”, “Michael Ignatieff is a Bush clone”, “LeBlanc isn’t up to the job”) that in reality could have been best countered by already being in government. If any of the leadership candidates could become PM upon winning the leadership then they would INSTANTLY be able to counter the smears (e.g., Bob Rae would bring in a competent budget, Ignatieff would show himself to be much more moderate, LeBlanc would show himself to be a sound economic manager as PM). This in turn would give that leadership candidate a much better chance of winning re-election as PM. So I hope cooler heads can prevail here and see how this works out best for ALL progressives, Liberals and NDP alike.

But what of all those who will howl that this is “undemocratic”? Well here are some facts:

- The Liberals and NDP together received 44.4% of the vote in the last election compared to 37.65% for the Conservatives. The coalition would be supported from outside by the BQ and Greens who received a further 16.76% of the vote.

- The Liberals and NDP may only have 114 seats between them, but opposition parties received more than 50% of the vote in more than half the ridings across Canada.

- The NDP and Liberals hold seats in EVERY region of the country.

- The first two Conservative budgets and the softwood lumber deal were ONLY supported by the Cons and the Bloc Quebecois so talk of this “aiding the separatists” is merely a sideshow. Conservatives had no problems being propped up solely by the BQ for the first two years of their government and NO ONE is talking about the BQ formally joining this coalition so this arrangement would be no different.

- In 2004, when Stephen Harper was opposition leader, he signed a letter with Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton saying it would appropriate for a new government to be formed without an election should the governing party be voted down within a few months of the last election.

- Coalition governments that are decided after the election are the norm in countries with economies much larger than ours such as Germany, France, Japan and India. Coalition governments are also the norm in over a dozen other Western countries whose economies are doing comparatively well (e.g., the Scandinavian countries). Often these coalitions last several years so the argument that coalitions would necessarily be unstable or bad for the economy doesn’t fly.

Will there be a backlash if we get a Dion led coalition? Of course, but so would there be if there was a coalition led by someone else (in fact the Tory talking points already have adapted to that possibility of slamming a PM “voters never had a chance to vote on”). We can’t let a possible short-term backlash deter us here. Stephen Harper faced a large backlash over the appointments of David Emerson and Michael Fortier to his cabinet. It lasted a few weeks and (unfortunately) it blew over. Harper is facing a backlash now, but we can’t back down this time.

Any public backlash over a coalition will surely dissipate if we PROVIDE GOOD GOVERNMENT. The best way to counter way to counter all the fear mongering is provide the public with a dose of reality and the beauty is that, in government, we can do that. We will have a strong rational PM with a cabinet that puts the interests of Canadians ahead of their parties for once. The public will see that within a few months time and come to support what we’ve done. Let’s be prepared for some short-term opposition, but we can prove the skeptics wrong in the end.

So it’s my hope (and it may never come to pass I realize) we will see no backing down by the opposition and that ALL Liberals and ALL NDP members can get thoroughly behind our parties’ leadership here for the good of the country.

We will face an onslaught of opposition this week in the form of TV and radio eds, op-eds and anything else the Conservatives will throw at us.

Let’s be ready, we know what we are doing is right.

Recommend this Post

Getting to Know Bob

So I participated in what is now “that infamous bloggers call with Bob Rae” (rundown of the call is below). Rae does gets credit for being what I believe, is the first leadership candidate to officially reach out to Bloggers in this race. I could be wrong, but I believe any Liblog who listed their contact email in their blog profile got an invite. And the invites seem to have gone out AFTER the call was made public in the G&M, which did cause some unnecessary panic in Liblog world. Nonetheless, I’m pretty sure everyone who wanted to attend got to and that’s the important thing. And I have to say the conference call system was pretty effective and unique.

I’m beginning to notice how much blogs get attention - my stats show signs of Macleans, the Star, CBC, amongst others, and I’m sure we blogs are some good lunch time entertainment or a quick research for the media for inspiration, who are always looking for a good (or
pitiful) political fight. So it makes good sense the leadership candidates would reach out to us.

Anyways, Bob did say he would answer my questions that I previously posted (see the questions here), so I am gracious for that. I have gotten a similar response from LeBlanc’s camp as well, so only Iggy remains on that front (I’ll update this post when I hear from them). I’ll still give big props to whoever gets me actual answers first though. Below you will find out what was discussed on the call and Bob’s point of views on the issues.

Bob acknowledges that he has challenges in Ontario, but will be direct and honest on that front, and will prove that he is the right person for the job by talking about all of the experiences that he had the opportunity to participate in to make a difference in this country. He asks us all to pay attention to his Canadian Club presentation tomorrow, where he will dive more into this.

He believes the new Liberal leader and the Party must be physically much more present in all 308 ridings. This will help riding associations, and hopefully reach out to new voters and hopefully members. The party needs a systemic strategy based on where we can find new voters. It is going to take more than a fresh coat of paint for the leader to be able to really say they’re a leader.

Bob wants to support riding associations, and I believe he said that he supports some of the money from the per vote subsidy going to the riding associations so that they can use that to fund their activities and base. He supports the idea of a national, 308 riding strategy.

I really thought Bob got something else really on the nose, and it made me happy to see that people “high up” in the party like him realize that many of our members, perhaps those within it who already hold positions, suffer from “Title-it is”, that is, people want position, power and turf, rather than do the heavy lifting work needed and being an inclusive player in the party trying to build a broader base of support (without needing attention and glory to do it). So true.

Furthermore, the leader must be interested in fundraising and connecting with the public, and know about fundraising. I assume then Bob is inferring he has this expertise and experience fundraising and clearing his debts leadership race? I give credit for Dion for focusing his efforts on this as well.

Bob believes one issue that the Liberal party could have taken greater hold of during the last campaign, and can more in the future, is the issue of high drug costs, which I believe he said is a problem that is growing, particularly in the west. I think this definitely can be an issue we can use, along the lines of how the ndp used texting messaging and AMT fees are issues to mobilize voters. Bob also noted that he economy was the big issue, and while our platform was heavily focused and related in various ways to the economy, but we didn’t place emphasis on these specific economic planks. A party and leader must be able to shift focus in a campaign more effectively he said

Bob notes that the economy will still be an issue for some time to come. As a country, we must think about the future and how we can compete globally. While the Green Shift did focus on this last point, we must work towards the goal, and he doesn’t believe the Green shift can lead us to that goal. We must focus always have an end goal in mind with a strategy to get there and sales pitch to sell our plans. He used the example of Germany, a country known for its automobiles, which now has more jobs in the energy sector.

Lastly, he is in favour of one member, one vote (OMOV). This didn’t surprise me since he said this morning he supports free memberships. But free memberships can be threatening to a riding association, delegate selection meetings, and internal party races as insta-Liberals could play a larger role. Unless there are rules for how long you can be a member to invoke your membership rights and there is a very active join/renewal process or other membership requirements this may prove problematic.

And I have strong concerns about a strict one member, one vote system as I feel that would severely weaken the voices of youth (I believe the YLC officially opposed it last time unless a sub-amendment passed to allocate 25 out of 100 points per riding for youth), women, Aboriginals, and seniors unless there are measures to put in place to ensure their votes would count for a similar proportion to what they currently get in delegate spots. There’s also the concern that Toronto and other urban areas would always end up electing the leader (and the voices of rural areas, Francophone Quebec and the West where our membership numbers are weak would be severely diminished) without an appropriately weighted by riding OMOV system (I believe the proposal at the last convention that was voted down was at least a weighted OMOV system with 100 points given per riding). Personally, I also find something rejuvenating about going to a national convention, meeting Liberals from across the country who love their party and are dedicated, active members who want to be there with you. There may be exceptions (and I realize there are still cost issues), but for the most part I’d say the people who actually go to conventions are more committed on the whole than those who just attend the DSMs on Super Weekend. So one of my questions I’m following up with Bob on is exactly what kind of OMOV system he supports.

So thanks for having us Bob. I understand that LeBlanc will also be holding a conference call sometime soon for Bloggers, so I look forward to that one as well. My contact email is on the right, Dom. Same goes for Iggy if he chooses to do the same, I’ll be there.

Recommend this Post