Cold Water on Global Warming
How Canada's Liberals Have Run Out of Ideas
by Pieter Dorsman
It was a rainy New Year's day when I ambled onto our local beach for the traditional dip and dash'. Usually the event is hosted by the mayor, but this time there was our Member of Parliament, Liberal Blair Wilson. Of course, he was surrounded by a group of curious people and I could not resist mixing into the circle and get a feel for the discussion that was consuming them.
Wilson was confident in reporting to the group around him that the days of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s conservative minority government were pretty much numbered. Eighteen months, and that’s about it affirmed Wilson. All the bystanders reacted in the affirmative: Right, eighteen months.
A bit too confident to my liking as the latest polls were showing that Canadians were (a) not very interested to head back to the polls anytime soon and (b) were giving the conservatives still the edge over the liberals. Sure, Wilson and friends have a good six months before the year-and-a-half mark is reached, so I asked him what it was that the Liberal Party of Canada planned to campaign on in order to ensure their return to the halls of power.
To clarify my point I underlined that the last campaign was about the corruption of Wilson’s own party so what could we possibly expect this time?
Childcare was the confident answer from Wilson and the group started concurring again.
My rebuttal was swift, Many people with young children are quite happy with the monthly Harper check, pointing to the current government’s attempt to let parents figure out how to care for their kids rather than create another state-owned behemoth. Childcare an issue? Sure, but it will not swing an election.
Wilson was not easily taken. Afghanistan he said stridently, We’ll see the same here as in the US last November, people are just tired of the war.
It was not the place and time to take Wilson through the various reasons as to why the Democrats recaptured congress, but suffice it say that according to CNN’s exit polls they were in order of importance: corruption, terrorism, the economy with the Iraq War only number four on the list. Still, the man representing the party that instinctively rejects anything American wasted no time to put Canadian voters in the same box as their southern neighbors, conveniently forgetting that it was his own Liberal party that sent troops to Afghanistan in the first place. Barring any disaster, this is not something the Liberals would really want to campaign on.
Wilson must have sensed he was on feeble ground and quickly went on to the next issue that would move the Canadian vote: aboriginal or Indian issues.
I don’t think I needed to underline the folly of that particular item as the bystanders stopped nodding and now came to the rescue of our struggling parliamentarian: The environment!
Wilson was relieved to get this lifeline, how could he possibly have forgotten the flavor of the month and the pet issue of his party’s new leader, Stephane Dion? So, he started to celebrate the greening of his own party and to be frank, it has indeed become an issue for many; the marketing genius behind An Inconvenient Truth knows no boundaries.
Walking away and preparing for the dip in the ice cold Pacific Ocean I couldn’t help but think that none of the issues that the Liberal party has prioritized are all that compelling. Harper has enacted an accountability act that will hopefully address corruption for generations to come, he is carefully but steadily forking cash back into Canadian households and his clear stance on foreign affairs is admired, prompting one of Wilson’s own liberal colleagues, an immigrant Muslim no less, to join the conservative ranks. Afghanistan is not moving the nation and too hot to handle for the Liberals, childcare and aboriginal affairs are unlikely to get anyone seriously excited and Harper has in the meantime moved adroitly to regain control of the environmental portfolio.
The Liberals have routinely assumed power in Canada without ever offering a vision of the future and most of the times the electorate let them get away with this without much ado. That has bred the sort of complacency that forms the basis of the party’s lack of a strategy and its inability to articulate clear and compelling issues.
The result is simply hoping that the conservatives will somehow trip and that Canadians will wake up realizing they had been foolish to hand Harper a mandate. This attitude is not a strictly Canadian phenomenon; it is an ideological void that the liberal-left has run into in many other countries: it has lost the debate over the economy and fiscal policies, it has failed to grasp security and terror and multiculturalism is just too toxic to touch these days. So, on the wings of Al Gore it has embraced global warming as one of the last big issues alive.
As of today Stephen Harper has shown unusual strength in offering up new ideas and against all expectations, has mastered the political part of the game. Only the faint hope of an unforeseen disaster can bring the liberals back to power, hardly something to build your electoral strategy on. Harper will — as Canada stands today– last far longer than anyone, friend or foe, had expected.
To be frank, I was out of the freezing water in less than ten seconds, and a gracious Wilson, ever the politician, walked up to me and shook my hand. And in that he revealed what his party has always been very good at: politics, not ideas.
Pieter Dorsman has a guide to Dutch Politics @ DUTCH POLITICS 101. He studied law and obtained a Master’s degree in Economic and Social History at the Erasmus Universiteit in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. After graduation he joined Barclays Bank PLC in London where he worked in the corporate banking and risk management divisions of the bank. Pieter is the force behind Peaktalk, a weblog about international politics and economics. Some of Peaktalk’s posts have appeared in the National Post, one of Canada’s largest newspapers and more recently Pieter’s columns have appeared on PJ Media. Pieter has also appeared on a number of radio shows in the US and Canada to talk about European news and developments..
Actually, I have to disagree with you on the likely outcome. I believe the Liberals probably will get back into power in the next election, and here’s why:
Most Canadians are fairly center-left in their political views, and fit more naturally with the Liberal vision for the country than with the Conservative vision.
Harper and his Conservatives didn’t get into power last time because people had overwhelmingly moved rightward in their thinking; they got into power because people were overwhelmingly fed up with the corruption and scandal of the Liberals. Simply put, they thought it was time for the Libs to take a break and for someone else to have a turn.
Well, that someone else is having his turn now. He isn’t completely botching it, but from where I live around here, he might as well be. He’s lost almost all of the popularity and support he had for a short-lived period around here (especially here in Quebec), and Dion’s Liberals are perceived as being distant enough from the Chretien era to emerge, if not sqeaky clean, at least able to make their case for another chance.
The next election *will* be about the environment, and it’s likely a winning issue for the first time in history. Already, Dion is drawing lines in the sand, promising to reverse the GST cuts by the Tories in order to pour more funds into the environment. 5 years ago or even 6 months ago, this might have been political suicide, but in today’s climate (pun intended), it just may fly.
Whatever the case, I just hope the next election is about issues, not character attacks. It would be nice, for a change.
Recognizing segacs position, nonetheless I disagree. For all of their posturing on the environment, the Liberals accomplished nothing in the years they spent in power. It isn’t a strength for them, but a weakness. Also, I seem to hear the gathering storm of Corruptiongate building in the distance, which should be quite visible by budget time. Finally, Canadians seem to be enamoured by the “Big Idea”, and only Harper seems to have registered that, by affirming Canada’s stance as a player. I think he has a full term coming up.
One thing you might add to the article is that the global warming issue is intended as a way to resurrect the left’s economic preferences, i.e., central planning and lots of taxes. It is not only presented by the left as without controversy (it is considered unethical to present information that contradicts the global warming storyline), but also as only solved by big government in do-gooder role (i.e., the Wilson types want Canada to get out of Afghanistan but spend that money on playing global warming police/nanny).
It is always assumed by Liberals that liberalism is a lifelong affliction. I do not believe that people are so fixed in their ideology or political views that they cannot eventually change their minds. In fact ,most of the people I know share a similar journey from early liberalism to eventual conservatism. Admittedly this is credited to natural aging and the accumulation of experience in matters of the world.
I choose to believe a lot of it is the accelerated disclosure of the flawed premises found in liberal theory. People quickly ascertain that no nation has enough wealth to make everyone wealthy.If everyone is at leisure. who will do the labor ? If we take from the rich and give it to the poor, did the rich deserve it and did the poor earn it ?
Why is a committee of politicians more justified in deciding our lives than we are?
Thus , people see from simple logic that liberal remedies are nothing more than fairytales.
In the age of light speed communications this process shapes our opinions more quickly than before and liberalism is moving toward the life span of a lacewing nymph.
Example; Last week in the span of 10 minutes ,roughly, I read the following stories.
Sen. T. Kennedy D- Mass. to introduce a bill this session for the establishment of Universal Health Care for all residents.
The British National Health Service announced this week that attempts to resolve the disparity between revenues and cost has failed again, and warned that Parliment has only a year or less to cure this chronic problem or the NHS will be bankrupt.
As I said , the lifespan of a …….
It just shows how shallow and hollow Liberals are.
Segacs wrote:
“He isn’t completely botching it, but from where I live around here, he might as well be.”
Actually, he isn’t “botching it” at all. Harper is delivering competent steady leadership for the first time in years. Just like the the citizens of most western democracies, Canadians crave above all “peace, order, and good government.” Harper’s Conservatives are delivering. For the first time in years I can say that I’m proud to be a Canadian.
Didn’t one of these leaders secretly die?
One election turning aspect Mr. Dorsman missed in his article is the effect that the media has on the electorate.
In Canada we do not have a Fox News, Rush Limabuagh or any real voice on the right in the media to offset the CBC, CTV, Global, The Globe and Mail etc.
This election will be fought on environment, and won or lost on that file, largely because the media will put it front and center non stop and will frame the debate around Liberal talking points.
It won’t matter that the Liberals will be taking a grossly hypocritical stance given their own complete failure on the environment, the media will give them a bye on the issues.
This strategy has been employed in all previous elections in Canada in recent memory.
2007 environment?
2006 – Canadians do not want an election
2004 – Harper is scary, gay marriage
2000 racism, gay marriage
1997 oppostition racist
All of the above were Liberal talking points.
Notice that we are facing our third election in three years and the burning question of last election “do Canadians want an election” has not passed anyone in the media’s lips.
Considering the story is not about climate change, it is especially charming to see it on my web site.