What went wrong
In my humble, distantly-removed opinion, there are a number of serious flaws with how the Quebec byelection campaigns were run. Some of these flaws are serious problems that remain with regards to our party as a whole, while others are specific to these Quebec campaigns.
FRAMING
The framing of these Quebec contests should have been an absolutely critical component of any Liberal strategy heading in to them, and instead framing as a strategic objective seems to have been either ignored or completely mishandled. How in the world did we allow these byelections to be a hyped-up mini-referendum on Stephane Dion's Leadership?
We have had over a year and a half of Conservative broken promises, deception, and reduced accountability. It would seem to me that in Outremont, where unelected Senator and Cabinet Minister Michael Fortier happens to live, we could easily have targeted Fortier as a living personification of those Conservative broken promises and Harper's blatant lack of trustworthiness. If framing a debate in Quebec around accountability was deemed to be risky in any respect, we easily could have focused strongly and clearly on either our strong climate change message or our principled and realistic Afghanistan position, or both. It seems that any clarity, focus, or framing at all would have been a substantial improvement.
While these byelections were clearly major theatres of action in the big-picture strategies of both the Conservatives and the NDP, it is not clear to me how we as Liberals had incorporated them in to our own.
ON THE GROUND ORGANIZATION
There have been numerous credible reports of a lacklustre, confused, and disorganized campaign structure at the riding level. Across the country and especially in Quebec, we are typically and historically known for an ability to muster up a "big red machine" of voter identification, persuasion, and delivery on (and certainly in the lead-up to) Election Day. The fact that the NDP, with barely a skeleton of a traditional voter and volunteer base, was able to out-do the LPC on the ground should be a major wake-up call to Liberals everywhere, including the OLO, LPC Office, and the various LPC Provincial-Territorial Associations. Nothing can be arrogantly presumed safe about our support base. Every vote must be respected, fought for, and earned, and our various party offices must be working hard to ensure ridings and commissions have all the tools they need to effectively set up those critical local-level teams and machines.
FEDERALISM POLICY
Liberals in Quebec seem so timid of late to offend nationalist sentiments amongst the province's political and media elite, never mind confront them. This opens up a dangerous void to be filled by our opponents, all of whom support strong and separate Quebec nationalism to varying degrees. Whether it be through asymmetrical federalism, the fiscal imbalance, the two nations doctrine, or limits on the federal government's spending power, these nationalists continue to put the squeeze on traditional Trudeau Liberal positions of fair and equal federalism based on individual rights, collective responsibility, national bilingualism and meaningful multiculturalism. We used to win big in Quebec when we confronted nationalist myths with real substantive alternatives based on a Liberal pan-Canadian ideal and perspective. We tend to lose with leaders and policies that concede that ground to our more nationalist opponents. In Quebec we should always aim to fight first on the same bread-and-butter issues that matter to Canadians from coast to coast to coast, but if our opponents want to talk about federalism, let's talk about the amazing twenty-first century Canada that our party and its leaders have built and how it's working so well for Quebec, instead of timidly showing voters a clouded mirror of our opponents' own ill-founded myths and objectives.
LIBERAL UNITY
Last but by no means least, the value of firm and meaningful party unity to our cause cannot be understated. Neither can the danger of irresponsibly or deliberately letting it slip away. Our party has had (and continues to struggle with) a seemingly widespread problem of competitive party cliques and petty factions. They sometimes match up with former leadership campaign teams, but not always. These cliques are, often to the extreme detriment of the party, the most persistent actors in our most damaging internal party conflicts. Loyalty in a political party should lie first with the ideals the party exists to promote, and then certainly and critically with the people you fight with to promote them. That order is important though, and the interests of the party as a whole should play large in the political decisions we make within it. Unless we set those priorities straight, squabbles over personality politics will continue to detract from time that could be spent defeating Conservatives, New Democrats, Bloquistes, and their ideas. A party plagued with internal mutual suspicion is not one that will find broad success any time soon.
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While the bit on Federalism policy pertains rather exclusively to Quebec, I think these categories serve to highlight a few areas where our party could work much harder and smarter in our quest to earn the trust of the Canadian people once again. Had they been more deeply considered in advance of these byelections, I think we would have had a much better chance of winning and performing more strongly across the board.
FRAMING
The framing of these Quebec contests should have been an absolutely critical component of any Liberal strategy heading in to them, and instead framing as a strategic objective seems to have been either ignored or completely mishandled. How in the world did we allow these byelections to be a hyped-up mini-referendum on Stephane Dion's Leadership?
We have had over a year and a half of Conservative broken promises, deception, and reduced accountability. It would seem to me that in Outremont, where unelected Senator and Cabinet Minister Michael Fortier happens to live, we could easily have targeted Fortier as a living personification of those Conservative broken promises and Harper's blatant lack of trustworthiness. If framing a debate in Quebec around accountability was deemed to be risky in any respect, we easily could have focused strongly and clearly on either our strong climate change message or our principled and realistic Afghanistan position, or both. It seems that any clarity, focus, or framing at all would have been a substantial improvement.
While these byelections were clearly major theatres of action in the big-picture strategies of both the Conservatives and the NDP, it is not clear to me how we as Liberals had incorporated them in to our own.
ON THE GROUND ORGANIZATION
There have been numerous credible reports of a lacklustre, confused, and disorganized campaign structure at the riding level. Across the country and especially in Quebec, we are typically and historically known for an ability to muster up a "big red machine" of voter identification, persuasion, and delivery on (and certainly in the lead-up to) Election Day. The fact that the NDP, with barely a skeleton of a traditional voter and volunteer base, was able to out-do the LPC on the ground should be a major wake-up call to Liberals everywhere, including the OLO, LPC Office, and the various LPC Provincial-Territorial Associations. Nothing can be arrogantly presumed safe about our support base. Every vote must be respected, fought for, and earned, and our various party offices must be working hard to ensure ridings and commissions have all the tools they need to effectively set up those critical local-level teams and machines.
FEDERALISM POLICY
Liberals in Quebec seem so timid of late to offend nationalist sentiments amongst the province's political and media elite, never mind confront them. This opens up a dangerous void to be filled by our opponents, all of whom support strong and separate Quebec nationalism to varying degrees. Whether it be through asymmetrical federalism, the fiscal imbalance, the two nations doctrine, or limits on the federal government's spending power, these nationalists continue to put the squeeze on traditional Trudeau Liberal positions of fair and equal federalism based on individual rights, collective responsibility, national bilingualism and meaningful multiculturalism. We used to win big in Quebec when we confronted nationalist myths with real substantive alternatives based on a Liberal pan-Canadian ideal and perspective. We tend to lose with leaders and policies that concede that ground to our more nationalist opponents. In Quebec we should always aim to fight first on the same bread-and-butter issues that matter to Canadians from coast to coast to coast, but if our opponents want to talk about federalism, let's talk about the amazing twenty-first century Canada that our party and its leaders have built and how it's working so well for Quebec, instead of timidly showing voters a clouded mirror of our opponents' own ill-founded myths and objectives.
LIBERAL UNITY
Last but by no means least, the value of firm and meaningful party unity to our cause cannot be understated. Neither can the danger of irresponsibly or deliberately letting it slip away. Our party has had (and continues to struggle with) a seemingly widespread problem of competitive party cliques and petty factions. They sometimes match up with former leadership campaign teams, but not always. These cliques are, often to the extreme detriment of the party, the most persistent actors in our most damaging internal party conflicts. Loyalty in a political party should lie first with the ideals the party exists to promote, and then certainly and critically with the people you fight with to promote them. That order is important though, and the interests of the party as a whole should play large in the political decisions we make within it. Unless we set those priorities straight, squabbles over personality politics will continue to detract from time that could be spent defeating Conservatives, New Democrats, Bloquistes, and their ideas. A party plagued with internal mutual suspicion is not one that will find broad success any time soon.
---
While the bit on Federalism policy pertains rather exclusively to Quebec, I think these categories serve to highlight a few areas where our party could work much harder and smarter in our quest to earn the trust of the Canadian people once again. Had they been more deeply considered in advance of these byelections, I think we would have had a much better chance of winning and performing more strongly across the board.
posted by Braeden Caley at
8:51 PM
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2 Comments
