Interim federal Liberal leader Bob Rae has a simple tongue-in-cheek solution on how to save the Canadian Wheat Board single desk from Conservative plans to dismantle it.
Just rename it The Royal Canadian Wheat Board and the Conservatives will feel duty bound to protect it, he said in a speech to the remnants of the Liberal caucus gathered in Ottawa Aug. 29 to begin three days of soul-searching over the disastrous May 2 election result.
Rae was poking fun at the Conservative decision to reinsert “royal” into the official name of the Canadian air force and navy more than 40 years after the word was dropped by a previous Liberal government.
“Just an idea I thought I’d throw out,” he laughed.
But jokes aside, Rae’s advice to Liberals was not to “over-read” the May 2 election when the party was handed an historic defeat.
True, with less than 20 percent of the vote, just 34 MPs and third party status, it was the worst Liberal electoral showing since 1867 — a political tsunami for a party until recently considered the “natural governing party.”
But Rae, one-time one-term NDP premier of Ontario, began with a bold assertion. By 2015, the Liberals can be government again after the next election.
It will come from reforming the party, concentrating on proposing economic solutions that would create jobs and by hounding the majority Conservative government at every turn.
“We are going to fight this government every step of the way,” he said to applauding MPs, defeated candidates and party staff. “That’s what we’re going to do.”
The interim leader, appointed after former leader Michael Ignatieff lost his own seat in the election, said it would be a mistake to see the May 2 result as a final repudiation of the Liberal brand.
Instead, he said the party did not connect with voters. However, his summer travels convinced him Canadians want the Liberals to get their act together, rebuild and present a future alternative.
Rae said his own experience is proof that third place parties can become government. In 1990, he led the third place New Democrats to government in Ontario.
However, he didn’t dwell on the fact that after a disastrous five years, they were thrown out by voters and have languished in third place ever since.
Rae insisted Canadians want a party that will focus on job creation and not just tax cuts and smaller government that he said is the Conservative fixation.
“No one left behind — that will be our motto,” he said.
In the 2011 election, part of the Liberal message was a version of that, but the party was out-organized and out-campaigned by the better organized and financed Conservative Party that won a majority.
