Dear Liberal Party, wtf happened? (Part 2 of 2)

Continued from Part I

After our October 2008 election loss, Dion announced that he'd stay on as Interim Leader until the next Liberal leadership convention.  This (to me) meant that he'd be taking a step back and handing the party over to the next guy.

In the November 2008 fiscal update, Flaherty (inexplicably) included the subsidy removal provision amongst other proposals.  This led to Dion, Layton, and Duceppe teaming up to form the coalition.  This also led to me losing any respect I had left for Dion.  I'm familiar with all of the arguments we like to make when our party defends the coalition.  They're all bunk, and I think most of us know that even if we don't admit it.

The coalition claimed that this was more about about the lack of stimulus and the plan to ban public service strikes, and less about the elimination of political party subsidies.  I didn't believe them.  I think it was only about the subsidies (which I'll write about later) and the rest was just fluff.

The coalition was to be between the NDP and the Liberals, with the BQ providing votes only on confidence motions.  There was a lot of hemming and hawing about how the separatists weren't really in the coalition.  For people (like myself) who despise the Bloc, this wasn't good enough.  Even if we were to put that issue aside, why were we even teaming up with the NDP?  Memo to party leaders - A lot of grits don't like the NDP, and some of us even hate them.

I know the coalition was legal, but I didn't consider it to be legitimate.  There's a big difference.  Canadians had just unequivocally rejected Stephane Dion, but here he was trying to install himself as Prime Minister.  The pundits that ragged on the electorate for not understanding our parliamentary system were focusing their attention in the wrong place.  A lot of people that understood that this was legal still didn't support it.

For all Liberals who claimed to be taking a principled stand for parliamentary democracy, let's be honest.  If the Liberals had won more seats than the Conservatives in that election and if Harper had tried pulling the same shenanigans, you would be up in arms protesting the hijacking of democracy.  I know it, you know it, and all of Canada knows it.  Stop pretending this was kosher, it wasn't fooling anyone then and it isn't fooling anyone now.

So we've gone from Chretien's 3 consecutive majorities to Mr. Dithers' minority to the Sponsorship Scandal (our loss of power) to the Green Sh*t (our trouncing) to the Coalition (a shameful moment) to Election Iggy (worrysome) to Calm Iggy (less worrysome).   Iggy's recent shift away from 'Election Now!' mode is reassuring.  Here's hoping he lasts long enough to build the party back into fighting shape.

Dear Liberal Party, wtf happened? (Part 1 of 2)

My family immigrated to Canada in the summer of 1995 when I was 12.  We have been Liberal party stalwarts ever since (with one notable exception, which I'll get to).  The 2000 federal election was the first that we were eligible to vote in (after having obtained citizenship).  My parents are big fans of Chretien, and they proudly voted Liberal.  We didn't follow politics too closely, so we were largely unaware of the shenanigans that led to Chretien's retirement and Martin's prime ministership.  We were lukewarm on Martin, but the Liberal party got our vote once again in 2004.

After the Gomery report's release, we were quite disgusted, so we voted NDP in 2006 (the Conservatives weren't even considered).  I was young, stupid, and a university student; so I became an NDP member.  I even campaigned for the NDP candidate in my riding (Etobicoke-Lakeshore, a Liberal stronghold and is currently Iggy's riding).

It didn't take long for me to become disappointed with Layton and disillusioned with the NDP.  My political philosophy was slowly edging right-wards.  Martin was turfed, and a Liberal Party leadership convention was to be held.  Filled with excitement, I returned to the party and became a member. 

The candidates were all interesting, but my support would go to either Ignatieff or Dion.  Iggy was my favourite until his support for Harper's Quebecois resolution.  Although Dion also supported this resolution, I took another look at him.  His excellent credentials on the unity file and his decent performance as environment minister were noteworthy.  I decided on Dion, but didn't think he had a snowball's chance in hell.

The convention was held almost two years ago (I remember watching the results during my birthday party).  Dion's surprise victory seemed like a great birthday present (in hindsight, I couldn't have been more wrong).  I was hoping for a policy convention that would lead to a new blueprint for the Liberal party (a la Red Book, perhaps?).  This never happened.

I first stated worrying when he decided not to run a Liberal candidate in Peter Mackay's riding to help Elizabeth May.  This would be (for me) the first in a series of wtf moments.  Not only did we not have a policy convention, we stayed in election mode for the entirety of Dion's tenure.  Watching the inflated rhetoric about the Conservatives destroying the country being followed by cowardly climbdowns during confidence votes was tiresome.  The final blow (or so I thought) came when Dion unveiled the Green Shift as the central platform of the Liberal campaign.  The economy was already shaky, and this was not going to go down well with the electorate.  For once, I was right.  The election was called and we were trounced.  I seriously thought about not voting, but I still did since every Liberal vote would count in my new riding (Trinity-Spadina, where Olivia Chow was re-elected). 

Our party dropped to its lowest vote total ever, and the Conservatives were handily re-elected.  I was demoralized.  Dion is a good guy and was a great minister, but he turned out to be a terrible leader.  We need to be honest about this and we need to stop making excuses for his (and our party's) performance.  It seemed he'd resign soon, and I had hopes that a new leader (probably Iggy) would make things better.  Then the coalition happened, which was the biggest wtf moment of all.

To be continued in part 2.