Frankly, people opposed to the Conservatives just can't seem to accept that they lost an election.  The reactions range from wishful thinking to the deranged.  The thing that links them together is the notion that the Conservatives have to be removed from power, now, immediately, before they destroy everything.

Lloyd Axworthy starts off his op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen with a cliche, and that is never a good sign.  It suggests that the rest of the essay is going to offer nothing original, or else that gem would have been used to lead off the piece.

Instead we get that old canard about how the majority of Canadians did not vote for the Conservatives:

More than 60 per cent of those who cast ballots in the last election did not support the Harper government. If you count in all those who did not participate out of choice or indifference then you likely have a much larger cohort of Canadians who are not in favour of the agenda espoused by this government.

Yes, but an even larger percentage voted against the Liberals.  Looking at the numbers, the vote for NDP barely registered, and the Green Party share of the ballots cast was mathematically insignificant.  The Bloc Quebecois?  Only in Quebec.

But somehow that never seems to be noted by the majority-voted-against-Harper club, of which Lloyd Axworthy seems to be a card-carrying member.

Why is that?  Because when faced with the Conservatives in power, some people become so unhinged that they imagine that the Liberals, the NDP, the Green Party, and yes, even the Bloc Quebecois, are all just variations on a theme:

First, the opposition parties must begin immediately to have direct conversations about the forthcoming parliamentary session....This de facto parliamentary alliance, while troublesome for partisans, is a must and is clearly mandated by their electors who were asked to vote Liberal, New Democrat, Green or Bloc to stop Mr. Harper.

Stopping Harper.  Not defeating Stephen Harper at the next election.  Stopping him.  Now.

The theme is that the votes that went to the Liberals or the NDP or the Bloc or the Green Party weren't awarded by voters who support free trade (the Liberals) or those that don't (the NDP) or those who want Quebec sovereignty (the Bloc) or those who are environmentalists first and foremost (the Green Party), but by some imaginary notion that the votes went to these parties primarily to Stop Harper.

Not only is this the way Lloyd Axworthy chooses to interpret the impetus behind these votes.  He says that this is the mandate clearly delivered by these voters.  Unfortunately, this clear mandate was splintered between these parties.  He's just repairing this clear mandate.

Clearly mandated?  Well, let's be clear.  Stephane Dion did ask voters to vote for the Liberal Party to stop the Conservatives.  Jack Layton did ask voters to vote for the NDP to stop the Conservatives. Gilles Duceppe did ask voters to vote for the Bloc Quebecois to stop the Conservatives.

But if it was so important to beat the Conservatives, why didn't two of the leaders throw their voters to the third?  I mean, if these parties existed for the sole purpose of stopping Harper, it wouldn't matter which got elected.  If it was so clear that the votes that they were getting were not in support of their policies, but just an attempt by confused voters to deliver a mandate to stop the Conservatives, then pooling their votes together ahead of election day would have made sense.

Heck, that's exactly what Elizabeth May did, asking on three different occasions that Green Party supporters to vote for someone else.  Net effect?  No Green Party seats and a strengthened Conservative minority.

The other party leaders didn't go that route.  Jack Layton believes every vote he got was in support of the NDP platform, and not merely parked with the NDP as a convenient spot to put the anti-Harper vote.  The same goes for the Stephane Dion and for Gilles Duceppe.  Lloyd Axworthy is asking these party leaders to repudiate their platforms, and indeed, their own parties, and imagine that all the votes earned were purely protest votes against the Conservatives (his imagined "clear mandate" . 

I guess we could throw in the Green Party votes too, if they joined in, though their contribution to the seat count in parliament would be, well, nothing.

Does Lloyd Axworthy think this is just about voting for or against this bill or that?  If so, then this will happen anyway, and it always does in parliament, especially in a minority parliament.  What a waste of ink if that's all this is about.

No, he's talking about something long term:

It is the mirror image of the politics of the 1990s when the Reform-PC split gave Liberals a built-in advantage. This is compounded by the shifts going on in the diverse demographics of the country and the advancement of a new generation that does not have the same political loyalties of old. So, as uncomfortable as it may be, there will have to be realignments, along with a serious look at electoral reform.

Google as I might, I can't seem to find any references to Lloyd Axworthy demanding that Canada's right merge in order to give his Liberal Party serious electoral opposition, or that the ruling Liberals suggest a different voting system to give the Progressive Conservatives or the Reform Party a leg up in seat count.

But Lloyd Axworthy seems to think that there is a serious likelihood that the Liberal Party, and the NDP, and the Bloc Quebecois, can actually merge.  If Lloyd Axworthy thinks the NDP and Liberals ought to merge based on some significant overlap in philosophy and platform, and no deeply held positions or philosophies in the two parties would stand in the way, fine.  I'd like to see a serious deconstruction of their platforms and philosophies to show that a merger would actually work.  Really impress me by adding columns for the Bloc Quebecois and the Green Party, and show that there is nothing holding back full consolidation of what I think is inaccurately labeled "The Left".

Inaccurate because it is only Liberals like Lloyd Axworthy that talk about mergers. Others like me realize that the Liberals aren't on the Left, or not by much.  We recognize that it would be much easier to remove the Liberal Party altogether, and have right-of-centre Liberals drift to the Conservatives, and left-of-centre Liberals join the NDP.

Really, that's far more likely to work than trying to merge the Liberals and the NDP.  Let's not even imagine trying to shoehorn the Bloc and the Green Party into that.

When Lloyd Axworthy brings up mergers with the Liberal Party, smart people think dissolution of the Liberal Party.  You would think Lloyd Axworthy would do well to be quiet and just work on fixing the Liberal Party, assuming it can be repaired.  But instead, Lloyd Axworthy opens this can of worms.

What is it that inspires people like Lloyd Axworthy into these wild flights of fancy?  It comes back to this notion that Stephen Harper has to be stopped.

There seems to be a feeling on the left that something terrible has happened, or is going to happen.  It makes people like Lloyd Axworthy say silly things.  He's not the only one.

Consider Progressives for Dion.  This group of earnest, well-meaning women seem to think a coup is in order, and that Stephane Dion needs to be the Liberal leader for it to work:

We the people are asking the establishment to keep Dion on as leader. He was barely supported by the power brokers and was left to fend for himself against all odds. If Dion is ousted the party will lose its grassroots support and because of lack of funding it will wither away. Harper is a crook and we cannot defeat him in the conventional way.

To replace Stephen Harper using conventional means, we hold an election and then the parties duke it out.  These progressives do not explain what unconventional means will be necessary to replace the Conservatives, and why an election wouldn't work.  Really, though, the word conventional is nearly analogous to legal.  When I read about people considering unconventional methods, well, I worry.  There aren't too many unconventional methods that are also legal.

And in any case, these progressives are calling Stephen Harper a criminal (though they don't mention what crime, other than to call him a "crook" .  What unconventional methods wouldn't be justified to eject a criminal from office?

They remain tantalizingly silent on that point.

But at the Stop Stephen Harper blog, a more detailed plan is laid out, based on a letter writing campaign to the Governor General.  If the Governor General doesn't take action to do what the electorate did not do and stop Stephen Harper, there will be fighting in the streets:

Canadians have voted not to give the Conservative Party an overall majority in this election. The result clearly shows that an overwhelming majority of the voting public do not support the Conservative Party, and therefore do not wish to see Stephen Harper continue as prime minister of Canada.

Mr. Harper may petition you to be allowed to continue as prime minister with a parliamentary minority. I beg you not to grant his request immediately. Instead, I respectfully request that you stay your official permission until the four opposition parties, or at least those whose candidates have been elected to sit as members of the 40th parliament of Canada, are given time to try to form a coalition government.

I believe that a coalition government holding a majority in parliament would be in the best interests of Canada at this time. To allow Mr. Harper to continue as prime minister would have many damaging consequences that could undermine the peaceful order and good government of this country.

A minority Conservative government would expose Canada to policies that the majority of Canadians clearly do not want. They could diminish Canadian sovereignty by integration into a continental union with the United States, and further undermine the supportive social programs and civil liberties that Canadians citizens have come to enjoy.

Another minority government would frustrate those Canadians who have rejected Mr. Harper’s platform and past policies, possibly leading to civil unrest.

Civil unrest?  Is he serious?  The author, Stuart Hertzog, is a failed NDP and Green Party candidate in British Columbia.  I haven't heard of riots out west, where the Conservatives did very well indeed.  The Conservatives increased their seat count by five (holding 22 of 36 seats), took seats from both the NDP and the Liberals, and came close in several other seats.  That was on the strength of a 45% share of the popular vote.

Perhaps Stuart Hertzog thinks the civil unrest will start elsewhere and spread to British Columbia.  Perhaps he's hoping it will.

Perhaps that what the Progressives for Dion mean by unconventional methods.  Demonstrations.  Or worse.

Who knows?

The path of least resistance for left-of-centre Canadians is consolidation, not union.  We'll all watch carefully as the Liberal Party attempts to revive itself.  If it fails, it will splinter and disappear, and the NDP and the Conservatives will both benefit.  It's a realistic prediction.  Why?  Because I don't predicate my predictions on the premise that the Conservatives have to be forever frozen out of power, at any cost, using any plan no matter how bizarre.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 01:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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