People organize in all kinds of ways for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes they advocate for causes or issues that may not be the most pressing concerns in the world but it isn’t really fair to hold that against them. We all do it, after all, and no matter that there’s a war on somewhere and people who are suffering we still turn on the ball game at night and spend our hard earned money on trivial things. We can’t always be worried about pressing social concerns.
Sometimes people try to advance their causes in unusual ways. That’s even harder to criticize because oftentimes unusual methods work. Heck, by the time we hear about some odd tactic or publicity stunt it’s already worked – and the proof is that we’ve heard of it.
Then there are these folks, who are building little homes on their properties complete with running water and electricity only to block and protest the intrusion of wind turbines near their land. They consider the turbines unsightly and a danger to their property values. And so they are trying to use the rules restricting how close a turbine can be to a dwelling to block them out, as a combined technical maneuver and publicity stunt. Not only that, but they are fundraising to do it. Three quarters of a million dollars so far, from the very well off residents of a community that values its sight lines an awful lot.
Now, I give credit for originality. Truly, I do. And the originality has landed them on the front page of the Toronto Star. These folks sure are proving a point. But I’m not sure it’s the point they intended.
All I can think, on reading this story, is holy hell but these people are privileged beyond all reason and badly divorced from reality. These houses are a “mere” 16×20 feet. And this is presented as some kind of joke. That’s 320 square feet. I have personally lived in a basement apartment smaller than this while attending university. That was my home for two years. Run a search on Craigslist or similar. There are many units smaller than this advertised for rent in Toronto. I can’t even imagine the contrast between this absurdity and the need that exists in foreign nations. I don’t even have to. There are individuals in Canada who dream about having a place like this to call their own. And they are being built as a joke – to stand empty on the corner of some over-privileged landowner’s field.
Words escape me. People are entitled to their causes and they are entitled to advance them as they may wish. But when you take your incredibly trivial cause and spend a flagrant amount of money only to waste a precious resource that so many people go without then you deserve to be called out. You deserve to be told that you’re a jackass and there are far better things you could be doing with your time and money. And you’re entitled to spend your time and money literally tilting at windmills. But don’t imagine it makes you a hero in even the most Quixotic sense.
A couple of weeks back, coming out of the biennial convention in Ottawa, I wrote The Hijackers’ Guide to the Liberal Party of Canada. This guide remains an evolving story. It’s been translated into French through the gracious efforts of Alexandra Mendes. And the intention is that it will be used somehow by the Liberal Party as an example of member generated content and organizing – though we’re still a little vague on exactly how.
Recently, the whole idea of “hijack” got a lot more real and a lot more worrisome. In the nomination race for the Toronto-Danforth bi-election, we faced the real possibility of seeing a pro-life candidate nominated through the efforts of a group called “Liberals for Life.” You can read about the outcome here. In the end, saner heads prevailed and we’re going forward under the leadership of Grant Gordon in the riding. We certainly wish him well. But what if it had gone the other way? What if we’d ended up with Trifon Haitas and his anti-abortion stance that’s so far out of step with Liberal values?
My view on this subject is that if Liberals can organize and back a candidate to the nomination in their riding they are entitled to that candidate – extreme exceptions aside. Do I like Haitas’ pro-life/anti-choice stance on abortion? Hell no. But we also can’t pretend this view is entirely outside of the political mainstream. We still have MPs in caucus who, in their private views, are not supporters of a woman’s right to choose. We can’t pretend to be shocked when a new candidate shows up with similar opinions.
There was a lot of hand-wringing and predictions of doom about what it would mean if a fringe candidate such as this could pull off a nomination battle. And are we surprised? 355 votes cast in the nomination from among 833 eligible voters. In a riding that has been Liberal in the past and will be Liberal again that is not a lot of riding activity. Could we imagine someone with a small but dedicated core of support scooping the thing? Absolutely. Is it the best possible outcome? Of course not. But should we insist on central party control to avoid candidates such as this in the future? Should we oppose the will of local Liberals and their supporters? Should we intervene? No.
If we continue to dismiss, attack, and oppose the efforts of interest groups to organize within our party we will be making exactly the mistake that will, in time, damn us to complete irrelevancy. Yes, our party is weakened. Yes, in smaller EDAs with fewer numbers we are especially vulnerable to fringe issues and unlikely candidates. But how is shutting our doors and trying to control the influx of members into our party going to solve that issue? How is it going to protect us to narrow the field, restrict participation, and try to rig the outcome according to what we believe is right? Who the hell are we to judge in the first place what an acceptable candidate looks like, and how do we expect people who disagree with our opinions to react when we presume to that kind of gatekeeper function?
The guard against fringe candidates and small special interests isn’t protectionism. It’s large membership, wide participation, and the common sense and decency of ordinary people. If we stop believing in that we have lost the most central value of the Liberal Party. We won’t always get the candidate that we like 100% of the time. But what’s the alternative? Try to dictate every outcome? Decide in advance what the limits of acceptable political discourse look like and draw those lines prior to inviting people to participate in the party?
Every time I listen to debate on this issue, I realize that my Hijackers’ Guide is more timely and relevant than I ever imagined. It’s crunch time, and we either embrace what it means to be a popular party that invites all Canadians to participate in our ranks or we don’t. This was one bi-election. Leading into 2015 we’re going to see a lot of interesting nomination battles for riding we can win, have held in the past, and will hold again. And if we start telling our prospective members who they can and can’t nominate we’ll be cutting the legs out from our rebuilding effort before it even starts.
If fringe candidates worry you well, they worry me too. But we have a solution at our fingertips. Not fewer members, but more. Bring your friends and bring your neighbours. Don’t try to control who joins the party – bring everyone who wants in. And the results won’t always be what any one of us would choose. But the outcomes will nonetheless be sane and decent and reasonable because Canadians are, on the whole, sane and decent and reasonable.
Bring on 2015. We’ll be ready.
By now it’s becoming tired, I know, but I just can’t get over the idea that the Liberal Party of Canada risks being hijacked by … well, someone. Part of the reason I’m stuck on this worry people seem to have is because it’s so abstract. I wonder what a hijacker would even look like. We’re the Liberal Party of Canada and now we support the legalization of marijuana, among other things. If a Liberal from 30-40 years ago could somehow get into a time machine and see this I’m sure they’d fall over in shock at how we’ve been hijacked already. So what’s our yardstick here?
I do acknowledge the risk of narrow interest groups seizing control off a single EDA. I suppose that could happen. But then that was always possible. It isn’t like a $10 membership fee is any great barrier. And the fear only makes sense if we imagine a fringe group with values well outside the Canadian mainstream. So what’s the protection against that? Not fewer people but more. If enough people are participating then a fringe takeover becomes, by definition, impossible.
The whole discussion just seems so ridiculous to me that I went and wrote a guide. It’s tongue in cheek. I hope it comes across properly. But here it is – the Hijackers’ Guide to the Liberal Party of Canada. And for those who want to skip straight to the good stuff, here’s the Hijacking Flow Chart.
The Liberal Party, under the leadership of Bob Rae, is taking a line of attack against the Conservatives that I wholeheartedly support. They’re pinning down Harper on the fact that he’s pleading poor on one hand when it comes to social services and at the same time spending like a drunken sailor in port on his anti-crime agenda with no research or foundation to support it. And the story is getting traction. Here’s the Globe on the topic.
Let’s be honest, okay? Sometimes every political party scores points just to score points. It’s ugly and unproductive but it seems to be the way the game is played. This isn’t one of those times. People need to hear this story.
Conservatives push their tough-on-crime policies because it works with many voters. In particular, it works with seniors. Older Canadians can easily feel unsafe. So promise to put the bad people behind bars and they respond. Tell them we’ve got a crisis and they may believe it because they already feel like it might be true. Never mind the statistics that tell us crime is down across Canada and has been falling consistently for years – especially violent crime. It’ll be easy enough to fix those statistics if we just criminalize more things.
Drugs are an especially easy target, because while no one is directly harmed by someone else’s drug use the entire scene carries a sense of danger. A recreational drug user today is a mugger tomorrow – to a Conservative anyway. So promise to put everyone even potentially dangerous behind bars and it sells to a fearful electorate. With only one problem. Someone has to pay for it.
Every political initiative comes with cost. Money spent in one place isn’t available for something else. And that’s long been part of the debate on crime and punishment in society. It isn’t only a question of what people deserve it’s also a question of what it’ll cost. It costs far more to send someone to prison for a year than to support them through a full university education. So while it may satisfy us to see someone get what they deserve, we often end up poorer as a society for it.
Due to the timing of these separate but related policy drives, the Conservatives have handed us a perfect contrast. These are both key issues for older voters. Are they going to feel safe in their communities and believe the government is protecting them from crime, and are they going to see adequate support in the form of pensions, health care, and other benefits?
The Conservative government wants to build prisons and to claw back social spending. It isn’t political rhetoric to say as much – it’s the bald truth. The only question is whether seniors and other voters are going to let them get away with it, and allow baseless fears to trump their own self-interest, or realize they would rather have adequate social programs than pay to incarcerate non-violent offenders. Bravo, again, to the Liberal leadership for appreciating the contrast. And thanks to the Conservatives for providing it.
Something remarkable happened in Ottawa this past weekend. More than 3,000 Canadians came together under the Liberal banner to insist on a reasonable, pragmatic, and socially progressive option to the Conservative machine. And we came to the Liberal convention to make that happen because the Liberal Party, for all its flaws, is still the only party in Canada that strives to reflect the values and ideals of Canadians rather than alter their values and ideals. And none of us, even those who may sometimes vote for other parties, can afford to lose that option.
Many delegates at this convention, like me, were first-time participants. They came from diverse political backgrounds. I met former NDPers, former Conservatives, even a one-time founder of the Marijuana Party. More than anything I met younger or previously silent supporters of the Liberal Party who woke up this year and realized that we can no longer stand by and trust other Canadians who share our values to drive the political discourse. We realized that we had all become more than a little complacent in the expectation that decency and common sense would win out in the end. But if that was going to happen this year, or any time soon, it would be our job to make it happen.
Canadians responded to this challenge. They came from coast to coast. More than a third of the delegates were under 30. They spent money they couldn’t easily spare on flights, hotels, and convention fees. And yet many, like myself, came mainly out of a sense of obligation. We all knew we had to try to turn things around and revive the Liberal Party. But did we really believe it was possible when we arrived? I know I had my doubts. Then we started talking and listening to one another. More and more we realized we all wanted the same things from the Liberal Party. Real change. Policies that speak to ordinary Canadians and to core Canadian values. A return to popular, broad-based politics that empower the widest number of people and trust in their decency, common sense, and good intentions.
Then, even more surprisingly, those of us come newly to the party found that we weren’t alone in our hopes and aspirations. The biggest names in the Liberal Party – those still standing after everything else was swept aside – also faced the need for real and even radical change. They put courageous proposals and policy options on the table and we responded.
Nothing important went down easy or without opposition. There are still a lot of long-term members of the party who like their politics small, simple, and tightly controlled. They showed up at the convention talking about the need for renewal and all the while fought hard against almost every proposal for tangible change. But in the end, we simply overwhelmed them. In an unlikely and unplanned alliance, the brightest minds of the party offered up the opportunity to do something dramatic, and a great mass of Canadians who had no investment in the old way of doing things showed up to make it happen.
So what is the result? We adopted policies that put our party at the forefront of contemporary issues. Most obvious is the legalization of marijuana. We also decided to back a simple and practical option for electoral reform, that of preferential balloting, as a pragmatic route towards improvement of our antiquated first-past-the-post system. We made structural changes to our party that are going to resonate for years to come. We opened participation to anyone who may choose, for free, to simply declare their support for our party and our goals. We gave them the chance to help choose our leader by popular vote. We voted to stop protecting incumbent MPs from challenge in their nominations. We voted to significantly restrict the ability to parachute in candidates. And more besides. The net effect is to open up the party dramatically to new influences, to new participants, and to new ideas. And the folks who have become comfortable with the idea that they are somehow entitled to drive the party agenda as a reward for long service have been put on notice. Either get with the renewal or get out of the way.
Going into this convention, Shelia Copps was the runaway favorite for President of the Liberal Party. But riding on the wave of change, and speaking to younger and newer members of the party, Mike Crawley swept in and won the day. He won by a small margin, but for a guy who was “Mike who?” mere weeks ago the momentum is staggering. While others are talking about renewal as though it’s a gimmick that can lure a new generation of Canadians into old style politics, Mike is talking about broad, wholesale innovation. The goal is to restore a fundamental notion to Canadian politics – the notion that if only enough people come to the table and talk things through, we can govern this nation well.
The Conservatives, the NDP, and even the Greens and the Bloc have one thing in common. They are built around trying to convince people to buy into their agendas. They are always trying to move public debate and shift the values of the Canadian population. At their core, these parties believe that a small number of Canadians know what’s right, that the great mass of Canadians are wrong, and that it’s the job of the few to convince and lead the many.
The Liberal Party believes the overwhelming majority of Canadians are decent, trustworthy, well-intentioned people who can and will do the right thing when they are given a chance. They only need a political party that can express the values they already hold in a responsive and relevant way. And yes, that means centrist politics. But centrist, popular politics in a nation of decent people will produce decent government.
The radical change embraced by the Liberal Party this past weekend is nothing more and nothing less than giving this party back to the whole nation and trusting them to make something of it that we can be proud of once again. I believe Canadians are ready to receive it. And I truly believe that we’re going to change history together.
A recent article in the Globe about Niki Ashton’s entry into the leadership race for the federal NDP caught my attention. Ms. Ashton is young, at 29. That isn’t to say she’s inexperienced, and she is fact in her second term as a MP. But rather than rely on this fact alone to back up her credentials, the Globe mentioned that “politics is in her blood” – almost as though this is some additional qualification. Her father, you see, is a provincial cabinet minister. Which presumably suggests that his daughter is more qualified than the next Canadian to hold high elected office.
I don’t mean to pick on Ms. Ashton in particular. This isn’t an issue that’s especially about her and it isn’t a topic that’s confined to the NDP. We often talk about how politics “runs in the blood” or maybe we refer to a “political gene.” We are in regular need of some way to explain or discuss the fact that so many families share the habit of occupying our elected offices. Whether it’s children succeeding their parents or siblings following one another or spousal power couples (the genetic explanation has less force here) we’re regularly confronted with this topic. Examples are so common that picking a few seems arbitrary. Mike Layton is now on Toronto City Council, replacing his father. Doug Ford followed his brother there. Dalton McGuinty’s brother, David, is in federal politics representing the same riding. Justin Trudeau is famously regarded as his father’s successor as a potential leader of the Liberal Party. And I looked into Helena Guergis, to see about when her involvement with Rahim Jaffer started (turns out they were both in office already) but I stumbled over a long history of her family’s involvement in municipal politics. There – now I’ve at least picked on every major party.
In all seriousness, the point I’m making hardly needs examples. In fact, it’s most badly in need of counter-examples. Dig into the family history of any successful politician and the odds of hitting prior family involvement are shockingly high. Which comes right around to the point I started with. We talk about politics in the blood and the political gene because there’s no way to avoid the idea. We need an explanation.
Yet it’s a bald-faced lie to imagine that any family has a genetic predisposition to the traits required for public office. We’d never accept that explanation as a qualification for any other job. Imagine the applications to medical school … because my mother was a doctor you should presume in my favour that I’d be a good doctor as well, and accept my application over the son of an auto mechanic. How can we possibly imagine this reflects our values as Canadians?
The real and much more obvious explanation is that politics is a game of connections and privilege. Those who are already in have a vast advantage over those who are not. And we all bloody well know this already, it’s just considered tacky to admit it. There’s a certain pragmatism to it, certainly, from a party perspective. Every party wants, first and foremost, electable candidates. So those who already come with name recognition and connections are considered safer bets than those without. And beyond simple pragmatism, there’s still the advantage of money and connections. It takes cash to get elected. It takes friends to make it happen. And we all know that too.
Certainly there are children (and siblings, and spouses) who follow the examples of their families and loved ones into the occupation of politics. It’s a career, like any other, and it isn’t the only career that may be susceptible to becoming a family trade of sorts. I don’t mean to disparage the presumably sincere motivations of the many politicians who may come from family histories of public service. But the frequency which with this happens in politics must be greeted with extreme skepticism. And the public trust vested in our elected officials suggests this career, in particular, should not and cannot be passed down like the neighbourhood grocery store. We must be vigilant to ensure that our elected offices remain occupied by the best and the most qualified individuals – not simply by the best connected and most pedigreed.
Canada’s system is still better than many. I don’t mean to indict the whole or claim that it would ever be easy or even possible to remove entrenched political advantage entirely. But one thing we can all do – and the one thing we should do at minimum – is at least admit to ourselves what’s really happening. This “politics in the blood” nonsense has got to stop. We all know it’s a lie, and it’s just embarrassing that we repeat it so readily in order to maintain the myth that public office is equally accessible to all.
As you may know, I’m on the Board of YouthLink. We do important work out in Scarborough, where there ain’t a lot of money to go around.
Aviva is giving away money through their community fund and we want some of it to support our programs. They’ve got a simple and tested system. You sign in and give them your attention for a second, and they let you vote for something you support. Then at the end of it they divvy up $1,000,000. Our program is located here.
I know – signing into a website just to endorse something isn’t anyone’s idea of a good time. But it’s a truly worthwhile cause. You can vote every day for the next two weeks. So literally this time – vote early and vote often.
Please spread the word. I know they’re bribing our eyeballs with money, but the money goes to a good cause, and you really can spare a second right? You won’t even be hit with advertising. Aviva just wants you to know they’re supporting our communities. And since they really are, it isn’t asking so much to take note of that fact.
I very recently joined the board of YouthLink for a three year term. I will additionally be serving on the Governance Committee.
YouthLink is a fantastic organization that serves young people in a broad sense, focusing on challenges they face and providing services to help them meet those challenges. It was founded in 1914 by The Big Sister Association of Metropolitan Toronto and at the time was concerned with helping young women and girls caught up in the court system who lacked family support and guidance. Since that time the organization has expanded greatly and its mandate widened, but the central mission remains – to find young people who are struggling with problems and who have no other support, and to help them.
In 2004, YouthLink made the decision to focus on Scarborough as a community in particular need of its services. After some period of transition, it is now based from main offices located on Warden Avenue between Eglinton and St. Clair.
This new role certainly fills up my dance card. Three boards is my limit. But I was very flattered to be described as an “expert” in not-for-profit governance at the AGM just past and I suppose I am gaining some expertise as the years go by. I’m very glad to help provide that to such a worthy organization. Also, I’m pleased that the three organizations I participate in all serve Scarborough, and particularly the community of Scarborough Southwest.
Jack Layton’s legacy has not yet been measured. He served three decades in office but it’s only in the last few months that he turned Canadian politics on its ear. At the height of his success, and the NDP’s improbable ascendancy, he suddenly died. It’s almost the tale of a rock and roll legend, only transposed into politics. We’ll be learning from him long after his time, and wondering what else he would have done if things had turned out differently.
Jack’s remarkable deadbed letter may be the most significant artifact left from his career. The sentiments aren’t unique but the timing and the wide exposure of these lines will magnify their impact. Anyone interested in politics should read the original in full, and almost certainly has. But the conclusion runs as follows:
My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.
It would be easy to imagine, reading those lines, Jack’s essential thesis is that the NDP is the party of love, hope, and optimism. But Jack was smarter than that. He gave the NDP more than enough partisan attention in his letter, and asked that Canadians give them a “careful hearing.” We certainly should do that. But in the end he turned his attention to a wider topic, and that deserves some acknowledgment also.
At its finest, left wing politics strives to build a better, fairer, more inclusive world for everyone. The vision of a party founded on those principles helped carry Jack and the NDP quite far. But the broad left and the NDP also include a lot of people who blindly demonize industry and distrust “the establishment” and anything mainstream. They divide the world between people who agree with them and people who are simply mean and badly intentioned.
Centrist politics can be optimistic and hopeful too. At its finest, centrist politics trusts ordinary Canadians and believes that bridging our differences is better than seeing one side win and the other lose. It balances compromise with a moral core that doesn’t shift. Centrist politics can also be cynical and opportunistic. It may try to be everything to everyone and end up standing for nothing other than the most convenient route to power.
Even right wing politics can be loving and hopeful. Tough fiscal policy says we’ll conserve today to build a better future tomorrow. Holding fast to the valuable lessons we learned from our parents and grandparents … that isn’t always wrong. At its worst, right wing politics becomes unbearably selfish and fearful. People convinced that the future looks dark simply hoard and protect what they have rather than invest in their neighbours. They want higher walls and bigger prisons to protect their families from imagined threats.
The truth is that the NDP are no more naturally loving, optimistic, or hopeful than any other party. Jack tried to guide them in that direction, and he deserves a mountain of credit for doing so, but all of us can and must learn from his example. If every party were to embrace his approach to politics we could indeed be proud of our leaders again. And that, even more than the remarkable breakthrough of the NDP, may be the legacy he leaves to Canadian politics.
Last week Jack Layon announced his temporary leave of absence as Leader of the Official Opposition, and named Nycole Trumel as his interim replacement. Looking frail and vulnerable, with a new and as yet unrevealed form of cancer, Jack struck a chord across all political lines. He was even featured positively on the front page of the Toronto Sun – probably a first in all his decades of public service, initially in Toronto and later federally. Politicians of every creed stepped up to declare their support for him and their admiration of his service. And the glow lasted for about three days.
Then the news broke that Ms. Turmel had formerly been a member of the Bloc Quebecois. And now it’s no holds barred again. Since the first news of her past membership, there’s been endless back and forth on the degree of her participation and nature of her affiliation. It would be easy to get into that topic, but in truth it’s just one big distraction. No matter how deep her connection with the Bloc, there is no reason at all that anyone should care. Save, of course, to score cheap points in political theatre.
Our Prime Minister, and current leader of the Conservative Party, was once involved with another party too. In fact, he was the leader of that party, during his time with the Canadian Alliance. The present leader of the federal Liberal Party, Bob Rae, was once a member of the NDP, and became Premier of Ontario under that banner. Is there any level of participation Ms. Turmel could possibly have had, in the Bloc, that would exceed these prior affiliations?
Yes, I know. It isn’t that it’s another party, it’s the fact that it’s a separatist party. Or that’s what folks will say, anyway. But the Bloc is also a party that enjoyed widespread support in Quebec and was, inevitably, elected by many people who are not separatists. In a nation with only a few political parties, it is the height of ignorance to suggest that when someone joins or votes for a party it means they support every aspect of that party’s platform. In order for this to be true it would need to mean that either (a) there are only a few possible opinions on every topic, and they come packaged in tight sets, or else (b) only people whose ideas are party orthodox on every topic can or should participate in any political party.
Of all the party’s that have taken shots at Nycole Turmel about this, I’m most disappointed in the Liberal Party. This isn’t worthy of us. Never mind that it’s hypocritical. It undermines the very notion of centrist politics. If we don’t uphold the belief that Canadians of various backgrounds and opinions can participate in our politics, and can move from one party to another that better represents them, then what in the world do we stand for? I expect ideological suspicion from parties on the left and on the right. The one thing both the NDP and the Conservatives share (whether they admit it or not) is a “with us or against us” mentality. It’s exactly that attitude that’s tearing apart the U.S. right now. And the greatest strength of the Liberal Party is that we can offer an alternative to that kind of short-sighted, uncompromising suspicion of people who hold different views.
I respect everyone who belongs to a political party. I respect everyone who participates in Canadian democracy. The outpouring of love and support for Jack Layton was based on that very notion – that we admire his contribution to our nation even if we don’t agree with his goals. Still, our commitment to that view is only paper thin if we immediately turn on his successor for having the nerve to participate in some other political party.
What worries me most is the message we send to people who already do participate in another party, or who have in the past. If we treat them with suspicion, or as second-class participants in our party should they become interested in it, then how can we ever call ourselves a popular, centrist party? Why would we ever expect people to come to the table and engage with us? How can we say in one breath “she can’t be a real NDPer if she used to belong to the Bloc” and at the same time say that every Canadian can be a Liberal?
Putting the interim leader of the NDP on the immediate defensive may be good strategy but it’s cheap politics. It isn’t worthy of any political party – much less a party that seeks to uphold centrist principles. The sooner the Liberal Party retakes the moral high ground on issues of this nature, and stops treating the political center as ideological turf to be defended as irrationally as the left and the right, the sooner we’ll regain our credibility as the natural governing party of Canada.