This story from The Hill Times website is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act. It highlights how a couple of Grits view the election results. The statement by Stephen Clarkson that the NDP has replaced the Liberals as the only national party reveals a certain attitude that has much to do with the Liberal failure, sort of an entitlement attitude. If one looks at the NDP growth outside Quebec, it was hardly spectacular.
Politics a 'blood sport' that Ignatieff didn't understand
Liberal Party's 43-seat loss a 'typhoon,' says Grit Jim Karygianis. 'Unless the leader and everybody else understands that this is a blood sport, the Liberals are going to be wiped off the face of the earth,' he says.
By TIM NAUMETZ
Published May 4, 2011 12:52 AM
PARLIAMENT HILL – The devastated Liberal caucus is meeting next week to come to grips with the unknown territory at the “rump end” of the House of Commons, the scarce resources and money the party will have available to get back on its feet over the next four years, and examine campaign wreckage to determine what led to the Liberal decimation when the electorate shifted like an earthquake in Monday’s election.
“The prospect is grim,” Stephen Clarkson, the University of Toronto professor best known for his expertise on Canada’s Liberal party, told The Hill Times. "It is no longer a national party, it can't claim to be."
Two Liberals made comments suggesting the open wounds the party is suffering now, down to a historic low of 34 House of Commons seats after winning only 18.9 per cent of the popular vote, its 12 Atlantic MPs now forming the largest regional caucus in the House, only five MPs left in Toronto’s 416 area code, only seven in the entire province of Quebec, may have been festering for years.
One longtime Liberal insider, who did not want to be identified, said the party “has been rotting for quite some time,” as it allowed the structures of its fundraising programs and membership, now apparently only 34,000 across the country, volunteer programs and grassroots engagement lapse since well before the Jean Chrétien government, and corrosion that “eroded” further in the decade-long wars between Mr. Chrétien and his loyalists and former prime minister Paul Martin.
Jim Karygianis, the down-to-earth trench fighter and combative Liberal MP who was re-elected in his Scarborough-Agincourt riding in Toronto, openly displayed pent-up frustration at the way he says some caucus members have been treated in the past, with limited consultation, exclusion of MPs unpopular with the last two leaders, Michael Ignatieff and Stéphane Dion, and a “dictatorial” approach Mr. Karygianis said has to end if the party expects to rebuild.
He expressed open discontent serving under Mr. Ignatieff’s leadership in the past two years, something other MPs have also hinted at privately during that time.
“We’ll give a plaque like he gives the rest of us and we’ll say ‘thank you for being here,” Mr. Karygianis said when told the Liberal leader announced he is returning to academic life. Mr. Karygianis blamed the humbling defeat on Mr. Ignatieff.
“It’s called a typhoon, and it’s all on account of the leader,” he told The Hill Times.
“There’s no ifs, ands or buts about it, we should have come out swinging when they said ‘just visiting and all that stuff.’ There’s no Mr. Nice in this business. This is a blood sport and unless the leader and everybody else understands that, this is a blood sport, the Liberals are going to be wiped off the face of the earth.”
Mr. Karygianis, whose gruff style apparently did not win brownie points in the caucus, even though he was one of the only five Toronto MPs re-elected, said the new caucus must be more inclusive, or the party will pay the price again at the ballot box. “When you want stuff, why should I go out of my way to help you, when you don’t look after me. When you call up and say ‘Can you come out to a rally,’ and the only thing that you do is come out to a rally, and you’re not the favourite person of the leader, why should I? Why should I get my 300 people out?”
Mr. Ignatieff resigned as leader of the Liberal Party on Tuesday, after losing his own Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Ont., seat to Conservative MP Bernard Trottier.
Prince Edward Island MP Wayne Easter, re-elected in his Malpeque riding, also expects a sobering readjustment once the new Parliament is convened. Liberals now sit at the far end of the Commons from the Speaker, beyond the new sea of 102 New Democrats occupying the official opposition centre stage.
“It’s going to be an awful shock to some who’ve been in there for a while, when we sit in the House, we’re down in the rump end, and we’ve only got one MP on each committee, there’s reality,” he said.
As the Liberal Party begins rebuilding, it faces a massive financial challenge, losing $1.3-million in Commons financing for the opposition leader’s office, more than $1-million for caucus research support and, just in the short term, $1.7-million in voter subsidies over the next year from Elections Canada because of its plunge in support. Mr. Harper made a campaign pledge to scrap the electoral allowance entirely, saying he would give the parties a phase-in period to adapt, and fundraising will only be more difficult for the Liberals as they move further from power.
The party must now sketch out a road map to replace the departing Mr. Ignatieff, and both Mr. Karygianis and Mr. Easter said an interim leader should be selected by the caucus, set to meet next weekend, for a period of up to one year, or even two, in Mr. Easter’s mind, before a new leader is chosen.
“The last thing we want to do is be hasty. Let’s sit back, let’s not get all excited over here, and plan our strategy well, and give our party the best chance at renewal,” he said.
Mr. Easter favoured Saskatchewan MP Ralph Goodale, the former finance minister and House leader who won re-election in his Wascana riding in Regina, who was also Mr. Ignatieff's deputy leader, while Mr. Karygianis said he would prefer Bob Rae, the former Ontario NDP premier who won re-election as a Liberal in Toronto Centre, Ont.
Mr. Clarkson, whose latest book on the Liberals was published in 2005 and titled How The Liberal Party Dominates Canadian Politics, said the NDP’s takeover of the bridge between Quebec and the rest of Canada, once predominantly held by the Liberals, and the huge chasm between its third-party status and the chance to form government again, is perhaps more important than the financial problems it will face.
“It means [the NDP] have replaced the Liberal Party as the only national party, the way the Liberals could [in the past] say, ‘We’re the only ones that can bridge the bicultural divide,'” said Mr. Clarkson.
Out of power already for the past five years, the next four years of Conservative government will only take the Liberals further away from the allure of government, power, Cabinet posts and patronage, that are essential to maintaining party strength and organization between election battles.
“They’ve got the potential to rebuild, but it’s going to be very tough,” Mr. Clarkson said. “They need an organization and members who are willing to work even though they’re not going to be made Cabinet ministers, and they’re generally only willing to work for that reason if they’ve got something to believe in."
