LGR Advocates, You Have Some 'Splainin' To Do

Long gun registry not the life-saver they claim it is

With Canada's far-left scrambling to save the long gun registry by any means necessary, it seems the facts just aren't lining up to support their arguments.

When the Globe and Mail put crime data recently released by Stats Canada into a chart, the conclusions became unavoidable. Those who claim the long gun registry saves lives -- as former Liberal MP Mark Holland used to delight in doing -- have some serious explaining to do.

The chart reveals that the last time more long guns than hand guns were used in homicides was waaaaaay back in 1990. (The L'Ecole Polytechnique massacre happened the previous year.) The bill authorizing the long gun registry was passed in Parliament in 1995, and the registry itself was established in 1996.

There's good reason for this. As the numbers have it, murders involving long guns have been steadily declining in Canada since 1984 -- twelve years before the LGR ever existed. There were occasional spikes in homicides involving long guns, but the general trend has been a decline since 1984.

During the same period of time, murders involving handguns -- which the law has required to be registered since World War Two -- have remained stable.

This is very clearly a difficult question the champions of the LGR desperately need to answer. They have relentlessly attributed the reduction in homicides involving long guns to the registry. Yet not only does the decline pre-date the registry, the handgun registry has no noticeable effect.

It's clear that registration has not had the magical properties LGR advocates have attributed to it. They have some serious questions to answer, some serious explaining to do -- although previous experience with these individuals suggests they will simply decline.

But We Mustn't Call it a Coalition...

Nathan Cullen proposes "coalition lite"

With Nathan Cullen contesting the leadership of the NDP, it's as fair a question to answer as for any other candidate:

What, precisely, does Cullen have to offer?

As it turns out, the answer is "very little". To date, Cullen's offering in the leadership campaign is "beat Harper", and not much else. To whit, Cullen is recommending that the NDP run "joint candidates" to defeat Conservative candidates.0

Is it coalition lite? Or merger lite?

It doesn't seem to matter to Cullen. To him, it's the prefect way to pander to a wider variety of left-wing voters.

"I believe now is the time to respond to the call from people of all walks of life, who hate that Stephen Harper can change our country for the worse with support of less than four in 10 voters," Cullen declared. "For me, the greater cause is that the wedge politics of the Stephen Harper government are killing us. ... We need to find a way to speak past the narrow political interests of parties from time to time."

A very real question must persist over whether or not those same people liked it when Jean Chretien was able to govern Canada with the support of less than four in ten voters. It also seems necessary to remember that it was that same Chretien government that slashed healthcare and education funding.

Yet the NDP -- whose bread-and-butter issue is healthcare -- never pulled out all the stops to team with their fellow opposition parties to put a stop to that in 1997. Very curious.

Non-ironies aside, this is an idea that only could have come from the NDP at a time when they're ahead of the Liberal Party, both in seat count and in popular support. In this sense, Cullen is very opportunistic with an idea he very clearly hasn't thought through.

For example, with whose caucus would a joint candidate sit? The Liberal Caucus? The Green Party Caucus? The NDP caucus? As an independent?

The only way an idea like this can be said to even remotely work would be within a formal coalition -- and Canadians have already shown what they think of that. Even if Cullen hasn't learned his lesson in this regard, his fellow leadership candidates seem to -- they've all given the idea their staunch disapproval.

This, along with the detail that joint candidates would require participation from another party. The Liberal Party is practically guaranteed to refuse.

Cullen will almost certainly remain undeterred.

"I have no problem going up against Stephen Harper one on one," Cullen declared. "This just makes it a slam dunk."

Not many Conservatives would worry much about a Stephen Harper/Nathan Cullen match-up in a federal election. Cullen's half-baked ideas are nothing to worry about.

Ontario's Left & the Bully Pulpit of Unlimited Spending

Campaign finance law needs to reign in labour unions

Canada's elections law essentially allow ganging-up by anyone willing to establish a third-party campaign.

It's no secret. The 2011 federal election was a splendid example of an attempt to do this, as dozens of far-left campaigns sprung up, eager to defeat the governing Conservative Party through the organization of strategic voting and, in some cases, outright lies.

So long as registered third-party campaigns are willing to stick the truth, they for the most part present no great dilemma for campaign finance law. At least not at the federal level.

At the provincial level, however, particularly in Ontario, it seems that there is a problem. A big one.

In Ontario, it seems that third-party campaigns face no spending limits, allowing some third-party campaigns to essentially gang up and bully the provincial Progressive Conservative Party, who are subject to spending limits and cannot effectively defend themselves.

The Working Families Coalition is the most publicly-known example. It claims to be independent of the Liberal Party, but was in fact directly organized by the Liberals. Another example that comes to mind is the "No Gun, No Funeral" campaign organized and operated out of then-Attorney General Michael Bryant's campaign offices.

In each case, Elections Ontario opted to ignore the undeniable connections between these organizations and the Ontario Liberal Party and treat them as an independent third-party. What had actually happened is that these groups allowed the Liberal Party of Ontario to breach campaign spending limits.

It's evidence that Elections Ontario is just as ill as Elections Canada, and needs the same overhaul of the people running the institution.

“The rule is too loose. We need the teeth of the federal rules if we’re to keep elections from being swayed,” remarked York University political science professor Robert MacDermid. He recently produced a report that demonstrates just how badly organizations like Labour Unions have abused the system in their bids to help out their partisan allies. (In the case of public service unions, this amounted to picking their own bosses.)

“The possibility of corruption is so much less,” MacDermid says of the federal campaign finance laws.

It's worth noting that the Coaliton for a Better Ontario came out on the side of the then-Mike Harris led Tories in 1999. Any connection between that organization and the Ontario Tories is unknown to this author, but just as troublesome if they existed.

MacDermid suggests the provincial Tories wouldn't complain if such a group were helping them, and he's likely right.

For Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's part, however, he's naturally pleased with the current status quo.

“We’ve got a great system here,” McGuinty remarked. “There are so many different avenues for people to give expression to their opinion. I believe in a strong collision of ideas.”

Unfortunately for McGuinty, that isn't what's happening right now, and he knows it full well. What is currently taking place is that his party has organized an environment in which they and the third-party campaigns they themselves organized can gang up on the PCs, whose own hands are tied.

Under the watch of the Dalton McGuinty Liberals, Ontario's lax rules on third-party campaigning have become a bully pulpit from which they can unfairly dominate their opponents. It needs to be stopped at the earliest opportunity.

What Time Do the Cows Come Home in Ontario?

Apparently, Nikki Holland will only deny smokes for votes until then

Ontario voters eager to hear the truth about the allegations that Liberal Party of Ontario Vice-President (Operations) bribing homeless people with cigarettes will only have to wait until the cows come home.

In reality, they're more than just "allegations". Audio recorded of Holland's comments have her admission in full.

"If anyone repeats this, I'll deny it until the cows come home," Holland remarked. "I have gone to a shelter in the riding of St Paul's with a carton of smokes and said 'I'll give them to you after you vote'. I have done that."

Once the recording came to light, Holland set about doing precisely what she said she would do: denying it. The recording has made that more than just a little awkward.

To account for that, Holland is claiming that what she said was "a joke". But there doesn't seem to be much reason to believe her.

She's also tried to spin the issue back on her political opponents by insisting that the NDP and Conservative Party do the same.

In the most amusing twist yet, Premier Dalton McGuinty responded not by doing what would have been expected of someone in his delicate position -- either collecting Holland's resignation or firing her from at least the campaign -- but has publicly accepted her apology.

"It was a bad joke in poor taste," McGuinty remarked. "She apologized for it."

It simply doesn't pass the laugh test.

It's only the most recent incident in a gaffe-ridden election campaign for McGuinty's Liberals, one that featured a staged photo-op at a closed factory and a lawsuit brought against the Ontario government by one of the very green energy companies McGuinty is championing as the future of the Ontario economy.

McGuinty's explanation for the staged photo-op didn't pass the laugh test, nor does his explanation for this scandal.

Especially damning is that Holland delivered these remarks at a training seminar for Liberal Party campaign workers. Even if Holland were joking -- and no one believes that she was -- if there are any Liberal campaign workers currently bribing homeless people with cigarettes, we know where they got the idea.

Nikki Holland cannot stay on as VP (Operations) of the Ontario Liberals, and if Dalton McGuinty continues to parrot her disingenuous explanation, he cannot stay on as leader of the party.

Both must go, before the cows come home.

A Horrible Idea Whose Time Should Not Come

Levac: Carbon tax "presently on the table"

In 2008, the federal Liberal party presented to Canadians a proposal that could have precipitated an economic disaster in Canada.

Pitched by Stephane Dion, cobbled together from an idea proposed by Michael Ignatieff during the 2006 Liberal leadership campaign, they called it the Green Shift. It was essentially a carbon tax paired with income tax cuts.

Yet the income tax "cuts" wouldn't reduce the tax burden on the average Canadian family. Shifted to industry in the form of a carbon tax, those cuts would come back to haunt Canadians in the form of higher prices for absolutely everything. As private businesses are not charities, they would inevitably pass their higher costs along to the consumer.

The best-case scenario was that Canadians would be no better off for indulging the Liberal Party's foray into utopianism. A likelier scenario is that the tax would have scared off foreign and domestic investment in Canada, ultimately leading to an economic collapse.

Now, with the 2011 Ontario election on the line, Premier Dalton McGuinty is considering setting Ontario on this very disastrous path.

With the green energy companies that were to be the feathers in McGuinty's cap failing one by one -- in some cases, failing to do much of anything but provide McGuinty with photo ops -- McGuinty is turning to the last alternative policy that he can to pander to environmentalists.

In an online chat, Dave Levac, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, has indicated that the McGuinty Liberals are already considering a carbon tax.

"It's being reviewed, and some of my colleagues are more enthusiastic about it than others," Levac declared. "There is a possibility that a carbon tax is on the table to evaluate, because it already is."

Levac noted that a carbon tax is not presently in the Liberal election platform. This is something of a meaningless detail; many of the things that were in the last Liberal election platform were not done. Many of the things that were done -- including the HST -- were not in the election platform.

Regardless of how sympathetic McGuinty is to a carbon tax proposal, he owes it to the voters of Ontario to not spring it on them as a post-election surprise. The time to tell Ontario voters precisely what manner of a carbon tax is on the table.

If the Liberals had learned from the failure of Canadians to fall for the proposals of their federal counterparts, the answer would be "none at all". Yet as Dave Levac has it, this is not the case.

A carbon tax would drive up the cost of literally everything an Ontario family consumes: housing, energy, groceries, everything.

Dalton McGuinty owes Ontarians the opportunity to use the 2011 election as a referendum on such a prospect. Whether or not he'll be forthcoming with Ontario voters remains yet to be seen.

David Suzuki Extinguishes His Own Credibility

When the Ontario Liberal Party secured the endorsement of David Suzuki, they were so excited they went out and made an ad about it.

In it, Suzuki extinguishes what little remained of his own credibility. Gushing over Premier Dalton McGuinty's environmental record, Suzuki declares how excited he was when McGuinty promised to shut down Ontario's coal-fired power plants. He declares the promise to be "a big step" toward fixing Ontario's relationship with the environment.

The problem is that McGuinty made the promise, then promptly set about breaking it. In 2006, he promised to shut down those power plants by 2009. In 2009, he promised to shut them down by 2014 He might not be around to keep that promise in 2014. Even if he is, he probably won't.

Even McGuinty's vaunted green jobs accomplishments are fading, as green energy firms continue laying workers off. Adding to the comedy is McGuinty staging a photo op at a solar panel factory that had shut down production.

In other words, McGuinty's environmental record is not all rainbows and sunshine. It's actually piss-poor at best. All he's offering in the 2011 election is more of the promises he already broke. He'll never keep them.

It only makes sense that the Liberals would work so hard to establish themselves as good environmentalists. But Ontarians aren't stupid, and can spot a broken promise when someone makes it again. In their effort to brand themselves as the party for the environment, they've managed to counter-brand themselves as promise-breakers.

For himself, Suzuki has done worse. In attempting to brand himself the voice of environmentalism in the 2011 election, he's counter-branded himself as an unprincipled hack who offers the Liberal Party's broken promises up as if they were achievements.

He's definitively turned his back on his own credibility. He'll never be taken seriously again.

The Value of a Vote in Ontario? No Less Than $730

Ontario Liberals crassly trying to buy votes

Students in Ontario following the ongoing provincial election were recently alerted to a remarkable fact:

To the Liberal Party of Ontario, their vote is worth money. So much so that Dalton McGuinty and the Liberal Party are willing to blatantly buy their votes for anywhere from $730 to $1600 per year.

In a mass email sent out to University of Windsor students, someone working on behalf of the Liberal Party spammed in favour of the party's proposed education policy. The specific language of that email lays out in no uncertain terms how the Liberal Party is appealing to these students:

"So [the Liberal Party] are going to support all middle-class Ontario families with a 30% across-the-board post-secondary undergraduate tuition grant.That means - every year - the families of five out of six students will save $1600 per student in university and $730 per student in college.

Neither the NDP nor the Conservatives have an education plan - nothing! Shame on the NDP and the Conservatives for not caring about students, higher education, or the future of Ontario.

We are in battle for our future and you get to help make the choice on October 6th, 2011. As many of you may know, we are currently in a provincial election. On one side there are the NDP and the Conservatives who want to take Ontario off track - cutting healthcare, education, and destroying jobs.

On the other side, there is the Ontario Liberal Party, who is fighting to ensure that we continue to have the best education in Canada, the strongest healthcare, and that we create jobs for everyone. We need to stay on the right track because our future depends on it.

PS. If you are in 4th year and don’t think this amazing policy will apply to you - think again. By voting Liberal, every student will receive half the amount in January - that is $800!"

To describe a blatant vote-buying scheme as an education plan is beyond facetious. It lacks any kind of insight into what is continuously driving up the costs of post-secondary education across Canada and certainly lacks the foresight to address those issues.

Instead, it simply promises to send a government cheque to university students once a year, every year, until the next election. That means that the Liberal Party has offered to buy the vote of post-secondary students for anywhere ranging from $2,920 to $6,400.

And all of this without ever having addressed, or even attempted to solve, a single problem related to the cost of post-secondary education. Finding ways to reduce the costs of providing post-secondary education in the first place would solve this problem once and for all. The Liberals' proposed policy simply shifts the costs away from the student to the taxpayer.

Any political party that respects taxpayers and aims to spend tax dollars responsibly would be absolutely ashamed to have put such a crassly irresponsible and flagrantly self-interested policy forward.

It's political bribery at its finest, and desperation from a party for whom the poll numbers are not what they're telling people they are.

Is Libby Davies the Most Irresponsible MP in Canada?

Davies resurrects Dhalla's pension bill

When running in a riding like Vancouver East, one can always bank on the appeal of additional welfare benefits for somebody.

In this vein, Vancouver East MP Libby Davies' most recent proposal is not actually a new idea by any stretch of the imagination. Unlike the idea's progenitor, Davies will likely not have to pay a price for the sheer irresponsibility of it.

Davies has resurrected a proposal by former Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla to pay old age pension benefits to elderly immigrants immediately upon arriving in Canada. The proposal, adopted as a blatant means of pandering to the immigrant community in her riding of Brampton-Springdale, instead angered her constituents. She was beaten by 10,000 votes in the 2011 federal election by Conservative Parm Gill.

Running in Vancouver East, Davies has found that no bit of far-left boilerplate, no matter how ridiculous or irresponsible, can fail her.

Precisely how irresponsible is Davies' most recent proposal? It's irresponsible to the tune of anywhere from $300 million to $700 million per annum, paid out to people who have never contributed a red cent to the Canada Pension Plan. Every year.

The sheer irresponsibility of it becomes crystal clear when one considers that as of 2006, the CPP was considered to be facing an unfunded liability of $620 billion.

This isn't the first time Davies has done something irresponsible for purely ideological or demagogical purposes. In 2009, Davies voted against a bill to impose a 5-year mandatory minimum sentence for human traffickers who exploit children. Her reason was an ideological opposition to mandatory minimum sentencing.

Davies' Parliamentary motion calling on the government to open pension funds to recent immigrants -- currently there is a 10-year residency requirement, which is as it should remain, if not increase -- is merely the most recent in a long, sad history of demagogical irresponsibility from Libby Davies.

ECW Fans Invade Michael Ignatieff Campaign Stop

The original, unedited footage of Michael Ignatieff and Nardwuar the Human Serviette from a Vancouver campaign stop during the 2011 federal election.

You wouldn't believe how many Bothans died to bring us this information.

Hands Off Canadian Pensions

Government had no right to seize pension surplus, must return it

Unbeknownst to many Canadians, there's a pivotally-important question at the centre of the ongoing -- and escalating -- postal workers' strike.

That question is: to whom do the pensions of Canadians belong? To themselves? Or to someone else?

In 1999, the Liberal government of Jean Chretien had an answer that should outrage all Canadians. They essentially decided that the pensions of public service employees belonged to them, to do with as they please.

They took it upon themselves to seize a $6 billion surplus in pension funds belonging to public service employees, the RCMP and the military and use it to eliminate the federal deficit.

"It was a money grab," fumed Public Service Assiance of Canada Executive Vice President Patty Ducharme. "The federal government has a responsibility to its employees, to the plan members; but they just took that money out of the plan ... and stole it."

"Stole" is a strong word. But it's bloody well close.

As the faceoff between Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers draws on, it pays to remember that one of the issues at play in the strike is the state of the CUPW pension fund. The union wants to use funds from a profit-sharing program to restore solvency to the fund.

But they shouldn't have to. The funds snatched from the pension fund should have been returned long ago. They should have been returned, at the latest, five years ago.

It's largely Jean Chretien and Paul Martin who are responsible for this scandalous outrage. (It's one of many underhanded means they used to balance the deficit, including cutting transfers to provinces, raiding EI premiums, and cutting funding to health care and education.) But they don't carry it alone.

It's an absolute outrage that the Conservative Party has bothered fighting this at all. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty should have smiled and obligingly introduced a program to restore the pilfered pension funds in 2006. They didn't, and the government is fighting it still.

The figure under discussion? $30 billion. That's $30 billion being withheld from hardworking public servants, including the woman who brings you your mail (and in this author's neighbourhood, doesn't at all mind when a well-behaved dog accompanies her on her rounds), the RCMP officer you call when you need help (even if he occasionally writes you a traffic ticket), the military personell who risk their lives for us, and countless others.

It's absolutely mind-boggling that the Ontario Superior Court of Justice could decree that public service unions are not entitled to those surplus funds, and sign of a deep rot in that institution.

It's a simple idea: in Canada, our pension funds belong to us. It should be not a whit different for public employees. If their pension managers do such a splendid job that they have a $30 billion surplus, that surplus belongs to the fund, not to the government.

This doesn't mean CUPW is right about everything in this strike. But they are right about this.

Fair is fair. And it's beyond the time for the government of Canada to do the right thing, and restore that $30 billion surplus to these pension funds.

Alfred Apps Takes a Page Out of John Ibbitson's Book (Literally)

Primary election leadership process a welcome prospect in Canada

As the Liberal Party looks to try to rebuild its shattered psyche and equally-shattered electoral prospects, embattled party President Alfred Apps has some bold ideas for the party.

He's clearly been reading John Ibbitson's Open & Shut. He's recommending that the Liberal Party start electing their leaders through a primary process.

More specifically, he wants to emulate the closed-primary process in the United States, in which voters who register as supporters of a particular political party are allowed to vote on who that party's Presidential nominee should be.

(Contrast this with open primaries, in which any registered voter may vote on the nominee of either party.)

“I believe that as a party we should commit, whenever we form government next – and God knows when it will be – that we want to introduce the concept of a registered voters list in Canada,” Apps declared.

The Liberal Party itself has inched closer to electing its leaders in this manner, when it voted to replace its the delegate-based leadership election process with its current one member/one vote system.

Apps insists that a primary election leadership process would go a long way toward revitalizing the party. Right now, the Liberal Party needs nothing as much as it needs to be revitalized. It would do much more than this.

As these primary elections would be conducted on a province-by-province basis, it would force liberal Leadership candidates to engage with the grassroots of the party. Rather than having the option of waiting for a leadership convention and impress a limited number of delegates.

“Liberalism is always in danger of running out of gas or becoming a victim of its own success,” he declared. “There’s always got to be a new frontier of reform.”

Whether or not Alfred Apps should still be the President of the Liberal Party is debatable. But Liberals would do well to listen to his ideas -- particularly this one -- very carefully.

Dalton McGuinty's Bizarre Message for Ontarians

In the most recent campaign ad released by the Ontario Liberal Party, Premier Dalton McGuinty seems to have a rather bizarre message for Ontarians:

Ontario has become Canada's Detroit. And it happened under the Liberals' watch.

As reported in the National Post, the ad bears a striking resemblence to a recent Chrysler ad, in which the ad insists that Detori will emerge triumphant from the troubles its been experiencing since the 1980s.

Among those troubles is a murder rate that remains perched atop US statistics.

In some of Ontario's neighbourhoods, things have indeed been troubled. The Boxing Day shooting of a teenager, hit in crossfire from a gang shooting in 2005, was a wake-up call for many in Toronto. But Toronto hasn't degenerated into the kind of Mad Max-esque desolation and violence that has seized Detroit.

And considering that Detroit came to be in the sorry state it's in because of utopian left-wing policies turned dystopic, the "progressive saviours of Ontario" message McGuinty wants to sell is rather comical.

Cetainly, the Chrysler ad the McGuinty Liberals are emulating is a worthy model: it's emotionally stirring and inspiring. Their ad is but a pale comparison, but it wouldn't matter much if the ad were a perfect facsimile.

This was a message that was ill-conceived from beginning to end.

Good Luck With That, Stephane

Stephane Dion wants his legacy back

Like Chevy Chase in Memoirs of an Invisible Man declaring "I want my molecules back!", Stephane Dion is making demands of the Canadian political class.

He wants his legacy back. His separatist-fighting legacy.

In an op-ed appearing in the Ottawa Citizen, Dion is offering a lecture to NDP leader Jack Layton about why 50% +1 is an unacceptable threshold for a separatist mandate in a sovereignty referendum.

In a nutshell, Dion's argument is that the oui majority in a seccession vote must be large enough to allow the negotiation process to move forward with certainty, and must be able to withstand periodic shifts in public opinion:

"There are two fundamental reasons why negotiations for secession should be contingent on a clear majority. The first is that serious and irreversible decisions that affect future generations should be made by consensus, not on the basis of a weak and uncertain majority, not on the basis of a result which might have been different if the vote had been held the day before or the day after. There is no doubt that secession is something serious and probably irreversible since it is nearly impossible to rebuild a country after it has been broken. Such an action affects future generations and has serious consequences for all of the citizens of the country being broken up.

The second reason is that, even with all the goodwill in the world, negotiating the separation of a modern state would inevitably be difficult and fraught with pitfalls. What must not happen is that, while negotiators are working on a separation agreement, the majority should change its mind and decide to oppose secession. That would be an untenable situation. That is why the process should only be undertaken if there is a sufficiently large majority that will last through the inevitable difficulties of negotiation."

Dion makes a very strong argument. Unfortunately, Dion still has to own up to his role in attempting to form a coalition government with the NDP that would have mortgaged the Canadian government to the Bloc Quebecois.

While the Liberals publicly boasted that the Bloc had voluntarily taken separatism off the table for 18 months, and that they had refused to give in to Bloc demands on language law.

However, the NDP had been walking the BQ line on Bill 101 all along, and are walking it still.

In 2008, the coalition's right hand ignored what the left hand had been doing. Now that the left hand no longer needs the right hand at all, it seems that all bets are off.

It's admirable that Stephane Dion is standing up to Jack Layton on his soft-on-separatism positions now. But Dion knew full well that Layton was soft on separatism before he tried to bring the NDP and Bloc together in a vain attempt (vain in every sense of the word) to snatch power away from the Tories.

That's why Dion will likely never recapture his tainted legacy as a separatist fighter. When all the political chips were on the table, he revealled to Canadians that he can be every bit as soft on separatism as Jack Layton clearly is.

In 2008, and as it pertains to the fight against separatism, Stephane Dion has made himself Canada's invisible man.

2006: The Beginning of the End of the Liberal Party?

Liberal Party still paying for its mistakes

In 2006, something happened to the Liberal Party that they had considered unthinkable:

They were defeated in an election.

That year, Stephen Harper led the Conservative Party to form a minority government. He has resided at 24 Sussex Drive ever since, much to the consternation of the Canaidan left.

The Liberals spent the time since blaming everyone but themselves. They blamed the NDP -- who have since supplanted them as the official opposition -- for competing against them. They blamed the RCMP for choosing to investigate the income trust leak, after Finance Minister Ralph Goodale flat-out refused to investigate on his own.

They never came to grips with what led them to that defeat in the first place, and they're still paying.

Looking back on 2006, it was hard to know precisely how bad it would be for the Liberals moving forward. But looking back -- and hindisght is always 50/50 -- there were some signs. The best sign was actually the individuals who offered themselves as candidates to replace Paul Martin.

The frontrunner candidates in 2006 were Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff. Stephane Dion eventually managed to emerge as the Liberal leader. Then there were the less-competitive also-rans.

Individuals like Joe Volpe, Ken Dryden, Martha-Hall Findlay, and Gerard Kennedy. What do these four have in common? They, along with Michael Ignatieff, lost their Parliamentary seats in the 2011 election. They also have in common outstanding debts -- nearly five years after the 2006 Liberal leadership convention -- from that campaign.

But the real story is the rout. Considering the position the Liberals were in circa 2006, each one of the leadership candidates who ran should have done so because they believed they could lead the Liberal Party back to power.

Five years later, five of these would-be Prime Ministers are out of Parliament, against their own wishes.

Was 2006 the beginning of the end of the Liberal Party? That chapter hasn't been written yet. Despite what the triumphalist cheerleaders of the NDP have declared, Canada is far better off with the Liberal Party than without it.

But in order for the Liberal Party to emerge intact, they must first learn from the mistakes that led to their 2006 defeat, and all the mistakes made since.

The best time -- perhaps the only time -- for them to do that is right now. If they don't 2006, really will have been the beginning of the end.

Liberal Party Needs to Go Back to the Drawing Board on Israel

Irwin Cotler lost the Jewish vote

In the 2011 electon, the Conservatives achieved one of their key goals: they breached "fortress Toronto".

They didn't accompish at least one other: making inroads into Montreal.

Arguably they may have had the best opportunity to do this in Mount Royal, where they matched Saulie Zajdel up against longtime Jewish MP Irwin Cotler.

Leading up to the election, they worked very hard to lure the Jewish and ethnic votes away from Cotler. In the end, it turns out they were successful in luring the Jewish vote, but failed to win the ethnic vote.

“Clearly, there was an erosion,” Cotler admitted. “I think it’s correct that I lost the majority of the Jewish vote. But I won, importantly, in the cultural communities.”

The Conservatives won good portions of the Jewish vote by taking a strong foreign policy stand on Israel, something the Liberals had declined to do. They had deluded themselves into thinking being an "honest broker" means being a weak ally.

“People said to me directly, ‘Irwin, you’re a great guy, but we have to vote for Harper," Cotler recounted. "He’s there for us. We have to be there for him.’”

But the shift in the Jewish vote was not merely due to the Conservatives earning it with sound policy on Israel. The shift also occurred because of a distrubing and disappointing flier distributed in Mount Royal inferring that Cotler was soft on anti-Semitism.

To at least a small degree, those fliers accoumplished their goal.

“I had some painful encounters," Cotler said. "I would go into seniors’ residences, and they would ask me, ‘Why is Ignatieff an antisemite?’ ...Negative attack ads do work,”

Unfortunately, it seems like those fliers did do their dirty work. However, they were able to do it because the Liberals left themselves vulnerable. While Irwin Cotler was denouncing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmaedinejad for incitement to genocide, Michael Ignatieff was suggesting Israel is a war criminal.

It doesn't excuse dirty campaign tactics, and in the leadup to the 2011 election, all of Canada's political parties have been guilty of it; the Tories are no different.

But the best way to appeal to the Jewish vote is to be solid on their values. When one of the key valeus is supporting the Middle Eastern state with the best human rights record of any of them, this shouldn't be difficult.

It wasn't the voters of Mount Royal who failed Irwin Cotler. The Liberal Party leadership failed Irwin Cotler. It's time for them to go back to the drawing board and get those policies right.

Liberals Taking the Long Road Back

Liberals to postpone leadership vote for two years

The 2011 federal election was nothing if not a humbling experience for the Liberal party. Reduced to a rump of a mere 34 seats, the Liberal Party lost key strongholds in Toronto and Quebec, lost ground in BC, and found narrow salvation in the Maritimes.

It represents the kind of deep-rooted rebuilding a lot of Liberals called for after the 2008 campaign -- they dubbed it Liberal 308, but it was sadly abandoned quickly in the face of what many expected to be a quickly-looming election.

Instead, the 40th Parliament of Canada lasted for nearly three years. Now that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is settling into 24 Sussex Drive with a majority government, the Liberals will finally have the opportunity to make their leadership campaign part of a comprehensive rebuilding process.

For the Liberals, the first step seems to be picking an interim leader. The party has declared there will be two conditions for seeking the interim leadership: first off, that individual must be bilingual. Secondly, they must promise not to run for the full-time leadership.

At this point, that would exclude Bob Rae, Justin Trudeau, Dominic LeBlanc, and Ralph Goodale from contention. As Denis Coderre and Marc Garneau could also throw their hat in the leadership ring, one could consider them out, too.

The most interesting element of the Liberal plan is that it will actually turn out to be Liberal senators who will decide the interim leader. The interim leader must have the support of the majority of the Liberal caucus as a whole -- House of Commons and Senate combined -- although the Commons caucus will essentially have a "double vote" on the matter. (The interim leader must also have majority support from the House of Commons caucus.)

There do seem to be two essential snags in the issue: first, the Liberal leadership must agree to amend the party constitution via a June 18 "virtual convention".

Second, the plan has nothing to say about the future of Liberal Party President Alfred Apps, who many Liberals think should resign after the historic 2011 defeat.

If the Liberal Party is serious about making a two-year commitment to party renewal it would be unfortunate if Apps were to become a roadblock to the needed changes. If the party's national board won't ask Apps to resign, he should do so on his own.

Now Canada will wait with far-from-baited breath to learn who will be the Liberal Party's next interim leader. Will it be Scott Brison? John McCallum? Geoff Regan? Joyce Murray? Mauril Belanger?

Perhaps the better question is: Will it even actually matter?

One Last Thing Before You Go, Marlene...

...Jennings leaving office with coalition-related secrets intact

On May 2, Liberal Marlene Jennings, then the incumbent MP for Notre Dame-de-Grâce-Lachine, was defeated by NDP candidate Isabelle Morin.

Following her defeat, Jennings said all the right things that defeated incumbents usually say. Humble comments, and all.

"The voters made a change," she said. "I hope the change will meet their expectations."

"The heart is still there, the soul is still there," she said of her party, which has clearly lost its connection with Canadians. "I think our party has to let the dust settle, let peoples' emotions calm and then meet and see what message we should take from this and how we should rebuild the party."

There is, unfortuantely, one thing Jennings still isn't saying: she still isn't telling Canadians what she, her party, and the NDP gave up to the Bloc Quebecois to make the 2008 coalition agreement -- to which all three parties were party.

We know what the Liberals and NDP said "no" to. Jennings revealled in January 2009 that they had said "no" to extending Bill 101's authority to federally-regulated industries in Quebec. That was a laudable act.

However, we still have yet to hear Jennings -- the Liberal Party's lead negotiator on the coalition deal -- tell us what they agreed to. They're still keeping it secret.

Marlene Jennings has little left to lose politically. It's far past time she did the right thing, and tell Canadians just how much she and her party were prepared to give up to the Bloc in order to get power back.

A Post-Election Reflection on Contempt

Looking back on the 2011 election, one thing becomes crystal clear:

The left did try so very hard.

Left-wing groups leapt over one another online for the privilege of being the group that not only prevented Prime Minister Stephen Harper from winning an election, but turfing him out of the Prime Minister's office entirely.

They fear mongered at a torrid pace, burned up the Twitter feeds of the nation, and (in the case of websites such as ShitHarperDid), blatantly lied wherever they felt they needed to.

And they came up short. Which is fitting when one considers the biggest lie ever uttered in the 2011 federal election: the so-called "contempt of Parliament" lie.

Moving to defeat the government on charges of Parliamentary contempt was, no doubt, the most desperate gambit the left had ever imagined. It was intended to panic Canadians about the direction of the government.

It clearly didn't work. More Canadians voted than in 2008, and more voted Conservative. More voted Conservative than for any other party, and as a consequence Harper is returning to Ottawa at the head of a majority government.

Many of those who campaigned so hard on the back of "contempt" charges are surely scratching their heads today, wondering why Canadians didn't take that nearly so seriously as they thought they would.

The reason to that is very simple:

There was nothing to these charges of contempt.

Queen's University professor emeritus Ned Franks is considered the top advocate of Parliamentary privilege in the entire Commonwealth. If Parliamentary privilege had truly been breached, or if Parliament had truly been impeded in its funtions, one could fully expect that Franks would be apoplectic about it.

Apoplectic he was not.

"If the finding of contempt is purely the result of a political game, it's not super serious. If the finding of contempt is something really went wrong, then it is serious," Franks remarked in March. "I have wrestled with this, and I'm not convinced that there actually is a contempt of Parliament and I don't think it's the important issue."

In fact, Franks pointed to a bigger problem with Parliamentary procedure in regards to contempt: that it isn't terribly well-defined.

"To be found in contempt of Parliament, a person must be found guilty by the House of Commons of actions that have obstructed or impeded the House in the performance of its functions," Franks mused. "That's not the same as privilege and I think we have to appreciate that there's no limit to what might be contempt."

Nor is there any guarantee that cases of Parliamentary contempt will be equally pursued in all cases.

For example, there's the famed "crosses burning in Prince George" remark uttered by Liberal MP Hedy Fry in the House of Commons in 2001. Fry later admitted that it wasn't true, and apologized.

Fry was, at the time, the Minister of State for Multiculturalism. So her misleading of Parliament was actually an extremely serious matter. Yet she was not held in Contempt of Parliament. That the House of Commons was controlled by a Liberal majority at the time is likely of no small consequence.

Another case is that of Lloyd Axworthy, who was also a member of the Chretien government that tabled and passed the long-gun registry. Liberals told Canadians that the long-gun registry would cost $2 million to put in place. By 2006, costs had exceeded $1 billion.

Meanwhile, Axworthy had reportedly instructed his fellow Cabinet ministers that they shouldn't talk about the cost of the long-gun registry, and that they should talk about expected public safety-related benefits instead.

Axworthy was never held in contempt of Parliament, largely because he had left Parliament by the time his remarks had come to light. Parliament was (again) controlled by a Liberal majority at the time of Axworthy's tenure, so it's unlikely he would have been held in contempt even then.

It seems that the Liberals, at the very least, have four approaches to contempt of Parliament: one for when the Conservatives govern, and one for when they govern. One for a minority Parliament, another for a majority Parliament.

It shouldn't surprise anyone. When one considers the results of the 2011 federal election, it becomes clear: it really didn't. Canadians took the matter with a grain of salt, and voted accordingly.

The rest is history.

Justin Trudeau & the Death of the Natural Governing Party

Trudeau looking for light at the end of the tunnel

According to the most recent polls, if the 2011 election were held today, the Liberal Party would narrowly come in third behind the Conservatives and the NDP.

This should be a deep existential moment for many Liberal Party partisans, who have, even in their numerous defeats over the past few years, never managed to disabuse themselves of the delusion they are the natural governing party of Canada.

But according to Justin Trudeau, that may be changing.

According to Trudeau, the idea of the Liberal Party as the "natural governing party" is dead, especially among Liberals.

"The idea of a natural governing party was one tossed around more by our opponents than by any Liberals themselves, but perhaps there were a few Liberals who started to believe it and sat back and rested easy," Trudeau suggested. "Honestly, we're having a little bit of trouble connecting with voters."

Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes talking with a Liberal partisan would be surprised to hear that the "natural governing party" is more of a preoccupation of their opponents.

"What I see right now, especially here in Quebec, is good news that an awful lot of Canadians, an awful lot of Quebecers, have decided to put aside their allegiance to the Bloc Quebecois and are open to voting for someone else," Trudeau declared.

Trudeau naturally omits a very notable detail: that the decline of the Bloc Quebecois in Quebec has coincided with the decline of the Liberal Party federally. The Liberal Party has never quite been the same in Quebec since Trudeau's father, Pierre Trudeau, re-patriated the Constitution without Quebec's consent. Even when the Quebec Liberal party governs, their federal counterpart continues to struggle.

"People are turning towards anti-parties," Trudeau suggested. "I'm hoping and expecting that on May 2, Canadians will turn and say it's not enough to just protest against Mr Harper because Mr Harper will remain prime minister, we're better off replacing him by choosing a party that actually wields the confidence of Canadians in government."

What Trudeau doesn't seem to understand is that, at face value, the emerging figures in Quebec seem to suggest that the anti- vote in Quebec is the anti-Liberal vote.

This is probably one of the reasons why it took a split in conservative voting for the Liberals to be successful in the 1990s (although, to be fair, the small-c conservative vote has always split between the Liberal Party and the Tories). Without a leading stake in Quebec, and against united conservative opponents, the Liberals find it exceedingly difficult to govern.

It's led to the ultimate death of the Liberal Party as the "natural governing party". But this is actually for the best. For Canadian democracy to remain strong, the last thing Canada needs is a "natural governing party".

Ruby Dhalla Outhustled, Complains About It

Dhalla objects to Tory candidate helping immigrants

According to Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla, something rotten is afoot in Brampton-Springdale; it's Conservative candidate Parm Gill.

Dhalla is upset that Gill has been extending his help to local immigrant families, helping them fill out the applications necessary to help their family members move to Canada.

"In those cases the families have been called before even I was notified, that had they had been accepted and approved by the minister's office and they were called by Parm Gill," Dhalla complained.

She alleges that her constituents are unwilling to come forward because of some form of intimidation. (Which seems strangely at odds with what the facts seem to be. Helping people get their family into Canada is an odd form of intimidation.)

For Jason Kenney's part, he suggests Dhalla is largely fabricating her concerns.

"That's completely ridiculous, you know, she's a Liberal MP who's under a lot of pressure, and of course she's going to make unfounded and ridiculous accusations," Kenney declared. He also suggests Dhalla does a poor job of serving her constituents.

"It's because they can't get any service from their member of Parliament and that's one of the reasons why I think Parm Gill should be elected member of Parliament for Brampton-Springdale," Kenney declared.

"Mr Gill has every right as a private citizen to provide volunteer unpaid advice," Kenney continued. "I understand he has taken no payment for that. He has never claimed to represent the government or me, but he's just providing a volunteer service and that's totally legitimate."

It's not over in Brampton yet. Dhalla -- who was also the MP behind a ludicrously-irresponsible bill that would have granted pension benefits to immigrants after they'd been in Canada for only three years -- has spent a great deal of time pandering to the immigrant community in her riding. Even if she's done a poor job of serving her constituents, she may yet be able to win reelection based on that pandering.

So even though Ruby Dhalla got outhustled in her own riding, she may yet outrun her principal opponent.