Federal Politics – Page 196

Say it isn’t so Martha.

November 14, 2012 by Peter Lowry

You have to admit that Martha Hall Findlay can add a little something to the federal Liberal leadership contest. The former MP for Willowdale has been outed as a candidate by her purported campaign guru, Stephen Carter. He says that she will make it official today. Since prairie political strategist Carter is also believed to be working for Alberta’s Premier Alison Redford and British Columbia Premier Christie Clark, it is likely that he is only doing a part-time job for Martha.

While we have to admit that her intelligence and earthy sexuality make her an interesting participant in the leadership race, we are not about to bet heavily on her winning. She will probably prove herself too far to the right for Liberals east of Winnipeg and playing up to the Western vote, is slim pickings.

The paper she wrote a while ago dissing supply management might have pleased Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and the Fraser Institute but it went over like a lead balloon in Ontario and Quebec. While those who think about the issue see lots of room for improvement in how we manage farm commodities, the facts are that Canada has had an enviable stability of supply over the years. When Harper’s government set about dismissing the Wheat Board recently, they found that the farmers themselves were going to fight for it. In politics, being right, does not make things right!

In Martha’s manifesto for the leadership that she published in Options Politiques last March, she put her credo in the headline: Not left, not right, but forward. That is the standard formula for right wing Liberals who have lost sight of the reform nature of the Liberal Party. You can hardly claim to be middle of the road when you cannot even find the road.

Martha complains that less than 20 per cent of Canadian voters voted Liberal in the last federal election. She also complains that less than 0.2 per cent of Canadians are members of the Liberal Party. It makes you wonder what she has done to improve those figures. Having been handed the Willowdale riding in 2008 without having to bother with a nomination convention, she then lost it in 2011. It was one of the safest Liberal ridings in Canada and she blew it!

What people such as Martha do not understand about the Liberal Party is that it is not like an army of militia that goes away until you have a war to fight. It is an active force that needs to be involved in the process of policy development, the choosing of candidates and the ongoing communications of a vibrant and meaningful party. Leadership has to capture that.

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The Liberal mystique of Windsor.

November 13, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Windsor, Ontario is something of a shrine to the Liberal Party both provincially and federally. The entire area of South Western Ontario is a cornucopia of Liberal Party icons, former cabinet ministers and party thinkers. It was the farmers of this part of Ontario, known as Clear Grits, who joined with George Brown’s Toronto Reformers and created the Liberal Party of Ontario and the Liberal Party of Canada in 1857.

Windsor itself was the chosen home of Paul Martin Senior (not to be confused with Junior) who made a name for himself as a left-wing Liberal when campaigning three times for the party leadership. After Mackenzie King stepped down in 1948, Martin lost to Louis St. Laurent and then to Lester B. Pearson, after St. Laurent stepped down in 1958, and then to Pierre Trudeau after Pearson stepped down in 1968. He served in all their cabinets and, for the times, was very much the conscience of the Liberal Party. Medicare today, is part of his legacy.

Continuing in Martin’s tradition was our late friend law professor Mark MacQuigan who moved to Windsor from Toronto to contest the new Windsor-Walkerville riding in 1968. He held the riding for the next 16 years. It was Mark who created the party policy that forces the party leader to submit to a leadership review after every election. He believed strongly in a democratic and responsible Liberal Party.

Another area minister was Eugene Whelan, who served in Pierre Trudeau’s cabinet as Minister of Agriculture. He was very much a farmer but he actually helped transition Canadian farming into the computer era. Eugene was always willing to work with people and for them and left an indelible mark on the agriculture portfolio.

The one person you can never forget from Windsor is the much admired Herb Gray. A jack of all trades in parliament, Herb was not only the first Jewish cabinet member but he holds the record as the longest serving parliamentarian in Canadian history. He also has a devilish sense of humour that he delights in inflicting it on those of us who know and admire him. He is the dean of the left wing of the Liberal Party. The party is feting Herb next week in Ottawa and the federal leadership contenders will be there in hopes that some of his intelligence and knowledge of politics will rub off on them.

We could mention provincial politicos but none of them are left wing and none of them are particularly important. We were pleased to hear though that the locals in Windsor have started calling Provincial Treasurer Dwight Duncan ‘Slight’ Duncan. It seems his crash diet is working and he is reported to have lost as much as 50 pounds. We also hear that he intends to back Sandra Pupatello in the provincial leadership and then quit politics for a while. He might be just slightly ahead of the voters making that decision for him.

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Stephen and the hair do the subcontinent.

November 10, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Not since Brian Mulroney did his farewell tour to see the only people who still liked him, has a Canadian Prime Minister travelled the world to the same extent. This week, the (almost) perfect hair and wife Laureen did a photo-op for the news media at India’s world famous Taj Mahal.

While there was nothing of import to report on from the trip, our slavish news media did their best to report on the exciting aspects of the hair’s adventures in tourism. The unusually relaxed prime minister mildly explained Canada’s acceptance of free expression when an Indian cabinet minister gave him a lecture on Sikh extremism. After all, Mr. Harper has lots of religious extremists in his own political party back in Canada.

How Harper could look so relaxed knowing his government was in the hands of people such as Public Safety Minister Vic Toews and Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney was the mystery. And it is not as though Defence Minister Peter McKay is a stabilizing influence while he is enjoying his honeymoon.

As an added precaution in India, the RCMP had a Globemaster aircraft fly in special armoured cars for him to use during his visit. This was probably an unnecessary expense considering how much more experience that India has in political assassination compared to Canada.

At least, while in India, Mr. Harper and his hair were hardly out of touch. We understand that the backup plan for communications was to take over a Microsoft call centre with its perfect connections to North America. This also assured Mr. Harper that he could be one of the first to congratulate Barack Obama on winning his second term.

Mr. Harper knows exactly what Mitt Romney and his GOP team did wrong in the American election. He figures that in four years he will be out of office in Canada and available to advise the next GOP presidential candidate.

In a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, you could see the Indian Prime Minister’s eyes taking in the perfection of the Canadian Prime Ministerial hair. For a guy who wears a turban, you could see his envy of the freedom of a hair cut.

But we do notice that the Stephen Harper’s real hair is becoming a lighter shade of grey than that which covers his receding hairline. Time to take the hair back to the shop for a redo, Stephen!

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Cut the C.R.A.P. Mr. Trudeau.

November 4, 2012 by Peter Lowry

We used to call it Consolidated Reports on Approved Policies (CRAP). That was what you wrote for politicians who did not know what to say and asked you to write something for them. “Just don’t rock the boat,” was always their final instruction. That must be how MP Justin Trudeau got his first policy paper of the campaign for the Liberal Party leadership. This example of CRAP was called Middle class left out of the growth equation when it ran as an op-ed item in the Toronto Star last week. Any more like it from the Trudeau team will require the Liberal Party of Canada to get serious about finding better candidates for its upcoming leadership convention.

It is the Toronto Star that should really be embarrassed by this effort. Not only is the article trite, out of date and pedantic but it contributes little to serious discussion about what is happening to the middle class in Canada. For the article to note that a major change is the large numbers of women who have joined the Canadian workforce is something that Justin Trudeau’s father might have noted 60 years ago in Cité Libre.

Even worse, the writer says that he (ostensibly Justin Trudeau) has nothing against wealth. This is not only gratuitous but serves to remind people that Justin was born to wealth and privilege. It makes you wonder just who he is trying to reach? There are new definitions of society in the 21^st Century and Justin’s writers need to be more aware of reality.

The middle class that backed Justin’s father so strongly have been sliding downhill into poverty as they age. As seniors, they are struggling to maintain a standard of living as their savings are ravaged by a lack of earnings and rising inflation. What was once a comfortable retirement base is now decimated and a worry.

And here we have Justin Trudeau saying: Have no fear. “The Liberal party I want to lead would pursue pro-growth policies and actively seek to broaden the positive effects of economic growth.” And the rest of the article goes on with drivel such as that.

The only thing that can be said for the article is that it is early in the campaign and no candidate wants to peak too early. Eventually, Trudeau and his campaign team are going to realize that Liberal party members and supporters are serious about the need for a clear direction for the party.

The Trudeau team needs to realize that the Liberal Party of Canada must be a democratic party; electoral districts must choose their own candidates and make the party decisions. The party must have a clear left of centre platform that addresses real needs with real solutions. The party must be a party of inclusion, recognizing and furthering our history of reform and building a stronger and better country for all.

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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Babel’s schism of liberalism.

October 25, 2012 by Peter Lowry

It could only have happened in Babel. It was at last year’s federal Liberal association annual meeting that the putsch was attempted. It was an effort by the provincial association to take over the federal association. It was not about to happen. The feds fought back.

And you would have thought that the severe political drubbing of the former MPP and her small coterie of supporters would have seen the end of it. They left the meeting beaten and disavowed. They left behind a stronger and united federal association.

But last week, when Ontario’s federal commission for the redistribution of electoral districts hearings came to Babel, the provincial’s came back, seemingly representing all Liberals in Babel. Somebody had apparently told the federal riding president that the Conservatives had the commission in hand and nothing that was said would change anything. This seemed the case when well-known Conservatives stood and said that they liked the commission’s approach to Babel. What the commission had done was split Babel roughly in half into north and south segments and then added large rural areas to each half of the city to complete the two new electoral districts. It seemed like an undisguised way to use rural voters to keep both districts Conservative.

But here were the provincial Liberals to set the commission on the road to fairness. These people proposed that there be a city district that encompassed most of the old Babel and that some of the outlying, newer parts of the city could be part of a rural district. That way the city could, hopefully, be represented by a Member of Parliament who could speak for the city voters.

As the province uses the same boundaries for provincial electoral districts as federal districts, this was not an altruistic plea the provincial people were making. The proposed two districts with their dominant rural base would not have been good hunting ground for provincial Liberals either.

But why the two groups of Liberals cannot learn to work together is a question for a modern Solomon. It is not as though the provincials are a particularly strong, democratic or creative group. Their antics are what lead us to think of Ontario Liberals as ancient political Whigs from the 19^th Century.

The federal Liberals in Babel are democratic, hard-working and inclusive, with a vibrant youth wing. They are active in the community and are due for a real shot in the arm with the upcoming federal leadership contest. This is the organization to watch. They, in turn, need to watch out for those provincials.

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Leadership strategy: part 2 – finances.

October 24, 2012 by Peter Lowry

This applies both federally and provincially. Before you decide to make an all-or-nothing grab for the leadership reins of your political party, you have to make sure of the money. As crass and pedestrian as the subject might be, we have seen too many good people hamstring themselves politically over the fairy tales they told themselves about money.

Sure, you know that your old friend Sam is good for a fulsome donation and you know Sam is an honourable person. The problem is that unless you have the cheque from Sam and the bank has cleared it, you really do not know about that money. Things happen. People do funny things. Always get the money up front.

And you cannot go cheap. You are going to spend every penny allowed and some pennies in addition that might be questionable. Let your financial person control it and you maintain deniability. The best financial people are the ones who will go to jail for you.

You should definitely try not to get involved with one of these ‘big spender’ campaign managers. A campaign must have a strict budget and a campaign manager who can work within it. No candidate for office should have to dig into their own pockets at the end of a campaign to cover for the campaign manager’s bright ideas.

Leadership campaigns are particularly tough to budget because of the two phase costing involved. The division is between meeting and communicating with party voters in their electoral districts and the television hoopla at the end of the campaign. They are distinctly different activities and both hard to control from the financial standpoint. In both cases, you have to concentrate on your voting lists. If it is a delegated convention such as the Ontario Liberal one coming in January, you have a better chance for control. An open convention such as the federal Liberal leadership in April next year is more like a war where you are never sure where to point your cannon.

In the federal leadership, you need three deputy campaign managers. They are the social media manager, the news media manager and the computer lists manager. The better and the more cohesive the brain trust that supports your four managers, the more effective will be your campaign.

In the simpler delegated convention as in Ontario, the key manager under the campaign manager is the communications person. This requires level-headed texting of hundreds of people in an instant to take full advantage of events as they happen on the convention floor. In all cases it is your managers’ knowledge of who are the delegate’s second and third choices that can make the difference.

And always save a few loonies at the end for the beer and/or the crying towels.

This discussion will continue.

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CRTC puppy bites Bell master.

October 19, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Wow. You have to really wonder at this one. Many of us had taken a pass on going to plead with the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) not to allow Bell to buy Astral Media. We figured that this new chairman, chosen by Prime Minister Harper, was just a new lap dog for Bell Canada.

Boy, were we wrong. This ruling almost made up for the time Bell laughed at us for opposing the takeover of CTV. It helped soothe the bruises we still carried from opposing local television channels charging cable and satellite companies for their signals. While we were always treated well by former chair Konrad von Finkenestein, we had no hope at all for this new guy.

Jean-Pierre Blais, the CRTC’s chair for the coming five years (maybe) was appointed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in June of this year. As an Ottawa insider and a former official of the CRTC, Blais seemed to be the ideal guy to cater to whatever Ma Bell wanted. He is considered knowledgeable in both telecommunications and television which is essential to understanding where these converging industries are heading.

But anyone who has been involved in both industries knows, it takes a very level headed person to understand both and to handle the people involved on both sides of the issues. And that describes Blais.

As The Globe and Mail wrote about Blais at the time of his appointment “Those who know Mr. Blais say he is more of a conciliation-minded type who would seek compromise rather that strike out independently with bold initiatives.”

This seems to tell us that even insiders, who say they know Blais, have been caught off guard by this ruling.

All the rest of us can say is that it is a breath of fresh air in the arid climate of Harper’s Ottawa. While it is considered unlikely that cabinet will overturn the decision, you can be sure that the sore losers at Bell will leave no rock unturned in searching out a legal reason for the cabinet to restore Bell’s wounded pride.

It is good to see Astral’s stock falling to more realistic levels after the ruling. It might be asking too much though for Bell’s people to realize where they have gone wrong.

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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Leadership strategy: part 1 – timing.

October 18, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Having always been a student of political strategy, the strategy used in leadership campaigns for political parties is particularly intriguing. It is entirely different from the challenge of a general election or even of a by-election. With the two largest provincial Liberal Party organizations and the federal Liberals currently mounting leadership contests, now is a good time to start to offer some tips to the contestants.

Let’s start with timing of the announcement for federal candidates and communications with the key audiences for that race.

There are two possible answers to timing. If you are well known and have been assured funding for the run, your only reason to announce early is to pre-empt some possible opponents. For example, Justin Trudeau has announced early and his friend MP Dominic LeBlanc has announced his support instead of that he is running.

If you are not as well known as, for example, Justin Trudeau, you might announce early to optimize the time you have to reach voters. Bear in mind, in the federal race, there are three categories of voters. The first category includes the party’s MPs, Senators, Liberal Privy Council members, national and regional party organization officials, electoral district party presidents and previous candidates. We already know about these people. You can expect around 80 per cent of them to vote. The best way for the candidate to communicate with these people is by personal telephone calls.

The second group are party members. They used to have to be elected as delegates to federal conventions but now all party members have a vote whether they are at the convention or not. They are people who are involved. At least 50 per cent of these people will be expected to vote. These are the people who have to be wowed as the candidate tours the country.

The third group will be the friends of the Liberal Party of Canada who have been signed up to participate in the leadership voting. More than 20,000 have already been signed up not even knowing who will be running. Candidates are sure to encourage more of these sign-ups by people supporting them. Judging by the NDP experience with this category of leadership voter, we can expect 20 per cent or more of them to hang in for the vote. These people have to be left to your Facebook and Twitter experts as well as your provincial organizations.

A best guess at this time is that there could be as many as 200,000 people eligible to vote in this federal Liberal leadership contest. If a candidate spends just $5 per voter, there goes another million loonies.

This discussion will continue.

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Justin Trudeau and the Facebook follies.

October 14, 2012 by Peter Lowry

With more than 50,000 ‘friended’ readers on Facebook and more than 150,000 followers on Twitter, MP Justin Trudeau will be counting heavily on this group of Canadians in his upcoming run for the leadership of the Liberal Party. The best advice we can give him on this is to count on one in ten or less to come through in the party vote and to turn his twits and Facebook entries over to a professional. This is not where he has to concentrate his efforts for the next seven months.

So far, Trudeau has been able to keep one foot in the social media world but his efforts in Facebook are banal at best and he really does not understand the strengths of Twitter. The only thing you can say for now is that he is better then most.

But the strength of the Trudeau name and his novelty as a candidate are in danger of wearing thin before this campaign has celebrated the New Year. Most of his opponents can also hire experts in the use of social media and Justin has to realize that his readers want to hear more from him than generalities. If you are going to communicate with the computer savvy of this country, you had better realize that they are ahead of you in some of the concerns that had not seen the light of day in Pierre Trudeau’s time.

Someone in Trudeau’s campaign group needs to be analyzing the feed they get from their followers on social media. They might not be as radical as the “take back our cities” demonstrators, but they are going to send in their wants and likes. The campaign has to encourage that feed. And it has to respond.

Start with Twitter. It has always been amusing to us that an old-fashioned newspaper headline writer can say a great deal in 140 characters. Twitter is not as limiting as some people think. It is an excellent way to put basic ideas in front of a target audience and to send them to further depth as needed.

Facebook, in turn enables a bit more depth and visuals to putting across ideas. Just remember here that the average attention span in this group is not long. Our advice to people preparing material for Facebook is to write tight!

This opportunity to layer material at different levels is ideally suited to political campaigns. Campaign web sites can have hundreds of thousands of words but the only people who might read it all are your competitors.

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Stephen and Hair do Africa.

October 11, 2012 by Peter Lowry

The Hair and hairdresser arrived in Senegal yesterday. (Or maybe it was today. World travel is confusing as you cross time zones.) Never one to miss an opportunity for tourism, Stephen and his hair rushed out to do photo ops with local Dakar school children. The hair, of course, was perfect.

There was no report on there being anything wrong with the Canadian Forces’ Airbus A310 that it could not find Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That is where the Hair and hairdresser were reputedly headed. On the weekend in Kinshasa, there is to be a meeting of la Francophonie, a gathering of French speaking countries. This meeting is likely to explain the stop in Senegal. Harper is obviously bad at adjusting to cross time-zone travel. He and his Hair are picking a nearby tourist destination to enable him to acclimatize before the meetings. Why else would his first meeting in Kinshasa be with Quebec Premier Pauline Marois?

It seems appropriate that Marois would have her first meeting with Stephen Harper at this venue. It is the one place where she can act as a head of state. Harper and the Premier of New Brunswick David Alward are also members of la Francophonie but they represent bilingual states. By attending, Harper is furthering Marois’ agenda.

The one thing Harper would not do is invite Marois and Alward to fly with him at the Canadian taxpayers’ expense in the VIP Airbus. They can fly at their provincial taxpayers’ expense. And besides, Harper needs room for his hairdresser.

What Harper is doing at la Francophonie remains to be seen. His voters in the west do not generally acknowledge that he speaks such practiced French. And he is hardly about to become too chummy with Pauline Marois.

Harper can save his world-statesman stance for NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair when he deigns to return to the House of Commons. It would be good if Harper took more Prime Ministerial responsibility for bad meat. Between bad meat and highly polluting tar sands, Harper has lots to answer for here in Canada

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