Election 2015

[larry Strong]

However it might not be clear sailing for Muclair:

Reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from CTV:

Broadbent: Mulcair taking credit for Layton's success

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20120315/Broadbent-Mulcair-taking-credit-for-Layton-success-120315/

OTTAWA — Former NDP leader Ed Broadbent is accusing the front runner of the current leadership race of taking undue credit for the party's electoral breakthrough in Quebec.

In the process, Broadbent says Thomas Mulcair has unfairly maligned the team largely responsible for the NDP's success and, by implication, the leader who put that team together -- Jack Layton.

Broadbent is backing Brian Topp, a key member of the late Layton's inner circle and one of Mulcair's top rivals for the leadership.

Broadbent is also casting doubt on Mulcair's temperamental suitability for the top job, which he says requires a team player who can unify the party.

In speaking out one week before the New Democrat leader is crowned, Broadbent is saying openly what Mulcair's critics have only whispered up to now.

In an interview Thursday with The Canadian Press, Broadbent denied suggestions his blunt talk signals a desperation to stop Mulcair.

He said he simply felt someone needed to come to the defence of Layton and his team and set the record straight.

He said he's been "deeply disappointed" by Mulcair's repeated snide references to "Laurier Avenue," the location of the NDP's national headquarters, and his suggestions that he's had to fight against central party strategists in order to modernize the party's approach to campaigning in Quebec.

In reality, Broadbent said it was Layton and his inner circle "who put money and resources and developed together a coherent strategy for Quebec before someone named Tom came along."

"It was the federal campaign in Quebec that got Tom elected in the first place in the (2007) byelection and then repeated after in the general election," he said.

"Of course, (Mulcair) played a role in this himself as the candidate and he was a very good candidate. But the strategy for it, the money for it, the organizational resources were all provided by the federal party."

Broadbent named those in Layton's inner circle whom he believes deserve the credit but who may have no future in the party if Mulcair is chosen leader: Topp, who served as Layton's national campaign director, chief of staff Ann McGrath, principal secretary Brad Lavigne and Raymond Guardia, who ran the Quebec campaign for Layton.

Guardia is now Topp's national campaign director. McGrath and Lavigne have remained neutral in the leadership contest, serving as chief of staff and principal secretary respectively to interim leader Nycole Turmel.

Broadbent said he decided to speak out because "they were being attacked, I think unfairly and, by implication, Jack was (being attacked for) not running the right kind of campaign, which is of course ridiculous. That needed to be said."

He said it "does indeed" worry him that some or all of Layton's team will be sidelined if Mulcair wins, given the apparent contempt the front-runner feels for them.

"These are good, fine, dedicated, competent people ... I'm sure many of them are concerned when you have one of the leadership candidates who's doing very well making these kinds of comments. If I were in one of those positions, I would be concerned."

Broadbent acknowledged that a new leader is entitled to bring in his or her own people. But he said that doesn't mean the outgoing team should be unfairly criticized, particularly when some are unable to defend themselves publicly.

Broadbent also took issue with Mulcair's repeated assertions that the party needs to modernize in the rest of Canada, just as it did in Quebec in last spring's election campaign. He said Layton's entire tenure as leader was devoted to growing, expanding and modernizing the party.

"It's been misleading to say that the party hasn't been constantly revitalizing itself, both in terms of policy and organization."

Mulcair's critics have long whispered that he's an abrasive, mercurial figure who doesn't play well with others. But there's been little sign of that in the leadership contest. Mulcair has been resolutely positive, amiable and collegial.

But Broadbent, who led the party from 1975 to 1989, raised the temperament issue openly as he talked about the two qualities he believes are most needed in a leader.

"One is to be very intellectually competent and self-possessed and able to debate in a very forceful way ... and Tom clearly is able to do that," he said.

"But the other capacity of leadership ... is the capacity to generate a good team spirit, to maintain a sense of unity and collaboration."

On the latter score, Broadbent said New Democrats should take note that most of the 43 caucus members who've endorsed Mulcair are newly-elected rookies from Quebec while most of those who've worked with him in caucus in the past are backing other candidates.

"I read into that that they have concerns about team-building, presumably."

Mulcair's camp refused to directly respond to Broadbent's criticisms.

"Mr. Mulcair and his team have run an upbeat, positive campaign and have stayed on the high road throughout," campaign director Raoul Gebert said in an email.

"Mr. Mulcair now has the support of 43 of his fellow NDP MPs -- there are no second-class MPs -- and this means that he has more MPs from across the country supporting him than all other candidates combined," he added.

"As this race comes to a close, we are focused on keeping it a positive and unifying campaign."

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the National Post, is Michael Den Tandt on why Stephen Harper wants Thomas Mulcair to lead the NDP:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/03/15/michael-den-tandt-thomas-mulcair-would-bring-harpers-dream-of-liberals-demise-a-closer-to-reality/

Thomas Mulcair would bring Harper’s dream of Liberals’ demise closer to reality

Michael Den Tandt, Postmedia News

Mar 15, 2012

Thomas Mulcair should eat his Wheaties and strap on his body armour. Correct?

The Harper Conservatives are already training their cannons on the New Democrat front-runner, some say, because he is the one they most fear. Mulcair’s combativeness, experience and brains make him a formidable foe. Moreover, he’s the New Democrat best placed to pull a “Tony Blair,” and shift the party further to the centre, where conceivably, it might contend for power.

But there’s another line of thinking, which suggests a Mulcair victory would suit Prime Minister Stephen Harper just fine. It gets back to Harper’s lifelong dream of destroying the Liberal party. Mulcair, it is believed by those who’ve seen him work in Quebec, has the capacity to wipe out or to absorb the Liberals. A Liberal-Democratic Party would necessarily position itself left of where the Liberals stood in their small-c-conservative period in the late 1990s. And that would at last leave the economic centre unobstructed, which is precisely what Harper wants.

Consider first the emerging endgame in the NDP leadership contest. The “anybody but Mulcair” candidate was to have been Brian Topp. Party insiders say that a series of halting debate performances have made that a non-starter. “In terms of being able to capture and continue to grow his (Topp’s) vote, I don’t see it . . . ” said one. “The Brian Topp campaign has no momentum right now. If anything he’s in reverse.”

Three are believed to be nipping at Mulcair’s heels: Peggy Nash, Paul Dewar and, most interestingly, Nathan Cullen. Nash’s solid union support, steady debate performances and the fact she’s the only serious female candidate in the race (Niki Ashton being too young and too wooden) have made her a contender. Dewar, despite his poor French, has benefited from good organization. And Cullen, widely dismissed as an also-ran at the outset, has surged on the strength of his likable onstage persona.

If anyone still has a shot at becoming the “anybody but Mulcair,” compromise candidate, it may be Nash. More likely though, observers say, is that Mulcair wins either on the first or second ballot. Cullen’s supporters are deemed likely to go to Mulcair as a second choice. Martin Singh’s supporters, we now know, have been asked to do likewise. (Keep in mind, much of this will have been decided before the convention March 23-24, since most of the party’s 125,000-plus registered members will have voted in advance.)

But let’s assume, for the sake of discussion, that the smart money is correct, and Mulcair wins. And let’s further assume he names Cullen, a fellow centrist and a popular British Columbia MP, as his deputy in English Canada, perhaps with a strong female Quebec MP — foreign affairs critic and former diplomat Helene Laverdiere has been mentioned — as Quebec deputy. What then?

Mulcair has taken great pains to avoid open comparisons with former British prime minister Tony Blair, who held power in the U.K. from 1997 to 2007, after jettisoning the most impossible of the British Labour Party’s socialist policies. But the parallels are clear. A couple of weeks ago, I asked Mulcair about the NDP’s reputation as a party that doesn’t understand kitchen-table economics. “To concede the point,” he said, “we’ve always been very conscious of the fact that a majority of Canadians share most of our goals and values. It’s been difficult in the past to convince them that we can provide good, competent, confident public administration.”

His solution, he said, would be to demonstrate while in Opposition that “we’re capable of running a G7 country.” Reading between the lines, in my judgment, that means he intends to pull a Blair.

Small wonder then, that there’s more than a whiff of fear, in Liberal ranks, at the prospect of a Mulcair victory. Should he transform the NDP into a mass-market party, as Blair did to New Labour, what remains of Liberal support could easily bleed away, permanently. In that event, a merger — say in 2014, after the smoke of the Liberals’ own leadership race has cleared — would be more akin to a takeover.

How would this benefit the Conservatives? Gerry Nicholls, a conservative consultant who worked alongside Harper at the National Citizens Coalition, holds that this PM would love nothing better than to do politics in a two-party system. That’s because, in a standup fight between a socially moderate party of the centre-right and a party of the centre-left, this PM believes Conservatives will win every time — because most Canadians, while socially moderate, are economic conservatives. The Liberal party, because of its chameleon-like ability to mould its ideology as needed, will always be a threat to the Conservatives. But a Liberal-Democratic Party, with the history of the NDP embedded in its DNA? Perhaps, not so much.

It’s an interesting theory and, I think, plausible, with this caveat: It only works if the Tories avoid becoming reviled and disrespected, by the time 2015 rolls around.

Postmedia News

Den Tandt's caveat, the Conservatives need to avoid becoming the rascals Canadians want to vote out of office in 2015, is important, but, bearing it in mind, I, too, think there is merit in Gerry Nicholls' theory. I believe that centre left and, especially, left of centre parties cannot helped but be dragged father and farther to the left (witness the Democrats in the USA) and so long as the Party leader can keep the Conservatives in the centre right/centre and avoid the right and far right areas, (s)he will retain a near stranglehold on power. Natural governing party anyone?

 

[Edward Campbell]

This report, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Ottawa Citizen, might have gone in the Budget 2012 thread but I think it -balancing the budget - will be a defining issues for the Tories in 2015; it provides some insight into who will decide on how to balance the budget and how they manage the decision making process:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Future+public+service+hands+nine+parliamentarians/6314885/story.html

Future of public service in hands of nine parliamentarians

By Jason Fekete, Postmedia News

March 16, 2012

OTTAWA — They're a small group of nine Conservative parliamentarians, mostly cabinet ministers, who carry enormous clout in shaping the future of the federal government and public service — and they also carry a big axe.

Led by Treasury Board president Tony Clement (chairman) and junior finance minister Ted Menzies (vice-chairman), the subcommittee on the strategic and operating review is the small panel heading the government's search for up to $8 billion in annual savings over the next few years.

Joining Clement and Menzies on the cost-cutting committee are a crew of MPs and a senator from a wide variety of portfolios and backgrounds, including: government Senate leader Marjory LeBreton, Defence Minister Peter MacKay, Human Resources Minister Diane Finley, Industry Minister Christian Paradis, Labour Minister Lisa Raitt, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver and Edmonton Tory MP Laurie Hawn.

For several months, the group of nine has gathered two or three nights a week — four to five hours at a time — for meetings through the dead of Ottawa winter to debate where to cut billions of dollars in spending and thousands of public-sector jobs.

Announced about a year ago, the committee and spending review were launched to help eliminate a $31-billion deficit, pay down federal debt and to "focus on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of government operations and programs to ensure value for taxpayer money," according to the 2011 budget.

After months of anticipation and hundreds of hours of meetings, the broad results of the spending review are to be released in the March 29 budget, although details on specific cuts are likely to be rolled out by individual departments in the weeks that follow.

Committee members have been hesitant to discuss much about their work or even how often they meet, leaving Clement to do the talking.

"This kind of review is not just about finding savings per se — although that is important — it is also a tool by which we can help to modernize government," Clement said about the review, in a speech last weekend to Conservatives at the Manning Centre conference in Ottawa.

"We have to ingrain this idea of efficient and constrained use of tax dollars on a day-to-day basis at every level — from the politician all the way down to the proverbial mail clerk, to every level of bureaucracy," Clement added.

The panel was initially tasked with finding $1 billion in cuts for the new fiscal year beginning in April, $2 billion for 2013-14 and $4 billion in annual savings for 2014-15 and beyond.

Nearly 70 government departments and agencies were asked to submit scenarios for a five per cent and 10 per cent cut to their budgets as part of an examination of about $80 billion in direct program spending.

The $4-billion savings figure was based on a five per cent cut to department budgets.

However, the Conservative government has indicated it will cut deeper and faster than originally promised, including possible cuts of 10 per cent or more from some departments and agencies to find $8 billion in annual savings.

Departments were asked to submit the different scenarios so the subcommittee could go through them like a buffet and have several options for finding savings.

All of the submissions were sent to the Treasury Board committee in October for review.

The panel then met two or three nights a week from late October to Christmas in a cabinet committee room inside Centre Block on Parliament Hill, reviewing the department submissions. Several meetings have also been held in 2012.

During the late fall and early winter, the committee held evening meetings with ministers for each department, who presented their submissions to the group of nine and fielded questions from panel members. Once the presenting ministers left the meeting, the committee would then discuss what options it liked and the ones it didn't.

BEGIN OPTIONAL END

Hawn, the lone non-cabinet minister on the committee, has acted as a caucus liaison, providing Tory backbenchers with general updates on the panel's activities and work.

The Conservative government is also paying Deloitte Consulting nearly $20 million — almost $90,000 a day — to advise the committee, cabinet and senior officials until the spring on how to find savings to balance the books in the coming years.

Moreover, 40 per cent of "at risk" bonus pay for senior government managers is based on how much they cut and contribute to helping the government find billions of dollars in annual savings.

A number of major federal departments are believed to be facing accelerated cuts, including National Defence, Public Works and Foreign Affairs.

Public-sector unions estimate that cutting up to $8 billion could eliminate tens of thousands of jobs in both the government and private sector, although the government has called some of those estimates "outrageous."

Gary Corbett, CEO of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, said the government's cost-cutting committee is forging ahead with plans to slash billions in spending and thousands of jobs without discussing them with public-sector unions or Canadians.

"The government is just hell-bent on cutting the public service without consulting anybody," said Corbett, whose group represents approximately 58,000 scientists and other professionals employed mostly at the federal level.

Clement, meanwhile, stressed the government's hunt for ongoing savings can't simply be a once-a-year "episodic thing" done through the budget, although he wouldn't say whether the cabinet committee he's leading on the spending review will continue after the budget.

"That's a very important question and I'm sure there will be an answer to it," Clement told reporters, with a grin.

jfekete@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/jasonfekete

© Copyright (c) Postmedia News

 

[Edward Campbell]

The attacks, à la those used with such success on Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff, are now aimed at Bob rae according to this article which is reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/liberals-vow-to-return-fire-after-tories-target-rae-with-attack-ad/article2374022/

Liberals vow to return fire after Tories target Rae with attack ad

GLORIA GALLOWAY

OTTAWA— Globe and Mail Update
Posted on Monday, March 19, 2012

The Conservatives have launched a televised attack ad against Bob Rae that’s similar in tone to the campaigns successfully waged against the Interim Liberal Leader’s predecessors.

Michael Ignatieff and Stéphane Dion chose not to respond in kind and, as a result, the ads proved effective in discrediting them as political leaders.

But this time the Liberals say they will fight back and will use the ad to both raise money and to appeal to voters who go to the polls Monday in a by-election in Jack Layton’s former riding of Toronto-Danforth.

“My colleagues at the party will be asking Canadians to contribute financially to our response. The scale of that response will depend on how generous Canadians will be in our appeal to fight back,” Rae spokesman Daniel Lauzon said in an e-mail.

“Of course,” he said, “the people of Toronto-Danforth will get the first chance to respond today – and tonight’s Conservative results will speak volumes of how these kinds of attacks are perceived by voters.”

Mr. Rae isn’t the permanent leader of the Liberal Party – there is still an “interim” in his title. The Liberals aren’t the Official Opposition – they are the third party in the House of Commons. And an election is more than three years away.

But that has not deterred the Conservatives. Their ad is now up on YouTube and will run on television stations in markets where the Liberals are competitive with the Tories starting Tuesday.

It features an announcer ripping into the Interim Liberal Leader’s economic record while he was NDP premier of Ontario in the 1990s. The announcer says Mr. Rae turned the province into a welfare state and asks: “If he couldn’t run a province, why does he think he can run Canada?”

A second ad released by the Conservatives, meanwhile, boasts about Prime Minister Stephen Harper's economic performance.

Mr. Lauzon said the Liberals will fight fire with fire.

“They want to talk economic record? Stephen Harper took a $13-billion surplus and turned it into the biggest deficit in Canadian history,” Mr. Lauzon said in an e-mail, referring to the $56-billion deficit Mr. Harper’s government racked up during the recent economic downturn.

Mr. Harper added $125-billion to the national debt, Mr. Lauzon said, and since he became Prime Minister, 270,000 more Canadians are out of work.

Mr. Rae was premier during a period of economic downturn and the province’s deficit was about $10-billion a year.

“I started subways, they destroyed them; I build social housing, they destroy it; I build people up, they tear them down,” Mr. Rae said Monday. “Plus the Blue Jays won the World Series twice when I was premier.”

When asked why the Tories would attack someone who is just interim leader of the third party, Conservative Party spokesman Fred DeLorey said Mr. Rae refuses to rule out a run at the full-time leadership and “everyone knows he wants to be prime minister.”

Conservatives believe Canadians have a right to know the record of someone who wants to be their leader, Mr. DeLorey added.

And other parties are running ads as well, he said. “The Liberal Party has billboards with Bob Rae on them, something that is unprecedented for an interim leader to do. And he’s changed the Liberal Party of Canada news releases so that they no longer refer to him as interim leader, but as leader.”

It's a pretty good ad; many Ontarians have not forgotten Premier Rae and those who remember do so without much affection.

It looks like the Tories have concluded that Mr. Rae is likely to be the leader of the Liberal Party ... something I have suggested, in the past, is a mistake, but as Boneparte said, "never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

 

[Fishbone Jones]

It does look good Edward. I see no real attack, like with Ignatieff. Just a simple telling of facts to aquaint those across Canada, not familiar with Boob Rae.

 

[GAP]

Given how McGuinty is screwing up Ontario, just the vision of his predecessor have control of the GOC should put Ontarians on the Conservative side.....

 

[Bass ackwards]

On the other hand, Ontarians reelected McGuinty...

 

[Fishbone Jones]

On the other hand, some Ontarians reelected McGuinty...

TFTFY

 

[GAP]

so true......sigh....

 

[dapaterson]

It looks like the Tories have concluded that Mr. Rae is likely to be the leader of the Liberal Party ... something I have suggested, in the past, is a mistake, but as Boneparte said, "never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

In which case, they are prematurely undermining him.  Far more effective to let the Natural Governing Party appoint him in another year or so, then begin the undermining.  If they make him appear weak now, they're risking an unknown factor successsor.  Better the evil you know, after all.

 

[Kalatzi]

It'll be interesting to see how this skirmish plays out.

Seems to be a sure win for the CPC, after all it has always worked in the past. Even me, oops. even I bought into their attack ads on Ignatieff.

To use a hockey analogy the CPC are playing like the NY Rangers and The LPC more like bantam.

So far with pr editable results.

To use another analogy, one can but hope that they get really really good with the sling.

 

[Edward Campbell]

In which case, they are prematurely undermining him.  Far more effective to let the Natural Governing Party appoint him in another year or so, then begin the undermining.  If they make him appear weak now, they're risking an unknown factor successsor.  Better the evil you know, after all.

I said, elsewhere:

I suspect that a contender like Dominic LeBlanc might make a spirited run this time, aiming to finish a strong second without running up too much debt, knowing that

1. Rae will prevail and will lead the party into the 2015 election;

2. Rae cannot bring the Liberals to power in 2015, but he might unseat the NDP for second place; and

3. By 2017 or so he (Rae) will be far too old and "worn" and it will be time for a young, photogenic, Francophone from outside Québec to lead the party and, maybe even, to win the keys to 24 Sussex Drive in 2019.

I think Rae is, already, past his prime; he is 64 now, he'll be 67 when we go to the polls in 2015, Harper will still be in his 50s. The Liberals have better choices - Dominic LeBlanc would be my choice if I was a Liberal: young, smart, telegenic, quick witted, Franco but not from Québec.

 

[Old Sweat]

And old Chretien loyalist Warren Kinsella sticks it to Bob Rae in this column from the Sun Papers. It is reproduced under the Fair Dealings provision of the Copyright Act.

Stick fork in Grits, they’re done 

By Warren Kinsella ,QMI Agency

First posted: Monday, March 19, 2012 08:00 PM EDT
 
Later on Tuesday, you will start seeing Conservative Party ads attacking “interim” Liberal Leader Bob Rae.

The ads are pretty good, as these things go. They cite unhelpful things about Rae’s record as the NDP premier of Ontario, and they end it with the obvious tagline: “He couldn’t run a province. He can’t run Canada.”

That’s the main criticism that can be made of Bob Rae, of course, and you’re going to be hearing a lot of it in the months ahead. Under his watch, Ontario became an economic basket case — unemployment and welfare rates way up, growth and investment way down.

The purpose of attack ads is to surface feelings voters already have about a politician. Rae, Canadians suspect, makes wildly spending drunken sailors look like paragons of fiscal probity.

The Con ads will remind voters about Rae’s record and voters will vote accordingly.

It worked with Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff, and it’ll work even better with Rae: He has a record in government that can be attacked. Heck, it deserves to be attacked.

Raelians, in full self-denial, will say they aren’t worried about the spots, of course. They’ll say the ads’ existence demonstrate that it is the Tories who are worried about Rae. Why else run them, they’ll ask.

Because, for starters, Rae has decided to break his promise — he’s after the permanent leadership post.

A few weeks ago, one of his Toronto loyalists summoned some former Michael Ignatieff staffers to a meeting. Rae walked in and said, “I’m running for leader.”

That’s not all. Rae and his apparatchiks are doing their utmost to ensure that no other Liberal gets a fair shot at running for leader.

After the Paul Martin debacle of 2003, you’d think Grits would know by now that coronations are a seriously bad idea. These guys don’t ever learn from history, and so they’re doomed to repeat it.

But the Raelians ask a fair question: Why isn’t Stephen Harper’s evil empire attacking the NDP, too?

Because they don’t have a leader yet, that’s why. In a few days, they will.

Darth Harper and his imperial guard will point their death star at the Dippers and fire away. It won’t be pretty.

Fine, say the Raelians. But why go after the third-place party? It doesn’t make any political sense, they’ll say.

Perhaps. It does, however, if you accept that wars are always easier to fight on one front, not two. It does if you accept that Stephen Harper is in the final phase of doing what he always coveted most: He wants to be remembered by history as the guy who wiped out the Liberal Party of Canada.

Bob Rae is going to help Harper do precisely that. His arrogance and hubris are so immense, he cannot accept — not even for a moment — that his appalling record in Ontario will destroy what little credibility the Liberal Party has left. It’ll slip beneath the waves of history, for good.

Without an arrangement with the NDP, and with Bob Rae as leader, the Liberals are heading towards gritterdamerung. The end times.

The ads that started Tuesday, therefore, aren’t original or even a surprise. They will, however, do what they are intended to do. Kill off the Liberal Party of Canada.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I don't often agree with the Good Grey Globe's Lawrence Martin, and I don't agree with all of his comments in those column, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, but it is on point:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/lawrence-martin/all-parties-have-a-stake-in-the-ndp-leadership-race/article2374012/

All parties have a stake in the NDP leadership race

LAWRENCE MARTIN

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Mar. 20, 2012

There are two politicians, Bob Rae and Thomas Mulcair, whom Conservatives do not wish to see leading the opposition parties.

It’s quite a compliment to the interim Liberal leader that, three years away from the next election, the Tories are already targeting Mr. Rae with a scornful attack ad. The just-released ad condemns the Bob Rae of no less than two decades ago when, as Ontario premier, he was with a different party.

Why go after him now? Because Team Harper would prefer anyone else as Liberal leader. By maligning Mr. Rae today, they can hurt him in national polls, sour his reputation among Ontario Liberals and seed doubts throughout the party about making him permanent leader.

As a political force, Mr. Rae and Mr. Mulcair have similarities. Both have their share of weaknesses, but both are of a political quality that Stephen Harper would rather not face. Both are seasoned, erudite, trenchantly articulate, and, with machine-gun thrusts, potent on the attack. They are the Commons’ two best debaters.

As with Bob Rae, it’s no surprise that the Harper gang has also targeted Terrible Tom. Earlier in the NDP leadership campaign, its operatives leaked a rumour that upon entering federal politics, he was prepared to join the Conservatives if they offered him a cabinet seat. That, of course, was designed to poison his credibility among Dipper members. Ed Broadbent’s attacks last week focused on the same theme – his not having true NDP blood.

We will find out the degree of effectiveness of these hits this weekend. The stakes in the NDP’s decision on leadership are tremendous, not just for the New Democrats but for Mr. Rae, Mr. Harper, the Bloc Québécois and the unity question.

After the Bloc’s humiliation in the last election, the party is already showing signs of springing back to life. It would dearly love to see Mr. Mulcair beaten. Should New Democrats reject their Quebec strongman for someone from outside the province, a Bloc resurgence is more than likely. While there were many factors in the stunning rise of the NDP in Quebec, no one, least of all Mr. Broadbent, should discount Mr. Mulcair’s pivotal role. He won the first Quebec seat for the party under Jack Layton and provided it the visibility and credibility among Quebec media that helped set the stage for the breakthrough.

The Liberals would dearly love to see Mr. Mulcair beaten as well. The Grits, who lack a base across the country, would then at least have a chance of gaining a bigger foothold in the province. They also would prefer a winner who is more cut from the NDP’s traditional left side and who therefore won’t crowd them for votes in the middle. Mr. Mulcair, who wants to broaden the NDP tent, is not that man.

The Conservatives don’t need Quebec to fashion another majority. The prairies and Ontario are a strong enough coalition. But in addition to not having such a fire-breathing antagonist as Terrible Tom across the floor, they would have a better chance of holding on to their few seats in Quebec and building on that number without him.

Like the Liberals, they also fear, as they should, an NDP that is more in keeping with Tony Blair’s former Labour Party than one that is favoured by Mr. Broadbent.

At stake this weekend is an altering of the country’s political dynamic. It’s about the old versus the new. Brian Topp, Peggy Nash and Paul Dewar represent the forces of tradition. A victory for these forces would likely see a maintenance of the old right, centre and left axis. It would see the sovereigntists better placed to regain the stature they’ve had for two decades.

A victory for the other side, for forces as represented by Mr. Mulcair, by Martin Singh, and by wild card Nathan Cullen, who could provide the big surprise of the weekend, offer the likelihood of a departure from that paradigm.

I agree with Martin in so far as Mulcair is concerned; I think he's right: both the Conservatives and the Liberals are afraid of Mulcair because he is an effective political performer. The Liberals have an additional reason to fear him: he threatens to push farther into the centre-left and even centre of the Canadian political spectrum to challenge the Liberals directly on their "home field."

I'm not so sure the Conservatives fear Rae as much; he is a good parliamentary (TV) performer but I doubt the Conservatives see a Rae led Liberal Party as a realistic challenge in 2015. Why attack him, then?  In my view the Tories just want to further discomfit the Liberals; the Conservative goal is a long, bloody war between the Liberals and the Dippers ... a war for second place.

 

[Old Sweat]

And for something completely different, here is a piece by Stephen Marche in Toronto Life on Jack Layton's effect on Canada, as opposed to the New Democratic Party. It is reproduced under the Fair Dealings provision of the Copyright Act. I admit that this is the first I have heard of the author, and hope it also is the last.

Stephen Marche: an unflinching assessment of Jack Layton’s dubious legacy


The next NDP leader will be obligated to adopt Jack Layton’s Toronto-born brand of socialism—childlike, sentimental, and entirely ineffective

By Stephen Marche

Jack Layton, posthumously, has more influence over Canadian left-wing politics than any living person. When Nycole Turmel, the NDP’s interim chief, announced the date for the party’s March leadership convention, she said, “We will not replace Jack Layton,” the implication being that Layton is irreplaceable. And yet, the main leadership candidates appear to be trying their hardest to prove they can replace the irreplaceable. Brian Topp, the quintessential backroom operator, recently gained prominence as a member of Layton’s inner circle and the author of How We Almost Gave the Tories the Boot: The Inside Story Behind the Coalition. (Note to file: books with the word “almost” in the title are almost never worth reading.) Thomas Mulcair, the MP from Outremont, promotes himself as the creator of Layton’s strategy for taking Quebec, and therefore the most likely candidate to maintain that legacy-defining victory. Peggy Nash, MP for Parkdale–High Park, is the candidate most similar to Layton personally: an urbanist, supported by artists like Sarah Polley, and inspiring in a safe sort of way. (She wants to make Canada a global leader in innovation. Who doesn’t?)

No matter whom the NDP delegates select to replace Layton, his memory will shape the aims of the party for the foreseeable future. So the time has come to evaluate his legacy clearly, unflinchingly. The popular narrative—certainly the party’s narrative—of his time in federal politics casts the story as an unadulterated victory. And in one sense it was: when Layton took over, the NDP held 14 seats in the House of Commons. Within a year, he had nearly doubled the party’s share of the popular vote. Seven years of steady rises culminated with the NDP winning 103 seats in 2011. The expansion of the party under Layton was much larger than anyone could have imagined.

And yet despite the marked improvement in the numbers, the left has never been in a worse state by the simplest and most meaningful gauge there is: its effect on the lives of Canadians. In hindsight, the most consequential decision in Jack Layton’s career, perhaps the most important political decision of the past decade, was when he chose to support a Conservative non-confidence motion and end Paul Martin’s minority government in 2005. It was the moment when Layton and the NDP held the most influence over the national agenda, and the Liberals at that time were well on their way to instituting affordable national daycare. That piece of legislation would have done more to help lower- and middle-class families, more to help women and the poor, more to strengthen the social fabric of the country than any other policy. The business case was outstanding: research from a host of economists and community development experts has shown that public investment in early childhood affects subsequent lifetimes of earning ability. Universal daycare would have increased national prosperity in the broadest sense of the term.

Layton, simply by letting things happen, could have helped deliver the policy that offered the single best reason to vote for a socialist government. But instead of taking a solid gain for working families, Layton concentrated on developing the NDP around his own personality. The result? Rather than functional, technocratic socialism, today we have Raffi socialism. Raffi, the ’70s children’s folk musician who fuelled a generation’s road trips with Banana­phone sing­alongs, has recently set some of the lines from Layton’s final letter to Canadians to music—which is exactly what it’s good for. “Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear” were Layton’s parting words, words that sound good but mean exactly nothing, and do nothing to provide the young children of exhausted working families with any benefit from the state.

Raffi socialism is not wrong; it’s much worse. It’s content in its impotence. Its constituent parts are feel-good, conventional, childlike ideas about how the world should work, substituting bike lanes or an empty critique of capitalism for practical policies that would actually improve the lives of Canadians. Today’s left-wing leaders, following in Layton’s footsteps, like to whine—about whether the head of the CRTC is bilingual or not, or about why we don’t have more bike lanes, or about the need for a hockey concussion registry.

Raffi socialism is downtown Toronto’s cheerfully useless contribution to national politics, born from the dysfunction of city hall. To become a councillor or mayor, you have to win a lot of votes, and then when you do, you’re only one decision maker out of 45. The OMB and the province make all the substantial decisions anyway, so it’s quite easy to praise public transit and parks without ever having to go to the trouble of finding the money to build them, and it’s equally easy to shout your respect for taxpayers and commuters while doing nothing to alleviate congestion. Rhetoric, alongside basic constituency business, is the job; the innovators of city hall invent new modes of political symbolism. As a councillor, Layton mastered Raffi socialism. Ford is inventing gridiron conservatism.

The Conservatives loved Layton; they loved his tireless impotence. No doubt Harper would like Layton’s legacy to live forever. The Conservative prime minister, elected with barely 40 per cent of the vote, faces no real Opposition caucus. Instead of national child care, we have the Universal Child Care Benefit, a hundred bucks a month for each kid, which must be a joke or an insult; either way, it manages to be hilariously infuriating every month.

The vague feel-goodery of the left has allowed the Conservative government to carry on unsupervised, free to indulge their love of all things clandestine. They used that freedom to hide the G8 funding details, to launch a misinformation campaign against the Liberal MP Irwin Cotler in which they defended outright lying as an act of freedom of speech, and to establish the ominous, contentless “Office of Religious Freedom.” Against the advice of every business and social welfare group in the country, they abandoned the mandatory long-form census—so we won’t be able to know the results of their policies. The Conservatives of the moment are the party of the closet.

After the NDP convention, there will at least be a leader to rattle the Conservatives’ closet. But 10 years ago, the NDP, even with fewer seats in the House of Commons, had more influence over national policy because it preserved a practical, progressive approach in Canadian politics—and this was at a time when the left in other English-speaking countries simply imploded or ran as fast as possible to the centre-right. While countries that espoused a rampant unchecked capitalism (the U.S.) or an unaffordable socialism (Greece) lie in social and financial ruins, the Canadian model, with its three-party system, is triumphant. The terrible irony of our situation is that, exactly at the moment when our moderate, polite politics has been justified before the world, we are abandoning moderation in favour of empty ideological rhetoric from the left and secrecy from the right.

No doubt the video tributes to Layton are already locked and loaded for the Toronto convention. Hopefully, this last burst of sentiment will assuage the needs of the kitsch left, and the NDP can stop remembering Jack Layton and start remembering whom it’s supposed to serve.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Except that he's right when he says:

"Raffi socialism is downtown Toronto’s cheerfully useless contribution to national politics, born from the dysfunction of city hall. To become a councillor or mayor, you have to win a lot of votes, and then when you do, you’re only one decision maker out of 45. The OMB and the province make all the substantial decisions anyway, so it’s quite easy to praise public transit and parks without ever having to go to the trouble of finding the money to build them, and it’s equally easy to shout your respect for taxpayers and commuters while doing nothing to alleviate congestion. Rhetoric, alongside basic constituency business, is the job; the innovators of city hall invent new modes of political symbolism. As a councillor, Layton mastered Raffi socialism. Ford is inventing gridiron conservatism.

The Conservatives loved Layton; they loved his tireless impotence. No doubt Harper would like Layton’s legacy to live forever. The Conservative prime minister, elected with barely 40 per cent of the vote, faces no real Opposition caucus. Instead of national child care, we have the Universal Child Care Benefit, a hundred bucks a month for each kid, which must be a joke or an insult; either way, it manages to be hilariously infuriating every month."

You have to give him that.

 

[Old Sweat]

I do agree with that part. My difficulty is that the author seems to be a minor leftard commentator with an advanced degree and minimal accomplishments.

 

[Edward Campbell]

It's interesting that the old party line hard left is so distressed. The left wing of the NDP remain died in the wool, tooth and claw socialists - nationalize the banks and so on; they are not, as Mackenzie-King put it, "Liberals in a hurry." They will be chewing the carpets if Mulcair become NDP leader ~ he's not a true believer.

 

[Brad Sallows]

The NDP's moment in the sunshine is chiefly the LPC's achievement (and partly also the BQ's), not Layton's.  The NDP has a bunch of seats because the LPC is in disarray.  Once the Liberals come to their senses, unite behind a leader, and produce a real platform instead of grasping at the ephemeral "natural governing party" straws thinking the CPC will blow away like dust in the wind, the NDP will be restored to its customary rump status.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

The NDP's moment in the sunshine is chiefly the LPC's achievement (and partly also the BQ's), not Layton's.  The NDP has a bunch of seats because the LPC is in disarray. If Once the Liberals come to their senses, unite behind a leader, and produce a real platform instead of grasping at the ephemeral "natural governing party" straws thinking the CPC will blow away like dust in the wind, the NDP will be restored to its customary rump status.

TFTFY