Thursday, April 26, 2001
Stock’s stock has fallen - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- Stockwell Day’s got it all bad, and it ain’t good. The embattled leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, no matter the comparisons he can draw on Her Majesty herself, is in royal trouble.
The Canadian Alliance, besides facing the ludicrous stigma of being a far-right, Christian, racist party, has never gotten the fair shake they deserve from the media and the Ottawa establishment. One should forget bitching about the stigma, as its clear it’ll stick as long as Jean Chrétien and the Liberals are in power. Stockwell Day, himself since assuming the leadership of the Alliance less than one year ago -- yes, it’ll be one whole year in July -- has faced the unjustified attacks on his commitment to healthcare, abortion and other pillars of Canadian society. He’s faced the unnecessary and simply opportunistic election of last November. All that, part and parcel of Canadian political life, the political life of Canada’s opposition leader.
And then the bad luck moved into the world of his own backyard; his own closet, skeletons and all. There was that stupid lawsuit that stuck Albertans with an eight-hundred thousand dollar tab, thanks to some mindless chatter. There were missteps in his claim that the Niagara River flowed south, when in fact it flowed north. Loose lips, we blamed those ones on.
Then, in recent days the gloves came off. He faced not the unruly Liberals or the naughty media, but rather the misgivings of his own caucus. In politics, as anyone knows, the enemy more potent is that which comes from within.
With the resignation of the Alliance’s most senior member and deputy leader, Deborah Grey, coupled with the stepping down of house leader Chuck Strahl and other stalwarts like Grant McNally and Val Meredith -- the lustre that ski-doo Day came in with is tarnished and Art Hanger is calling for his head.
The treatment hurled Day’s way is both disappointing and at the same time reasonable. For me it’s disappointing that the Alliance, whose sole purpose was to unite the right behind their elected leader Stockwell Day, is crumbling under its own weight. The objective of being the right-wing alternative to the Liberals is unmet, add to that the ineptitude of their own caucus to unite. (I am somewhat disappointed as well that Day is in the pickle he’s in. After all, I was one of the many Alliance members who voted him in, idealistically pinning our hopes on a... political boob?)
It is reasonable, as the Alliance is showing how different they run themselves in the glut orgy of federal politics. I’m almost proud to be a part of a party where the leader is held accountable and not the other way around as with the Chrétien Liberals. (Then again, I could be spinning the story faster than Ezra Levant, to whom Ritalin must have been invented for.)
In the last couple of days, pundits have been grazing conspiracy theories as to the ‘doing in’ of Day. Is it coincidence that Deb Grey, Grant McNally and Chuck Strahl step down, the exact same day Art Hanger’s call for his resignation?
The party is young. Its leader was in his position for mere weeks before an election was called and he was thrust onto the political scene to be raked by a governing party, an unruly media and the public. We gave Stockwell Day a chance to mend after November’s lackluster success, but it seemed that he operated one disaster after the next.
Joining the Alliance was something I considered very carefully. I weighed the issues at length, before casting my membership. It was the fact the leader would be selected popularly by the membership rather than conventions where delegates would be stacked to the ninth degree, that I signed up to join the Alliance.
With this exercise in political manoeuvring and masochism, one has to take stock (pardon the pun) of the greater perspective. The reconciliation of parliamentary democracy and responsible government (as it’s clearly demonstrated on an opposition party, let alone a government) doesn’t work here. Prime Minister’s from Pierre Trudeau to Jean Chrétien have bastardised the system to the point where it is rotten. It may seem I am beating the collective drum of people like Gordon Gibson and Rafe Mair, but it is true. The system doesn’t work, because we, the citizen, have let it be that way. Great reform must be undertook if this mess is to be solved or even understood.
The election of the party leader by the whole membership poses a definite contradiction to the notion of the leader maintaining solidarity amongst its caucus, as espoused to be the end all of all parties subscribed to the concept of ‘responsible government’. Squaring that circle is near to be impossible and the Alliance should consider how to maintain the facade of being grassroots, while being a party in this damned system.
While I sympathise with Day and his troubles, people like me who voted Day in, have come to regret that choice. Did we choose -- as Kim Campbell warned us with Bill Vander Zalm fifteen years ago -- charisma without substance? It ’s proved dangerous. In the Alliance’s case, and the Liberals should take note, it is democracy. Stockwell Day has been both fairly and unfairly treated by his party, the press and Canadians in general. The sad part is Jean Chrétien, at the barest of mimimums, should be held to the same scrutiny for his sins. Politics, if you’ll remember, is where perception equals reality. The Liberals still smile shamelessly.
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An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .