The Liberals have made their first big blunder in the federal election – on the national unity file.
Opposition leader Michael Ignatieff said during last week’s French language debate that folks in Canada’s most culturally troubled province have the right to choose being a Quebecer or a Canadian in “the order they prefer”. That is hardly exercising inspired leadership for all Canadians to see, hear and feel.
Locally, there is no leadership whatsoever. This once proud political party is beyond making startling boondoggles. It has surrendered all relevancy. Bring on the Rhinoceros Party.
The party’s Alberta wing scrambled pathetically in recent weeks to find a candidate, any candidate with a pulse apparently, to carry the flag in the Red Deer riding, the heartland of Central Alberta that is known throughout North America, particularly before the recession, as the golden corridor of prosperity.
In the end, just before the buzzer when nominations closed, the Liberals announced that Andrew Lineker, who last fall received a less than stellar 0.6 per cent of the popular vote in the Edmonton mayoralty race, would carry the Grit flag in one of Alberta’s most influential and important ridings.
Lineker may very well be a sincere and intelligent man but what credibility will he present to anyone in this Tory heartland?
The Liberals failure to prepare for the 2011 election in Alberta has sunk to an all time nadir. And it is not like they did not see this coming.
Since 2004 the Grits have been tanking badly in the region. The party finished second in the Red Deer riding behind the Conservatives in 2004, third in 2006 and dead last in 2008. There is no further bottom left to sink to for the Liberals, unless it announces that Justin Trudeau, son of the late Pierre Trudeau, will give up his political aspirations in Quebec and agree to be parachuted in to win a seat in Central Alberta’s heartland.
Certainly it has been a long time, longer than most people would care to remember, the Liberals were considered ‘mighty’ anywhere in Alberta. But for the party, which gave Canadians Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Mackenzie King, Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chrétien, to find itself in such dire straights – even in this Tory stronghold – is almost too painful to contemplate.
It has become easy over the years to point to the hated Liberal-inspired National Energy Program (NEP) of the early 1980s as the source of Albertans’ disdain for anything Grit. After all, historians and scholars have estimated the province lost between $50 billion and $100 billion while it cost the average Albertan about $18,000. No small matter, for sure.
But 30 years have past and Albertans are waiting for a reason to forgive and forget. They are not unreasonable. But they need something, anything. But the Liberals have never bothered to come up with a platform that would make it possible for Albertans to turn the ugly NEP page and move on.
Current Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, who has headed the Grits since 2008, is still a non-entity in Alberta. He did attend a rally in Edmonton last weekend with former Primer Minister Paul Martin. But there was no notion to come to Central Alberta.
That’s unfortunate. No matter what bad feelings there are here about anything Liberal Ignatieff would have been in the public eye.
After all, there is an old adage in the public relations field that does comes to play when desperation sets in, and that being ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity.’ A message is a message, and at the very least there is ink and airplay.
As sad as the situation is, the Liberals have arrived at this point. Better to be jeered and mocked than to be irrelevant, lost and forgotten on the Alberta prairie.
