Until Michael Ignatieff gave the kibosh to it, the idea of a coalition was a popular one among the Liberal Party’s various talking heads.
Of course, the coalition love-in that’s been making the rounds among Liberals is really just their way of unofficially recognizing their party has no real hope of forming a majority in the foreseeable future.
Liberals like to talk about themselves as the “Natural Governing Party of Canada,” and to pretend their turn in government is only the next vote away. But the Party will be lucky to survive until the next election.
Liberals, of course, prefer to deny there is any problem besetting their party that couldn’t be solved with a change of leadership.
The Liberal membership has decided to sacrifice itself in the name of a cult-of-personality; but in the interest of maintaining opposition, it’s worth pointing out a few of the problems that those Liberals interested in governing some time in the next century might do well to consider.
The party of fiscal responsibility
The first strike against the Grits is the deplorable state of their finances.
In 2006, the newly-elected Conservative government passed the Accountability Act, which banned corporate and union donation to political parties; between 2006 and 2007, the Liberal Party’s revenues dropped by two thirds (from $35 million to $12 million).
Cut off from the corporate spigot, the Liberals have consistently been unable to keep up with the other major parties’ fundraising efforts. Thus, in 2008, the Liberals brought in just over $6 million in individual donations – compared to $5.5 for the much smaller NDP, or to the Conservatives’ whopping $21 million.
Their published finances actually understate their predicament however. This is the case, first, because the $6 million raised in 2008 donations was artificially inflated by election-year fundraising. Unless the Liberals force an unwilling public back to the polls again this year, their donations are likely to drop back down to 2007 levels ($4.5 million), if not lower, as the recession closes voters’ wallets. More important, however, will be the effect of the Grits’ weak election result on their public financing. Last quarter, the Liberals received a subsidy of $2.1 million from Elections Canada, based on their share of votes from the 2006 election. Starting this month, however, that amount will drop to just under $1.6 million per quarter.
Between their lackluster fundraising and their weak vote-count, the Liberals will have to give up between one quarter and one third of their existing revenues, all while attempting to rebuild a broken and demoralized party.
The Liberal solitude
The Liberals’ secondhand more concerning problem is the increasing eastward shift of their elected members.
Over the last 40 years, the Liberal Party has always required three things in order to win elections: Ontario, Quebec and B.C. During Trudeau’s 1968 sweep, for instance, the Grits won 16 of 23 seats in B.C., 56 of 74 in Quebec, and 63 of 88 in Ontario. Together, these three provinces provided Trudeau with 135 of his 154 seats, and, all on their own guaranteed him a comfortable margin above and beyond the 131 needed for a majority.
Today, the Liberals are locked out of B.C. (except for a toe-hold in Vancouver), they have been supplanted in Quebec by the Bloc (which would win a minimum of 42 seats even if Gilles Duceppe burned down Parliament), and they are being absolutely trounced in Ontario (where the Tories earn 1.3 seats for every one that goes Liberal). In exchange for these crushing losses, the Liberals have had to console themselves with gaining a virtual stranglehold on Atlantic Canada. But even these Maritime gains are likely to be cold comfort for the Grits, given the way that power has shifted in this country since Trudeau.
Since 1968, 48 seats have been added to the House of Commons, and of these only one has gone to Quebec, and zero have been added to the Maritime provinces. In fact, all increases in seats (whether carried out by Liberals or Conservatives) have gone to Conservative strongholds (Alberta, B.C., and Ontario).
Because of the new weighing of seats, even wildly optimistic projections see the Grits clearing no more than 105 to 115 seats in a future election – not enough to form a government, even alongside the NDP’s 37 seats.
Based on recent federal-provincial discussions, there is yet another increase in seats set to take effect shortly, and this one is again targeted at Ontario, B.C. and Alberta (Ontario itself is apparently guaranteed 21 new seats). Under present conditions, these new seats, which all fall in the Tory heartland, represent the groundwork for a permanent Conservative majority.
Ignatieff knows that unless the Liberals are able to move outside of the East, they are going to find themselves permanently locked out of power.
The Liberal catch-22
The Liberal Party is caught in a trap: to win elections, it needs to expand its base beyond the urban centres, and to do that, it needs to make long-term investments in riding associations in provinces where it has no chance of winning in the immediate future. But investing heavily requires money, and that requires constituencies willing to invest in the future of the party without expectation of immediate return.
To succeed, the Liberals have to do little more than look southwards to the Democrats in the United States. After 2004, when the Democrats were locked out of power, DNC head Howard Dean began what he termed the “Fifty State Strategy,” which required the Democrats to invest in building constituency organizations in states where they knew they would lose, with the long-term goal of becoming competitive across the whole country. Four years later, and with Democrats in charge of all of the organs of American power, Dean’s strategy seems to have paid for itself.
Liberals could, nay should, use the next four years to rebuild their shattered and bankrupt organization, and to try and calm the simmering hatred of the West for the party of the NEP.
Indeed, for Liberals to become competitive throughout the country, all that is required is a Liberal leader willing to forego a chance at Prime ministership in order to rebuild his party.
