At Home in Hespeler

I wrote this piece in response to Gerry Nicholls assertions that the Liberal Party was done like dinner, to quote a colourful figure from the past. It has been up on Gerry’s Freedom Forum for a couple of days now.

By the way, by “young, energetic new leader,” I don’t mean Justin Trudeau.

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Gerry Nicholls says the Liberal Party of Canada is a spent entity. Here’s how his argument runs:

The Liberal Party is based on a single ideology, power. Now out of power for three elections and five years, the Liberal Party has no other base to fall back upon. Where once the Liberals were loaded with talent, now the cupboard is bare, frontline talent so thin the Maple Leafs would give them a run in a best of 7 series.

Furthermore, the Liberals are lined up against a dastardly foe, Stephen Harper, the “Genghis Khan of Canadian politics,” a ruthless player of chess against everyone else’s checkers. Harper’s overriding ambition is to eliminate the Liberal Party of Canada.

I agree with Gerry on these points, and that the elimination of public political funding is a serious blow to the Liberal Parties ability to fight elections and collect entitlement with which to be entitled. However, I think the playing of Marche funèbre on behalf of the Liberal Party is premature.

Can the Liberal Party of Canada rebound?

It is first important to ask, if not the Liberals, who? The Bloc Quebecois seems to be in equally dire circumstances in Quebec, and seems less likely than the Liberals to ever rebound. With almost all of their funding coming from the now defunct $2.00 a vote scam, it seems likely the smart sovereigntist money in Quebec will go provincial. The Bloc, in other words, now that is a spent force.

After the last election I suggested the NDP had a problem. They now have two disparate bases, Quebec and Western Populists. Their western populist base, sprinkled with some union towns in Ontario and the Maritimes is the traditional NDP. The new Quebec NDPers, however, have old school Quebec ideas, i.e. the Federal Government needs to move resources out of the rest of Canada and into Quebec. Here in Ontario we seem to not get that Quebec’s $7 daycare is paid by us (or was, before Dalton McGuinty saved us from paying into Canada’s transfer payment system), but in the west they are very aware of who pays to keep Quebecers happy. The NDP, I argued then, had a tough balancing act:

He (Jack Layton) will also now have to make up his mind on a number of issues where he said one thing on Quebec and another elsewhere, particularly out West. You can’t play two sides of the fence in Parliament. It will be a delicate balancing act, and one if he gets wrong, could be very bad for the NDP next time around.

The juggling act would have been tricky for a skilled politician like Jack Layton, the chances that whoever replaces Layton will be able to hold the NDP vote together for future elections is unlikely. The recent caucus split on the issue of where to build Canada’s new navy ships, a split that runs along Quebec and not Quebec lines seems to prove this out.

All good news for the Liberals. The bad news is, they are in just as bad a shape. They have no funding base except the government, now run by their sworn enemy, they seem out of touch and out of ideas. As Gerry notes, leadership material is thin on the ground.

But they are not dead yet. Here’s what the Liberals need to do to survive. Elect a young, energetic new leader and give him a mandate to win not the next election but the one after.

This leader needs to go from town to town, riding to riding, meeting with Liberals and potential Liberals. They need to shake hands with every person they can, look them in the eye and listen to their concerns and ideas. They need to meet with the leaders of the Liberal party in every riding, talk to them, listen to them. They need to hold rallies, not $350 a plate dinners, and pass around the collection bucket at the end. It doesn’t matter if they donate a toony or a twenty, people must feel like they own the party.

Based on their travels, and listening to the people, the leader needs to create an ethos for the Liberal Party to base its policy on, not just pull policy out of thin air. Every item in the policy book needs to be tested against the ethos, and not found wanting. And the Liberals need to be prepared to let the new leader have an election to lose, to learn from the mistakes, to begin selling the ideas of the new Liberal Party.

The Liberal Party of Canada is, to borrow a phrase, not dead yet. And unlike Gerry Nicholls, I am unconvinced they will not recover. However, they have one chance to get it right, and only one.

Silly Liberals Freedom Forum, Gerry Nicholls, Jack Layton, Liberals

My man, Gerry Nicholls (and I mean in the most 70’s, Huggy Bearish kind of way) has started a new website, Freedom Forum.  It is, says the welcome message, “an online sanctuary where the focus is on ideas not partisan political spin.”

Here’s more from the welcome:

It’s a site I’ve put together with some friends with one goal in mind: to promote economic and political freedom.

Why?

Because as Ronald Reagan once put it,

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

So this site will be a forum for those who wish to stand up for the ideals of limited government, free enterprise and individual freedom.

After all, a “war of ideas” is raging in this country and it’s a war those of us who cherish freedom simply can’t afford to lose.

We need to effectively communicate to Canadians, especially to younger Canadians, why freedom is important, and why only the free market system can ensure continuing prosperity and why big government isn’t the answer to all our problems.

Previously, Gerry launched Libertas Post, which I was honoured to be involved with. Unfortunately, he got called away by the need to earn a living just as it was getting going, and Libertas Post never regained it’s momentum.

Now, if only I could figure out how to get an article under the door at Freedom Forum…

freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy, Gerry Nicholls Freedom Forum, Gerry Nicholls, LibertasPost

When Gerry Nicholls travelled to New Hampshire to save the Yanks from themselves, his “socialist free zone”  website, LibertasPost got put on temporary hiatus.

Last week I received an email from veteran journalist Nate Hendley informing me he was taking over as the new editor at LibertasPost. Please continue contributing, was the gist of his email. I did, crossposting We Stand on Guard for Thee to LibertasPost.

Today, Nate hit the ground running with a couple of stories, re-launching, or at least re-igniting, LibertasPost.

It’s good to see Libertas back in operation. Be sure to visit often as it will hopefully be a lively site, where freedom reigns, once again.

Libertas Post Gerry Nicholls, LibertasPost, Nate Hendley

closer to the NDP than the Conservatives.

How can this be true? you might ask. This is how…

To quote one of the top five political minds in the country: stick a fork in him.

for whom the poll tolls CBC, Gerry Nicholls, Liberals, Michael Ignatieff

Greg Weston was one of the journalists in the Parliamentary Gallery who got his nose particularly out of joint with the PMO when it got invaded by Conservatives. He has since calmed somewhat and seems to be offering fairer reportage. Today, he offers up a tidbit I never heard before, but which gave me a good laugh:

"Stop wasting my money!"

It has been almost 30 years since a flock of geese flying across Canadian television screens caused a national flap over taxpayers’ money being used for partisan political propaganda…

Liberal MP Bob Rae, then a member of the NDP, said at the time: “I will never be able to look at Canada geese in the same way again. I’ll see them as Liberals in disguise.”

Even right-wing commentator Gerry Nicholls decried the campaign as “an abuse of tax dollars,” describing the ads as “clearly partisan, clearly Conservative propaganda.”

Gerry Nicholls, Ink Stained Wretches Bob Rae, Conservative Party, Gerry Nicholls, Greg Weston, Liberal Party, NDP, Pierre Trudeau, Sun Media, Toronto Sun

It was a couple of weeks ago that Gerry Nicholls emailed me to tell me about a new web site he was working on, “with some other people.” The idea, a Libertarian portal, where a variety of writers would contribute articles and blog posts. Perhaps, he thought, I would like to add some content?

I did, and have been posting some stuff there for a few weeks now. Yesterday, Gerry went live with LP, the new Canadian Libertarian website. With articles by Gerry, Rondi Adamson, Charles Adler, Michael Taube and others Libertas promises to be a good website, which I am honoured to be contributing to.

Please check out Libertas Post, bookmark it and come back often.

Libertas Post Charles Adler, Gerry Nicholls, Michael Taube, Rondi Adamson

Gerry Nicholls first book, the autobiographical Loyal to the Core, begins and ends with his time at the National Citizens Coalition (NCC). Nicholls takes us quickly through his early political leanings (Liberal), to his conversion to conservatism at the University of Windsor and to his postgraduate days at London’s Western University. Chapter two begins his career at the NCC in 1985, which lasted until 2007.

Nicholls discusses learning to keep his writing short, simple and on message, and those lessons serve him well in this book. It is tightly written with not a superfluous word to be found in the 200 plus pages of the text: if somebody offers you an over/under of two for semi-colons/colons in Nicholls’ next tome, take the under. This book reads very much like a long version of any of Nicholls well known columns in the daily newspapers. It is readable and enjoyable.

I took this book with me for a two-day visit at my mother in laws and easily read it in the two days. A true rarity in the world of political books Loyal to the Core is enjoyable and never boring. The reason for this is that Nicholls is one of those rare birds: a backroom player who is not a policy geek. Nicholls doesn’t suffer with the ego of a politician or the boring insistence that policy rules all. Instead Nicholls has a pragmatic approach to match firm convictions about what is right. His communication background means his abiding concern is making a point.

The first half of Loyal to the Core is full of good yarns about the National Citizens Coalition and it’s work through the years. If you have paid attention to Canadian politics over the lasts 20 years, then you will fondly remember many of the campaigns that Nicholls was involved in, including the famed pigs at the trough campaign to highlight MPs “gold-plated pensions”, a term the NCC created.

The juicy part of the book, however, is when Stephen Harper becomes President of the NCC. At this juncture we get an insight into Stephen Harper that is not common, neither flattering nor a partisan slag. It is not, however, a personal hack job either. While there is some personal slags, the insight into Harper’s eating habits, and the fact he was called FB, or Fatboy, by NCC staffers is one, Nicholls description of Harper comes across as honest and thoughtful: a cold and tough boss; a boss who would call the Toronto office at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon (he worked out of Calgary) to make sure his employees where still at their desks; a boss who shut down ‘Friday afternoon drinkfest,’ and banned alcohol from the NCC offices; We see that Harper’s ideas are the law, that he takes council poorly and that he was more interested in policy than the NCC’s more traditional advertising blitzes.

Lest you think this is a Harper slap-down, Nicholls is very fair to the man who promoted him to the Vice Presidency of the NCC, and gave him the title of his first book, noting that Nicholls was “loyal to the core”.

Loyal to the Core is a good read, an interesting look at Gerry Nicholls, Stephen Harper, the NCC and the conservative movement in Canada over the last twenty years. If you are interested in politics, then you should probably read it. If you are a conservative who wonders how conservatives can communicate their message in a hostile media climate, it is a must read.

Order Loyal to the Core, and other Conservative books from Freedom Press.

Books, Gerry Nicholls, Review Fatboy, Freedom Press, Gerry, Gerry Nicholls, gold-plated pensions, Harper, Loyal to the Core, National Citizens Coalition, NCC, Nicholls, Staphen, Stephen Harper, Stephen Harper Me and the NCC, University of Windsor, Western University, Windsor

I had the opportunity yesterday to sit and have lunch with Gerry Nicholls, whom I’ve met only once previously but have had a very amicable on-line relationship for a few of years now.

Loyal to the Core

Gerry’s promoting his book, Loyal To The Core: Stephen Harper, Me And The NCC, and I was pleased to be able to purchase a copy direct from the author, who signed it:

To Brian. A friend of freedom and a friend of mine.

Aww gee, I blush.

The talk revolved around politics, covering both political philosophy and some people involved. I won’t repeat anything here except to say I was surprised that Gerry thought the one cabinet minister I like to replace Stephen Harper might be a better fit for Provincial leadership (I am still chewing on that, by the way Gerry), and that Gerry was surprised I am not a fan of Randy Hillier, which tells me I might have to give Hillier a second look.

I am off for a few days in the chilly wilds of Parry Sound, where I plan on reading my book under the nose of my Trudeaupean mother-in-law. If I don’t get my tail cut off with a carving knife I will review the book early next week.

Meanwhile, you can get your own copy of  Loyal To The Core: Stephen Harper, Me And The NCC.

Gerry Nicholls Author, Book, Gerry Nicholls, Loyal to the Core, National Citizens Coalition, NCC, Parry Sound, Randy Hillier, Stephen Harper, Trudeau

The National Post is today running an excerpt from my friend Gerry Nicholls’ new book Loyal to the Core.

The NCC’s board of directors instituted a search process shrouded in secrecy. None of us on staff knew even who was interviewing for the position. But in the fall of 1996, when Reform MP Stephen Harper announced he was not seeking re-election, I knew he would get the job…

Ah, hell, read it all, then go buy the book.  I have a personally autographed copy on order, and will review it when they finally arrive in Gerry’s hot little hands and we can arrange lunch.

Gerry Nicholls, National Post Book, Freedom Press, Gerry Nicholls, Loyal to the Core, National Post, NCC, Review, Stephen Harper