As remnants of the battered Liberal caucus gathered on Parliament Hill Aug. 29 for three days of planning and introspection, they might have remembered the problem-solving formula of a former agriculture minister.
Lyle Vanclief, minister for seven years before being toppled in 2003 in the Jean Chrétien-Paul Martin civil war, said he looked at issues on the farm and in government with three simple questions:
What? So what? Now what? For the Liberals, the ‘what’ is obvious.
On May 2, voters handed the party its most devastating defeat in history – third party status, 43 MPs defeated and just 34 elected.
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So what?
That too is relatively easy to summarize. The party obviously has lost clout in Parliament to the second-place New Democratic Party, much claim on daily media coverage and almost as important, significant funding because public subsidies are based on votes received and Liberal vote share fell below 20 per-c ent while the NDP shot up to almost 30 and the Conservatives to almost 40.
More ominously for the Liberals, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives plan to end the public per-vote subsidy by 2015, leaving the Liberals scrambling with one of the weakest fundraising machines in politics.
And after such a disastrous result, party workers and members are dispirited and maybe ready to drop out if not switch.
Many will see interim leader Bob Rae’s declaration Aug. 29 that the Liberals can win the next election as verbiage better applied to organic crops.
Now what?
This is where the lifting becomes much heavier.
In many parts of the country, the Liberals have lost their way, lost their base and lost their touch.
Years in office and then years of civil war and leadership-based membership recruiting allowed the party base to hollow out.
Years of depending mainly on corporate contributions allowed the grassroots fundraising machinery to rust away.
Every leader promises to renew the party and to water the grassroots. Every change of leader creates hope.
But unless he breaks his promise, former New Democrat Rae is just there for two years until a permanent leader is chosen.
It will be a very tough sell to have someone warming the seat for someone else to convince people to join in the renewal process.
What if they don’t like or support the next leader? What will his or her agenda be?
Rae’s argument is that leadership aside, Canadians want a strong Liberal party to be there as a potential government. Recent election results suggest otherwise but maybe that was a leadership problem – Paul Martin, Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff.
And then there is the conundrum of rural Canada. Except for a small redoubt in Atlantic Canada, the Liberals have become the party of downtown enclaves – Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Regina and Vancouver.
No amount of policy development, campaigning or leadership attention (Ignatieff really tried to crack this nut) has stopped the ever-diminishing Liberal presence in rural Canada.
Any party that has to concede one third of the seats before an election starts is doomed.
The ‘now what’ question will take more than four years to solve.
Sorry, Mr. Rae.
