While many have been worried about it for years, it can now be reported that there is a serious disconnect between the people running Canada’s political parties and the rank and file of the parties. It happens much too often with top-down management. The leadership think they are omnipotent and important and the party think the leaders are impotent and unimportant. And visa-versa, of course. The problem is that without some real leadership, nothing is going to be done about it.
First, we have to deal with the fact that large numbers of Liberal and New Democrat party people at the electoral district level across Canada want to work together. Maybe not all party members would agree but certainly a high percentage see that as a way to defeat Harper’s Conservatives. If we did polls of individual electoral district party members across Canada, there is good reason to suspect that a high percentage of them would opt for cooperation. Liberal MP Joyce Murray from Vancouver Quadra might just have a good idea.
Joyce has been saying during her leadership campaign that Liberals should offer to cooperate with New Democrats at the riding level. Front-runner MP Justin Trudeau can hardly scoff at the idea as he is also promising more power to the ridings and to MPs.
He has been talking a good story and this is an excellent place to start. Assume that the Liberal Party people and the New Democrats in every Conservative-held riding across Canada have a vote. You can bet that you would have enough ridings that are winnable by a Lib-NDP consortium to not only defeat the Conservatives but to totally confound Stephen Harper. He would have to contend with two party leaders at the national level while the odds defeat him in the ridings.
After we defeat Harper’s Conservatives is when the fun part of the process begins. Since neither the Liberal leader nor the NDP leader will have sufficient members of just their party to form a government, the Governor General is duty bound to ask the one with the most seats if he (or she) can form a government. Obviously by adding the Lib-NDPers to the numbers, that party will be able to form a government.
And that leaves what is left of the party that came third which would obviously include some experienced and knowledgeable MPs. Its members can join the ruling party and govern or it can sit as a rump in the House of Commons. That second choice might not sit well with the rank and file of their party. Think about it.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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