You look at the current crop of leadership candidates for both the federal and Ontario Liberal parties and wonder if there is a leader among them. In Ontario, there has been nothing suggested that could stop the provincial Liberals from sliding into third place in an election, that could be forced before mid 2013. Federally, there is only one candidate who has been toe-testing the waters to see if there is hope to stop a further slide. The rest deny the need for the party to merge with the New Democrats. Their goal must be to lead the party to oblivion.
The most vociferous arguments against a merger are from the extreme right of the Liberal party in the person of Martha Hall Findlay. The former MP who lost one of the safest Liberal seats in Toronto to the Conservatives in the last federal election is now running as a leadership candidate from the west. She wrote a paper against a merger back in October of 2011. Her basic assumption is that people are adding the Liberal and NDP voting numbers and using the figures to argue for joining the parties. She, quite rightly, points out that two and two do not make four, in this case.
But the problem facing us at the moment is that the consolidated Conservative vote is running ahead of the Liberal or NDP vote. And as long as the progressive vote is split between two parties, the Conservatives can gain the upper hand. There is no question but that some of the right-wing Liberals will go home to their Conservative roots if the Liberal and NDP come together as a single party. Those people have been dragging their feet for too long anyway. There are also die-hard socialists in the NDP who believe in the collective and will reject the protection of individual rights as promoted by the Liberals
But that is the balance that will give us honest elections. Hall Findlay thinks that some average Canadians want a smaller, cheaper government that is needed to provide services and social safety nets that allow for a minimum quality of life for all Canadians. That is nothing but sleazy conservative cant for the gullible.
You will be hard-pressed to find Canadians who will settle for a ‘minimum’ quality of life when what they really want is opportunity. With the strong social conscience of the NDP combined with the Liberal belief in the rights of the individual, you have a formula for success across Canada.
Surely, MP Joyce Murray is not the only Liberal politician in Canada who recognizes where the future is for the progressive parties?
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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry
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