Out in Left-Centre Field

Earlier today, I read with great interest a column in the Toronto Star by the inimitable Chantal Hébert on the Conservative government's ongoing internal struggle over the issue of abortion -- one of those great, colossal elephants in the room for any social-conservative-friendly government.

Amidst the furor over Conservative backbencher Stephen Woodworth's motion to reopen the abortion debate in Parliament, chief whip Gordon O'Connor (to his credit) took some time out of his presumably chock-full disciplinary schedule to attempt to shoot down the nascent initiative.

Mr. O'Connor quite rightly pointed out that no law compels anyone to have an abortion at all; rather, the issue is left to personal conscience. He went on to reinforce the fact that Parliament is not a place where religion has sway but rather the secular rule of law, which is as it should be.

What made this whole exchange remarkable -- to myself as well as, apparently, pundits like Mme. Hébert -- is that a Conservative government which is readily seen as being friendly to social conservatives is actually taking the time and effort to stonewall part of their base.

Could it be that Stephen Harper is afraid of what might ensue if the abortion debate results in a ban? Could it be that he fears an electoral revolt against his rule if the Canadian public sees the Conservatives pandering to a religious minority?

It is not a huge leap to estimate that the Conservatives saw what happened earlier this year to their provincial Reform-derived cousins, the Wildrose Party in Alberta. Danielle Smith's party was riding high in the polls until late in the campaign, when a number of factors converged to rob her and her party of victory.

Prominent among those factors was an outbreak (these days we call that a "pandemic") of vocal social conservatism among several Wildrose candidates. And it is not a stretch to imagine that similar or worse revulsion might erupt on the federal scene if the Conservatives were to experience the same.

Stephen Harper and his subordinates fear what will most likely happen if the Conservatives are defined the wrong way by the abortion debate. As an outside observer, I am curious to see how such a potent mix of fear and anger will play out when it occurs internally among the Conservatives, rather than being used externally by them as a campaign tool.

Is this the beginning of the end of Mr. Harper's hegemony? Is this the flashpoint, the flicker that grows into the inferno that costs him the loyalty of his caucus? Despite their trained-seal routine and sycophantic demeanour in the Commons, Conservative backbenchers nevertheless have their own minds, agendas and priorities.

How long can the social-conservative wing of the CPC be kept in check? How long can Harper command their fealty without throwing them a substantial bone? Conservative politics have forever been wracked by the tug-of-war between social conservatives and social moderates.

It seems to me that it is only a matter of time before the joints and fractures erupt into a full-blown fault that shakes the Conservatives to their bedrock. (Geological analogy FTW!) How will that manifest? A new party leader, perhaps one not nearly so competent as Stephen Harper? A mass caucus exodus, perhaps to a new socially conservative party similar to Wildrose or to Ontario's Family Coalition?

Religious voices will never cease calling for the laws to be changed in their favour. At the same time there are moderate adherents, like myself, who support a woman's right to choose. The strain even among the churches is clearly present.

The following words may shock and astound you, but on this issue, I support Stephen Harper. I support those who commit to leaving intact the right to choose. I support those who refuse to use this issue as a wedge to further divide us all.

The progress has been made. We've turned this corner already. Going back to the past is beyond pointless. Let's move on and deal with issues that really deserve our attention.

- AS

The busy political week continues.

To my mild surprise, the Toronto--Danforth byelection was won much more soundly than I had anticipated. I figured Craig Scott would win, but not by this much; evidently the people of Toronto--Danforth thought otherwise.

The guesses in my last blog post were not far off: the NDP was at 60% instead of 50%, the Liberals were bang-on at about 30%, and the Greens and Conservatives were down at 5% each instead of 10%. Maybe, just maybe, that last one has something to do with the Conservative candidate basically boycotting the election (most likely in a failed effort to get the Liberals to take it).

The real story I find is not in the vote breakdown, but in the turnout. Another look at that Elections Canada results page (link above) shows that 32,469 voters out of 74,512 eligible citizens cast a vote in the by-election. That may be down from a general election, but that's still a turnout of 43.6% -- I don't think I've ever seen such a high turnout in a by-election. Congrats to the people of Toronto--Danforth!

~~~~~~~~~~

So, what's next? With the bounce in seat count and morale from this by-election, New Democrats of all political stripes are converging on Toronto to choose the next Leader of the Opposition.

It will be a critical and defining moment on the national stage -- the federal NDP has never before held this kind of stature and will be putting forward someone who could plausibly be the next Prime Minister in 2015. The weight and consequences of that choice are enormous.

So that means you have to choose the right person. There are seven candidates remaining. I am not a card-carrying New Democrat, but I know who I prefer, and this is what's on my mind:

I've got to give kudos to Martin Singh for being courageous and tenacious, but he should not win the leadership. Being an activist and a faith and social justice commission president does not qualify one to be the leader of a national party that comprises one-third of the seats in the House of Commons. He would have to wait until a by-election arises in Nova Scotia to join the House, and for all we know that could take 'till 2015. The NDP doesn't have that luxury -- he will make a fine candidate in his riding, but that's all. (But even then, I hope he would find a different riding, as Singh's home district of Sackville--Eastern Shore is held by the excellent Peter Stoffer.)

I'm heartened by the fact that the NDP has people like Manitoba's Niki Ashton on their side. She is knowledgeable and competent far beyond her years. And yet, she needs more experience in politics -- I hate to find myself basically concurring with the ageists that have bashed her all campaign long, but a caucus of mostly rookies needs a proven, steady veteran at the helm. Ashton's day will come when the current older generation of NDPers have moved on, and I look forward to it.

Paul Dewar, too, is a remarkable man and would be a mainstay of any front bench. He has done a great job so far, between his Ottawa riding and the role of Foreign Affairs critic. But the leadership of a national party in Canada -- let alone one that has the majority of its caucus from Quebec -- demands fluency in both English and French to connect with and engage with all the regions of the country. Don't get me wrong, Dewar is a great MP, but as a leader his lack of French would instantly alienate the Quebecois. Robert Chisholm, to his credit, realized this obstacle. Dewar has not.

Toronto MP Peggy Nash also strikes me as a great member of the front bench. She was Jack Layton's finance critic, the counterpart of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, and she also knocked off prominent Liberal MP and leadership candidate Gerard Kennedy in Parkdale--High Park. I would support her, but her closeness with big unions makes me uneasy. Just as the Conservatives and Liberals are wrong to be beholden to large corporations, the NDP would be wrong to be beholden to large unions. With Nash in charge, I fear for the NDP's vital autonomy and the clout of its grassroots membership. That fear is, I hope, unfounded; but regardless of labour's role in the formation of the NDP, they cannot conscionably have structural control over the direction of the party.

The wild card of the race -- and for once I actually agree with the mass media -- is Nathan Cullen. He has done a remarkable job as an NDPer in former Conservative territory, is fluent in both official languages, and is a very intelligent man. I would love to see him win but for his most controversial proposal: joint nominations. On paper, it seems like a good tactic to run a single progressive candidate in Conservative ridings. But, as I enumerated in a past blog post, this ignores three main things: firstly, partisan support may not transfer easily or at all; secondly, it limits choice in our democracy; and thirdly, the Liberals never lifted a finger to come to the NDP with this kind of deal, so why should the NDP fall on its sword for them? This plan just strikes me as a massive mistake in such a volatile electoral environment.

Former NDP president Brian Topp was the early frontrunner in the leadership race. He has some eminent NDPers on his side already, and he announced the support of some of the biggest ones (Broadbent, Romanow, et al.) right off the bat. But from the very beginning, Topp's transparent attempt at steamrolling his competition struck me as bullying. He's the darling of the Establishment, but if there is anything NDPers hate, it is being told what to do and how to think by the elite. Topp has no front-line electoral record; he's a fine strategist, but (just as with Mr. Singh) the NDP cannot wait around for a by-election for their prime-ministerial candidate to finally enter the ring. It would be fatal. I appreciate that Topp has rediscovered his commitment to his native Quebec, but the province has not warmed to him. The NDP must not turn to such an unproven politician at such a critical time.

And that brings me to Quebec MP Thomas Mulcair. There are many hardcore NDPers who are uneasy with his candidacy -- understandably so, since he is a former provincial Liberal -- but I, for one, see no evidence that he is about to ditch the greater whole of the NDP's essence for Liberal vagueness. He wants to modernize the party and make it more appealing to the moderate majority of Canadian voters, a goal with which I agree. If the hardcore communist/socialist wing of the NDP wants to mutiny over that, let them. Mulcair is the candidate who, from what I have seen, can best take on Stephen Harper and possibly win. That should be the goal -- the NDP was not formed to lose, even if we as supporters have gotten used to that dynamic over the decades. But the dynamic has changed; now the NDP is realistically in a position to win. For the sake of this country, and for the sake of the party, the NDP needs to pick Thomas Mulcair in order to continue to move forward and prosper.

~~~~~~~~~~

TL/DR -- So, what would I like to see happen in the NDP? Mulcair for leader, Nash and Cullen as deputy leaders, either Dewar or Ashton as House Leader, and Topp returned to being NDP president or some kind of chief strategist.

And I'll see you on the other side ...

- Adam

If you're a dedicated political geek like me, today's byelection in Toronto--Danforth should provide plenty of excitement and discussion fodder.

First of all, to the citizens and voters of Toronto--Danforth: vote.

It's one of the unfortunate weaknesses of our electoral system that our greatest chance to shape the political discourse and direction of this country comes only once every four (or three or two) years. So take that chance. Sieze it. Whatever your political inclinations, don't let your values and your priorities go unheard. Even if you feel alienated, even if others are more vocal, you always have something to say.

One site I've found most illuminating is political analyst Éric Grenier's overview of the history of Toronto--Danforth over at his ever-informative blogsite, ThreeHundredEight. It's a great recounting of T-D's political history, back to its precursor ridings and the era of Confederation.

You might have heard Toronto--Danforth being proclaimed in the media as a "historical Liberal riding" or by the Conservatives as "the Liberals' to lose". One look at a particularly good graph in Mr. Grenier's article reveals this assertion as nothing more than fanciful spin.

The Liberals have only held Toronto--Danforth or its parent ridings for a grand total of 18 years. 16 of those years were with Dennis Mills from 1988 to 2004, and two more were with D.G. Hahn from 1963 to 1965.

Meanwhile, the NDP have held Toronto--Danforth for a total of 30 years. This includes successive incumbents John Gilbert (1965-1978), Bob Rae (1978-1982) and Lynn McDonald (1982-1988), in addition to the late Jack Layton (2004-2011). In fact, one of the main reasons that Mills was so strong in the area throughout the 1990s is the fact that the federal NDP was abysmally weak during this period, thanks in part to the provincial government of one Bob Rae (hmm, that name sounds familiar, eh?).

Prior to 1963, Toronto--Danforth had been owned by the Progressive Conservatives and a smattering of independents dating back almost a century to Confederation in 1867. So if we're going on a "historical" basis, Toronto--Danforth would actually be a historical PC riding -- if, indeed, the "Progressive" Conservatives still existed and were not transformed into some pale clone of the USA's Republicans. (But I digress.)

Today's byelection is almost certain to be closer than the last general election. NDP candidate Craig Scott is no Jack Layton, and it would be an utter mistake and gross wishful thinking to expect him to fill those substantial shoes, either right off the bat or at all. If Mr. Scott wins, he will be a newbie, a rookie just like 57 members from Quebec found themselves on May 3rd of last year. But they have been learning admirably, and so will he.

The Liberals' Grant Gordon has also been running an indisputably strong and often unconventional campaign. He certainly turned heads (including mine) when he ran for the Liberal candidacy, reaching out to members of all parties in an innovative bid to, essentially, keep Ottawa on its toes. It heartens me that the Liberals are showing signs of gradually turning themselves around to work for their success, instead of the self-assured assumptions of the past.

However, Mr. Gordon's campaign (or what I can see of it here on the other side of the GTA) has profoundly disappointed me since. He has fallen back on the standard partisan Liberal assertions that (1) the NDP have never accomplished anything and have no economic competence, (2) the Conservatives only ever care about corporate profits, and (3) the Greens are a waste of votes. Haven't we heard all of these gross generalizations before? How well did these Liberal talking points play in May 2011? If Mr. Gordon really wanted to bring "fresh thinking" and ring anything other than hollow, he could easily have run as an independent (and probably would have done better too).

I feel bad for the Conservative, Green, independent and small-party candidates. Being squeezed between two well-led, well-staffed, well-funded and well-publicized campaigns cannot be any fun. I sincerely hope that all of the candidates have a good run and achieve a healthy standing in the polls. It must be harder than I can possibly imagine to put in the work required to run in an election, but choice and freedom are the lifeblood of our democracy. Everyone deserves to have their voice be heard -- even if I personally disagree with what they have to say.

So ... my extremely informal guess on the results? NDP about 50%, Liberals about 30%, Conservatives and Greens each about 10%. But as always, anything and everything can happen. We'll find out tonight!

~~~~~

On a related note, I couldn't help but notice how Prime Minister Harper had so conveniently called the byelection so close to -- and yet before -- the NDP leadership convention this coming weekend in Toronto. March 19th vs. March 23rd. There is no way that's a fluke.

Even if it works out for the NDP and they hold the riding, the proximity to the convention will heighten confusion among less politically astute viewers of the news. Furthermore, any leadership candidates without a seat in the House of Commons (I'm looking at you, Brian Topp) are busy with their own campaigns and cannot use this by-election to try and gain legitimacy by becoming a sitting MP.

And if it works out for the Liberals and they gain the riding (in an eerie parallel to Winnipeg North), then the NDP will be significantly deflated heading into the leadership convention. The Liberals would also get all kinds of press coverage for the upset victory. This scenario also plays into the Conservatives' hands, as they'd love for the progressive vote to continue being split for as long as humanly possible.

Once again, it's going to be interesting ...

Who dares disturb my slumber?[/giantvoice]

Oh, it's an NDP leadership race. Just kidding -- I have been following it for a while now.

For starters, I wish it was shorter. The race is depriving the party of its best front-benchers right when the NDP needs to be working flat-out to cement their newfound gains. But instead, we get a campaign so long that the media are only paying attention to the polls showing NDP slippage in Quebec (among, yes, a few other regions).

Hilariously, the mass media still don't know how to make heads or tails of the federal scene in Canada. The mentality of "only two parties can ever win" has been so prevalent for so long that to contemplate the mere possibility that change might be real (gasp!) is something akin to an unspeakable sin. The glass ceiling has been shattered and decisively so. Get used to it.

And yet, at the same time, those polls make a valid point: the next leader of the NDP has to be up to the task of not only shoring up the gains the party has made, but also growing beyond to reach out to people who have never voted in their favour. That will undoubtedly leave some hard-liners unhappy, but then, no one can ever have it all at the expense of everyone else -- that is the essence of both compromise and democracy.

Staying put, playing it safe, just won't cut it. The status quo is not what the NDP is about -- if that's what you truly want, go vote Liberal. The former dream about the future; the latter obsess about the past.

"Aha!", but you say, "they could just merge and have a little bit of both! They're both leftist parties anyway, right? What's the big deal?"

I can say it once, I can say it a thousand times: it's just not that simple.

Fundamentally, the NDP and the Liberals just aren't that close in terms of principles, values and ideology. To most NDPers, the Liberals aren't even left of centre at all. Most Liberals don't consider their party to be left of centre (or right of it), sometimes giving their stance the oxymoronic appellation of "radical centrism" or the "radical middle". There's nothing radical about the Liberals; there hasn't been for decades. Long story short: we don't want to be them, and they don't want to be us.

For much of the 1990s -- the decade I grew up and first met politics -- the Liberals made an art out of campaigning from the left and governing from the right. They'd talk a good game about government programs and social stability, and routinely garner large numbers of disenchanted, demoralized NDP-leaning voters to swell their majorities. Then, when it came time to govern again, they'd turn around and go right back to the cutting corporate taxes and slashing provincial transfers. They were Tories in all but name -- and in fact were gladly supported by the Reform Party for adopting their fiscal policies. It was both predictable and utterly transparent.

It's a scene NDPers have watched time and time again: the Liberal Party, stampeding otherwise NDP-leaning voters into inflating Liberal victories, casting themselves as the righteous guardians of sanity against the Conservative (EVIL!) and NDP (COMMUNISTS!) bogeymen. It kept working, and the Liberals got gradually more complacent until the voting public finally got wise to their act and shifted to more credible rivals on both the right and the left.

And now, it is the Liberals who want the NDP's compassion. There's a proposal going around, endorsed in particular by the otherwise ingenious Nathan Cullen, that in the absence of an actual merger, the NDP and Liberals should agree to not compete against each other in ridings across the country so as to unite the "progressive vote" and, theoretically, unseat the greater enemy of Stephen Harper's Conservative government.

First of all, and more simply, this ignores the possibility that left/centre votes might not readily transfer to one party or the other. More hard-line partisan voters might be so butthurt that (1) they might not vote at all, (2) they might vote for some random fringe candidate, or (3) they could hop straight to the Conservatives in revenge for "their" candidate not getting in.

(I would know; in Ontario's 2007 provincial election, I voted for the local PC candidate because the NDPer sucked. I hopped right over the Liberals because, despite the media frenzy over the "religious school funding" issue, John Tory and his local candidate seemed like reasonable people.)

Secondly, what's worse, this amounts to basically handing the Liberals an easy way to sneak up and take the NDP down from behind. The NDP just won Opposition eight short months ago. Their leader promptly died, they still have yet to solidify those gains, and every new federal poll accompanies a column crowing about their supposedly inevitable fall back to "natural" third-party status. And now you're asking them to freely hand that advantage back to the Liberals, who beat them down, demoralized them, and laughed and spat in their face for the better part of a century? It goes against any rational instinct -- and parties have never won by being soft to those who would harm them.

I mean, I'd love to be friends and have everything be happy and roses, but isn't that asking a bit way, way too much too soon?

I know that we need to kick the win-at-all-costs, beat-'em-when-they're-down philosophy that has gradually and incessantly been rotting our politics from the inside out. (Don't even get me started on the fun in the USA.) It is critical that we must restore decency and openness and trust to politics in order to regain the confidence and engagement of the public.

Two parties merging or not competing is not going to do that. As human beings, we can do our best to forgive what others have done, but there is no way we can forget. Decades of antipathy and malfeasance cannot vanish overnight. The idea is admirable, but in practice, the time has not yet come.

And it takes time to build trust. I'm not going to pretend the NDP haven't been jerks to the Liberals on countless occasions -- so in that vein, I would readily imagine there are many Liberals who feel as I do (a strange manifestation of cooperation, but still). To start, let's make a commitment to be at least nice to each other and see how it goes from there. One day, we might all be ready.

~~~~~

And, in a highly tangential addendum, from the ranks of the "Evil Overlord List":

#6) I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them.

#24) I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)

#48) I will treat any beast which I control through magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus, if the control is ever broken, it will not immediately come after me for revenge.

A few days ago, one young woman, barely out of university, dared to make a peaceful act of protest that astounded and shocked a nation.

Brigette DePape's quiet act of civil disobedience was all the louder for the way in which it was conducted: holding up a "STOP HARPER" sign on the floor of the Senate chambers in the midst of the Throne Speech. Her actions didn't have the glamour of high-flying political manoeuvering, nor did they have the in-your-face anger of protests like those at the G20 in Toronto last year. She was just a lone person, with a handmade sign; the difference lay in where she chose to stand.

I guess Brigette's actions strike home a little more than usual for me, barely a month removed from university classes in my own right. I can't help but marvel at the way that a quiet protest on the floor of the Senate could achieve such a balance of right and wrong -- as the best acts of protest ultimately do.

Right, in that she has a point: Stephen Harper's Conservative government has consistently hit unprecedented heights of obsessive control over everything from the business of Parliament to mere photo-ops and anything in between. Dissent has become a crime in Parliament -- not just to the Speaker's right, either -- and Mr. Harper has willfully led the charge to greater anger and divisiveness for his own gain.

Every so often, someone has to come along and remind us that debate and dissent are essential and healthy parts of democracy. If this is what it takes, then so be it; Ms. DePape is to be commended for that.

Wrong, also, in that she paid fundamental disrespect to the institutions through which our democracy functions. Her protest flagrantly disregarded the decorum of Parliament; how many of us have been taught that it is rude and improper to interrupt someone (in this case, the Governor-General of Canada himself) while they are speaking? Both parliamentary procedure and common manners took a beating at the hands of a girl and her octagonal sign.

Furthermore, Ms. DePape and her fellow parliamentary pages are meant to serve as neutral, non-partisan intermediaries; how much of that trust will be shaken by her actions? Her superiors were right to fire her from her position; Ms. DePape's example has eroded trust in the neutrality of the page service, no doubt primarily with regards to the government that her words targeted. Worse, any other employers seeking to fill positions that require scrupulous neutrality may never turn to her in the future.

But then, in some ways, what else could she have done? Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett's suggestions included taking the protest outside, to the lawn of Parliament -- who would have noticed? The focus was on the Senate for the Throne Speech; no one on the streets of Ottawa would have taken more than a momentary glance. The best protests are those that grip our attention and make us force ourselves to watch.

Ms. DePape must have known that such a high-profile act would cost her a coveted, well-connected job; it must have been worth it to her. Whether you or I think she had genuine political concern or just a desire for attention, it is undeniable that she showed extraordinary bravery in voicing her opinion. Her actions have, at least in part, touched off a debate that we needed to have about the need for courage and engagement where we, as a nation, only see complacency.

At the same time, as stupid as we were as a nation to hand Mr. Harper an unfettered, four-year-long majority mandate, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about acting on it. The Conservatives won the election; there is no changing that fact, and there is no point complaining about it. Far from needing an "Arab Spring", as Ms. DePape says -- an entirely absurd comparison, given that people in the Middle East are fighting dictators and paying with their lives -- we need to work together to ensure that abuses of democracy are never allowed to happen, and if they do occur, to hand appropriate punishment to those responsible.

Democracy isn't just something we take out for a little fresh air once every two, three, four years. It requires us to get off our asses and make our voices heard on the issues that matter to us. It requires us to keep the people who we elected responsible to the people they represent. It requires us to be vigilant, principled, and above all, courageous.