It didn't quite work out the way he intended, but a reckless one-sentence ultimatum from Michael Ignatieff defined the person, the party and ultimately his popularity for the entire fall session of Parliament."After four years of drift, four years of denial, four years of division and discord "” Mr. Harper, your time is up,"� the Liberal leader harrumphed on Sept. 1. After four months of discussion, rarely has a political statement proven to be so laughingly wrong. By making the declaration without the approval of his MPs, he was shown to be a self-absorbed leader. By sending the country careening toward its second election in less than a year, Mr. Ignatieff defined himself as a shameless opportunist.By not advancing a compelling reason to justify a snap vote, Mr. Ignatieff portrayed himself as an empty alternative.The public response was not surprising. Since he had disappeared for the entire summer, their first impression of Mr. Ignatieff was entirely negative. His polling numbers went into a free-fall from an approximate tie with the Conservatives to a basement below the approval level for hapless former leader Stéphane Dion.That's when the wheels really started falling off. After taking it on the chin with a blitzkrieg of attack ads paid for by the Conservatives, Mr. Ignatieff limply responded with his own commercials, portraying himself as a policy wonk in casual clothes against a forest backdrop that turned out to be located in Metro Toronto. Stung by the media-christened nickname of Iffy, he played leadership hardball in arbitrating a Quebec riding nomination decision, only to lose Quebec lieutenant Denis Coderre in a reactionary huff, who went down while declaring his leader brainwashed by too many Torontonians.After denying any such thing, Mr. Ignatieff cleaned out all the loyalists who brought him back from his nomadic globe-trotting and they all returned to, um, Toronto. Amplifying the damage caused by those developments, Mr. Ignatieff endured a scathing Facebook-posted analysis of his party's fickle behaviour by Mr. Dion's spouse. There was talk of defections, the mutter of mutiny and a series of discouraging byelection results to shrug off. At any point Mr. Ignatieff could have been forgiven for writing off the Liberal leadership as a failed academic exercise and returning to the ivory tower. He has wisely decided to surrender instead. The undeniable ascendancy of Prime Minister Stephen Harper is more than just a matter of enhanced personal popularity played out to the tinkle of piano keys while singing a Beatles classic. This is the dawning of the age of acquiescence, a de facto majority rule by a minority government that wants an election but can't persuade all three opposition parties to accomplish the mission so they will govern by whim and iron will until they are taken down.Peter Donolo, Mr. Ignatieff's new chief of staff, has decreed that the Official Opposition will no longer serve as an election-threatening Conservative antagonist. Unless the polling numbers rebound, it seems likely the Liberals won't even vote down Stephen Harper in next spring's budget.But Mr. Harper's majority-flirting popularity level is even more surprising because the government has been whacked by a series of issues effectively raised by the Liberal bench.The Official Opposition's research showed irregularities in the government's stimulus spending habits. There were many signs "” and not just the ones hoisted on signposts by the federal government "” that the handouts were selectively targeted at Conservative ridings. That sense of tax-dollar entitlement was best illustrated by oversized publicity cheques for infrastructure projects sporting Conservative logos or MP signatures that are now under an ethics probe. Even so, the public yawned it off the radar screen. The government's readiness for the H1N1 pandemic had the potential to fill a Conservative body bag or two in the next election. The Liberals furiously denounced the late order for vaccines from a single source and warned hospitals were overflowing as the rollout ran into production showdowns. But the pandemic appears to have fizzled, hospitals have not filled with life-threatened flu victims, the vaccination clinics are starting to close due to lack of interest. There hasn't been a lead question on swine flu in the Commons for weeks now.Now comes the detainee abuse kerfuffle. This is not an attack on soldier behaviour, as the Conservatives allege. It's about the government's secretive, obstructionist conduct with key ministers using the soldiers as cover from Opposition fire. But the government tactic seems to be working and the issue will languish now that the Christmas recess has sent MPs scurrying back to reality for six more weeks. Like everything else this year, every break has gone the Conservatives' way. Even Liberals admit they have recorded their second annus horribilis in a row this year. Their only comfort is that 2010 can't possibly get much worse.
National Post
The Liberals next big break will come if Harper kowtows to the snake oilers at Copenhagen. If he saddles Canadians with that scam he is dog food.
Oh Don for the country's sake we can only hope that it does get worse for the Liberals. If you keep on crying wolf eventually people stop listening. Why don't the Liberals go and find themselves some policies instead of trying to find a Conservative scandal?
Could it just be that the Canadian public had had enough of the Liberals after thirteen years of Chretien and Martin doing nothing and aren't willing to bring them back to power anytime soon? Add in the corruption that we had for those thirteen years and you have to wonder if the Liberals will ever get back to their glory days?
Gaining the public confidence is a tall order for any Liberal to accomplish today, it's virtually impossible for Iffy to do it.
@Don Martin: I agree with everything you have written except the last sentence. If the Libsa do force an election, Ignateiff is going to have to debate with seasoned professionals on issues he has shown to be very shaky on at best.
The Conservatives and NDP have access to his past publication where he has espoused a number of things that are anathema to most Canadians - and contradict mush of what he says now.
Last, but far from least, he will be characterised as a bungling American academic with quotes about how the Canadian flag looks like a beer label.
He will. as they say, be toast, and the party with him. The dippers will be the opposition, and the LPC may never be heard from again.
"Their only comfort is that 2010 can't possibly get much worse."
Really?The Liberal Party of Canada will probably fall lower in the polls than one party or more whose leader is openly a Taliban supporter, whose leader is openly separatist, or whose leader is a global warming looney.
... and when a majority Harper government is elected and has abolished party subsidies, the LPC could go bankrupt.
Live the dream Don, as the economy starts to rebound, people go back to work and the general populace realizes the world hasn't ended with the Conservatives running the government as if they had a majority, the Liberals will become more and more desperate. And irrelevant. They have nothing to offer except negatives. They have no constructive policies, no positive programs. Everything they have is a negative - more social programs (a drain on the taxpayer), a desire to tax us back to the stone age (to be more green - ha, ha the only green will be lining their trading buddies coffers), an unspoken desire to put the military back in their rightful place (in the mind of the socio-communist anyway) slightly below the members of society on assistance, and a desire to buy our votes with their advertising cronies. Nope, give me 5 more years of what we have, thanks anyway. The rats are deserting the good ship fiberal. Let the captain go with it.
And @ZEEBC - you can expect Harper to do exactly what all the other world leaders will do. Make a meaningless promise and then go home and (hopefully) slow-play it.
Either way, the Libs will howl.
I don't think Ignatieff had a feel for the peculiarities of Canadian politics and there's no reason why he would. He probably hadn't thought about it in years, if ever.
He should spend some time with Jean Charest. He's the only person I know who knew how to be conservative without turning off liberals, how to be pro-Quebec without turning off the anti-Quebec crowd (except for the hard core bigots) and how to be a Quebec nationalist and a federalist all at once.
Fortunately for the country, the lying CONS will eventually do themselves in just like their idols, the Bush Republicans.
If their opposition wasn't split 4 ways counting the Greens, they would be nowhere, which is where they should be in a decent country like Canada.
In the meantime, hopefully the LIBS will get their act together.
How quickly the Conservatives supporters forget that every time we have an election and the public hears what the Conservatives are about their numbers plummet.
The choice of Ignatieff by the LIBS might have been a mistake. The "pro-torture" allegation is a crock, as anyone knows who has actually read his writings.
But, he pretty sincerely believed in a form of American imperialism, and I don't think most Canadians would like that. Funny the CONS don't pick up on that one, possibly because they believe in it too.
"Their only comfort is that 2010 can't possibly get much worse." I think that it will unless they quit wasting their time and ours with their Parliamentary alchemy, trying to convert their leaden accusations against the Government into the gold that will improve their poll numbers. It hasn't worked and more of the same will not help them. It will only confirm their incompetence to the rest of us.
I gather this is a right-wing newspaper? Or have I accidentally stepped into a Republican "tea party"?
To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
~ Theodore Roosevelt
(just insert Prime Minister and Canadian where applicable).
Some of these 'servile' loudmouths just lack brown shirts for a uniform.
Actually Don Martin is the biggest Liberal cheerleader that there is in the newspaper industry in Canada.
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