The downtown party
Ezra Levant - Monday,20 November 2006
WESTERN Standard
Is it not odd that Stephane Dion, the Liberal leadership candidate from Quebec, has issued a statement in favour of the Canadian Wheat Board? Or that Gerard Kennedy, from Ontario, has done so as well?
In fact, there are two things that each of the Liberal candidates has in common: they all believe in keeping the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly that forces farmers to sell their wheat to the government and no one else. And none of them come from provinces where the Canadian Wheat Board actually applies.
Wheat farmers in Ontario aren't required to sell to the CWB. Nor are any in Quebec. But Kennedy and Dion and the rest of the Liberals are adamant that western farmers remain bound to do so.
Kennedy's statement on the subject was particularly precious. The Conservative government has ordered the CWB to stop its partisan lobbying efforts, and has put them on notice that farmers may soon have a choice about selling to the CWB. Kennedy called
the Conservative approach "an outrageous, anti-democratic abuse of power." Funny; forcing western farmers--and Westerners alone--to sell to the government didn't strike that Toronto boy as anti-democratic.
Every one of the leading Liberal candidates is a candidate of Toronto or Montreal. That's fine--those are Canada's two largest cities, and they should be well represented in government. But has the party no breadth? This cosmopolitan clique feeds off itself, confirming its own prejudices like a pond without a stream to refresh it with new ideas. For heaven's sakes, the two leading contenders were even university roommates--is the Liberal party's brain trust no larger than a college dorm?
Of course these candidates know nothing about the wheat board. It's not a subject that comes up over lunch at the National Club on Bay Street. That these candidates would have an imperious attitude toward western farmers shows that little has changed in the Liberal party and its attitude toward "the regions," as the rest of the country is condescendingly known.
Michael Ignatieff's support for a carbon tax--translation: Alberta tax--is more evidence of this. As is the candidates' universal support for a long-gun registry that targets western and rural duck hunters and farmers, but is irrelevant to gun crime in their own violent cities.
Canada's cities are great, and Toronto and Montreal ought to be loved by all Canadians for their many admirable attributes. But the Liberal party has become nothing but a party of the downtowns.
That is evident in more than just the monoculture of their leadership candidates. The parties' annual fundraising returns tell the story as well. In a final shot at the party that unceremoniously threw him out, Jean Chrétien passed amendments to the election fundraising statutes, effectively banning corporate donations. Once the Liberal party relied on a handful of six-figure contributions from banks and law firms to fill its coffers. Now that elite group of supporters has been shut out, and the paucity of the party's grassroots support has been made painfully aware to them. The Conservative party, by contrast, has record numbers of small, individual donors--a necessity, after a decade of being shut out by corporate Canada. The age of the Liberal bagman is over, except as preserved in the Senate.
This is a story of the brittleness of the Liberal party, once the "natural governing party." It is the story of a party that needs to lie fallow much longer than a single year, and that needs a purging of its current grandees for more than mere esthetic reasons--it needs to rebuild from scratch.
Canada requires more than a one-year, minority government interlude from the Liberals. But the Liberals need a longer interlude, too, if they are ever to have a chance at growing a political culture that is more than just a belief in their own entitlement to govern. Their haughty downtown fiats about the western Wheat Board show that day of rejuvenation is a long way off.
Ezra Levant - Monday,20 November 2006
WESTERN Standard
Is it not odd that Stephane Dion, the Liberal leadership candidate from Quebec, has issued a statement in favour of the Canadian Wheat Board? Or that Gerard Kennedy, from Ontario, has done so as well?
In fact, there are two things that each of the Liberal candidates has in common: they all believe in keeping the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly that forces farmers to sell their wheat to the government and no one else. And none of them come from provinces where the Canadian Wheat Board actually applies.
Wheat farmers in Ontario aren't required to sell to the CWB. Nor are any in Quebec. But Kennedy and Dion and the rest of the Liberals are adamant that western farmers remain bound to do so.
Kennedy's statement on the subject was particularly precious. The Conservative government has ordered the CWB to stop its partisan lobbying efforts, and has put them on notice that farmers may soon have a choice about selling to the CWB. Kennedy called
the Conservative approach "an outrageous, anti-democratic abuse of power." Funny; forcing western farmers--and Westerners alone--to sell to the government didn't strike that Toronto boy as anti-democratic.
Every one of the leading Liberal candidates is a candidate of Toronto or Montreal. That's fine--those are Canada's two largest cities, and they should be well represented in government. But has the party no breadth? This cosmopolitan clique feeds off itself, confirming its own prejudices like a pond without a stream to refresh it with new ideas. For heaven's sakes, the two leading contenders were even university roommates--is the Liberal party's brain trust no larger than a college dorm?
Of course these candidates know nothing about the wheat board. It's not a subject that comes up over lunch at the National Club on Bay Street. That these candidates would have an imperious attitude toward western farmers shows that little has changed in the Liberal party and its attitude toward "the regions," as the rest of the country is condescendingly known.
Michael Ignatieff's support for a carbon tax--translation: Alberta tax--is more evidence of this. As is the candidates' universal support for a long-gun registry that targets western and rural duck hunters and farmers, but is irrelevant to gun crime in their own violent cities.
Canada's cities are great, and Toronto and Montreal ought to be loved by all Canadians for their many admirable attributes. But the Liberal party has become nothing but a party of the downtowns.
That is evident in more than just the monoculture of their leadership candidates. The parties' annual fundraising returns tell the story as well. In a final shot at the party that unceremoniously threw him out, Jean Chrétien passed amendments to the election fundraising statutes, effectively banning corporate donations. Once the Liberal party relied on a handful of six-figure contributions from banks and law firms to fill its coffers. Now that elite group of supporters has been shut out, and the paucity of the party's grassroots support has been made painfully aware to them. The Conservative party, by contrast, has record numbers of small, individual donors--a necessity, after a decade of being shut out by corporate Canada. The age of the Liberal bagman is over, except as preserved in the Senate.
This is a story of the brittleness of the Liberal party, once the "natural governing party." It is the story of a party that needs to lie fallow much longer than a single year, and that needs a purging of its current grandees for more than mere esthetic reasons--it needs to rebuild from scratch.
Canada requires more than a one-year, minority government interlude from the Liberals. But the Liberals need a longer interlude, too, if they are ever to have a chance at growing a political culture that is more than just a belief in their own entitlement to govern. Their haughty downtown fiats about the western Wheat Board show that day of rejuvenation is a long way off.
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