Musings on Greenwood

I saw this article in the Toronto Star on the weekend.

Click on the title of this post and give it a read.

It talks about how former Prime Minister Jean Chretien joked of returning to politics. Some Liberals are taking it serious. They long for a return to his time.

Ok, this embodies everything that’s wrong with the Liberal Party of Canada. They just don’t get it.

The truth of the matter is that the Big Red Machine that ruled Canada for most of the 20^th Century was obliterated by Pierre Trudeau in 1982 when he repatriated the Constitution without Quebec.

Les Quebecois saw that as an act of betrayal. Support for the Liberals in La Belle Provence has never rebounded.

In 1980, the Liberals won 74 of the 75 seats in Quebec. The French Canadians were always the key to their electoral success. They rolled up huge majorities election after election because they had a solid base amongst the francophone population.

 The Liberals were obliterated in Quebec between 1984-1993. They made small improvements in the 1997 and 2000 federal elections then the Sponsorship Scandal reduced the once mighty party to a rump in Quebec.

Stick a fork in them, they’re toast.

However, the Liberal Party members failed to get the memo in the Eighties that their party needed a major overhaul. It needed to completely reform itself for the new challenge of governing Canada without massive support from Quebec. Chretien’s reign of error only enhanced the myth that the Liberal Party is still what it used to be.

Jean Chretien’s three majority governments were not the work of a political mastermind. They were the result of a divided political alternative. The Liberals under Chretien won 100 of Ontario’s 102 seats in each election he fought as leader. This was because the Conservative movement in Canada was divided between the Progressive Conservatives and the Reform/Canadian Alliance.

The Liberals will NEVER win 100 seats in Ontario again so long as there is a strong alternative like there is now. Had the Right not fallen apart, Chretien maybe, and I emphasize maybe, would have won a majority in 1993 then he would have been creamed in 1997.

The reality is that Trudeau destroyed the Liberal Party in Quebec and Chretien wasn’t that good.  His electoral success was a freak occurrence because he had no opposition. His success in Ontario will never be duplicated and Trudeau’s success in Quebec is long gone.

So, the question the Liberals have faced for 30 years is, “What do we do now that our French base has left us?”

Until they take a long, hard look at the mess the party is actually in they will never return to power with a majority government.

The mess they’re in now goes well beyond Michael Ignatieff. The party has been rotting for 30 years but the implosion of the Conservative movement enabled the Liberals to pretend everything was fine.

So, the Liberals can bring back Chretien if they want. Harper will kill him. For now, they’re stuck with Ignatieff but it doesn’t really matter. The party apparatus is broken and has been for three decades. Until they fix that and get honest about the real legacies of Trudeau and Chretien, the party will wonder in the wilderness for a long time to come.

Ethan Rabidoux